The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-11-12
GOT HIS SKELETON.
Strange Request Made by a Bandit
to His Wife.

San Francisco Examiner: There
comes a time in every husbands life
when the very natural wish to express
some more than ordinary tender feel
ing for the partner of his joys and
cares take the form of a gift that is at
cnce tribute and a memorial. Such
time comes to most men along toward
the twilight of life, when the knowl-
edge that their days are numbered
arouses sentiments of a peculiarly SYM
pathetic nature for the woman who
shall survive them.
1t must have been some such mood
that came to Mr.. Polk Wells, the
Missouri outlaw, as he looked back
upon a variegated and versatile career
from behind the bars of cell in the
Anamosa penitentiary in Iowa Polk
among the peace loving farmers of that
prairie country, was for a time the
most dreaded outlaw in a region not
unfamiliar with the ways OF the mod
ern Richard TurDins
In the closet of the house of Mrs.
Albert Warnica, at Halls, Mo-, there
is a skeleton. 1t is a mans skeleton,
and on a shelf beside it sits a jar con-
tanning a human heart preserved in
alcohol, and a dish containing q leaden
bullets. The heart was once the prop
erty Of the late Polk Wells, and the
bullets were relics carried in his body,
of as many bloody bouts with the
marshals.
The CHASTITY curious treasures of Mrs.
Warnica are legacy willed to her as
the last act of a man who had held
her as a guardian angel through life
who desired, even in death, if possible,
to be near her. Once she was the wife
OF the man whose skeleton is now in
her closet; but that was before his
name became a terror 10 the country,
and before a price was set upon his
head.
Besides the warden of the peniten-
tiary, ]. w. Madden, the woman most
interested and her immediate friends.
there are few who have yet heard of
the strange legacy. Even when the
VIII OF the dead bandit was read to the
half dozen who were interested in it.
possibly not more than one of them
believed that the terms of it would
ever be complied with. This one was
the former wife of the dead man, and
what her feelings were none could say.
She made arrangements to execute the
will and kept her peace.
1t was after Polk" Wells had been
IN prison for some years that his wife
was divorced from him and later that
she was married to Albert Warnica of
Halls, Mo. Although the woman could
never be induced to speak of it, there
must have been some strange romance
connecting her with her outlaw hus-
band. She never lost trace of him.
and knew all the details of his prison
life-how he had, under the watchful
eyes of the warden and other prison
officials, repented of his past deeds and
become God-fearing man. She knew.
too, that finally he had broken down.
until he became a physical wreck, and
died miserable death in his prison
cell.
The outlaws will, containing it's
weird. wild and unheard-of bequest.
was faithfully executed. The 81 bull
lets, each a story in itself of tragic
episode, were found in as many differ
ent parts of the body, and were care
fully laid aside. The heart was taken
out and treated with the scientific at
tention due to so interesting an ex-
hibit. The bones were treated in like
n!anner-scraped, polished and finally
pleced together with wires so as to
make perfect ensemble, and then
were turned over to the whilom wife.