Hulu's latest true crime series is Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story, which focuses on two true crime stories related to the Stayner family—the disappearance of Steven Stayner in 1972, and his brother Cary killing four women in 1999.
Captive Audience spends the first two of its three episodes telling the story of Steven, who was abducted, held captive for seven years and subjected to psychological and sexual abuse.
Steven Stayner was finally able to escape at the age of 14, when his story became national news—news that was eventually turned into a hit miniseries in May 1989. Little did Stayner know when that miniseries aired on NBC that he would have just a few months to live.
What happened to Steven Stayner?
In December 1972, when Stayner was seven, he was approached while on his way home from school in Merced, California by a man named Ervin Edward Murphy, who told him he wanted to see his mother to ask her to donate to a church. Stayner agreed, and a man named Kenneth Parnell pulled up in his car and offered him a ride home.
Stayner agreed, but the man took him to his cabin in Catheys Valley instead. At this point, Parnell had already served a four-year prison sentence for sodomizing a young boy two decades earlier, and for the next seven years he would keep Stayner captive, submitting him to regular abuse.
Once Stayner reached puberty, however, Parnell began to search for a new victim. He had tried to get Stayner to help him, but Stayner deliberately sabotaged the kidnappings. Eventually, though (in February 1980), Parnell managed to abduct Timothy White, 5. This spurred Stayner into action to escape, with the now 14-year-old later telling police that he did not want White to suffer the way he had.
He also later told Newsweek in a 1984 interview: "It was my do-or-die chance—and I also would be coming home for doing something positive."
The pair hitchhiked 40 miles to a police station, and that night Parnell had been arrested.
Parnell was tried for kidnapping the two boys (though not for sexual abuse). He served five years of a seven-year prison sentence.
Though the media painted Stayner's escape as a heartwarming reunion, in reality he struggled to adjust to normal life.
His sister Cory Stayner (who appears in Captive Audience) told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "He was pretty messed up and he never got any counselling. My dad said he didn't need any."
Steven Stayner would drop out of school due to the bullying he received. He also struggled re-acclimatizing to the structure of family life after Parnell had allowed him to smoke and drink. He told Newsweek: "I returned almost a grown man and yet my parents saw me at first as their 7-year-old...Why doesn't my dad hug me anymore? I guess seven years changed him, too."
At the age of 20, Stayner married his 17-year-old girlfriend Jody Edmondson, and in the next four years they had two children, Ashley and Steven Jr. At the time of his death, he was working in a pizza shop in Merced, CA, and worked with groups that searched for missing children.
That year, he also acted as a consultant in the miniseries based on his ordeal, I Know My Name Is Steven. He also made a cameo appearance in the show, which was watched by 40 million people.
On September 16, 1989, Stayner was riding his motorcycle on his way home from his job, when he collided with a driver coming out of a nearby migrant labor camp. He was not wearing a helmet, and would die less than an hour later from his head injuries. The driver, a man named Antonio Loera, 28, was sentenced to three months in prison for felony hit-and-run driving, though he was cleared of the charge of vehicular manslaughter.
Prior to this, Jody Stayner told People: "I'm very, very, very angry. I've never been this angry. It would have been a lot different if this man who hit him had stayed. If it's the last thing I do I'll nail him." She declined to comment to reporters, however, after Loera was sentenced.
Stayner's funeral was held on September 20, 1989. Timothy White, then 14, was a pallbearer at the service. Speaking to People at that time, Steven Stayner's father Delbert said, "It's final this time. I know where Stevie's at now."
Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story is streaming now on Hulu.
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