On 7 January 1941, the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger reported that Governor M. Clifford Townsend, a Democrat, was considering granting an early parole to Stephenson.
Stephenson then moved to Jonesborough, Tennessee (the town name was briefly spelled as "Jonesboro" during this time), where he was employed at the Jonesboro Herald & Tribune,[REF] and where he married Martha Murray Sutton without having been divorced from Dickinson.