records for many of the murder victims, it was evident that with
each successive death more and more headrights were being
directed into the hands of one person—Mollie Burkhart. And it
just so happened that she was married to Hale’s nephew Ernest, a
man who, as an agent wrote in a report, “is absolutely controlled
by Hale.” Kelsie Morrison, the bootlegger and bureau informant,
said to agents that both Ernest and Bryan Burkhart did exactly
what their uncle told them to do. Morrison added that Hale was
“capable of anything.”
White studied the pattern of deaths in Mollie’s family. Even the
chronology no longer seemed haphazard but was part of a ruthless
plan. Anna Brown, divorced and without children, had bequeathed
nearly all her wealth to her mother, Lizzie. By killing Anna first,
the mastermind made sure that her headright would not be
divided between multiple heirs. Because Lizzie had willed most of
her headright to her surviving daughters, Mollie and Rita, she
became the next logical target. Then came Rita and her husband,
Bill Smith. White realized that the unusual method of the final
killing—a bombing—had a vicious logic. The wills of Rita and Bill
stipulated that if they died simultaneously, much of Rita’s
headright would go to her surviving sister, Mollie. Here, the
mastermind had made one miscalculation. Because Bill
unexpectedly outlived Rita by a few days, he had inherited much
of her wealth, and upon his death the money went to one of his
relatives. Still, the bulk of the family’s headrights had been
funneled to Mollie Burkhart, whose wealth was controlled by
Ernest. And Hale, White was convinced, had secretly forged an
indirect channel to this fortune through his subservient nephew.
As White later reported to Hoover, “MOLLIE appears to have been
the first means to draw HALE, through the BURKHARTS, the
assets of the entire family.”
White couldn’t determine whether Ernest’s marriage to Mollie—