moment’s notice. Authorities feared that Hale had disappeared for
good when he suddenly strolled into Sheriff Freas’s office. He
looked as if he were heading to a formal party: he wore a perfectly
pressed suit, shoes shined to a gleam, a felt hat, and an overcoat
with his diamond-studded Masonic lodge pin fastened to the lapel.
“Understand I’m wanted,” he said, explaining that he was there to
turn himself in—no need to put the fellas out.
As he was taken to the jail in Guthrie, he was confronted by a
local reporter. Hale’s deep-set eyes burned, and he moved, in the
words of the reporter, “like a leashed animal.”
Hale in front of the Guthrie jail Credit 53
The reporter asked him, “Have you a statement to make?”
“What are you?” Hale demanded, not used to being questioned.