I Know My First Name Is Steven (14 page)

Try as he might, Ken couldn't land a job in Willits, and it was only thanks to his mother's beneficence that his little family remained financially afloat. Lessthan a month after arriving in Willits, Ken again hooked his travel trailer to his old Ford and he, Barbara, Dennis, and Queenie chugged west, toward the coast. It took nearly half a day for the overburdened, frequently overheating car to crawl over twisting California Highway 20, up and down hills blanketed with towering redwoods, into and out of occasional fog banks, the spooky, desolate, uninhabited forests making a profound, lasting, sinister impression on Parnell.

In Fort Bragg, Ken quickly found a home for his family at the Harbor Trailer Park, high on a cliff over-looking the mouth of the Noyo River and the Pacific Ocean. To Dennis it was a beautiful, idyllic location, and with the exception of Yosemite National Park, by far the best in terms of natural beauty in all the time he had lived with Ken.

With a population of 4,500, Fort Bragg is the second largest town in Mendocino County, a pleasant, mostly
blue-collar town with a large Georgia Pacific Mill turning out lumber, plywood, and other wood products from redwood and Douglas fir logs trucked in from throughout the region. Tourism is a major local industry, and there are scores of motels and restaurants catering to sightseers and rail buffs who come to enjoy the dramatic northern California coast and ride the renowned California & Western "Skunk" tourist trains round trip to Willits.

In the 1850s Fort Bragg drew its first immigrants from the Portuguese Azores, immigrants who first worked at the area's pioneer lumber mill and later used some of the large trees themselves to build family fishing boats. Today one of the largest concentrations of Portuguese on the Pacific Coast continue this fishing industry in both Fort Bragg and the nearby picturesque fishing village of Noyo.

Ken spent weeks trying unsuccessfully to find a job and then made one of his infrequent trips to Bakersfield to visit his mother. As usual, he left Dennis and Barbara behind. Once at Mary's, Ken convinced her to underwrite his plan to open the Fort Bragg Bible Book Store and to buy her son a brand new Chevrolet Impala. Even though Dennis never met Mary Parnell, he said that from what Ken told him she is a very frugal yet financially well-off woman, having managed to save money from her World War II boardinghouse operation, invest it, and then add to it money from Ken's half brother, at one time the president of an oil company. But when the author asked Ken about this in 1984, he would neither confirm nor deny this information, but rather showed consternation that it was known. Said he angrily, "I won't verify or deny any
thing in those regards! One way or the other! Just let it stand at that!"

To a certain extent, starting the Bible Book Store was not all that foreign to Ken, who explained, "I usually don't discuss it, but I've had a lot of study in the Bible. I have taken extensive courses—and I'm not going to get into detail—but I have held a minister's license and a Doctorate in Bible degree. I've had times when I wanted to get into the religious field, and it weighed out in the bookstore. Financially, of course, it was a disaster." Ken's boasting notwithstanding, the author found no evidence of his ever having received a minister's license or a college or seminary degree.

About Ken's Bible knowledge, Barbara said, "On Sundays he used to sit down and read the Bible to us. And one day he was saying something about a certain part of the Bible and Dennis says, 'Well, why don't you get the Bible down and read it to us?' And Ken says, 'I know it all by heart.' So I says to Dennis, 'Well, there's the Bible right there. Get it and see if he does know it by heart.' And so Ken told us the page and the paragraph and such, and then Dennis follows along and then he says, 'He
does
know it by heart!' "

So, with neither of them attending church, Barbara illiterate, and Ken a convicted kidnapper and pederast, and
both
of them practicing perverted sex acts on their nine-year-old son, albeit at different times, this very odd, amoral couple opened the Fort Bragg Bible Book Store in a rented A-frame just across Highway 1 from the mobile home park where they lived in a sixteen-foot travel trailer.

Dennis recalls that Ken often left Barbara to handle the store alone and that she was unable to make out
receipts and give change for the sales she handled while he was gone. During these times Ken was usually drinking with his buddies at the local Eagles' Lodge, where he was soon a well-liked, well-known member and where for several years he led the membership in sales of tickets to their annual pitch-till-you-win dungeness crab feeds, their annual fundraiser. At the election of officers in 1976, Ken was chosen treasurer. He held this post for nearly three years, until the membership decided that they should bond their treasurer; fearing his criminal past would be exposed, Ken resigned the post.

A good friend of Dennis's back in the late 1970s, Joe Gomes described the scene at the Fort Bragg Bible Book Store. "They had a full stock: Bibles, pencils with scriptures on them, and different types of religious pictures . . . but not many customers." Also, Joe recalled that Ken and Dennis " . . . always seemed like they were trying to hide something. I knew Barbara and Ken weren't really married. Dennis told us that, and he called Barbara his 'Mother-friend.' But—you know the way kids get together and just talk about everything?—well, we'd go down to the river a lot and just sit and talk, but Dennis never opened up to anybody and let them know about the past."

The owners of the Harbor Trailer Park, husband and wife Leroy and Dorothy Neilson—no relation to the Nielson whom Parnell robbed in Salt Lake City—also found Barbara and Ken somewhat strange. Said Dorothy, "Barbara was a rather queer bird. She complained constantly of men peeking in the shower in order to see her take a shower in the public facility.
She wouldn't use the bathroom, but rather urinated right at the rear of their trailer."

Remarked Leroy, "Parnell was very slipshod in the hours he kept at his shop. He was very erratic, opening and closing at his convenience rather than the public's." It was this attitude about business which cost Ken the position of manager for Mr. Neilson's flea market when the job opened up and Ken applied.

That first summer Parnell caught Dennis playing with matches, this time trying to set fire to a field atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific surf. Dennis recalls, "I was out in this field where the grass was real dry. Plus, it was a non-burn day. I had a clump of grass in my hand and I was trying to set it on fire.

"So Parnell comes out there and says,
'Dennis!
What are you doing?' I jumped up and dropped the matches. He came out to where I was and saw the pile of grass and the matches and says, 'What have I told you about playing with matches? Go back to the trailer and wait for me.' And I went back to the trailer and he came in and he gave me this big lecture about what happens when little kids catch places on fire and the trouble they get into with the fire department.

"Then he says, 'Now, I'm going to blister your ass!' And he took off his belt and said, 'Bend over!' And this time he made sure that I didn't have nothin' in my pockets. And he went at it . . . hit me eight or nine times . . . hard, too!"
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That fall Dennis enrolled in Miss Friend's fifth-grade class at Dana Grey Elementary School on Chestnut Street. On the enrollment form dated September 2,1975, Ken listed himself as Dennis's father and "Barbara Parnell" as Dennis's mother, and Ken admitted as much to the author in 1984: "I may have represented her as my wife in the [school] registry over on the coast." Also for the first time, Dennis's real middle name, "Gregory," was spelled out on a school form, and as before, his actual date and place of birth were listed.

As a ten-year-old in Fort Bragg, Dennis was rather independent, often spending Saturdays wandering around this just-right-sized town for a boy his age, buying and chewing fist-sized wads of grape-flavored bubble gum, gazing in shop windows, watching the "Skunk" trains (so named for the noxious fumes their gas-electric engines emit) arrive and depart from the local depot, and nosing around the commercial and sport fishing docks in Noyo Harbor.

It was on such a Saturday, with Barbara busy minding the Bible Book Store while Ken made his social mark at the Eagles' Lodge, that the police picked up Dennis and Joe Gomes for shoplifting. While they were in the Ben Franklin five-and-dime, Joe dared Dennis to slip some Silly Putty into his pocket. The two then casually strolled out the front door and a clerk and the store manager nabbed them.

The police arrived, put Dennis in the back of their cruiser, and delivered him to Barbara—who identified herself as his mother—at the Bible Book Store, where they told her what he had done. "It was the first time I had come into contact with the police since I had
been kidnapped," Dennis recalled, "but I wasn't thinking about saying anything to them about that. I was
extremely
scared of having been caught shoplifting. My mind wasn't into, 'Oh, boy! There's a cop! All right! I want to tell him that I was kidnapped and I'm going to go home!' Well,
shit,
I was worried about,
'Oh, no!
My ass is going to get whipped!'

"But when Parnell got there he gave me this big bullshit line about good people and bad people. What he did is, he took a piece of paper and drew a black line and he says, 'You see this line? This line represents all the people who have committed a crime. The empty space on either side is the people who have not. You have now been added to that black line. Now, how do you feel about that?' And I told him, 'Well, everybody does that! It was just a little thing . . .just a little toy!' But I didn't say anything about him being a part of that black line. I wasn't out to be killed!
No thank you!"

There was insufficient demand for a religious bookstore in rustic Fort Bragg, let alone one run by business and church neophytes like Ken and Barbara, and when Mary finally cut off her son's supply of money, the business's days were numbered. Struggle as he might, Ken knew this was a losing proposition. Finances were so tight there was not even money for much-needed school clothes for Dennis and, said Barbara, "[Ken] called up his mother on the phone and begged her for money. I was standing right there when he made the call. He just said, 'I need money for clothes for the kid.' And I assumed that she knew about it, because she didn't question him. She just said, 'I'll send you two hundred bucks . . . would that
help you out?' And he says, 'Yeah.' And she did send it, because I was there when the check came in the mail." Although Mary maintains that she knew nothing about Dennis living with Ken—and Dennis concurred—did she, perhaps, think that "the kid" was one of Barbara's children?

In the spring of 1976 Barbara's divorce from Bob—who had remained with their children in Santa Rosa—came through, and with it she gained custody of her four youngest children: Lloyd, Kenny, Vallerie, and Christy, and suddenly an ill-prepared Ken found himself the head of a family of seven. It was a rowdy brood and far more than he had bargained for, especially in terms of the attendant financial responsibility. To begin with, there was absolutely no way the seven could live in a sixteen-foot travel trailer, so Ken bought an old, motorless, converted school bus which in the past was painted a dusky, noxious shade of blue, a remnant of the hippie exodus to Mendocino County in the 1960s. It could sleep eight on crude wood berths slung under the windows, and there were, after a fashion, cooking and dining facilities, plus a primitive bathroom with a shower that at best sprinkled one with a few drops of cold or warm water, depending on whether it was winter or summer. But the Neilsons were not about to allow such an eyesore to mar the decorum of their establishment, and when Ken and an Eagles' Lodge brother unexpectedly showed up towing the bus—prepared to exchange it for the travel trailer—Mr. and Mrs. Neilson rushed from their office protesting the monstrosity and Ken had to find another place for his enlarged family's new home.

Fortunately, there was such a place nearby. Below
the spectacularly high Noyo River Bridge, in the malodorous fishing village of Noyo, the Anchor Trailer Park had a collection of pickup campers, old house trailers, motor homes, and a couple of similarly converted school buses—though none as ghastly a hue as Ken's.

Located on a tidal flat between two cliffs, Noyo had air heavy with the unmistakable smell of the predominant local business, yet it was a fascinating place for the kids and it wasn't long before Dennis and Kenny and a couple of their friends went for a day's fishing on a raft—and failed to return by dark. Upset, Barbara wanted to call the sheriff, but at first Ken wasn't at all keen to do so. He was worried, she said, but had her wait a while before allowing her to call the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. After she did call and a deputy arrived, Barbara said, "Ken was kind of worried because he was walking back and forth and smoking more and more cigarettes. Then, while the deputy was talking to Ken, here came Dennis and them. They was cold and wet and everything else, and I just let Ken talk to the deputy and I took them inside to get some dry clothes on."

In prison, when the author recounted Barbara's version to Ken, the prevaricator bristled, "I
wanted
Barbara to call the sheriff! There was no question there! For me, believe it or not, there was a difference in me facing whatever penalties I might have [for kidnapping] and Dennis's life! He was out fooling around in the ocean . . . Okay? . . . so I had to face that situation . . .
right?
. . . to tough it out and hope that I could explain anything that came up!"

It was while living in Noyo that Barbara's eleven-
year-old son, Kenny, was first propositioned by Parnell. One day Dennis and Kenny were sitting on a dock shooting the breeze when out of the blue Kenny said, "You know your dad's a faggot?" Unnerved that someone knew, an embarrassed, shocked Dennis lied and denied any knowledge of such a thing. But Kenny persisted and went on to tell Dennis that Parnell had grabbed his balls and tried to get Kenny to fellate him. Dennis ignored Kenny's accusations; for the time being, the subject was dropped and nothing was said to Barbara.
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