Latest / True Crime California / TCC #16 Steven and Cary Stayner, Part 1

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TCC #16 Steven and Cary Stayner, Part 1 · True Crime California

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indie podcasts. Hi, I'm Heather and I'm Dylan. We are
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Mountain Murders and Appalachian truecrime podcasts, dropping weekly episodes every Sunday.
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Speaker 3: Hey everyone, welcome to true Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
1:33
and I'm glad you're here. Hello, listeners, Welcome back to
1:51
True Crime California. We are like I promised on a
1:55
pretty good recording schedule, and this last week has been
2:00
a little more mellow, so I'm able to get my
2:03
shit together and record on time. I also want to apologize.
2:07
I think I was so bummed the Kendy Cabin murders.
2:10
I did so much research on, but I was having
2:12
issues with the sound quality. So I apologize because I
2:16
feel like it's so weird. I use the same mic
2:19
and the same recording program, but if I stop and
2:24
then pick back up, it will record at different levels
2:27
for no reason, and I cannot figure out how to
2:30
fix it. And most of the time I'm able to
2:32
sort of fix it in post, but this time it
2:36
was so all over the place that even with trying
2:38
to fix it, it didn't really work. So I apologize for
2:42
that one. I think Sherry rass Mussen was a lot more.
2:47
The sound was right, it sounded good, But I apologize
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for the Kendy Cabin murders. That one was something I
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really wanted to do and I felt like it was
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so overwhelming, and then there were like the sound issues,
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So hopefully you all enjoyed that one, but it was
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kind of a bummer for me listening back and not
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being able to like fix the audio. So so sorry
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about that. I hope everybody's having a great week. It's
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finally maybe gonna stay warm here in Los Angeles. The
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weather has really changed here over the last few years,
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and I never really knew that, like you actually do
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get depressed in cold, in like wintery conditions, because I
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had lived in California for so long and it was
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never really liked that. And now it's like cold like
3:30
six months out of the year or not cold, like
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I know people in Midwest are like eat shit, but
3:35
like California cold. It's much colder, it's gloomier. It rains
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way more, which is good because we were in a drought,
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but for my mental health it is bad. And so
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it's been really great having the sunshine again because it
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was gone for a long time. And as we all know,
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I love California. I don't ever want to leave. So
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I hope it gets its shit together with regards to
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the weather, because that's why we all pay so much
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to be here. So you know, it's not the traffic
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that keeps us here. I can tell you that. Anyway,
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I'm going to do a two parter this week, and
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I know I've said in the past that I hate
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doing two parters. I don't want to make people wait
4:11
a week. I actually haven't even finished researching this case
4:14
because it got so big. The flip side of that
4:18
is that this is actually two cases. They're just in
4:21
one family. They're pretty separate cases, but they do overlap
4:26
obviously because it involves the same family. So I'm going
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to start by talking about this is two brothers. It's
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one family, but it's specifically two brothers, and I'm going
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to start by talking about one brother. Then I'm going
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to shift to the story basically that needs to be
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told about the other brother, and then I will probably
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do a quick recap and then come back next week
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and get into the rest of the first brother's case.
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So hopefully that all makes sense. Maybe if some of
4:58
you are big true crime fans, you will know what
5:00
I'm talking about, But for those of you who don't,
5:03
I am doing the cases of Stephen and Carrie Stainer.
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Now I've heard the Carrie Stainer case covered a lot
5:12
of times in true crime, and the Stephen Stainer case
5:15
tends to sort of be like a footnote or an aside.
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It kind of gets talked about, but only in the
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context of how it affected Carrie. And I think that
5:24
is a big mistake on a lot of people's parts
5:28
to not cover both of these cases together, because Stephen's
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case was huge when it happened. It was absolutely like
5:36
wild and we'll get into it. So I always find
5:39
it really interesting when podcasts choose to only really cover
5:43
Carrie and not really talk about Stephen. So I am
5:46
going to be the change that I want to see
5:48
in the world, and I'm going to talk about both
5:50
of them. So let's get into it. So this story
5:56
begins with the birth of Carrie Stainer. Carrie Anthony Stayner
6:03
was born in August thirteenth, nineteen sixty one in Merced, California.
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The family actually grew up, or he grew up with
6:12
his family in a place called Atwater. And I actually
6:14
have a friend from Atwater, California, which is so crazy
6:18
because it is an absolutely fucking tiny, tiny little town.
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So we're gonna say Merced because essentially it is Merced.
6:26
It's like when people are from like West Hollywood, and
6:29
they say they're from Los Angeles, like the greater like
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it's not a metropolitan city by any means, but like
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the larger city is Merced. But I thought it was
6:38
interesting because I was like, holy shit, I know somebody
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from Atwater and it's like the tiniest town. So in
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any case, he was born and raised in Merced, California.
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Merced is about sixty miles from Yosemite, so it's a
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very rural area in California, which, as I've mentioned, is
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actually really common for California to have a lot of
6:57
rural areas, which people don't really think about, but is
7:00
definitely true. M. M. Carrie was the oldest of five
7:04
children born to Delbert Dell and Kay Stainer. So Delbert
7:09
went by Dell, a couple who were married only about
7:12
a year before his birth, and they had actually only
7:15
been together for a pretty short time before they got married,
7:19
so it was a quick marriage and then immediately started
7:21
having kids. After Carrie, two sisters were born, and then
7:26
brother Stephen, and then another sister. Stephen was four years
7:30
younger than Carrie, and as the oldest, Carrie received the
7:35
brunt of many of the bad things in the family.
7:38
I also want to call out that they had four
7:40
kids in four years. I think they even had five
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kids in five years, Like they were just going, go
7:44
and going. So in any case, you know, Carrie's the
7:48
oldest kid. He is kind of the first one to
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experience his family, his parents. They're learning to be parents
7:55
with him, which is not always a good thing. And
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mostly the the bad thing in the family was his
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mother's inability to show love or really connect with her children,
8:07
and especially with Carrie. Because again he was the first child,
8:11
Carrie was easily discouraged from being emotional, and since he
8:15
was a first child, he picked up on his parents'
8:17
attitudes more readily than his younger siblings. Now, his mother
8:20
had been molested as a child by her father and
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as such had learned to hold in her emotions and
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be very stoic. Carrie was taught to do the same thing,
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even though it really wasn't natural for him to be
8:34
that way. And we'll get into how that affected him now.
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The daughters, being girls, were naturally more caring and were
8:40
given more care in return, because you know, back then,
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in the fifties, sixties, seventies, I mean even now, in
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a lot of cases, the idea is like girls, they
8:51
get the love, they get the hugs. Boys they have
8:53
to be men, they have to be stoic. You know
8:55
all that shit. Now. Steven, the younger brother, for his part,
8:59
was a very out going child from birth and was
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at least in Carrie's eyes, the family favorite, or at
9:05
least the favorite of the two brothers. So Carrie's already
9:08
feeling this sort of favoritism, and as a result, Carrie
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felt very removed from his parents and his siblings, and
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maybe even resented Stephen a little bit while growing up.
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I wanted to mention at this point that the family
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was also Mormon, and I believe that that contributed to
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their stoicism as well. Carrie was so affected by this
9:32
lack of love from his parents that when he was
9:34
a baby he developed trichotillomania as a way of self soothing.
9:40
And he would do this and I'll explain what it
9:41
is in a second, but he would do this because
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when he would cry, his mother would ignore him and
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his father would yell at him because his father didn't
9:49
know how to handle it, and his mother obviously also didn't.
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Now this started before he was even able to walk
9:56
or talk, so this was ingrained in him from the start.
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Nobody's going to soothe you. Nobody is going to help you.
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You have to figure this out, and the way he
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figured it out was self harm. Tricotillomania is basically pulling
10:11
out your own hair, and it's something that people do
10:14
as a way of matching their mental discomfort with a
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physical version of the pain that they feel. This is
10:20
common in neglected children, which obviously makes sense here because
10:23
although Carrie had two parents living at home, neither was
10:27
able to give him even the basics in terms of
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love and care, and this affected him deeply, especially once
10:34
he saw the other children receiving even a tiny bit
10:36
more love and affection than he was. So life went
10:41
on as you know, quote unquote normal within his family.
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Carrie did really well in school from a young age.
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He had a lot of friends, He played baseball. As
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he got older, he was a really talented artist. He
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had good grades. Even when he got into high school,
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he did really well. He was in fact, voted most
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likely to succeed one year, and the year of his
11:05
graduation he was voted most creative. So outwardly, Carrie's family
11:10
was great and his life was the dream, but in
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reality things were obviously very different, and in fact, at
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the age of only seven years old, Carrie began fantasizing
11:22
about hurting women. These fantasies were sexual in nature, and
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at that age he didn't understand that really and he
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definitely did not want to act on these urges, and
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that's something that I personally find really interesting. Even though
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his fantasies were violent in nature, at the age of seven,
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he was still innocent enough to not want to actually
11:43
hurt anyone and was scared at his own feelings. His
11:49
tricotillemania also continued for most of his life, and at
11:52
one point he started wearing baseball caps to constantly, like
11:56
all the time to cover his bald patches because he
11:59
was getting made fun of, which I mean even popular
12:02
kids can get made fun of. So Carrie grew up
12:04
feeling very isolated, and the only thing that he was
12:07
really able to connect with with either of his parents
12:10
was when his father would take the family camping, and
12:13
his father loved camping, he loved being outdoors. Carrie was
12:19
also a natural outdoorsman and loved camping, hiking, fishing, all
12:24
of it. Since the family lived so close to Yosemite,
12:27
they would go really often, and that would give Carrie
12:30
a chance to connect with his dad in a way
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he wasn't ever able to otherwise. This contributed to Carrie's
12:36
absolute love of the outdoors, which in turn, unfortunately contributed
12:40
to the latter part of the story. But we'll get there,
12:42
but at this time kind of connecting, actually feeling affection
12:47
from one of his parents really made him love being
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outdoors because it was the only time that he felt love.
12:55
Steven Stainer also did really well in school and in life,
12:59
and as far as we can tell, this was much
13:01
more consistent with how he actually felt on the inside,
13:04
because he was always like a really confident and happy kid.
13:08
So the way that he behaved outwardly matched the way
13:11
he felt inwardly. But Carrie was doing more of like
13:15
masking and like lying about how he felt to sort
13:18
of hide his inner demons and the struggles that he
13:21
was facing, and you know just how he was feeling
13:23
on the inside. Dell Stainer used to refer to Stephen
13:28
as this little puppy dog because you'd always follow Dell
13:31
around and wanted to do whatever he was doing. As
13:34
a result, Dell and Stephen, who everyone called Stevie, spent
13:38
a lot of time together when Stevie was young. This
13:42
later led to Stevie calling this time of his life
13:45
the quote most idyllic, which I'm sure only led to
13:48
Carrie feeling even more like an outcast, because what I'm
13:51
seeing here is Carrie picked up on his parents' lack
13:55
of ability to express love and he didn't ask for
14:00
He was not confident enough of a person to kind
14:03
of ignore that and ask for what he needed, whereas
14:06
Stevie was just born with confidence and didn't even seemingly
14:10
notice that his parents weren't like warm and loving and
14:13
just basically demanded it and they gave it to him.
14:16
And I think if Carrie had been a little bit
14:19
more outgoing in that way, maybe a little less sensitive
14:25
from a young age, it would have really affected his
14:29
experience growing up. Kay Stainer actually said at one point
14:33
that she was always the heavy in the house because
14:36
Dell was the fun one, which I find really interesting
14:39
because Carrie's experience was that neither of them was any fun.
14:44
So again, just sort of calling out the different experiences
14:47
that everyone is having within the same household, and I'm
14:49
not really going to talk about the sisters too much
14:51
because their stories don't really I mean, things happen with them,
14:57
but they don't have their own true crime stories, So
15:01
I don't mean to not include them in this, but
15:03
you know, we kind of talk about what's pertinent to
15:05
the story. When the kids were young, the family actually
15:09
lived on an almond farm just outside of town, and
15:12
this experience was really really great for Stephen and actually
15:16
for all the kids because they had a lot of
15:18
time outside and because Stephen was so obsessed with Dell
15:22
and Dell worked daily on the farm, Stephen was able
15:25
to hang out with him all day when he was younger,
15:27
not going to school, which he really really loved. Unfortunately,
15:32
this all went away when Carrie was ten and Stephen
15:35
was six when Dell injured his back and had to
15:38
give up farming. Stephen actually had to get rid of
15:41
his best friend, his dog, Daisy, and also no longer
15:45
got to spend all of this time with his dad
15:47
because Dell had to get a job outside of the
15:49
house because he wasn't farming anymore. This resulted in Stephen
15:53
acting up a bit, and in nineteen seventy two he
15:56
got into trouble for going to a friend's house after
15:58
school instead of coming straight home, which scared his parents
16:02
terribly and unfortunately would not be the last time. But
16:07
before we get there, we have to get through another
16:09
horrible part of the story, and actually there's a couple
16:12
more things to get through first. To escape the isolation
16:15
Carrie felt at home, he would often go to his
16:18
uncle Jesse's house. Jesse had two sons around Carrie's age,
16:22
and they would all hang out together. Jesse was much
16:25
much less strict than Carrie's parents, and the kids were
16:29
allowed to do kind of whatever they wanted over there.
16:31
Carrie obviously really liked this, but even more he loved
16:35
having a connection with a father figure, which is exactly
16:37
how he saw Jesse. And that is a big bummer because,
16:43
at age eleven, Carrie went to stay with Jesse overnight,
16:46
which he had done in the past. This night, however,
16:50
Jesse invited Carrie to sleep in his bed with him.
16:53
Carrie didn't think it was weird at the time, but unfortunately,
16:56
that night, Carrie's uncle Jesse molested him, and I believe
17:01
this happened a few more times after this first incident. Now,
17:06
speaking of molestation, remember how I said his mother was
17:08
molested well, very Unfortunately she continued this chain of abuse,
17:14
not by her own hand, but she did marry a man, Dell,
17:19
who went on to molest at least one of Carrie's sisters.
17:27
This molestation was not found out for a very long time,
17:31
but I do believe that he was arrested for this,
17:33
if not charged. So we have just this awful legacy
17:36
of abuse. We have his mother being abused, his father
17:40
doing the abuse. He's getting abused by his father's brother,
17:43
his uncle. So you know, I have to wonder what
17:46
happened to Jesse and Dell that they both molested children
17:50
in their adult years. I'm wondering if they suffered abuse
17:53
as well. Whatever it was, all three of the adults
17:56
in Carrie's life, all three that he was the closest
17:59
to you so, were involved in child molestation in one
18:02
way or another. And that's a really awful thing, and
18:05
it clearly messed with Carrie, who was already dealing with
18:09
these horrible fantasies of harming women. And I mean his
18:14
desire to harm women very well could have come from
18:17
his resentment towards his mother for not giving him love.
18:20
So I mean We've just got like generational trauma pouring
18:23
in on this poor kid. And again, Steven seemed to
18:26
mostly miss a lot of this, but a lot of
18:30
that could also be because of what happens next, which
18:33
is also horrific. When Carrie was eleven and Stephen only
18:39
seven years old, on the afternoon of December fourth, nineteen
18:42
seventy two, Stephen went missing while walking home from school
18:46
by himself, which he did often. Dell and Kay at
18:51
first were not too worried since he had done this
18:54
before and got in trouble for it. But after a while,
18:57
and after checking with all of his friend's parents, they
19:00
and called the police. Police began looking for Stephen, but
19:04
with no luck. After several days, finally police released his
19:10
photo to the papers and to the TV news. They
19:13
searched along wider and wider areas round Mercaid. They even
19:18
used psychics to try to find the boy, but never
19:20
found even a trace of him. He had simply disappeared. Now,
19:29
from Carrie's perspective, this is traumatizing on many levels. Obviously, First,
19:34
I wanted to call out that before Stephen's disappearance, his
19:37
father saw himself as a very involved parent. Despite what
19:41
Carrie may have felt. After Stephen went missing, Dell fell
19:44
apart completely and would cry often over the loss of
19:49
his son. This affected Carrie not only in that it
19:53
was hard to see his father so upset, but he
19:55
also felt resentful that his father cared so much for
19:57
Stephen when Carrie felt that he cared so little for him.
20:02
Carrie even believed that had he gone missing, his parents
20:05
wouldn't have cared much, if at all. Now whether or
20:08
not this is true is irrelevant really, because as we know,
20:11
Carrie had many problems, including fantasizing about hurting women, so
20:15
this could have been in his head as much as anything.
20:18
But we also know his parents were very stoic and
20:21
not super loving, so I think it was probably a
20:24
mix of things. Anyway, Carrie was also affected by this
20:28
because it thrust him and his family into the spotlight,
20:31
and he was known to many as the kid whose
20:33
brother was kidnapped, which I'm sure is traumatizing for anyone,
20:37
even without the other dynamics at play. And then, of course,
20:41
obviously he did miss his brother, and you know, obviously
20:44
just the trauma of your younger brother disappearing has got
20:48
to be really hard for a young kid. Even so, Carrie,
20:52
as I mentioned, did well in school all the way
20:54
through high school. He had a couple dates here and there,
20:58
had lots of friends, really create very talented artist. He'd
21:02
make cartoons and comics that his friends really enjoyed reading.
21:06
So again, outwardly he's masking things seemed a lot better
21:11
than they really were. Inside the home, obviously, the family
21:15
was a complete mess. Kate shut off even more from
21:18
her children, which who knew that was even possible. Dell
21:22
was just a sobbing mess. We have the moles station,
21:26
we have just all of these different things compounding and
21:30
it's really really awful. Then and guys probably just heard
21:34
my dog snoring. Then seven years later Stephen came home. Now,
21:46
let's talk a little bit about Stephen Stainer. Stephen Stainer
21:50
disappeared from his hometown of merced Or Atwater on December fourth,
21:55
nineteen seventy two. While walking home from school. He was
21:59
walking alone, as he often did, when he was approached
22:01
by a man handing out flyers for a church. This
22:05
man asked Stephen if his mother would be interested in
22:08
donating anything to the church, and Stephen said yeah, he
22:11
thought she would. The man then asked if he would
22:15
mind taking him to his home to meet his mother.
22:17
Stephen agreed, and as they began walking, another man pulled
22:21
up in a dirty white buick and offered the two
22:23
a ride. The man with Stephen said it was his friend,
22:26
so it was safe. Stephen happily got into the car
22:30
and from there the men, who were Edward Murphy and
22:32
Kenneth Parnell, drove Stephen not to his home, but instead
22:36
to a cabin in Yosemite. Kenneth Parnell was a convicted
22:42
sex offender who, by the time he picked up Stephen,
22:45
had already served time in prison for raping a child,
22:48
impersonating an officer, and armed robbery. It's thought he may
22:53
have been molested as a child, but regardless, he was
22:55
a dangerous and a very scary man. Edward Murphy, who
23:00
by Murph, was a trusting simple man who may have
23:03
had some mental health issues, so was easily manipulated by
23:07
Kenneth into helping him abduct a boy. Kenneth actually told
23:12
Murph they were doing this because he was an aspiring
23:14
preacher and he wanted to raise a sun in his religion.
23:18
It's unclear if Murph ever knew what was really going on,
23:21
but he definitely knew they'd stolen a child from his family,
23:25
So I don't really know. I do know that it
23:28
was later believed that Murph was kind of like a victim,
23:30
and I don't he wasn't punished too much for this,
23:35
you know. I read a lot about him and it
23:36
seems like he was very much taken advantage of, so
23:39
a very sad situation. Anyway, I won't get into too
23:43
many details, but Stephen was molested that first night with Kenneth,
23:47
and this escalated if he catched my drift and continued
23:50
for the following seven years. As for how he was
23:54
able to keep Stephen for this long, he brainwashed him
23:57
into believing his parents gave him up because they couldn't
24:00
afford to have that many kids, which at his age
24:03
Stephen believed. He would also sort of reinforce this brainwashing
24:10
and subservience by sometimes severely beating Stephen and then immediately
24:16
after spoiling him, So really messing with Stephen's mind from
24:20
a young age, lying to him about his parents not
24:23
wanting him, and using weird tactics to sort of manipulate him.
24:28
It's almost like a cult leader kind of thing. Kenneth
24:32
also changed Stephen's name to Dennis Parnell and even enrolled
24:37
him in school under that name. And I'm going to
24:39
continue to refer to him as Stephen, but there was
24:42
a book about him, and half the time they talk
24:45
about him as being Dennis, because for seven years, for
24:47
half of his life to that point, you know, to
24:50
the point that he's rescued, that's what he was called.
24:55
So essentially, Stephen became Kenneth's son. And after a while,
25:00
while with the lies, beatings and sort of just breaking
25:02
him down, Stephen became convinced that this was his new
25:06
life and he went with it. He later said that
25:09
he didn't want to have to fight with Kenneth every
25:10
night or be forced to do these horrible things every night,
25:14
so he just relented and went with it, which is
25:16
extremely sad and also fucking horrific. Kenneth and Stephen actually
25:22
stayed mostly in the area, only a county or two
25:26
over from where he was abducted, for basically the entire
25:30
time he was gone. At one point, Kenneth brought a
25:33
woman into the house for a time, a woman named
25:36
Barbara Matthias or Mattias. She lived with Kenneth and Stephen
25:40
for about eighteen months, and also sexually assaulted Stephen during
25:44
that time. Kenneth and Barbara also attempted to abduct another
25:48
child during this time, but failed, thankfully. Kenneth also tried
25:53
to have Stephen help with the abductions. We'll get into
25:55
that more later on, but he did give this up
25:58
because Steve constantly screwed it up, and later Stephen said,
26:03
you know, I screwed it up on purpose, which is
26:05
so awful that he's having to live this reality at
26:07
such a young age that he's having to think about
26:09
things like this. And the weirdest thing about this abduction was,
26:14
and I guess maybe not so weird because Stockholm syndrome
26:17
is a thing, but Kenneth gave Stephen a lot of freedom.
26:22
He let him pierce his ears, he let him smoke cigarettes.
26:26
He just let him basically do whatever he wanted, which
26:29
was very different from his Mormon upbringing that he had
26:32
at home with his stoic parents. You know, by sixth grade,
26:37
Stephen was regularly smoking weed, going out at all hours
26:40
with friends, and Kenneth allowed this because he knew Stephen
26:44
was afraid of him and would also give him what
26:46
he wanted. As long as Stephen did what he wanted sexually,
26:49
he allowed him to basically do whatever else he felt like,
26:52
and Stephen knew this, so it was sort of like
26:54
this horrible unspoken agreement between them. In fact, Steven's spent
27:00
a lot of time with other families, as that was
27:02
how he got any sort of positive love or affection.
27:06
Stephen would also have friends over and Kenneth most definitely
27:10
attempted to sexually assault them on multiple occasions, which is
27:13
so wild because none of the kids ever told anyone.
27:16
I mean they told each other, but even then not really.
27:20
It was kind of like an open secret amongst the kids,
27:22
but none of the adults had any idea. As Stephen
27:26
got older, Kenneth would buy him and his friend's alcohol
27:29
then take advantage of them in various ways. One way
27:32
that he did this was he took nude photos of
27:34
some of the kids in the shower, but he also
27:37
attempted to buy sex from a few of Stephen's friends
27:39
as well, So just a really really fucked up situation. Finally,
27:45
as Stephen got what Kenneth considered to be too old,
27:48
which is fucking disgusting, Kenneth's interest in him began to wane.
27:54
He wanted fresh blood, so to speak. So this was
27:57
when he really started to try to get Stephen to
27:59
help him abduct it new victim, some young boy. But
28:02
Stephen would always, like I said, intentionally mess this up
28:05
because he didn't want another kid to have to go
28:07
through what he was going through. Which is such an
28:09
interesting thing because it's like he knew he was being abused.
28:14
He knew this wasn't really his father, but he believed
28:18
him enough to think that he had actually like adopted
28:22
him and that his family no longer wanted him. And
28:25
it's so wild that he never like saw the news
28:28
or like you know, like I guess, by the time
28:30
he was old enough to really grasp what was going on,
28:33
it probably wasn't really a story anymore. So just such
28:36
a such a crazy thing. Now I hadn't mentioned this before,
28:41
but Kenneth Parnell had actually stalked Stephen before taking him.
28:47
He knew about Stephen's family, his habits, that he'd be
28:50
walking home that day at that time by himself. Over
28:55
the years, Kenneth had attempted to abduct a few other kids,
28:58
but I'm not sure if he had stalked them first. However,
29:02
this changed in nineteen eighty, when Kenneth was truly done
29:06
with Stephen, as he was now just far too old,
29:09
he enlisted. After Stephen fucked all of these abductions up,
29:14
he enlisted one of his wayward friends, a boy named
29:16
Sean Porman, to help him with the abduction because he's like,
29:19
I need a young kid to do this, and he
29:21
plied him with weed and alcohol to get him to help.
29:25
Sewan didn't really want to help, but he said he would,
29:28
and finally, on Valentine's Day nineteen eighty, Kenneth took Sean
29:32
to Yukaiah, which is in Humboldt County, so very north
29:36
and near where they were living at the time, and
29:38
they abducted a five year old boy named Timothy White.
29:42
Kenneth had been stalking Timothy, who went by Timmy, for
29:46
some time, and Stephen knew this and hated it. So
29:50
while it's unclear if he had stalked any of his
29:52
other attempted victims over the years, he had definitely stalked
29:56
Stephen and he definitely stalked Timmy. In any case, Sean
30:03
and Kenneth went to Yukaya and they followed Timmy in
30:09
Kenneth's car. Timmy was walking home alone from school at
30:14
age five, because that's what she did back then, and
30:17
Sean got out of the car. They actually pulled up
30:19
in front of him. Kenneth hid. Sean got out of
30:23
the car and pretended to have a flat tire. He
30:25
asked Timmy for help, and Timmy, who is a smart
30:29
fucking kid, yelled no and took off running because he
30:35
knew about stranger danger. And I'm not saying any kids
30:37
that don't know this at age five deserve to be
30:39
kidnapped or anything, but it was really cool to read
30:42
that he was like, nah, dude, I'm not doing it.
30:45
Sean ran after him. Unfortunately, obviously Timmy's not going to
30:49
be as fast as Sean, so Sean caught him pretty
30:52
quickly and threw him into the car. And I want
30:54
to say that Timmy also grabbed onto like a chain
30:56
leak fence and wouldn't let go, and Sean had to
30:59
rip him off of it. And this is really interesting
31:03
and important because it could have led to someone seeing
31:05
what was going on. Unfortunately it didn't, but the fact
31:09
that Timmy didn't just willingly get into the car. I
31:12
think could have made a difference. Unfortunately it didn't. But
31:15
he did everything right. He still got abducted, but he
31:18
did everything right because unfortunately he was no match for Sean,
31:21
and sadly there was nobody around. So anyway, Sean and
31:25
Kenneth then drive back to the cabin that they're living
31:29
in with Dennis or Stephen, and or Sean wasn't living there,
31:34
I guess, but Kenneth and Stephen were, and this kid, Timmy,
31:39
is introduced to Stephen who's called Dennis, and told like,
31:43
this is your new family, this is your new brother,
31:46
this is where you're living now. Timmy was not down
31:49
for this at all and was very vocal all the
31:53
time about wanting to go home. Kenneth obviously wasn't gonna
31:58
listen and figured he would be able to convince him
32:01
the way that he convinced Stephen. So he started doing
32:05
things like dyeing his hair so that he would be,
32:07
you know, less visible to people looking for him, and
32:12
sort of just kind of decided they were going to
32:14
fall back into this pattern of not really just like
32:18
hiding in plain sight, like he wasn't moving far away,
32:21
like Yukaya was not far from where they were staying.
32:24
You know, it was a pretty dangerous game, but I
32:26
think because it worked so well with Stephen, Kenneth got
32:29
a little greedy, he got a little cocky. So anyway,
32:34
they kept him in the cabin for two weeks. Now,
32:38
one thing Stephen didn't know was during this time, Kenneth
32:41
was planning on killing Stephen and he was going to
32:45
do this with the help of one of Stephen's friends
32:48
and dump his body in the forest because Kenneth didn't
32:51
have any need for him anymore. And it's so crazy,
32:55
what a heartless piece of shit. I mean, I think
32:57
it's obvious that he's a heartless piece of shit. I
33:00
find it really crazy that he was just going to
33:03
murder this fourteen year old because he no longer wanted
33:07
to rape him, like, it's so fucking disgusting. And basically
33:12
he was just going to replace Stephen with Timmy. Now,
33:16
this is why it is very lucky that Stephen planned
33:20
to return Timmy to his parents. Stephen had no idea
33:24
that Kenneth was going to kill him, and he still
33:26
decided to put himself in danger and do the right thing.
33:32
Like I said, Timmy was begging daily to be taken home,
33:35
and finally, on March first, nineteen eighty, Stephen decided he
33:39
had had enough, and after Kenneth went to work, he
33:42
and Timmy left the cabin and hitchhiked into yu Kiah.
33:46
Once there, he took Timmy first to his babysitter's house,
33:50
because that's where Timmy asked to go. This is actually
33:53
where he'd been headed when he was taken. She wasn't home,
33:56
so their next stop was the police station. Stephen's an
34:00
and this is actually what he did, was to drop
34:02
Timmy off then go on the run because as we know,
34:05
he was convinced years earlier that his family didn't want
34:08
him anymore, so it never crossed his mind to turn
34:11
himself in or to ask the police for help. And
34:13
later when he was asked like you could have escaped
34:15
at any point, why didn't you, he said, you know,
34:18
Kenneth told me he'd adopted me, Like, where exactly was
34:21
I going to go? Like I didn't know how to
34:23
ask for help. I thought this was my life. So anyway,
34:27
he drops Timmy off at the police station and he
34:30
goes to leave. Luckily, however, the police pretty much immediately
34:35
were like, well, how did this five year old get here?
34:38
You know, he's been missing. The whole world's been looking
34:40
for him. It was all over the news. Who brought
34:43
him here? So they run out of the station and
34:46
they see Stephen running across the street trying to get away.
34:51
They go after him, They stop him, They bring him
34:53
in and almost immediately he straight up told them my
34:56
name is Stephen Stainer. I was taken from merced seven
34:59
years ago. Now, when they ask him about his parents,
35:02
he doesn't quite remember the names of his siblings or
35:05
his parents. You know, he's been brainwashed and he was
35:07
very young. But he gives them enough information that they're like,
35:10
they realize what a big deal this is, So, you know,
35:16
huge news. This is a huge news. It's huge news
35:19
because Timmy was active current major news and went back
35:23
with his family. And it was huge news because a
35:26
seven year old kidnapping case was finally solved and Stephen
35:29
wasn't dead. Not only was he not dead, but he
35:33
was hailed as a hero for saving Timmy from the
35:35
fate nobody saved him from years earlier. He was also,
35:39
of course, reunited with his family. This made the news.
35:43
Dell and Kay were like beside themselves with happiness. They
35:47
hugged and cried over their youngest son on camera, openly
35:51
showing emotion. Carrie, for his part, let's talk about carry
35:55
again here, he seemed happy about this, but deep down
35:58
he truly, deeply resented how much they seemed to love
36:01
Stephen and not love him. Which is a really interesting
36:05
perspective because after Steven had spent some time at home,
36:09
he said he later said that he sometimes wondered if
36:11
he should have ever come home because everything was so different. Now.
36:16
At first, you know, things were great, everybody was happy.
36:19
Timmy's home, Stephen's home, Steven's a hero. But after a
36:24
while life started to settle in and Stephen had a
36:28
lot of trouble adjusting to a more strict and structured
36:31
lifestyle because once again, Kenneth let him drink, smoke, do
36:35
whatever he wanted. Also, Stephen later said that his parents
36:39
just immediately reverted to treating him like a seven year
36:41
old because their perception of him had been frozen in
36:44
time and they had no idea what he had been through.
36:48
I mean, he was living a very adult life since
36:52
he had been gone. It took a little time, but
36:56
Finally his parents backed off, but along with this backing off,
36:59
they sort of shut down. And I think this is
37:02
the first time that Stephen experienced what Carrie had felt
37:05
his entire life. In fact, later when talking about coming home,
37:10
Stephen said he sometimes blamed himself for things being so different,
37:14
but also asked, why doesn't my dad hug me anymore?
37:17
This was actually something he said in an interview. So
37:20
once again he is being his outgoing, very forthright, confident self,
37:27
but he's expressing something that Carrie held within himself for
37:30
his entire life. So here we have both boys having
37:33
similar feelings, but unfortunately seemingly never talking to each other
37:37
about them. Because I think it would have helped them
37:39
both if they were able to. So it's really unfortunate
37:41
that they didn't connect with each other. Now I want
37:44
to go back for a moment because I know we
37:46
all want to know what happened to Kenneth Parnell. He
37:49
abducted two boys, kept one for seven years, raped that
37:53
boy regularly during that time. I'm not one hundred percent
37:57
on what he did to Timmy. I know he didn't
37:59
wait sametime with Stephen, but maybe because Stephen was there
38:02
to me was not abused. I don't know. I don't
38:06
believe he was, but I'm gonna tell you what happened
38:09
to Kenneth here. He was arrested and charged only for kidnapping. Now,
38:16
the reason for this was that much of the abuse
38:18
hadn't taken place in the county where he was arrested,
38:20
and it used to be that you could only get
38:22
charged in the county where the crimes took place, and
38:25
the other county chose not to pursue charges, which is
38:28
fucking insanity. I mean, that may still be the law,
38:30
but at this point they would have charged him. Also,
38:34
the statute of limitations had passed for many of the rapes,
38:37
because that was a thing, which is again absolutely fucking insane.
38:42
As a result of this fuckery, Kenneth was given are
38:46
you guys ready? A seven year sentence, So he was
38:51
sentenced to prison for as long as he had abducted Stephen.
38:56
The difference is that he only served five of those
38:58
seven years. As you can guess, he was arrested for
39:03
similar shit once released, and was back in prison from
39:06
two thousand and four until his death in two thousand
39:08
and eight. After attempting to buy a four year old
39:12
Boy for five hundred dollars, So that's great, Go Justice system. Anyway,
39:22
I'm not gonna go too far into Stephen's life after
39:24
his return home because there's still so much to cover
39:26
about Carrie. But I did want to do a bit
39:28
more about Stephen, as his case always seems like a
39:30
footnote in Carrie's story, and to me, that doesn't feel
39:34
fair to either Stephen because his story should be told,
39:36
or did the true crime listeners, because again it's a
39:39
super interesting and terrible story. I will finish this story
39:44
with the homecoming because they don't really talk about his
39:46
life post homecoming, So I'm going to talk about his homecoming,
39:49
which I already kind of did, and then his life.
39:51
So anyway, he comes home, and when he comes home,
39:54
he gets very little counseling, mostly because he was still
39:57
a minor and Dell, his father, didn't want him to go.
40:01
It could be argued that Dell didn't want him to
40:03
go because again it was a different time therapy wasn't
40:05
widely accepted, but it could also be argued that Dell
40:10
didn't want Stephen talking about sexual abuse with anybody because
40:13
that might come back on Dell as the family knew
40:16
he had been what he'd been doing to at least
40:19
one of his daughters. I can't say for sure what
40:22
the reasoning was, but I definitely think that that could
40:25
have been his reasoning for not allowing his son to
40:29
get very much needed help for what had happened to him.
40:34
One of Stephen's sisters later said that while Stephen did
40:37
his best to move on with his life, he was
40:39
really messed up and had a very hard time, and
40:41
he wouldn't talk about what happened to him, which I
40:44
imagine would make things very difficult for him. He ended
40:48
up drinking a lot and acting out to the point
40:50
well where Dell kicked him out of the house, and
40:53
their relationship never really recovered from that, unfortunately. But I
40:57
also think that Dell might not be like a great guy,
41:00
so maybe it's a good thing that they kind of
41:02
didn't have too much to do with each other, especially
41:05
since Stephen had already kind of dealt with so much trauma.
41:09
In nineteen eighty five, Stephen, who was then nineteen or twenty,
41:12
married seventeen year old Jody Edmondson, and the couple went
41:15
on to have two kids, a daughter, Ashley, and a
41:18
son Stephen Junior. Stephen also dedicated a lot of his
41:22
time to working with child abduction groups to help victims
41:25
and their families, which I think shows that he was
41:29
doing his best to get on with his life and
41:31
make something good out of what happened to him. He
41:35
and his family also became members of the LDS Church
41:38
or Mormons, which he hadn't been a part of since
41:40
his abduction, so I think he was looking for something.
41:44
He was trying to find some way to deal with
41:47
what happened to him. Because he didn't go to therapy,
41:50
he didn't get help that he needed, so he was
41:52
looking for other ways to sort of handle it, like
41:54
on his own. Very unfortunately, on September Umber sixteenth, nineteen
42:01
eighty nine, when Stephen was only twenty four years old,
42:05
he was killed in a hit and run accident while
42:08
riding his motorcycle. The driver of the car who hit
42:11
and ran pulled out in front of him, causing him
42:14
to flip over their car and land on his head.
42:17
The driver, Antonio Loerra, was only given three months prison
42:21
time for the death because nobody needs to pay for
42:24
harming this poor man. Apparently, this guy's life is just
42:27
abuse and harm and hurt, and nobody has to atone
42:32
for that. Apparently Timmy White, then fourteen, was a pallbearer
42:38
at Stephen's funeral and over five hundred people attended. So
42:44
that is the very tragic and fucked up story of
42:48
Stephen Stainer, with a little sprinkling of Carrie in there
42:51
as well. Now I'm gonna move back to Carrie. There's
42:55
still a whole story left here, so I'm gonna come
42:58
back next week, but for now, I want to do
43:00
just a quick recap of his life so when I
43:02
come back, it won't feel so removed since I've been
43:04
spending so much time talking about Stephen. So just to
43:07
recap Carrie. As I mentioned, grew up with very unloving parents.
43:11
Always felt that his parents loved his brother and sisters more,
43:14
but especially his brother, and this was really pronounced when
43:17
Stephen returned home from his abduction. Despite Stephen clearly not
43:21
getting along with his parents and even being kicked out
43:23
of the house, Carrie always felt that he was the
43:25
golden child, and Carrie was overlooked. I think that it
43:31
was his parents just not being warm in general, so
43:34
it's likely all the kids felt this way, but Carrie
43:37
really really felt this way because he was the oldest
43:39
and he wasn't good at asking for the things that
43:41
he needed. Also, as a reminder, there was sexual abuse
43:45
in the home, and Carrie was sexually abused by his
43:47
uncle Jesse, who he saw as a father figure because
43:51
his own father, Dell, was so neglectful. Also, Carrie had
43:56
fantasies about harming women from the time he was about
43:58
seven years old, and they only got worse as he
44:01
got older. He also had trichotillomania pulling all of his
44:04
hair out that never went away. But remember, outwardly, he
44:08
was a very smart person, talented artist, good looking, and
44:11
well liked by his peers. Once again, his senior year
44:15
of high school voted most creative, seemingly had a bright
44:18
future ahead of him, at least if you ask anybody
44:21
not in his family. In reality, he had several mental issues,
44:25
very severe mental issues, and after graduation, Carrie did not
44:30
go to college, instead opting to work as a window
44:33
installer at a glass company. While working there, he apparently
44:37
had a fantasy about ramming his work truck into the building,
44:40
killing everyone inside and lighting the place on fire. He
44:44
told his friend this and also said he felt that
44:46
he was having a mental breakdown and didn't know why.
44:51
All of this actually happened just prior to Stephen's death
44:53
in nineteen eighty nine, which I'm sure only threw him
44:56
more down this path of mental health issues and anger.
45:01
At the time this was all going on, he was
45:03
living with his uncle Jesse, the father figure who molested him.
45:07
So that's another interesting part of this case because on
45:10
December twenty ninth, nineteen ninety, while Carrie was living there,
45:15
Jesse was found dead in their shared home of a
45:18
shotgun wound to his face. It was believed to be
45:21
an accident that happened while he was cleaning his gun,
45:24
and Carrie had an alibi, but to this day, nobody
45:28
is sure what actually happened to Jesse, and it is
45:31
thought that Carrie may have killed them killed him. He
45:35
certainly had a reason to do so. And that's where
45:39
I'm gonna leave this first half. We're gonna come back
45:42
and talk about Carrie's life after his uncle dies, all
45:47
the way up to present day, and it gets really,
45:51
really wild. So I hope you guys enjoyed this first
45:54
half and that you'll come back next week for the
45:56
second half. I promise I'll be on time. You'll only
45:58
have one week to wait, and you know, again, I
46:02
really feel like Stephen's story needed to be told. So
46:04
hopefully everyone enjoyed that as its own standalone case. Yeah,
46:10
please like rate review, share with your friends and family,
46:12
send me emails, case suggestions, anything you guys want the email.
46:17
All the information are in the show notes, so reach out.
46:20
I love to hear from everybody. Hope y'all are having
46:22
a great week. It's finally sunny and warm here in California.
46:26
Finally feels like the place that I pay so much
46:28
rent to live in, so that's great. Again, everybody, enjoy
46:32
your spring heading into summer. I'll see you next week
46:35
and until then, stay safe.