Otto Wood, J.H. Starnes Finally Captured in Roanoke, Va., May 12, 1924

Desperate Man-Killer Captured. . . Otto Wood Makes Bold Escape from State Prison

Substantial rewards are offered for Otto Wood, slayer of A.W. Kaplan of Greensboro, and J.H. Starnes, long term for larceny, whose escape from the central prison last Saturday morning was a piece of generalship too great for their keepers.

Sent to prison for 30 years from Guilford court, Wood came here with every prison eye on him. Superintendent George Pou, speaking of him said that Wood showed no unusual intelligence beyond cleverness in crime. The prison management, he declares, was doing its utmost, taking no chance on either man but watching their every move. Notwithstanding which, Wood and Starnes disarming Guard D.L. Partni about breakfast time, forced him to drive them from the prison yard in the automobile of Prison Physician J.H. Norman and after clearing the prison environs, they drove down New Bern avenue where holding up M.V. Sanderford, truck driver, a negro, they mounted his truck and forced him to drive them toward Durham. About 10 miles from the city they abandoned their stolen truck and they have not since been heard from.

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Through Greensboro

Greensboro News

Otto raced into Greensboro at 5 o’clock Sunday morning in a big Studebaker car. M.D. Cline of Durham, owner of the car, was on the front seat with he cunning bandit. J.H. Starnes, escaped convict and badman, occupied the rear seat. While Otto drive like wildfire, Starns occasionally prodded Cline in the back so he would make no outcry.

The trio rode about the principal streets of the city. By 6 o’clock Cline, gagged, bound, beaten and robbed, found himself in a secluded wood in the western suburb of the city. About the same hour Otto and Starnes were buying gas for the car at a filling station not far from the place where they had slugged Cline with the butt of a revolver. And by 7 o’clock the two fugitives, Otto and Starnes, still riding in the Studebaker, had disappeared completely from the city.

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Captured at Roanoke

Roanoke, Va., May 12—C.H. “Otto” Wood and J.H. Starnes, escaped convicts from the North Carolina penitentiary, were captured here shortly after 7 o’clock tonight.

From the front page of the Oxford Public Ledger, Tuesday, May 13, 1924