End Of A Long Hunt: Girl Scout Slaying Suspect Is Captured

              f  *'■■    "■■-^■^w  >^  End of a long hnnt!  #%? T  Girl Scout slaying suspect is captured  i-  MAYES  Piyor  Locust Grove  DELAWARE  ;c*>  Camp ScottA  ^i Tulsa 15 miles  ■  CHEROKEE  WAGONER  ADAIR  MUSKOGEE  o  10  20  Scab of mUet  Stflwell*  Point of capture  • Bunch  SEQUOYAH  —*-  Tribune map'  ■' i  CAPTURE COUNTRY — State agents caught fugitive Gene  Leroy Hart in one of the most rugged sections of northeastern  Oklahoma, in the Cookson Hills about 45 miles southeast of the  Girl Scout camp where three young girls were murdered.  By PEARL WITTKOPP  The nationwide manhunt for Gene  Leroy Hart ended Thursday afternoon in minutes that seemed like  hours to the authorities who cap-  tifc<?# the elusive prison escapee 32  miles from where he allegedly kiDed  three Girl Scouts 10 months ago.  It was a quiet ending to one of the  most frustrating searches in .state  history.  Hart tried to flee one more time,  but this time he couldn't run through  the woods that had hidden him since  he escaped from a Mayes County jail  five years ago.  The only place to run was into one  of eight shotguns pointed at him.  The hunt and the flight were over.  MIKE WILKERSON, who took  over Monday as head of the northeastern office of the Oklahoma State  Bureau of Investigation and ba$~*^  been in on the hunt since the battered bodies of Doris Denise Milner,  10, and Lori Lee Farmer, 8, and Michelle Guse, 9,. of Broken Arrow  were found at Camp Scott near Locust Grove June 13, said the "pieces  of the puzzle just fell into place  Thursday."  "After checking out so many leads  and crossing places off the map,  everything pointed to this place," he  said.  The place is a two-room, tarpaper-  and-wood shack in dense growth on a  mountain in the Cookson Hills in  far eastern Cherokee County.  The final chapter of the arrest  began about 2 p.m. Thursday when  Wilkerson called the OSBI office in  Oklahoma City with news they  thought they had Hart spotted.  "I said it looks real good and they  said to take him.  "(OSBI Director Tom/* Kennedy  said, *He will not get away this time,  wiUhe?,M  -BY THEN the agents were having  a state-marked van painted blue to  cover the seal and had another vehicle scouting the hill where they believed Hart had been living with an  Related stories, photos  on pages IB, 4B  elderly man named Sam Pigeon Jr.  Back at the office, the agents  planned their attack, put on their  bullet-proof vests, loaded the van  and two cars with tear gas and every  weapon they could find.  By 4 p.m. they were at the foot of  the hill where Pigeon lived.  "I took the lead," Wilkerson said.  "It wasn't even a road. It was a log  trail that was nothing like a road. I  tore up my car going up. Jack Lay  was driving the car behind me. We  drove up to the front of the shack.  The van with the other four agents  went to the back.  "I GOT OUT of the car. Jack  jumped out. Roger Chrisco was in  the car with me. We started in a  dead run toward the front door.  "And then we heard somebody in  See Manhunt, page 4A  HIDEOUT — This tiny house, tucked in the  trees in a remote part of eastern Cherokee  County, was the hiding place of Gene Leroy  Hart, who was arrested Thursday as a suspect  in the June 1977 slayings of three Girl Scouts  near Locust Grove. Eight Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents took part in the  capture. (Tribune airphoto by Royce Craig)