14 DYING WORDS

In September 1925, as White tried to determine what secrets

William Hale and his nephews Ernest and Bryan were hiding, he
wondered if one person had previously uncovered them: Bill
Smith, Mollie Burkhart’s brother-in-law. It was Smith who had
first suspected that Lizzie was poisoned, and he who had
investigated whether there was a larger conspiracy connected to
the family’s oil wealth. If Smith was killed because of what he had
learned, that information might be the key to unlocking the inside
world.

After the explosion destroyed the Smiths’ house, agents asked
the nurse who had been on duty when Bill was being treated in the
hospital whether he had mentioned anything about the murders.
She said that Bill had often muttered names in his feverish sleep,
but she had been unable to make them out. Sometimes, when he
woke up, he seemed worried that he might have said something in
his sleep—something that he shouldn’t have. Shortly before Bill
died, the nurse recalled, he had met with his doctors, James and
David Shoun, and with his lawyer. The doctors had asked the
nurse to leave the room. It was clear that they didn’t want her to
overhear their conversation with Bill, and she suspected that he
had given some sort of statement indicating who was responsible
for blowing up his house.

White, already suspicious of the Shouns owing to the missing
bullet in the Anna Brown case, began to question each person who
had been in the room with Bill. Later, federal prosecutors also