Warden's Wife To Be Tried For Con's Escape

She was the wife of a deputy prison warden who oversaw a pottery program for inmates, and who raised the eyebrows of staff over concerns that she was developing a relationship with a charismatic convict at the prison's minimum security unit.

On Aug. 30, 1994, Randolph Dial escaped from the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, and he wasn't alone.

Bobbi Parker, the warden's wife, was with him.

The woman who disappeared with a convicted killer and then lived on the lam with him for 10 years will now stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Brad Leverett said sufficient evidence was presented at a preliminary hearing to bring Parker, 46, to trial on charges she helped Dial escape.

Parker's defense attorney maintains Dial kidnapped Parker at knifepoint and held her against her will by threatening to use supposed mafia connections to harm her and her family if he were ever caught.

A decade later, Parker and Dial were found living at a chicken ranch in east Texas on April 4, 2005, after their case was highlighted on the television show "America's Most Wanted."

"It's clear from the evidence the court has heard so far that Ms. Parker was not kidnapped in 1994 as she claimed," Leverett said after the conclusion of Tuesday's testimony.

The charge against Parker carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

Ten Years On The Lam

The former warden of the prison, Jack Cowley, remembered Dial (who died in June 2007 at age 62) as "definitely a character.

"He was one of the ones who generally stood out, not just because of the art work but because of his intellectual ability."

A sculptor, Dial was serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of Kelly Dean Hogan. He did yard work for the Parkers and used their garage as an art studio.

Prior to a hearing Monday in Greer County Courthouse in far western Oklahoma, prosecutor Eric Yarborough filed court documents detailing elements of the state's case.

He said Parker had previous relationships, including sex, with inmates before escaping with Dial and that she had said she was unhappy in her marriage. The court filing alleges she started up a relationship with Dial and fell in love with him.

But concerns grew about the relationship developing between Dial and the deputy warden's young wife, especially when the two were spotted chatting over a cup of coffee on a porch swing of the home, Cowley said.

"You don't sit on the front porch and drink coffee," Cowley said. "Just the appearance would be an impropriety."

But Cowley said just as he was considering moving Dial's pottery operation into a renovated building on the prison grounds, the couple disappeared.

As the case grew cold, Charles Sasser, a retired Tulsa police homicide detective, wrote a book about Dial and the escape, "At Large: The Life And Crimes Of Randolph Franklin Dial" (St. Martin's).

Sasser testified Tuesday that years after the couple's disappearance, he received a call in 2001 from Dial, who told Sasser he read his book a dozen times.

Sasser said he asked Dial whether Bobbi Parker was still alive.

"He said, 'Of course she's still alive. She's right here. Do you want to talk to her?'"

Bobbi Parker then took the phone and talked briefly to Sasser, who said he encouraged her to call her children, who were 7 and 10 when she disappeared, to let them know she was safe.

Sasser said Parker responded it might be better if her children thought she was dead.

Sasser also testified he saw no indications that Parker was being held against her will.

"It was like two old married people," he said.

That's not the case, according to Parker's defense attorney.

"From the get-go, Dial was intimidating to her," said attorney Rick Cunningham. "He threatened her and her family, her two daughters ... and that became an oppressive part of that situation.

"She kind of resigned herself to her fate."

That differed from the scene described by Robert Williams, an investigator with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

After Parker and Dial were found in Texas, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation launched a lengthy probe into the case and submitted an 1,800-page report to District Attorney John Wampler in June 2006, but it took nearly two years for him to file charges.

Williams testified Monday that a search of the pair's trailer, which had only one bed, uncovered photographs, mail the pair received, cards they exchanged, a box of condoms, instructions that come with Viagra and a vibrating sex toy.

"We found items that appeared to us as a husband and wife relationship between a man and a woman," Williams said.

Parker told investigators the couple never were intimate, that she wasn't attracted to Dial and that the sex toy was a gag gift from a friend, Williams said.

Williams said Parker had numerous opportunities to escape while living with Dial, including one time in which Dial suffered a massive heart attack and was near death. Instead, she wrote him a love letter authorities later found, Williams said.

Parker, meanwhile, has returned to her husband, Randy Parker, and the two are living together in McAlester, where Randy Parker works as an administrator for the Department of Corrections. The couple's two daughters are now grown.

Randy Parker declined to comment about the case, but said the two are happily married and look forward to getting the case resolved.

Dial, who pleaded guilty to escape before his death, maintained Parker was an innocent victim and that he forced her at knifepoint to drive him away from the prison.

"I was a hostage-taker and will probably live to regret it," Dial said in a jailhouse interview shortly after his capture. "But now I don't. Doing a life sentence, at my age, I wouldn't trade it for the past 10 1/2 years."