American convicted sex offender, known infamously for his kidnapping of seven-year-old Steven Stayner in Merced, California.
In March 1951, Parnell was arrested for sodomizing a young boy, as well as for impersonating a police officer; he was convicted of the crime in 1952 and sentenced to almost four years in prison. While receiving treatment at Norwalk State Hospital, he escaped, staying free until February of the following year, when he was finally apprehended in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
More than a decade after the sodomy case, Parnell went back to jail for armed robbery in Utah.
On 4 December 1972, Parnell abducted Stayner with the help of Edward Ervin Murphy. Steven was taken to Catheys Valley. Parnell went on to tell him that his parents couldn’t afford to keep him anymore, that a judge had given Parnell legal custody of him, and that his new name was “Dennis.”
On 14 February 1980, Parnell abducted five-year-old Timmy White from Ukiah, California with the help of Sean Poorman. Poorman was a minor and also an acquaintance of Steven’s.
Refusing to let the boy suffer the abuse that he had been enduring himself for so long, Stayner waited until Parnell had gone to his night-shift job at a local motel on 1 March 1980 and, carrying Timmy on his back, hitchhiked to Ukiah, where his intention was to return Timmy to his home and then ‘escape’ himself. Unable to locate Timmy White’s home, he took the boy to the Police Department where the truth of what had taken place over the last seven years slowly came to light. By daybreak the following morning Parnell had been arrested, and while investigators were checking into Parnell’s past, his record of the 1951 sodomy conviction came to light, although at the time Steven insisted that Parnell had not sexually abused him.
Parnell was tried for kidnapping both Stayner and White, but not for sexual abuse of either boy. He was convicted of both kidnappings and served five years of his seven-year prison sentence.
In January 2003, Parnell was arrested again after trying to coerce his caregiver into buying him a four-year-old boy. Parnell was convicted on 9 February 2004, on the charges of attempting to purchase a child and attempted child molestation. He was sentenced to 25 years to life under California’s “three strikes” law.
Parnell remained incarcerated until his death of natural causes on 21 January 2008, aged 76, in Vacaville, California.

Link to Wikipedia biography