Kenneth Parnell dies in prison

Kenneth Eugene Parnell, who kidnapped Steven Stayner in 1973 and became one of the North Coast’s most notorious criminals, has died of natural causes while serving a life sentence.

Parnell, 76, died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, corrections officials said Tuesday.

Parnell kidnapped 7-year-old Stayner from his Merced home in 1973 and kept him for seven years, claiming to be his father.

They lived in motels and trailer parks in Santa Rosa and on the Mendocino County coast in the 1970s. Parnell was working as a bookkeeper at a Ukiah hotel when he kidnapped 5-year-old boy Timmy White in 1980.

Two weeks later, Stayner arrived at the Ukiah police station with White.

He told authorities about being kidnapped by a man who offered him a ride and said he came forward to spare the younger boy from the sexual abuse he suffered since his kidnapping.

The kidnapping and its sensational conclusion became the subject of books and a TV movie, “I Know My First Name is Steven.” Parnell was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, but the case was just the beginning of three decades of tragedy involving the Stayner family.

Stayner’s uncle was murdered in 1990, a year after Stayner died in a motorcycle accident. His brother, motel handyman Cary Stayner, was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to death for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing a Eureka woman, her teen-age daughter and a family friend during a trip to Yosemite National Park in 1999.

Cary Stayner already was serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in federal court to killing a Yosemite naturalist four months later.

Parnell was paroled after serving prison time for the Stayner and White kidnappings. In 2004, he was sentenced to 25 years to life after he tried to abduct another child.

Prosecutors said he asked the sister of his former caretaker to deliver a 4-year-old boy to his Berkeley apartment in exchange for $500. The woman went to police instead.