Hattie’s sisters was heard yelling at Faulkner that he was an SOB
and should stop extorting Hattie; Faulkner snapped back that he
knew all about Hattie and the murder, and they’d better be careful
about how they spoke to him.) In a report, Agent Burger and a
colleague stated, “We are strongly of the belief that Faulkner has
succeeded in obtaining some sort of confession from Hattie, and is
using it to make her do as he sees fit, by threatening her with
prosecution and exposing her, and that his object is to gain control
of her...property at her death, and get money from her while she
lives.”
Before long, Hattie became incurably sick. Agents noted that she
seemed “liable to die at any time.” Remarkably, none of the agents
expressed suspicions over the nature of her illness, even though so
many victims during the Reign of Terror had been poisoned.
Faulkner had a wife, and she told agents that he was “refusing to
allow Hattie to be sent to a hospital...in order to keep her under
his influence.” According to Hattie’s sisters, Faulkner had begun to
steal money from her while she was “under the influence of a
narcotic.”
The sisters eventually managed to admit Hattie to a hospital.
Agents, believing that she was about to die, tried to persuade her
to give a confession. In a report, agents wrote that she had
admitted to Comstock that “she does know the facts and has never
told what she knows” and that “they”—presumably Minnie Savage
and other conspirators—had sent Hattie away at the time
Whitehorn was murdered. But Hattie never disclosed anything
further. Not surprisingly, she recovered from her mysterious
illness after being dislodged from Faulkner’s grip.
By the time Tom White showed up to begin his investigation, in
1925, the bureau had all but dropped the Whitehorn case. Agent
Burger wrote dismissively that it was an “isolated murder,”