Dead Man's Camp

On Saturday, David Owen was officially declared a missing person. In the camp that mid-June night, Hollingsworth had grown tired of Owen. According to court testimony, Hollingsworth grabbed him by the arm and led him to a wooded area away about 30 yards from the camp. On the way, Hollingsworth snatched a homemade hatchet that was wedged into a nearby tree.

Hollingsworth and Owen disappeared into the woods. In a clearing, Hollingsworth made Owen kneel before him. Owen sat with his back erect, his hands at his sides. Hollingsworth stood behind him and drew the ax over his head as if he were going to split a log.

Sharp walked into the clearing and saw Hollingsworth with the ax.

"No, no, no, no!" she screamed. "Don't do that. I can't be an accessory to this shit. I've got two kids." (Later, lawyers would argue over whether she said, "Don't kill him" or "Don't kill him here.")

Hollingsworth lowered the ax.

"You're lucky," he told Owen.

But Hollingsworth wasn't finished. "I need some rope," he yelled.

Baker went to his tent and retrieved a yellow nylon rope he used for raising tents and hammocks. He grabbed a machete and told Cornell to take the rope to Hollingsworth.

"You're going to camp out, motherfucker," Hollingsworth yelled at Owen. "You're going to see what it's like."

"Don't worry," Sharp assured Cornell. "We're just going to tie him up and make him sleep out with the mosquitoes and the snakes."

Hollingsworth tied Owen's right arm behind his back. He looped the rope around Owen's neck and then tied Owen's left arm behind his back. If Owen dropped his hands, the rope would choke him.

Owen was babbling, so Hollingsworth shoved a washcloth in his mouth, marched him back into the camp and sat him on a milk crate.

The trampled pathway into the camp brought another unexpected visitor, Ron Greene, a slow-speaking 35-year-old who was looking to score sleeping pills from Mark Brown.

"Who's this guy?" Hollingsworth asked.

"I met him at the mission," Cornell vouched. "He's all right."

Greene had worked kitchen detail with Sharp at the mission. She also spoke up for him.

Hollingsworth's attention returned to Owen. He set down the ax. Greene saw an opening to leave and slipped out of the camp.

Seeing Greene freely leave eased Cornell's fears.

Hollingsworth and Baker rolled a couple of cigarettes and lit up.

Baker would later tell detectives that Hollingsworth told him, "We got to get him out of here. You're going to help me because this bastard needs to die."

Hollingsworth and Baker hooked Owen under his armpits and led him from the camp. They led him to the steep, rock-covered levee. Owen sat down on the jagged rocks and refused to walk.

Owen had once led a Pitch reporter down the levee in search of homeless people living by the river. He'd warned the reporter that several people had split their heads attempting to climb down the steep incline of rocks. He said this was where he'd been beaten a few times.

Hollingsworth and Baker forced Owen to keep going. They dragged him down the rocks and through the brushy grass field near the railroad bridge. A police helicopter flew overhead. Baker and Hollingsworth ducked under the bridge until the helicopter was out of sight.

They led him past the graffiti-covered pillars to a sapling on the riverbank. Hollingsworth told Baker that he didn't want to leave fingerprints at the scene, so he took off Owen's shoes, socks and glasses. He strung Owen's feet in the air, looped the rope around the tree and then cinched it around Owen's neck — if his feet dropped, the rope would strangle him.

"Just sit still and you'll be all right," Hollingsworth told Owen. "If you move, you'll choke."

Owen cried and begged for his life, but his pleas were mostly unintelligible because of the rag in his mouth.

Before they left, Hollingsworth took a step back and then kicked Owen in the head twice with his steel-toed boots. Owen's head slumped. Later, Baker told detectives that Owen was unconscious when they left.

Twenty minutes later, Baker and Hollingsworth returned to the camp. Baker carried Owen's broken glasses and socks. Hollingsworth had his shoes. They threw them in the fire.

"How's David?" Sharp asked. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

"He's probably dead by now," Hollingsworth said, looking down at his wrist as if he were telling the time. "He was turning blue when we left."

It was Baker and Cornell's night to gather firewood. As they picked up branches for the fire, Baker told Cornell, "Charles lynched him."

Someone flipped on the battery-operated TV.

At 8 a.m. Sunday, July 2, detective Michael Barron launched the third search for David Owen. Barron, a 15-year veteran of the Topeka Police Department, is a slim 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with shaggy black hair. His team was scouring the north side of the Kansas River, where the tall grass was well above Barron's head. This time, they had a cadaver-sniffing dog.

Half an hour later, Mary Jo Meek of the Kansas Search and Rescue Dog Association watched as her border collie mix, Sierra, darted into an area of trees and saplings near the Santa Fe Railway Bridge.