The Escaped Con & Warden's Wife

Residents in this rural community along the Texas-Louisiana line thought something wasn't quite right about Richard and Samantha "Sam" Deahl, who moved in about five years ago to run a few chicken houses.

It turns out they were onto something.

Richard was really Randolph Dial, a convicted killer from Oklahoma who escaped from prison nearly 11 years ago. And Samantha was really Bobbi Parker, the wife of the prison's assistant warden who says she was held captive all along.

A tip generated by the TV show "America's Most Wanted" led law enforcement to the mobile home where Dial was arrested Monday, said FBI agent Salvador Hernandez. Parker was found a short time later working at a chicken farm. She told police that she stayed with the killer out of fear her family would be harmed if she fled.

"I was a hostage-taker and will probably live to regret it," Dial said. "But now I don't. Doing a life sentence, at my age, I wouldn't trade it for the past 10½ years."

Dial waived extradition and was returned to Oklahoma. He arrived at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester at 4 a.m. Wednesday and was placed in the prison's top-security unit, said Oklahoma Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie.

On Tuesday, Parker, 42, was reunited with her husband as authorities tried to piece together details of the strange case. "It looked like a husband and wife who hadn't seen each other in 11 years," Texas Ranger Tom Davis of the emotional reunion.

The Parkers have two daughters, who were 8 and 10 at the time of the disappearance. The family still lives in Oklahoma, where the escape occurred.

Tanya Joy Parker, the sister of Randy Parker, said the children did not make the trip to Texas. "They are elated, but after 10 years you'd be a little stunned," she said.

Sheriff Newton Johnson initially said Bobbi Parker wanted to stay on the chicken farm, but Hernandez said this was a misinterpretation. Hernandez said that while it is unusual for someone to be held against one's will for so long, it is not unprecedented.

"There have been cases of this kind and typically this will result when someone believes family members might be in danger," Hernandez said.

The FBI continued to question Bobbi Parker on Tuesday in Texas.

Residents of Campti say the pair kept to themselves over the years, never engaged in any personal conversations and avoided going to the nearby town of Center. Their trailer is secluded, near a red dirt road and sitting on a wooded lot across from five long metal chicken houses.

"We just thought they might have a couple of warrants or something," said Renae Almaguer, who once worked at a convenience store where the couple shopped for beer, cigarettes, gas and quick groceries. She said she told co-workers "something ain't right with them people."
Dial, a sculptor and painter, was convicted of the 1981 murder of a karate instructor. He had obtained trusty status at the Oklahoma State Reformatory, and he ran an inmate pottery program with Bobbi Parker and had access to the couple's home during the day in staff housing on prison grounds.

Bobbi Parker's mother received a phone call from her the night of the 1994 disappearance traced to Hurst, Texas. "I can't talk now," she said, crying. "I'm OK. Tell the kids I'll see them soon."

A day later, she made a second call, this time from Fort Worth to a friend. It was the last message her family got from her. "Tell the kids I love them and I'll be home soon," she said.

Dial, 60, said his relationship with Parker was never romantic and that they lived in separate rooms. He likened Parker's relationship to him as Stockholm Syndrome, where kidnapping victims become sympathetic to their captors over time, often out of fear of violence.

"She was living under the impression if she ever tried to get away, I would get away and I would make her regret it, particularly toward her family," Dial said. "I didn't mean it, but she didn't know that."

But some residents said if the woman they knew as "Sam" was being threatened, she didn't act like it.

When Parker did go to town to shop at the main grocery store, she wore a straw gardener's hat — pulled tightly to her head with a scarf — and a baggy dress, Almaguer said. She said people would laugh at how she looked, as if she was in disguise.