I Know My First Name Is Steven (21 page)

Chapter Eight

The Valentine's Day Kidnapping

"Get the kid!"

By early February 1980 Sean Poorman had still not kidnapped a young boy for Parnell and brought him to the remote cabin . . . but he had smoked up fifty dollars' worth of Parnell's pot and Ken was not happy. Already that year Ken had forced a very reluctant Dennis to accompany him to Santa Rosa on a "shopping trip" for another "son." Said Dennis, "It was the same thing"—as the attempts in 1975—"identical, exactly. We were there a couple of hours."

On Wednesday, February 13, Parnell again picked up Sean in Elk and drove straight to his cabin by way of Boonville, leaving Dennis to take the Point Arena school bus and then ride the rest of the way home with the Pipers. According to Dennis, when he arrived at the cabin that afternoon, "Parnell told Sean right in front of me, 'Dennis is just no help at all. He never wants to help me.' And it made me mad. He said that
I was worthless, and at the time I didn't know what he was talking about, but that made me so mad that I didn't speak to Parnell for the rest of the day. I was insulted." Later that evening Parnell said that they were going to Ukiah the next morning to pick up a box spring at a garage sale and he needed Sean's help to load the box spring.

But Dennis knew better. Parnell had taken him and Sean into Ukiah several times early that month to follow one particular five-year-old boy. That boy's name was Timmy White.

After fixing and eating sandwiches for supper, Dennis and Sean started pulling on yet another fifth of Jack Daniels, topping this off with a "nightcap" marijuana joint outside before coming back inside about 8
P.M.
and falling into a stuporous alcohol-and-drug-induced slumber.

Parnell had told Sean to wake him up at nine, but both boys were dead to the world by then and Parnell slept on until eleven, when he awoke with a start. Cursing, he angrily shook Sean awake, pulled on his shoes, and grabbed his partner-in-crime-to-be by the sleeve, sprinting out the door to his old Maverick. The car coughed alive and the pair roared off into the night.

They arrived at the hotel at midnight and Parnell apologized profusely to the evening desk clerk for his tardiness. Unconcerned, Sean watched a movie on the lobby TV. Later Sean curled up behind the front desk at Parnell's feet and fell asleep. At six-thirty the next morning, Valentine's Day, Parnell woke up Sean and sent him out for donuts and coffee. Then, when he got off at eight, he took Sean to McDonald's and over pancakes and sausage went over his kidnapping plans,
twice having to spell out for the teenager exactly what role he was to play. About eight-thirty they left and went to scope out the "particular boy" among the children entering Yokayo Elementary.

Failing to spot him, Parnell told Sean they would try again later, and they began a tour of garage sales advertised in the
Ukiah Daily Journal.
Sean said that Parnell bought a black briefcase for him at one and, inexplicably, little girl's clothes at another. Then they went to the Salvation Army thrift shop, where Parnell bought a box spring but did not take it with him. The Thrifty Drug store was their next stop, where Parnell bought a small bottle of Nytol sleeping pills and handed them to Sean. By then it was a little past eleven. Parnell drove back to Yokayo Elementary and the pair began again to troll South Dora Street for their intended victim, Sean remarking that at first they saw youngsters who had gotten out at eleven walking home, including a little boy whose Slinky toy he helped to retrieve from a sewer drain. But it was not until the Yokayo kindergartners got out at eleven-thirty that the two kidnappers began their task in earnest.

Driving south past the school they saw their intended victim, delicate, platinum-blond, five-year-old Timmy White walking with classmate Christy Ryan. Parnell drove to Luce Street, made a quick left turn, headed east a short distance, and then made a rapid U-turn in his Maverick, coming to a stop by the curb.

Watching his prey carefully, Parnell anxiously reminded Sean of his role: get out, fake checking the right rear tire, ask for Timmy's help, grab Timmy, quickly get into the backseat with the boy, and close the door behind him as Parnell sped off. Sean did
almost as instructed: when Timmy walked by alone, he asked him to hold the tire's valve stem to keep it from leaking air. Timmy emphatically said "No!" and continued on his way.

Not wanting to go after the boy, Sean went back to the car. But Parnell screamed and cursed at his accomplice to "Get the kid!" and so Sean ran after Timmy. Timmy ran too, but he was no match for the teenager. When Sean caught up to him the five-year-old had tightly wrapped his arms around a chain-link fence along the sidewalk, but Sean quickly slipped his arms under the youngster's and violently wrenched the little boy from the fence, ran back to the car carrying him, and threw the screaming, kicking child through the car's open right-hand door and onto the backseat.

Slamming the door behind him, Sean swiftly covered Timmy with an old green blanket as Parnell drove off, stopped briefly at the corner, turned right, drove directly past Timmy's school, and made another quick right to South State Street, down which he accessed the freeway and a short distance later the road to Boonville.

Timmy asked Parnell and Sean what was happening and where they were taking him. Parnell told him his mother was sick and in the same instant Sean said that they were taking him to a dentist. Timmy was confused by their conflicting answers but didn't ask anymore questions because he was afraid.

By the time they reached the freeway, Sean had given Timmy a sleeping pill and fruit punch to wash it down. Then he made the frightened little boy lie
back down while he himself hunkered below the car's windows.

Less than thirty minutes later, southwest of Boonville on the Mountain View Ranch Road, Parnell roared up behind Duke Stornetta, who was taking his time, headed in the same direction. Said Duke, "Parnell passed me this side of Boonville—you know where the high school is?—and he was just a-flying. And so I stepped on it and I said to myself, 'I wonder what he is in a hurry for?' And as far as I could tell, it was just him alone. And when I got to the cabin, he was already gone into the house. You know, I didn't see him . . . he just outran me."

When Parnell reached the cabin he carried Timmy inside while Sean followed with the black briefcase Parnell had bought for him. At the kitchen table Sean quickly loaded his briefcase with two bottles of Jack Daniels that Parnell had given him in partial payment for his role in the kidnapping. Then he departed the cabin, leaving behind the black Peterbilt "gimmie" cap Parnell had made him wear during their crime, the teenager's only disguise.

Thirty minutes later, at the crest of the hill just past the Pipers' place, Sean flagged down Billie Piper for a ride to the Coast Highway. Remarked Billie, "He talked about the movie he was watching on TV with Parnell the night before. I mean, I don't think the kidnapping fazed him a bit, I really don't. He was a kid who to me looked like he was out of it all the time."

Without a word to Timmy, Parnell removed the terrified boy's clothes, put them in a sack, hid it in the closet, and dressed his new "son" in blue pajama bottoms and a brown shirt bought at one of the garage
sales . . . apparently deciding not to disguise Timmy as a girl, his original plan for the little girl's clothes he'd bought. Then he laid Timmy down on his bed for a nap and stretched himself out beside his new son. As three o'clock approached, Parnell got up, carried Timmy out to the Maverick, and drove down to the coast to get Dennis.

"Parnell picked me up down at the bus stop, and that's when Timmy was in the back of the car," Dennis recalled. "He was asleep. I looked and just said to myself, 'Sure, ah ha . . . box springs, ah, yeah . . . right.' I didn't say nothin' to Parnell, and he didn't say nothin' to me, either. We just drove up to the cabin, I got out and walked up to the cabin, and Parnell went around and took Timmy out and brought him back inside and laid him on my bed."

With Timmy stretched out on his bed, and Dennis having only a spring-sprung couch on which to relax, seeds of jealousy were quickly sown in Parnell's oldest "son." Dennis selected a book from the stack Parnell had bought for him and, seething, flopped down to read it. At supper, Dennis recalled: "I was kinda' disgusted with the fact that Timmy was griping about what was being served. We was having a type of cube steak and mashed potatoes and white gravy. And Timmy didn't like the white gravy—'I don't like white gravy, I like brown gravy!'—and Parnell didn't like that either. So I ate my dinner real fast and then I went out to the barn. That was my place out there, at the barn. I'd just sit out there, or climb around in the trees, or I'd go down to the creek, or go around to the other side of the mountain and eat some apples. I'd go along the trails in back of the cabin because by
then I hadn't even gone on all the trails. I liked going through the woods."

By the time Parnell and his two "sons" had returned to their cabin, all hell had broken loose back in Ukiah. A professional in every sense of the word, steely-blue-eyed Ukiah Police Chief David Johnson said of the series of events, "We got the call about twelve-thirty that day from Mrs. White saying that her son had not arrived at the babysitter's house. So we sent an officer down to take an initial report. Then we had two or three officers in the area looking for the kid, but not really too seriously until about three o'clock, when it was evident that maybe something had really happened to him."

At this point additional officers were pressed into the search; and as time passed, off-duty officers, then reserve officers, and by dark even police cadets were busily combing Ukiah's neighborhoods. Timmy's steps were retraced to the point where he and Christy Ryan had parted at the intersection of South Dora and Luce. "From that point on," Chief Johnson sighed, "it was an absolute mystery as to what happened to him because nobody saw anything. No one heard anything, even though there were people living there. One woman was ironing clothes by her front window right where it happened, but she didn't see a thing, didn't hear a thing. And it's actually incredible that no one saw what happened."

Timmy lived with his mother, Angela, an attractive, vivacious, blond native of England, and her slender, stoic second husband, Jim White. Timmy had one sis
ter, Nicole, aged six. Timmy's mother and Jim had at first lived together several years and, when they married the previous year, Jim had adopted both children. Their home was seven miles south of Ukiah on Blue Oak Drive in middle-class Russian River Estates. Also the previous year, Angela began work at the Mendocino County Board of Realtors and Timmy began kindergarten at Yokayo, the public elementary school almost across the street from St. Mary's, the Roman Catholic school where Nicole was a first-grader. The previous fall the Whites had found a small private day care center run by Diane Crawford in her home on South Street, just a few blocks from their children's schools and a short walk for Timmy after his half-day kindergarten class.