Following is the conclusion of a story series by contributing writer Brent Engel.

 The man who killed a Stark Brothers Nurseries employee had little to lose by confessing to another killing.

Twenty-two-year-old Arthur Barnes was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting of Carl Shumaker on Feb. 17, 1925.

From behind bars, he had confessed to killing Quincy restaurant worker Mark Gallamore two weeks earlier.

It was one of several crimes to which he admitted as part of a gang that flaunted Prohibition laws against illicit booze. The surprise came on June 4, when Barnes recanted.

“I know nothing of the shooting of Mark Gallemore,” he said in a signed affidavit.

Investigators did not believe Barnes because the evidence pointed to his participation with two other masked men. One of them allegedly was Clarence Baker, an accomplice in the Shumaker killing. The other was reported to be a paroled criminal named James Smith.

In taking back his confession, Barnes said he barely knew Smith and that he and Baker were not part of the Gallemore murder. Smith also denied being involved.

Baker was sentenced to 25 years for helping to steal the car used in the Shumaker murder, and authorities speculated Barnes was trying to keep him from additional prison time if charges were brought in the Gallemore case. As his mother had done for him, Barnes sought mercy for Baker.

“He is just an 18-year-old, who, like myself, went the wrong path and is now paying the penalty,” he wrote in part.

On June 6, Smith was sentenced to 14 years in prison for separate robberies. Because Baker remained silent, investigators had nothing to go on and closed the Gallemore case without filing charges.

A battle over the $500 reward offered by Stark Brothers in the Shumaker killing would drag out until December 1925, when a judge ordered the money split between Hannibal Police Chief Pete Tuner, Detective Arch Leonard and Marion County Prosecuting Attorney Roy Hamlin.

Havoc surrounding Barnes continued, however.

He twice failed to escape from prison – in April 1926 and March 1929. On Oct. 25, 1930, his 21-year-old brother, Leslie, was gunned down during an argument outside an Elsberry grocery.

The most dramatic incident came on Jan. 10, 1931. Barnes stabbed to death inmate Garnett Petro outside the Jefferson City prison’s pool hall. Petro was serving five life terms for kidnapping and robbery, and challenged Barnes to what guards reported as “a fight to the death.”

Lonnie Clark, the other accomplice in the Shumaker killing, was paroled in 1930, with Baker freed in 1931.

Leonard, a law enforcement veteran of more than 25 years, called Barnes the “meanest criminal” he ever came across and said the Louisiana native had a penchant for lawbreaking.

The detective might have been onto something. A relative, Bartholomew Barnes, was 20 years old when hanged in Pittsfield on Dec. 29, 1871, for the murder of 45-year-old father of eight John Gresham.

A bar fight in Pleasant Hill triggered ongoing animosity that culminated with Barnes calling the victim “a damned old son of a b—-.” Gresham was beaten so badly that his own doctor did not recognize the corpse. Though the execution took place inside the Pike County Jail, an estimated 3,000 people stood outside in a vain effort to catch a glimpse.

“All were eager to see Barnes hurled into eternity, not because of his great crime, but from that insatiate curiosity of mankind to see man pass through the most fearful of earthly ordeals,” The Quincy Daily Herald proclaimed.

One last surprise awaited, and it was a doozy.

On May 31, 1940. Missouri Gov. Lloyd Stark – a cousin of the man whose car Barnes and his companions stole in Louisiana to start the series of deadly events – issued a pardon.

Stark gave no reason, and Barnes was freed after serving just 15 years and two months. He moved to Arkansas, got married and apparently did not commit more crimes.

Leonard never changed his mind about Barnes. Though the impassioned plea from the convict’s mother had led to the sentence of life in prison, Leonard believed the youthful criminal should have gotten the same fate as his relative.

“I would class him as a born killer, one who kills for the love of killing, and not necessarily for the material gain he may expect to get,” the detective concluded.