Killer Fled With Woman, Left Mystery -- Did Deputy Warden's Wife Go Willingly With Escapee Two Years Ago?

DALLAS - When convicted murderer Randolph Franklin Johnston escaped from a remote prison in western Oklahoma two years ago, the news would have rated only a mention in newspapers or 30 seconds on television news.

Except for one thing:

Bobbi Parker, the deputy warden's wife, disappeared along with Johnston, also known as Ronald Franklin Dial. They drove away from the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite on Aug. 30, 1994.

They are still missing.

FBI agents said - then and now - that they were not sure whether Johnston abducted Bobbi Parker or whether she willingly went with him.

True-crime mystery

The escape beckoned seductively to anyone with an appetite for true-crime stories.

But the case is much more than just a story to a bevy of Johnston's victims. It was additional evidence, they said, that evil exists in the world. Johnston, they said, taught them the true meaning of words such as "hate," "fear" and "loneliness."

"I've gotten past the hate," Randy Parker, Bobbi Parker's husband, said recently. "Forgiveness is something that I'm gonna have to work on."

Judy Hogan Yates, a Tulsa, Okla., businesswoman, has been living in Johnston's shadow ever since he confessed to shooting her brother to death for $5,000.

"It's always there," she said.

Johnston was born Randolph Franklin Dial in 1944. His mother divorced and remarried a man who formally adopted the boy, whose last name legally became Johnston.

Over the years, Johnston has used aliases that revolve around the Dial and Johnston names. He entered prison as Randolph Franklin Dial and quickly gained a reputation there.

Talented artist and con artist

Johnston might have been dismissed as just another sociopathic inmate if not for his talent as a sculptor, painter and writer. He's also an oft-married, smooth-talking con man with a penchant for abandoning wives and children.

At the time he escaped, Johnston was serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of Kelly Dean Hogan, a Tulsa-area karate instructor. The Hogan murder case went unsolved for five years.

Then, in May 1986, Johnston surfaced in Las Vegas and told police that Mafia-associated businessmen in Tulsa had paid him $5,000 to kill Hogan.

Johnston told different stories about why he surrendered.

On one occasion, he said remorse drove him to confess. On another, he said mobsters had tried to kill him in Las Vegas, forcing him to seek refuge with the police.

Police never developed any evidence against the men who, according to Johnston, wanted Hogan dead because he refused to repay a debt.

Johnston pleaded guilty and went to prison.

Within months, he began to make a name for himself as an artist. He won prison art contests, and some of his works were displayed in Oklahoma City exhibits.

Gained prison officials' trust

Johnston convinced prison officials that he could start up a prison art industry to make money for the institution and provide therapy for inmates. In 1986, he was granted trusty status and given a job doing yard work at the Parker home, just outside the prison walls.

Johnston also used the Parkers' garage as his art studio.

Bobbi Parker, a social worker experienced in working with inmates, was the volunteer coordinator for the new "art factory." Johnston became a fixture in the lives of Randy and Bobbi Parker and their two daughters.

On the morning of Aug. 30, 1994, Bobbi Parker left word with her husband that she was going shopping in Altus, a southwestern Oklahoma town about 25 miles south of Granite.

Later that day, Johnston, Bobbi Parker and the family's red minivan went missing. Parker has not seen his wife since.

"I blame myself," he said. "I'm trained to read inmates. Somehow, I missed it with him. I missed the evil."

Bobbi Parker's family and friends told the FBI they received three hurried phone calls during the week after her disappearance. Those who took those calls described her as distraught and choking back tears.

Police found the red minivan abandoned in a parking lot in Wichita Falls, about 90 miles southeast of Granite.

Parker and those who know his wife say she never would have fallen for Johnston and abandoned her family. She was active in church and the public schools and had a spotless reputation throughout her career as a prison social worker.

Many who have known Johnston well say he can be mesmerizing.

"He can convince you of anything," said a relative who requested anonymity.