Kenneth Parnell was a convicted child rapist, sex offender, and kidnapper who was behind the abduction of seven-year-old Steven Stayner in 1972, in what went on to become an infamous case. Parnell made the headlines again in 2022 due to Hulu’s show, ‘Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story’, which partly deals with the 1972 kidnapping case.

In 1951, Parnell was arrested for impersonating a police officer and sodomizing a young boy but managed to escape custody from Norfolk. He was later recaptured, but kept to his criminal ways: more than a decade after the sodomy case, Parnell was arrested again on armed robbery charges, and was convicted for the same later in Utah.

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After his release, Parnell in 1972 kidnapped Stayner from Merced, California. Parnell also kidnapped five-year-old Timothy White a few years later from Ukiah.

He was arrested in 1980 after Stayner and White managed to escape. The two boys reported the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Parnell, who was arrested a day after the kidnapping victims filed a complaint.

In 1981, Parnell was convicted of kidnapping on both counts and served five years in prison, but was arrested again in January 2003 for trying to buy a four-year-old boy for sex.

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Subsequently, in 2004, Parnell, who was past 70 years of age at the time, was convicted of trying to purchase a child and for attempted child molestation, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Parnell, who was already suffering from diabetes and pulmonary emphysema at the time of his second conviction, died in prison in January 2008 at the age of 76. Prison officials said that the convicted sex offender died of natural causes.