Timothy White, whose 1980 kidnapping rescue inspired a TV movie, dies at 35

Timothy White, victim of 1980 kidnapping, dies

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — Timothy White, the youngest victim and last survivor of a notorious California kidnapping saga whose rescue offered hope to parents of missing children, has died. He was 35.

Timothy “Timmy” White was 5 years old when he was kidnapped by child molester Kenneth Parnell as he walked home from his Ukiah school in 1980. Two weeks later, fellow kidnap victim Steven Stayner fled with the boy and hitchhiked to safety.

The 14-year-old Stayner had been held captive and sexually abused for years by Parnell.

“He didn’t want what happened to him to happen to me,” White said in 2004.

The dramatic kidnapping story was told in a book and in the 1989 television movie, “I Know My First Name is Steven.”

White’s stepfather, Roger Gitlin, said in an e-mail to family friends that White died April 1 of an apparent pulmonary embolism. He was buried Thursday in the town of Newhall in Los Angeles County, where he had worked as a sheriff’s deputy since 2005.

Parnell died at age 76 in 2008 while serving a life term for trying to buy a 4-year-old boy for $500 while living in Berkeley. He spent five years in prison during the 1980s for the abductions of Stayner and White.

Stayner, who returned to his family in Merced after living with Parnell for more than seven years, died in a 1989 motorcycle crash.

The ordeal exacted a heavy toll on the Stayner family. Stayner’s brother, Cary, is in San Quentin State Prison awaiting execution for killing four women in Yosemite National Park in 1999. His parents testified at his trial that they felt they neglected him, preoccupied with searching for Steven.

White is survived by his wife, Dena, and two young children, as well as his mother, father and sister.