Dead Man's Camp

In the statehouse, Owen had no pull. He lobbied without a budget and found few supporters. A Social Security disability check — Owen had cerebral palsy — paid his rent on a small apartment near the Capitol.

Owen was a lanky guy with a nasally voice. His Coke-bottle glasses sat askew on his oversized nose. That night, he wore a blue-and-white-checked short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. In his messenger bag, he kept a pair of cell phones, phone cards, a Bible, notebooks, and a photo album of homeless camps he'd destroyed. He thought the campers would be eating at the mission, and he'd be free to wreck their camp and disappear into the night.

Owen remembered Cornell.

"Why don't you call your mom?" Owen asked, offering Cornell his cell phone.

"I don't want my mother's phone number in your phone," Cornell told Owen. He knew Owen would badger his mother about getting her son home.

Owen offered him a phone card.

"I don't want it."

Owen was undeterred. He moved on to Baker, telling him that he was too old to be camping in the woods. When was the last time he contacted his family, Owen wanted to know.

"I talked with my sister yesterday," Baker said. But Baker explained that he couldn't live with his family. When Owen persisted, Baker grew angry. "If I wanted to get in touch with my family, I'd have gotten in touch with them," he yelled.

Owen wouldn't stop badgering him.

"Why don't you just get the fuck out of here?" Baker screamed.

"I got the right to be here, too," Owen fired back.

"Then shut up."

Owen turned to Sharp, not realizing that his opportunity to leave was passing.

"I'm not going home," Sharp told him. "My mom's a drug addict."

Sharp broke down. She claimed that her mother didn't care about her. Neither did her family.

Owen wouldn't listen.

"You want me to call the police?" Owen threatened. Threatening to call the cops was another one of his tactics for reuniting homeless people with their families. He reached into his bag.

Hollingsworth, his companions would later testify, pounced on Owen, throwing him to the ground and ripping the cell phone from his hand. Hollingsworth elbowed Owen in the face, then lifted him up and slammed him on a bench.

"Please don't hurt me," Owen begged. "I won't call the cops."

Sharp rifled through Owen's bag. She pulled out the photo album and flipped through its pages, growing incensed. The pictures were arranged in before-and-after style — showing tents before Owen destroyed them, and the wrecked aftermath. If they hadn't been in the camp, Owen admitted, he would have destroyed their stuff.

"What do you think of this?" Sharp yelled as she threw the photos in the fire. "How do you like it? People destroying your things?"

"That's my stuff," Owen screamed. "Why are you doing that to my things?"

Sharp burned all of the photos. She threw his phones in the fire. And then his bag.

"But that's my stuff," Owen screamed.

Last year, the Kansas Legislature was obsessed with sex offenders, and lawmakers targeted David Owen.

The attention started in January, when, in her State of the State speech, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius called on legislators to "double sentences for sex offenders who prey on children" and mandate electronic monitoring for repeat offenders. (Owen was in the audience; he stood and applauded the suggestion.) Legislators went on to propose lifetime electronic monitoring, longer prison sentences, and safety zones around schools and day-care centers.

One of the Legislature's highest-profile accomplishments was the passage of Jessica's Law, which mandated 25-year prison sentences for first-time child predators and life terms for third strikers.

The House Committee on Federal and State Affairs considered Owen-specific legislation that would have outlawed sex offenders from lobbying the Legislature, though the bill never made it out of committee. Owen pushed several legislators' buttons, particularly former Rep. Eric Carter, who later ran unsuccessfully for insurance commissioner. "He is superconservative, and I love him to death, but he hates me because I am a sex offender," Owen told the Pitch last March. Sen. Anthony Hensley and other legislators had barred Owen from their offices unless the lobbyist scheduled an appointment.

They wanted him to go away.

Owen was the middle child of Darrell and Ann Owen. He always called home on Father's Day, but that Sunday, June 18, the phone never rang. Darrell Owen had spoken with David on June 14, and David left a message on his parents' answering machine two days later, but they hadn't heard from him since.

The following Wednesday, Darrell called the Topeka Police Department to ask that someone check on his son. The police couldn't find David. The Owens left for Topeka the next day. David's landlord let them into their son's apartment in the 1300 block of South West Van Buren Street. He wasn't there. Nothing looked out of place. The Owens went to the Capitol, but David was nowhere to be found.

The Owens returned to Cimarron on Friday. They requested that the police keep an eye out for David.