Jet Set Slaying Of Son, 18, Makes No Sense To Father
Estate A Continent Away
August 11, 1969
By Robert Kestler
Times staff Writer
Wilfred Elmer Parent sat in his living room in El Monte Sunday
trying figure out why his eldest son - a seemingly quiet, 18-year-old - had
turned up dead at the scene of a jet set mass murder.
Things, as Parent had come to know them, just didn't make sense.
All Parent knew was that his boy, Steven, was dead-murdered on the premises
of a fancy Benedict Canyon Estate, 25 miles west of El Monte. And, in the world
of Parent, a 44-year-old construction superintendent, that estate was at least
another continent away.
"I just don't understand," Parent kept saying. "It - the whole thing - don't
make any damned sense."
From a nearby bedroom, recurring moans reached the living room. Parent said
his wife, Juanita, and their other children-Janet, 15; Dale, 10; and Greg,
13-had gone into that room to "kinda be together."
In a heavy sigh, Parent seemed to apologize for the moans from the bedroom:
"We didn't get to bed until 5:00 AM. Janet took it horribly hard.
"The wife and I finally put the kids in bed with us in the five of us just
held onto each other and cried until we went to sleep."
The body of Steven Earl Parent was found Saturday on the estate of movie
producer Roman Polanski.
Steven-one of the five slain victims-didn't fit the jet set backgrounds of
the others.
The youth, a sturdy teen-ager with medium-length-red hair, was found slumped
behind the steering wheel of his white Ambassador, just inside the gate to the
estate. He had been shot in the head and body, the coroner's office said.
Apparently, there's no indication that any driver's license or other papers
were found on the youth.
The other victims, all among the city's wealthy jet set society, where:
Sharon Tate, 26-year-old star "Valley of the Dolls"; Abigail Folger,
26-year-old coffee Co. Heiress; Jay Sebring, 35-year-old Hollywood hair stylist,
and Voyteck Frykowski, 37-year-old Polish movie producer.
"I just can't understand what he was doing up there in the first place." The
father said. "Hell, Steven wasn’t a poshy kind of kid. I didn't even know he
knew any of those people."
The young Parent, a recent graduate of Arroyo High School in El Monte, had
left 7:50 AM Friday, apparently bound for his job at the Valley City Supply
Company, a plumbing firm in San Gabriel, his father said.
"Working Two Jobs"
"The boy was going into Citrus Junior College (in Azusa) next year, and he
was working two jobs." Parent said. "The other job was a record or recording
company in Beverly Hills someplace. I don't know the name of it."
Friday night, for the first time in his life Steven hadn't come, his father
said. "He didn't call, didn't leave no word, nothing. Now, I guess we know why."
Besides the ultimate shock of learning that his boy had been killed in
Benedict Canyon, there was still in Parent's mind the way in which he learned of
the killing.
For twelve hours, the boy's body had lain on a slab in the coroner's office
while officials sought his identity, a "Mystery ". Parent now believes it should
have been solved routinely.
What bothered Parent is that his boy’s car had been found at the murder scene
shortly after 8:30 AM Saturday.
Yet, it wasn't until more than twelve hours later that Steven’s parish
priest-told of the possibility of the boy's death by a reporter-went to the
coroner's office to make a positive identification.
Apparently, no police officer checked the cars license number against
registration records from the motor vehicles department.
As late as Sunday morning, Parent said he had yet to be contacted by a member
of the Los Angeles police Department.
A reporter had gone to the Parent home Saturday evening to verify the
ownership of the white ambassador found at the murder scene.
However, the Parents were not located until three hours later, when they
return home from a restaurant.
By this time, Reverend Robert Byrne was preparing to attempt to identify the
boy's body himself, hoping to spare the family the ordeal.
As Father Byrne was driving to the coroner's office downtown, and El Monte
police officer appeared at the Parent home. He handed the startled family a
card, which bore only the telephone number of the county coroner's office.
Parent-still unaware that his boy was dead-dialed the telephone number given him
by the officer.
"By this time," Parent said Sunday," my wife was hysterical and damn near a
collapse. "
The voice of Don Strickland, a coroner's deputy, came on the line:
"Your son has apparently been involved in a shooting." Parent remembers
Strickland saying.
Became Aware
"Is he dead?" The father asked-for the first time becoming aware of what
might have happened.
Parent said Strickland told him: "We have a body down here and we believe
it's your son."
The coroner's Deputy then began to check physical characteristics of the body
against the father's description. They matched.
"All I can say," Parent said Sunday, "is that it was a hell of a way to tell
somebody that your boy was dead."
Said police Lieutenant Robert Madlock, who initially ran the slaying
investigation from the West Los Angeles Division:
"At the time we first found the Parent car at the scene, we were going 14
different directions at once. So many things had to be done; I guess we just
didn't have time to follow up on the car registration."
