Steven Stayner’s life changed three weeks before Christmas 1972 when he was kidnapped by a Texan drifter Kenneth Parnell. The 7-year old was going home from school, when he was lured into a van and taken by Parnell, who’d already done time for raping a child and impersonating a police officer, in the 1950s. 

When Stayner escaped from Parnell after years of abuse, he managed to tell the police “I know my first name is Steven”, before recounting what had happened to him. 

The troubling tale of Stayner’s kidnapping and his older brother’s crimes have come to public attention again in Hulu’s ‘Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story’. 

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Stayner remained captive for seven years and was raped in a remote cabin. The boy attended a local school under a false identity, but never braved an escape. When Stayner grew too old for Parnell, he was instructed to help the drifter kidnap another child. 

However, the then 15-year-old decided to help the five-year-old Timothy White from becoming another of Parnell’s victims. Stayner escaped the cabin and hitchhiked to safety in 1980. 

Steven Stayner’s escape: 

Stayner’s mind changed two weeks after White was snatched off the streets of Ukiah, Mendocino County. Since Stayner had never defined Parnell, and come and gone freely without once escaping, his captor didn’t anticipate what was to come. 

Affected by White’s emotional distress, Stayner helped the boy escape and hiked for 40 miles to reach a police station. While the long-captive boy found it difficult to begin recounting what happened, he eventually told the cops everything. 

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His allegations were deemed authentic, but there were jurisdictional issues and elapsed statutes of limitations when it came to sexual abuse. Thus, Parnell was only charged with kidnapping. He was sentenced to seven years, and granted parole after five. 

Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1989, while Parnell died of natural causes in prison in 2008, after a 2004 conviction for attempting to purchase and molest a child.