Hale would be “treated as other prisoners are treated.” White went
out of his way so that Hale’s wife and daughter never felt slighted
by prison officials. Hale’s wife once wrote a letter to White, saying,
“Would I be imposing to ask your permission to see my husband
next Monday? It will be almost three weeks since my last visit and
of course I realize your regulations allow us only one visit each
month but...if you could please grant me this I would surely
appreciate it.” White wrote back that she would be welcome at the
prison.
Over the years, Hale never admitted ordering any of the
murders: not the killing of Roan, for which he was convicted, or
the countless other murders that the evidence showed he had
orchestrated but that he wasn’t prosecuted for after he had
received a life sentence. Despite his refusal to admit responsibility,
he had given, during trial testimony, a rather cold statement about
a different attempt that he’d made to swindle a headright—a
statement that seemed to reveal his ethos: “It was a business
proposition with me.”
Whereas White had once turned to preachers to illuminate this
thing of darkness, he now also searched for a scientific
explanation. In prison, Hale was given a neurological and
psychological examination. The evaluator found that Hale showed
no obvious “evidence of repression nor of frank psychosis” but
nevertheless had “extremely vicious components in his make-up.”
Cloaking his savagery under the banner of civilization, Hale
portrayed himself as an American pioneer who had helped forge a
nation out of the raw wilderness. The evaluator observed, “His
poor judgment is further evidenced by his continued denial of his
obvious guilt. His affect is not suitable....He has put behind him
any feeling of shame or repentance he may have had.” White read
the evaluator’s psychological study of Hale, but there was some
evil that seemed beyond the scope of science. Though Hale