I Know My First Name Is Steven (4 page)

Each school morning Steven, Cindy, and Jody walked to school together, shepherded by unwilling big brother Cary, a sixth-grader who detested his mother's insistence on this. But each afternoon at 2
P.M.
Steven enjoyed the freedom and independence of walking home alone since Cary, Cindy, and Jody didn't get out until later.

In late November of 1972 Steven started getting into trouble for going directly from school to a friend's house to play, rather than going straight home from school. Del and Kay warned him several times to ask permission first, but this apparently didn't register, and by Friday, December 1, after Del had twice threatened to punish his son for disobeying this rule, Steven went to his friend's house again without asking and Del whipped him when he got home.

"Victor was my best friend then," Steven recalled. "On Thursday, the last day of November, I walked home with him to play soccer, but I hadn't asked first.
When it started to get real dark, I headed for home. That day my dad gave me a warning. Then the next day I did it again. That's how come I got whipped. Probably, if it had been a week between each time, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. It was just three licks with a belt across the fanny, but it made me remember!"

On December 3, 1972, Steven went to his friend Sharon Carr's eighth birthday party. Santa Claus was there, and photographs were taken while Steven and the other children gathered around the bearded old gent. After the party Steven beamed from ear to ear all the way home, as he talked nonstop to Kay about what he wanted for Christmas.

Once home, Steven bounded from the car and into the house, where he bounced onto his father's lap and told him all about the party, Santa Claus, and that among other things he wanted a G.I.Joe set for Christmas. As Stevie sat on his dad's lap, Del delighted in his son's wonder and excitement over the approaching Christmas holidays and thanked God for his family and especially his Stevie, the apple of his eye.

It was hard for Steven to fall asleep that night, what with visions of G.I. Joe sets dancing in his head. It was to be his last night in his own home and with his own family for many, many years to come.

Chapter Two

The Kidnapping: December 4, 1972

"The walk home was usual. . . at least the first part."

Outside the day was dawning cold and gray as inside Steven climbed out of his bed and padded down the hall rubbing sleep from his eyes. He peeked around the door into his parents' room and saw his dad still asleep. Canning season had finally ended, and Del was on vacation, enjoying the opportunity to sleep in. Steven turned and resumed his ambling journey down the hall, suddenly taking note of the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen. Quickly he ducked into the bathroom and relieved himself.

Back in his room, Steven dressed with a seven-year-old's purposefulness and then headed for the kitchen. Toast, scrambled eggs, orange juice, and milk . . . as usual, Kay's breakfast for her children was hot and nourishing. Later, as her four oldest children left for school, Kay stood at the front door and checked each
one's attire to see that they were all dressed properly for the cold weather. Then Cary, Cindy, Steven, and Jody walked the twelve blocks to Charles Wright Elementary, with Cary shepherding them as far as Yosemite Parkway. Once there and out of his mother's vigilant range, Cary sprinted away from the young trio lest his friends see him.

Back at home, Kay told Cory to go to her room and play quietly while she cleared and washed the breakfast dishes, clucking to herself as she looked up from the kitchen sink and through the window, frowning at Steven's bold pencil-scrawled signature on the white wall of the garage. Kay sighed as she recalled how she had tried to get Del to punish Steven for this indiscretion . . . "He didn't even make him wash it off!" she sighed to herself.

At a knock on the side door, Kay dried her hands and opened it to find her next-door neighbor Arlene standing on the stoop with her young daughter Donna. Just now remembering her promise to watch the little girl while her friend went downtown, Kay apologized for having forgotten and ushered Donna inside to play with Cory. With two four-year-olds playing in the house, Del soon abandoned his sleep, but ever the patient father, he uncomplainingly got up, dressed, stopped by Cory's room, and cheerily greeted the girls before going to the kitchen. There he sat down and visited casually with Kay as he washed down his toast and jelly with black coffee. When the girls entered the kitchen, Del gently tousled their hair before rising to go out to the garage to work on his '56 Jeep pickup.

At 1
P.M.
Arlene returned, thanked Kay, and col
lected her daughter. Ten minutes later Kay left for the auto parts store for Del, and to get a few groceries at Safeway. With a cold rain starting to fall, her plans included picking up Steven at school when he got out at two o'clock.

Eighty miles to the east, Yosemite National Park and the surrounding Sierra Nevadas had received an overnight blanket of light, feathery snow. In the predawn hours, kitchen cleaner Ervin Edward Murphy had gazed at the falling snow from his cozy shared employee's cabin as he planned his annual purchases of dime store Christmas gifts. Skinny, and hunch-shouldered, the simpleton worked the graveyard shift scrubbing Yosemite Lodge's huge cooking ovens, but Sunday and Monday nights he was off, and during the night just past he had fought hard to stay awake so as not to miss the daily bus to Merced. Not owning a car, and never having learned to drive, the 8
A.M.
bus was Murphy's only way of getting to Merced, the primary shopping town for people in the park. But "Murph," as his friends called him, had fallen asleep. A sharp knock made him wake with a start and he scrambled to the door, a glance at the clock confirming his fear that he had missed the bus.

Opening the door, Murph discovered his peculiar bespectacled friend, Kenneth Eugene Parnell, smiling furtively as he huddled against the cold. Ken, the Curry Company's night auditor at Yosemite Lodge, a slightly stooped, introverted, self-taught bookkeeper—with no other friends among his fellow employees—and Murph, who made friends with any and
all he met, were two of the oddest of the collection of social misfits, ex-felons, and alcoholics who then made up the bulk of the Curry Company's Yosemite employees.

"Let's go to Merced!" Parnell blurted, and without pause Murph smiled and happily accepted his friend's offer.

Recounted Murph, "We went down to Merced in his old white Buick. Parnell took me to Merced Mall, and I went shopping to buy my Christmas presents. Now, while I was shopping, Parnell got some gospel tracts. And after I did my shopping he give me some and he asked, 'Would you hand out some gospel tracts?' And I said I would. You see, according to Parnell, he was studying them gospel tracts and he decided to be a minister. You know, you
can
study to become a minister.

"So then he said that he was going to take me to a particular area of town that he knew to hand them gospel tracts out. And he drove me out on Yosemite Parkway and told me to give 'em to the kids walking home from school. He said that he wanted to raise an underprivileged child, and he felt he could do better than his [the child's] parents, and that he wanted me to help him pick up one of the boys walking home from school to be his son. Parnell said there were a lot of battered children out there who need a home where they can be well treated. He said he wanted to find him a boy like that and take care of him."

To Murph, though not, of course, to most people, Ken's plan made perfect sense, for during the pair's many conversations, Murph had shared with Ken that he himself had been an abused child, a fact not lost
on the cunning Parnell when he'd chosen him to be his partner-in-crime.

At the auto-parts store Kay stood in line for Del's oil, filter, and nuts and bolts. It was a little past 2
P.M.
and sleeting as she ran back to her car hoping that Steven would wait for her at school. Anxiously, Kay drove the freeway to Yosemite Parkway, exited, and headed east, arriving at the school's back entrance about 2:10. Fruitlessly she searched the few remaining clusters of children for her son before making a U-turn and driving straight home down Yosemite Parkway, past the Red Ball Gas Station, looking for Steven all along the way. Back home at 2:20, she got out of the car and asked Del, still working on his Jeep, if he had seen Steven. Not yet concerned, he shook his head "no." Neither had eaten lunch and Del asked Kay to fix tunafish sandwiches for them while they awaited what Del felt certain would be yet another tardy arrival by their youngest son.

A little before 3
P.M.
Del, Kay, and Cory piled into the car and headed back to Charles Wright Elemen tary to pick up Cindy and Jody, looking for Steven along the way. Cindy and Jody were waiting at the curb, but Steven was nowhere to be seen . . . and his sisters hadn't seen him since lunch.

As they drove home, Del's emotions began to swing between anger that Stevie had apparently disobeyed him again and anxiety that something just
might
have happened to him. If Stevie had gone to his friend's without permission again, Kay said, "Del was going to get him
good
this time."

Back at home, Steven's parents phoned his friends and his friends' parents, but no one knew where Steven was. They did, however, speak with his classmate Royal Harris, apparently the last one to have seen Steven at school. Royal said he waved 'bye to Steven as he himself boarded his school bus. But the second-grader had no idea where Steven had gone after that.

At 2 P.M., less than a quarter mile from Charles Wright Elementary School, Kenneth Parnell pulled off Yosemite Parkway onto Jean Street and drifted to a stop just west of the Red Ball Gas Station. He gave Murph some final instructions and a handful of gospel tracts. A few minutes later at the school, with his mother nowhere to be seen, Steven started to walk home in the pelting sleet.

Murph remembers, "After Parnell let me out, he drives off and I didn't know where he was going, and I'm just standing there in the sleet handing out these gospel tracts. And, you know, I gave a lot of them tracts to them kids walking home from school. A lot would just say, 'Hi,' or 'I've got to get home,' and pretty soon I had only a few left.

"And, see, I'm handin' 'em out and Steven shows up and I'm talking to him and I said, 'Where are you goin'?' And he said, 'I'm going home.' And I said, 'The minister will give you a ride home.' And then Parnell drives up and calls Steven over to the car. Then I opened up the door and Steven got in and Parnell says to me, 'Let's go. I'm going to take the kid home.' And I got in the front and shut the doors and we drove off."

Reminisced Steven, "I don't remember too much about the school days—the usual, monotonous days—but that one stands out. The walk home was usual. . . at least the first part. I walked down the back way and then crossed Yosemite Parkway there by the gas station. At that age I usually walked with my head down, looking at my feet, so I really didn't notice Murphy standing there until I was right on him. And then he came up to me and gave me some religious brochures. They had a little story in them in cartoon form that says something out of the Bible.

"Murphy said he was from a church and was trying to gather donations. He asked me if maybe my mother would like to donate something to his cause. He asked me where I lived and I told him that I lived right around the corner about three blocks. Then he asked, 'Well do you think we could speak with your mother?' And I hadn't seen anybody else by then, but I said, 'Yeah, I'm sure she would love to give a donation.' Then he goes, 'Well, could you take us there?' And I agreed to. My impression was that he was a nice man, even though I later found out that he wasn't too bright; but at that age that wasn't important to me.

"Then all of a sudden I noticed a white car pull around the corner and up beside us. Murphy opened the back door for me. I got in; he got in front. Then he shut the doors and introduced Parnell to me. They both used their real names, too.

"Then they drove off and they passed my street. I mentioned it to them, and Parnell said, 'Oh, well, we're going to our place for a while and see if you can stay the night. We're gonna' call your mother from there.' I go, 'Well, why don't we just go back and ask
her?' Then Parnell said, 'Well, we got some things to do down there. We'll call her from there.' Then they hit the highway for Cathy's Valley.

"They sure were sure of themselves. I mean, the way Parnell acted, as soon as he got me in the car, he acted like that was
it.
Then I just sort of sat back and enjoyed the ride. I'd never even been that way before, you know," Steven exclaimed.

Murphy said, "On the way out of Merced, I figured that there was something wrong"—with Parnell taking Steven along—"but then, I said to myself, 'The kid ain't doin' nothin'.' I
knowed
there was somethin' wrong, but after we left Merced I never heard him cry, either. Even when we got him there [a cabin in Cathy's Valley] he never cried."

The ordinarily taciturn Parnell recalled the events this way: "[At Merced Mall] we began looking for a likely prospect to be my son. During this incident Murphy talked to two other children in the shopping center. However, I thought them to be unsuitable." And referring to the kidnapping: "There was no force used on Steven by either Murphy or myself, and neither was any force necessary to keep him in our custody after leaving the area."

By 4
P.M.
Kay and Del had scoured their neighborhood several times, checking with Steven's playmates as they went. Then, with increasing concern for Steven's safety, they began driving in ever-widening circles around their home and the school in the ever-colder, wetter, gloomier weather.

Finally, weary and becoming frantic, Del and Kay
returned home a little before 5
P.M.
and telephoned the Merced Police. Fifteen minutes later Officer Michael Hyde arrived, was briefed by Del and Kay, and soon thereafter radioed his dispatcher: "Responded to the area of 1655 Bette Street in response to a missing juvenile from that location. The subject was approximately four feet eight inches, sixty pounds, with shaggy brown hair and brown eyes, last seen wearing a light tan coat with blue jeans and a possible zip-up type T-shirt." He then left and searched the adjacent neighborhood, the school playground, Yosemite Parkway, and everywhere in between.