[4][5] In March 1951, Parnell was arrested for raping a young boy and impersonating a police officer; he was sentenced to four years in prison.

[8] Parnell denied in that same interview having been sexually abused himself, although Mike Echols' book I Know My First Name Is Steven claims that he was molested at the age of 13 by a boarder in a rooming house that his mother owned in Bakersfield.

(Parnell's cabin was, unbeknownst to Stayner, located only several hundred feet from his maternal grandfather's residence.)

On February 14, 1980, Parnell abducted five-year-old Timothy White from Ukiah with the help of Sean Poorman, a minor and an acquaintance of Stayner.

[10] Weeks afterward, Stayner escaped Parnell's house with White; he later said he did not want the boy to suffer the abuse that he had endured.

Stayner waited until Parnell had gone to his night shift job as a clerk at a local motel on March 1, 1980, and, carrying White on his back, hitchhiked 40 miles to Ukiah.

Sean Poorman, Stayner's schoolfriend who abetted Parnell in the White kidnapping, was sentenced to a term in a juvenile work camp.

[14] Parnell was, by this time, 71 years old and suffering from diabetes and emphysema, as well as other ailments brought on by an earlier stroke, requiring near 24-hour-a-day nursing care in his cluttered apartment in the 2600 block of Mathews Street in Berkeley.

The prosecution successfully argued that sexual aids and pornography found in the apartment, along with Stevens' own testimony, were enough to prove that Parnell's intentions were criminal in nature.

Prior to publication, the manuscript served as the basis for the 1989 TV miniseries I Know My First Name Is Steven (also known as The Missing Years), with Arliss Howard as Parnell.

Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story aired on Hulu with all 3 episodes available immediately on the release date of April 21, 2022.