This was at the same time that Pratt was serving as a missionary in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Because Eleanor took the children, Hector blamed Pratt. Hector pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of assisting in the kidnapping of his children. Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in May 1857. Pratt and Eleanor McLean were charged with theft of the clothing of McLean's children. (The laws of that time did not recognize the kidnapping of children by a parent as a crime.) Tried before Judge John B. Ogden, Pratt was acquitted because of a lack of evidence and Ogden's own feelings after interviewing Eleanor. Ogden sympathized with Eleanor and Pratt, because he was so disgusted by Hector's drinking and wife-beating. Shortly after being secretly released, on May 13, 1857, Pratt was shot and stabbed by Hector on a farm northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas. He died two and a half hours later from loss of blood. As Pratt was bleeding to death, a farmer asked what he had done to provoke the attack. Pratt said, "He accused me of taking his wife and children. I did not do it. They were oppressed, and I did for them what I would do for the oppressed any where." Pratt was buried near Alma, Arkansas, despite his desire to be buried in Utah Territory. Some writers have viewed Pratt's death as the act of a jealous husband, deeply angered by a man who had "run off" with his wife. A 2008 Provo Daily Herald newspaper article characterized McLean as a man who had "hunted down" Pratt in retribution for "ruining his marriage". A 2008 Deseret News article described McLean as a man who had "pursued Pratt across Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, angry that his estranged wife, Eleanor, had become Pratt's 12th wife." Many Mormons viewed Pratt's death as a martyrdom; his dying words were said to be, "I am dying a martyr to the faith." A 2007 article in the Deseret Morning News said that "Pratt was killed near Van Buren, Ark., in May 1857, by a small Arkansas band antagonistic toward his teachings". The historian Will Bagley reports that McLean and two friends tracked Pratt after he was released by Van Buren's magistrate. Brigham Young compared Pratt's death to those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Other Mormons blamed the death