On Aug. 30, 1994, fugitive Randolph Franklin Dial escaped from prison in Granite, Okla. He also took a hostage, the deputy warden’s wife, Bobbi Parker. After 10 years of little to no word of the pair, Dial and Parker were both found working at a chicken ranch in Texas.

While wringing the necks of chicken by day and sleeping with a David Crosby look-alike by night sounds like my dream come true, something tells me it might not be for everyone. Even so, there has been some speculation about Parker’s true intentions. Was she being held for a decade against her will, or was she seduced by the wavy whiskers of Dial?

Dial, as he is both a murderer and a gentleman, has defended Bobbi to both the media and the police. He said she stayed with him only because he threatened her husband and children, whom she is now reunited with.

Still, there seems some evidence to the contrary. She had access to a phone and called her family on a few occasions. Dial even allowed her to speak to the man who wrote an account of their disappearance. There must have been sometime within a 10-year period that she was alone or, even better, surrounded by people. And yet she made no known attempts to escape. Did she not want to leave the aged, floppy arms of a man she had to grown to love?

Something tells me she did. Kidnappers may always get the lucky lady in movies, but Dial is no Sylvester Stallone. And while being a wife and mother in Oklahoma is not very elegant, being a chicken feather plucker in Texas is even less so. More importantly, even if she did choose to flee with Dial, she was obviously running away from something much worse. Like laundry. Or dishwashing. Or shouts of “Shut up! Go fix me a turkey pot pie!”

So then why is Parker forced to relate her motives to the general public? Even if she is not a victim of kidnapping, she is under some kind of strange kind of mental anguish. Why was Elizabeth Smart, someone who was both underage and a clear victim, put under the prying eye of the media?

The sick freaks in such cases are not just the “perps” (as I like to call them). It is bad enough to be victimized by some hairy loon, but to have to talk about it afterward to Barbara Walters? And all so Marna Walner in Oak County, Ind., can sink her teeth into a hot television show while she eats her beef strognoaff?

And yet, if victims like Smart and Parker did not participate in such programs, the true version of their story would never be told. Even though Smart was only a young girl when she was kidnapped, thousands of people wanted to know why she didn’t just leave. After all, she walked down the street in broad daylight, and was even seen at a party with her attackers. Ergo, she must have loved being kidnapped. “That little brat was just trying to get out of school.” And Parker? “That rabid ‘free-thinker’ just wanted to get out of the kitchen. This is what happens when you let women read. They get kidnapped. And stuff.”

Still, it’s easy for the pot to call the kidnapped kettle black. I mean, I know I look tough and brawny, but even so I wouldn’t have the nerve to escape from a crazy old fugitive. (Don’t let that give you any ideas, my crazy old fugitive demographic). So rather than putting Bobbi Parker under the microscope for being such a terrible wife and mother, maybe someone could actually tell her they are happy she is back.

‘Cause, shoot, woman, the laundry ain’t been doing itself.