Dead Man's Camp

Representing the state was Debenham, a polished deputy district attorney in Shawnee County.

"What do you think David Owen was thinking when he was tied to that tree?" Debenham asked the jury.

"Was he afraid or was he thinking, This is what it's like to be homeless?"

On December 18, four hours after beginning deliberations, the jury reached a verdict just after 5 p.m. Sharp's attorneys, Donovan and Wendell Betts, flanked her as the jury foreman read the verdict: guilty on both counts. Sharp sank in her chair. Tears streaked her cheeks. She wiped them away with a wadded-up tissue.

Judge Thomas Conklin set Sharp's sentencing for February 2. (Donovan told the Pitch that she would appeal the verdict.)

At Baker's trial, Darrell Owen repeated much of the testimony from Sharp's trial, talking about his son's "strong feeling of right and wrong." He said every issue was black or white in his son's mind.

"He was confrontational," the elder Owen testified. "That was his nature. He felt he had to argue them home."

But, Darrell Owen added, his son wasn't violent.

Testifying against Baker, Cornell claimed that he was afraid of Baker and Hollingsworth.

"A guy with a machete tells you to take rope to a guy with an ax, you better do it," Cornell said. He claimed that he didn't leave the camp the night of the murder because he didn't think he could outrun Hollingsworth or Baker.

Cornell added that Hollingsworth had threatened the others in the camp.

Pondering whether Owen deserved to spend a night in the woods, Cornell offered some perverse logic.

"Karmically, maybe he did deserve to be tied up and stay outside," Cornell testified. "If he would have survived it, it probably would have done him some good."

Baker, the 60-year-old convicted rapist known as "Grandpa" to Sharp's children and "Outlaw" to the other campers, had helped Hollingsworth carry out the lesson. Baker and Hollingsworth were the ones who had dragged Owen to the tree by the river. Baker had also helped Hollingsworth move Owen's body the next day.

But in his defense of Baker, attorney Tom Bartee claimed that his client was also afraid of the younger, stronger Hollingsworth. In his closing argument, Bartee told jurors that Baker followed Hollingsworth's lead because he was operating on a "survival instinct."

The jury didn't buy it. They found Baker guilty of felony first-degree murder and kidnapping. His sentencing is set for February 16.

Last February, while getting his picture taken by a Pitch photographer, David Owen noticed a uniformed Kansas Highway Patrol officer and a statehouse security guard watching him. "What's David up to now?" Owen asked, about himself, to no one in particular.

This January, as Baker's trial played out in the Shawnee County Courthouse just blocks away from the state Capitol, the Kansas Legislature reconvened. Melvin Neufeld, whom Owen credited as his inspiration for becoming a lobbyist, ascended to Speaker of the House. The 2007 session would be the first in four years without David Owen hanging around to pester lawmakers and draw the eyes of security guards. Secretaries no longer had his mug shot tacked to their bulletin boards.

Charles Hollingsworth's fate remains undetermined. Before his trial later this spring, he will undergo a psychological evaluation.

In a letter to the Pitch dated September 22, Hollingsworth referred to Sharp as his "fiancée," quoted Scripture as apparent evidence of his jailhouse conversion, and confessed to killing David Owen — but only killing him a little bit.

"Some would read this and say who am I to be 'preaching the good news of the Kingdom' (Mathew 24:14)," Hollingsworth wrote. "But Saul, who was a Pharisee from birth, who later became the Apostle Paul, was a killer of Christians (the disciples of Jesus) before he became one himself and went preaching the good news of Kingdom and of Christ.

"I had to kill a man to realize that the lifestyle I was living wasn't getting me anywhere," he continued. "I had to kill a man just to realize that the path my father was trying lead me to was actually what I needed to do and was ... the best move for me. I say I had to kill a man because of killing a man I am guilty of, but of 1st degree murder, I am not guilty of, more like reckless second/voluntary manslaughter!!"

Hollingsworth added, "I also have the hope of David Owens [sic] and many others being resurrected either to everlasting life or to judgment here in the near future (John 5:28, 29)."

Hollingsworth's judgment day is slated for April 16.