Reunion of Prison Warden and Hostage Wife Called 'Awesome'

March 8, 2005 — -- A Texas sheriff's deputy who spent two days and nights with alleged hostage Bobbi Parker says she believes Parker is telling the truth about being held against her will for more than a decade by a convicted killer.

The reserve deputy, Donna Clayton, stayed with Parker in a hotel room before accompanying her to a reunion with her husband, Randy Parker, a former deputy warden at the Oklahoma State Reformatory.

Bobbi Parker has told authorities that she was kidnapped by prisoner Randolph Dial, now 60, in 1994 and was held against her will for the intervening years. Parker and Dial were found Monday living in a trailer on a chicken farm in a remote part of southeast Texas after a tip on the TV show "America's Most Wanted."

Clayton said today on "Good Morning America" that she believes Parker's account of being held hostage by Dial for 11 years.

"I believe she was convinced he would harm her family," Clayton said.

Dial allegedly told Parker he had Mafia connections who would harm her family if she tried to leave.

Dial was a prisoner at the Oklahoma State Reformatory when Randy Parker worked there as a warden, and Dial, a sculptor and artist, ran a pottery class for inmates with Bobbi Parker. Dial had been convicted of killing a karate instructor in 1981.

Some locals who knew Parker and Dial while they lived in Texas under false names are skeptical of her account of being held captive, noting that Parker was allowed to work, drive alone and use the telephone, meaning she could have run away or called authorities.

But Clayton is convinced Parker is telling the truth. "I'm pretty well convinced she felt that he could have something done to her family and she was protecting her family," she said.

Other officials are also convinced, and Parker reportedly is not under investigation.

According to The Associated Press, Dial told reporters he abducted Parker at knifepoint in 1994 and brainwashed her into staying with him as they moved town to town in Texas, and then five years ago to the chicken farm where they were found. He said their relationship was not romantic.