WAS IN HIDING TWO
YEARS AS MURDERER.
MISSOURIAN BECAME A WAN-
DERER AFTER SHOOTING GIRL.
Betrayed to Police by a Boyhood
Friend, Fines Stark of Neosho
Learns the Girl He Shot
Is Still Alive.
After hiding from justice for two years in the mountains and deserts of the West, following an attempt to kill his sweetheart on the steps of the South Methodist church at Neosho, Mo., on the night of April 3, 1907, Fines Stark, 36 years old, was captured in Salt Lake City, Utah, on July 5. Last night Stark was placed in a cell at police headquarters for safe keeping, while I. H. collier, the sheriff of Newton county, waited for a Kansas city Southern train to take both back to Neosho.
Shortly before train time last night Stark was led from the cell and waited a few minutes while the handcuffs were adjusted to his hands by the sheriff, who evidently wished to take no chances with his prisoner. He looked careworn, and his face was deeply lined. Until the time of his arrest in Salt Lake City, he imagined that his attempt to kill Zea Carnes, his sweetheart, had been successful.
REFUSED TO MARRY HIM.
"I'm mighty glad I didn't kill her," he said. "I've been wandering all over the West, thinking I was a murderer. But I'm going back to face an awful crime, that I wasn't responsible for at the time. I was so crazed with love that I didn't know what I was doing.
"She had refused to marry me and I waited for her on the steps of the South Methodist Episcopal church. As she came down the steps that night with her sister, I fired at her twice with a revolver, and if it had not been for the sister, I would have fired again.
"When the people began running out of the church, I fled into the darkness, for the first time realizing what I had done. I hid in the hills for a couple of days and then beat my way to Arizona. Since that time I've never heard a word from home, until the day of my capture."
If it hadn't been for Samuel Williamson, a boyhood friend, Stark might have still been enjoying his liberty. For the last few months, the fugitive has been a ticket seller for the Sells-Floto circus, though he realized that his constant contact with the crowds might be his undoing. Williamson, who had grown to manhood on an adjoining farm in Newton county, unknown, of course, to Stark, was working in Salt Lake City. On circus day he approached the big tent and at one of the ticket boxes was Stark.
ONCE TALK OF LYNCHING.
"How are you, Stark?" he said.
That was the fugitive's first intimation that he was recognized. He smiled weakly and admitted his identity.
"For God's sake, don't give me up," he pleaded, and to conciliate his friend, refunded the money he had paid for the ticket. At the conclusion of the performance he took Williamson down town and exacted a promise from him that his secret was to be safe. But an hour later a detective placed him under arrest.
Possibly the $300 reward which was offered jointly by the governor of Missouri, the county court and the father of the injured girl, might have been instrumental in Williamson's anxiety to break his word. At any rate, he lost no time in finding the chief of police after he left Stark.
Prior to the shooting of Miss Carnes, Stark had been her devoted lover. They had become acquainted at Pierce City three years previously and when the girl moved with her parents to Neosho, Stark followed her. At last she refused his attentions and the shooting followed.
The community was extremely wrought up over the affair and and at the time there was considerable talk of lynching should the young man be captured. Will Carnes, the father of the young woman, is a contractor in Neosho.
