Remember his brother? Steven Stayner.
Stayner, the man who made world news at the age of 7 when he was abducted and returned home at the age of 14, was killed at the age of 21 when a stalled car caused his motorcycle to crash. His experience inspired the tv movie "I Know My First Name is Steven."
For all the info on him and wondering what impact this had on his murdering brother?:
blood brothers- Cary and Steven Stayner were connected by violence. One is a murderer. The other, a victim, is remembered by a childhood friend.
By Sarah Beach (Salon) July 30, 1999 | Cary Stayner has confessed to killing four women in Yosemite and may have committed many more murders, including that of his uncle.
Cary's brother, Steven Stayner, was abducted at the age of 7 by a stranger, Ken Parnell. Cary and Steven were very different -- they didn't even really grow up together. I doubt they knew each other very well.
This is what happened to Steven: In 1972, he was walking in his Merced, Calif., neighborhood when a car rolled up, and Parnell abducted him. Parnell lied to Steven, telling him that the Stayners couldn't afford to keep him anymore and had given Steven to him. He told Steven that his new name was Dennis Parnell. He took Steven to a remote trailer home up a long dirt road in the middle of the woods in Mendocino County. Parnell beat Steven, manipulated him, brainwashed him and raped him over 3,000 times, by Parnell's own reckoning. Eventually he told Steven that the Stayners had died. Steven gave up hope, and the two of them lived alone out there in the woods.
This morning, when I went to a coffee shop in Marin County for a latte, people were discussing the Yosemite killings. "And you know," said the older woman behind the counter, "his brother was the one who got kidnapped by the guy who molested him for all those years. Something's wrong with that family, for sure, because you know that kid could have walked away from the molester any time he wanted. He must have enjoyed it." I was tempted to throw something at this woman. Instead I told her everything I know about Steven, and by the time I left she was offering to help pass out flyers.
Steven Stayner was a friend of mine, but I knew him as Dennis Parnell.
My family lived up behind the general store in Comptche, just a few miles from Ken Parnell's place. My brother and Steven and I were part of a loose-knit group of local kids who sometimes hung out together on weekends and after school.
I didn't know Steven too well, but we bonded the summer I was 10 years old, over a ski cap and a motorcycle. I remember him mostly as a shy kid with a goofy sense of humor and a big, toothy smile. Steven's best friend was a kid I'll call David, who habitually wore a navy-blue ski cap. Steven, David and my brother liked each other but used to get in typical boyish fistfights from time to time, mostly over stupid stuff like who owned which G.I. Joe or whether someone had cheated in a bike race.
Steven and I started hanging out together when one of the kids got a motorcycle and let us all take turns. Steven showed me how to ride it, but mostly I sat on the back while he drove. It was late summer. In the evenings after school, I'd hop on the springy black seat and put an arm around Steven, and we'd go buzzing around on the whiny little one-stroke bike. I think it maxed out at 35 miles per hour. Our goal was to snatch the ski cap off David's head and drive off with it. David ran with both arms clenched over his head, but he let his guard down eventually, and Steven cut the motor. We rolled up behind David in complete silence, one of my hands clutching Steven's corduroy jacket, the other poised in mid-air just about at the height of David's head. He heard us when we got close, but it was too late –- I grabbed the cap, Steven stomped the bike into gear and roll-started it, and we tore off laughing, leaving the capless, swearing David in a cloud of dust.
I went to the Parnell place twice, both times on the back of the little motorcycle. It was a dingy trailer, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Steven would run in to get his coat and run back out, and we'd patch out of there down the dirt road. He wouldn't let me come in.
People have asked me what Steven was like, especially now that his brother is in the news for killing the women in the Yosemite area. Many people think that there must be something wrong with the entire Stayner family -- somber newscasters have already started referring to the "family curse." Maybe there were things wrong with the family, but I would guess there are worse things wrong with other families that don't produce serial murderers.
The abduction and molestation of their brother certainly traumatized the Stayner children, but Cary Stayner, 37, admits that his fantasies about killing women started 30 years ago, so if he's telling the truth, these murder fantasies began in 1969, three years before Steven's abduction. How did he get that way? How are serial killers created? Nature or nurture? Sadistic parents or a genetic aberration? Nobody really knows. But I do know that the abduction of their brother was not enough to turn the other Stayner children into killers. I feel incredibly sorry for them, and for Steven's widow and children, for the scrutiny they will now undoubtedly have to undergo. I hope people leave them alone.
. I didn't go to your link but I have a theory about the Staynor boys:
a perp looks for victims...he looks for victims that will allow the perp into his life..
we have heard reports that the family life was cold, distant...if that is true, perhaps Steven was the perfect victim for the perp..a little kid that felt distant from his parents and actually could believe that the parents no longer wanted him....he believed every thing the perp told him...
perhaps Cary was the same, except he got thru his childhood and adolescence...only to take out his anger at his cold, distant childhood on other people...