Child Molester Found Guilty of Trying to Buy a Young Boy

One of California’s most notorious child molesters was convicted Monday in Oakland of trying to buy a young boy for $500.

Because of two previous convictions, Kenneth Parnell, 72, could face life imprisonment under the state’s three-strikes law, prosecutors said.

In the most recent case, Parnell was arrested after a home health worker in Berkeley told police the elderly man she was caring for had asked her to help him buy a 4-year-old boy, police said.

Parnell, who uses a wheelchair and a walker, told the woman, Diane Stevens, to bring a child and the child’s birth certificate to his apartment, according to prosecutors. They said that when Stevens handed over a fake birth certificate and Parnell gave her $100 for it, officers arrested him. The child listed on the certificate did not exist, investigators said.

In 1972, Parnell, then a hotel worker in Yosemite National Park, snatched 7-year-old Steven Stayner from a rural highway in Merced. Parnell molested and tortured the boy for seven years.

Stayner escaped in 1980, fleeing to police in Ukiah with Timmy White, a 5-year-old boy Parnell had kidnapped two weeks earlier.

Stayner told detectives he didn’t want the younger boy to endure what he had. Parnell was arrested hours later.

Convicted of kidnapping both boys, Parnell served five years in the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad before being released in 1988.

Stayner’s ordeal became the basis of a book and a television movie, “I Know My First Name Is Steven.” In 1989, he died in a motorcycle accident near Merced.

Ten years later, Stayner’s older brother, Cary Stayner, confessed to killing three female tourists and a female park employee at Yosemite. He has been sentenced to death.

Prosecutors said Monday that in 1951, almost 30 years before his convictions in the Stayner/White case and 53 years before Monday’s verdict, Parnell was convicted of committing a lewd act on a minor.

Parnell’s lawyer, Deborah Levy, urged jurors not to focus on Parnell’s past.

But prosecutor Tim Wellman described the defendant as a heartless, lifelong predator.

“I think he is a poster child for the three-strikes law,” Wellman said. “The defendant is a danger at any age.... The defendant was looking for one last hurrah. One last Steven Stayner. One last Timmy White.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.