I Know My First Name Is Steven (28 page)

"George McClure found out about Parnell's sexual assaults on Steve and he said, 'Find out the facts.' So,
the first thing I did is ask Steve if this is true. Steve started talking about it . . . the last time he was molested. How Parnell fucked him, orally copulated with him. And Delbert was there, but about this time he [Del] got up and left. Then I decided, it's not worth putting Steve through. And at that time Steve was telling me that he had no problems in getting back into the normal hustle and bustle . . . Steve said he didn't have problems with that, but his friends did. Steve said, 'Hey, I can deal with it!' "

Therefore, on his own authority, Finn did not pursue a thorough investigation of Parnell's sexual assaults on Steven and the other boys.

However, Joe Allen accepts much of the responsibility for the decision not to prosecute Parnell for sexually assaulting Steve: "One of the things that the [Merced] police on the case had a difficult time accepting was our decision not to prosecute Parnell for any of the sex offenses committed against Steve, their reason being that here we have a series of crimes that could be sentenced consecutively to our kidnapping and could add many, many more years of imprisonment to Parnell's term; were prosecutable in Mendocino County without a statute-of-limitations problem; and within that three-year period there were eighty-seven counts of sexual assault [involving Steve alone] that we could have brought. Prosecuting him would have been a perfectly reasonable decision, except that after considerable meditation on the subject, I decided that, balancing the harm I thought it would do to Steve, it was not right. . . In retrospect, maybe Steve was stronger than I thought he was; and maybe from the standpoint of public safety, it should have been
done. But it is an issue that I have never been really quiet about in my mind, because the value of taking Parnell off the streets forever is so obvious."

Merced law enforcement officers continued to have a very difficult time locating and organizing the evidence they knew they would need to make their seven-year-old kidnapping case stick. Although Parnell had actually done little to cover his tracks since December 4, 1972, the major problem was the three-year statute of limitations on kidnapping in California. But early on, Merced County District Attorney Pat Hallford personally, astutely, and successfully argued in court that the kidnapping of Steven Stayner had been of an ongoing nature for as long as Parnell had kept Steve with him. Therefore, when tested in a preliminary hearing, Merced County's kidnapping charge against Parnell as well as the county's conspiracy-to-kidnap charges against both Parnell and Murphy stuck. Following preliminary hearings in both counties Parnell was indicted by the respective counties' grand juries for second degree kidnapping
*
and in Merced County both were indicted for conspiracy to kidnap as well.

In late April, Joe Allen personally handled Mendocino County's preliminary hearing, which was held just up the stairs from his office in the Mendocino County Courthouse in Ukiah. George McClure, Joe's newly hired Chief Deputy Criminal D.A.—a musta
chioed man who speaks in an intense and direct personal fashion—assisted Joe at the hearing. Opposing them was the young attorney who had succeeded Joe as Mendocino County Public Defender, Scott LeStrange, a lanky man with a folksy presence who favored cowboy boots and a spare, Gary Cooper manner of speech.

During the hearing a rare degree of agreement surfaced when LeStrange made a motion for a change of venue and Joe immediately concurred, the judge then ordering that Parnell's trial be held in the Hayward Hall of Justice in Alameda County, just south of Oakland on San Francisco Bay's eastern shore. The judge also issued a gag order forbidding attorneys and law enforcement officers to talk with the press about the case. However, on exiting the courtroom Joe went no farther than the foyer before holding his own court for the assembled press and extensively discussing Finn's investigative efforts as well as the case's merits.

Said Joe about the gag order and his subsequent trouble for breaking it: "At that point I was attempting to enlist the citizenry through the press in the search that turned out to be for Sean Poorman. Therefore, that was quite successful, but it resulted in me getting cited for contempt by Parnell's public defender for violating the judge's antipublicity order; although looking at it carefully later, I'm not sure I did violate the order. We tried very hard to get the publicity we wanted for the search for Poorman, and yet avoid talking about the heart of the case, which is what the order was about?"

In the end, Joe was vindicated when the judge heard and dismissed the contempt citation against him.

Said McClure about Joe's close call: "We settled that in chambers, and the judge said, 'Joe, don't talk to
anybody, anymore.
'And then we go to lunch at Al's and Joe meets a reporter from
Newsweek
or
TIME,
and Joe, with his voice louder than anybody else's in the place, proceeds to talk to this guy about the case all lunch time. And after about forty-five minutes I'm done eating, and I said to Joe, 'I've got to get back to work. Talk to whoever you want, Joe, but remember what the judge said.' And I walked out and Scott LeStrange is about four booths over, having lunch. I just thought it was kinda amusing. I never heard anything else about it. Maybe Scott wasn't listening very well."

Since Parnell had taken Steve out of California three times—twice to Reno and once on the cross-country trip to Arkansas—Merced County had the option of deferring prosecution of their kidnapping charge to the federal courts. However, in a meeting with D.A. Hallford, Sgt. Lunney and Chief Kulbeth agreed with the D.A.'s position that he prosecute the case for Merced County under California law. Also, at that time all three of them felt certain that Parnell would be prosecuted by Mendocino County for his sexual assaults on Steve.

In the kidnapping of Timmy White Mendocino County had no such option: The only decision facing Finn was whether Parnell would be charged with the sexual assaults on Steve and the many sexual assaults on Kenny and Lloyd Matthias, George Mitchell, and a number of other Mendocino County boys just then coming to light. But even when Lunney and Price phoned Finn to remind him that Steve was ready and
willing to testify about Parnell's sexual assaults on him, Finn acknowledged this concern but didn't act on it.

After working with McClure on the preliminary hearing, Joe Allen turned the actual prosecution of the kidnapping case against Parnell over to his assistant: "George just sat down with me one day and said, 'Would you have any great objections if I tried Parnell?' And I said, 'I don't suppose so. Why?' And he said, 'Well, I thought it would do me some good in the election.' And George was running for D.A. and I wasn't and we both figured George could use a win in an important case . . . it would help him politically. But from that point on, I sort of took a back seat to George."

McClure elaborates: "During the four years that Joe served as D.A. he tried less than half-a-dozen cases. As D.A., he liked to be known and to get his name in the news. But Joe is not a prosecutor. He has never been a prosecutor . . . it ran against his grain.

"The relationship between Joe and me was very strange. I ran the D.A.'s office for all practical purposes. Meanwhile, Joe would go to the Forest Club and all the pool tournaments and play pool. At that point in time I had been the chief deputy for five months and we had three brand-new deputy D.A.'s that had not been in the office long at all . . . a whole new crew. So who in the hell do I rely on? I rely on Dick Finn, because he's been there longer than anyone else. And I don't know what shit Dick Finn used to lie in, but at this point he was obviously doing a hell of a lot more to make Dick Finn important than anything else."

And so, McClure tacitly followed Finn's lead in the
investigation of Kenneth Eugene Parnell . . . sexual assaults and all. Specifically, George said that Finn came back to him about the sexual assaults and "recommended that we not go any further on it because we probably aren't going to be able to do anything much anyway."

When McClure first learned from the author that Merced Police had provided Finn with evidence of Parnell's 87 separate sexual assaults on Steve plus evidence of sexual assaults on nearly a dozen other boys, he angrily said that Finn never did share anything of the kind with him. "If in fact these assaults happened, and if there was sufficient evidence there that I could put on a good case, then I would blame whoever it was that was supposed to give them to me . . . and the person . . . was Dick Finn."

The change of venue to Alameda County for Mendocino County's kidnapping trial cost half of the D.A.'s annual budget. These expenses included considerable court costs, transportation, lodging, and meals. Also, Mendocino County was responsible for substantial defense bills, since LeStrange did everything he could to defend his client. First he hired private investigator Joseph Burger to search out defense witnesses. Also, before the trial, LeStrange spent considerable funds attempting to locate a psychiatrist who would examine Parnell and then at trial give helpful, expert testimony for the defense. It came to nothing.

However, when Parnell was transferred to the Alameda County Jail in Oakland, LeStrange engaged psychiatrist David Axelrad from the University of California at Davis to travel to Oakland to examine his client. Afterward, Dr. Axelrad wrote to LeStrange,
"During the course of the examination, it became clear to me that Mr. Parnell is experiencing significant paranoid ideation and significant hostility toward the criminal justice system. . . . In view of the above, I respectfully request that you arrange for an evaluation of Mr. Parnell with the Mental Health Institute of Sacramento." This was done, but again without positive results for the defense.

Next, LeStrange got the Court to transfer Parnell to the California State Prison Medical Facility at Vacaville, thirty miles north of Oakland where, at considerable expense to Mendocino County, Parnell underwent several "truth serum" sessions during which he was injected with sodium pentothal and then questioned by LeStrange. These sessions were videotaped and reviewed by LeStrange who told the author that he considered their content so damaging to Parnell that he chose not to use the tapes nor any of the information derived from them in Parnell's defense. "There is information in those tapes that, if known, would put Mr. Parnell behind bars for the rest of his natural life." These tapes have remained under LeStrange's direct, personal control ever since.

Chapter Twelve

The First Trial

"Parnell is capable of killing a kid to protect himself."

Finally, more than a year after Steve and Timmy had hitchhiked into Ukiah, on Monday, June 8, 1981, the trial of Kenneth Eugene Parnell, charged in the kidnapping of Timmy White, began "in the Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County, before the Honorable M. O. Sabraw, Judge." But matters ground to an immediate halt when there was considerable disagreement among the news media, the defense, and the prosecution about the media's right to be present in the courtroom. At the same time Judge Sabraw heard arguments from LeStrange and McClure about the methods to be used in questioning potential jurors—the
voir dire
process.

The next day Judge Sabraw granted the media's request for extended coverage, ruling that one television camera and operator and one still photographer with two cameras and four lenses could be present in
the courtroom at any given time, that one broadcast audio system could be in place in the courtroom, and that individual reporters could use their small pocket recorders. However, these rules were for the trial itself, and to prevent intimidating potential jurors, no media coverage would be allowed during the
voir dire.

Moving along quickly, Judge Sabraw granted LeStrange's motion to conduct an individual
voir dire of
each potential juror, denied LeStrange's second motion for an increase in peremptory challenges, and then had Bailiff Bob Artis usher in the panel of forty prospective jurors, seating twelve in the jury box and the remainder in the audience of his courtroom.

At this point Judge Sabraw spoke to the assembled jurors and delivered a polished and professional yet never patronizing explanation of their responsibilities and of the workings and procedures of a criminal court of law. A man of average build, with jet black hair highlighted by a few streaks of gray, and wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, Sabraw has the courtroom demeanor of a somewhat kindly yet learned uncle whose very presence demands attention. After a brief recess, the judge conducted the preliminary general questioning of the first twelve prospective jurors by inquiring about their ages, occupations, families, etc. One juror was retained for in-depth, individual
voir dire
while the remaining eleven, along with the balance of the panel of forty, were led out of the courtroom.

On through prospective jurors two and three the slow questioning process ground. Before juror number four took the stand, Judge Sabraw undertook to speed things up by suggesting to LeStrange that some
of his repetitious questions be handled in a general session, but LeStrange was unwilling to relinquish any portion of his hard-won motion to question each prospective juror individually.

The process continued to plod along day after boring day until it finally ended the morning of Wednesday, June 17. The jury was sworn in and court was promptly recessed for lunch.

The
voir dire
filled nearly eight hundred pages of trial transcript, but there had been one startling bobble the morning before its completion. With the individual
voir dire
under way, and without asking anyone, Finn violated court protocol and casually strolled into the courtroom holding Timmy and his sister Nicole by the hand and, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to do, nonchalantly led the pair around the courtroom, chatting with the two children as he pointed out the various participants—intentionally ignoring a shocked Parnell—until Bailiff Artis realized what was happening and escorted them outside. The hapless McClure lamely tried to excuse his investigator's conduct, but Judge Sabraw quickly agreed to LeStrange's request to dismiss the prospective juror then on the stand.