cover himself, was looking on. He was unable to turn away from
the horror, and he kept muttering, “Some fire.” The Big Hill
undertaker asked him for permission to remove Rita’s remains,
and Ernest consented. Someone had to embalm her before Mollie
saw her. What would she say when she learned that another sister
had been murdered? Now Mollie, once expected to die first
because of her diabetes, was the only one left.
The searchers couldn’t find Nettie. The justice of the peace
determined that the young woman, who was married and had a
child, had been “blown to pieces.” There weren’t even sufficient
remains for an inquest, though the rival undertaker found enough
to claim the fee for a burial. “I figured on getting back and getting
the hired girl with the hearse, but he beat me,” the Big Hill
undertaker said.
The doctors and the others lifted Bill Smith up as he grabbed for
breath. They carried him toward an ambulance and took him to
the Fairfax Hospital, where David Shoun injected him multiple
times with morphine. He was the lone survivor, but before he
could be questioned, he lost consciousness.
It had taken a while for local lawmen to arrive at the hospital.
The town marshal and other officers had been in Oklahoma City
for a court case. “The time of the deed was also deliberate,” an
investigator later noted, because it was done when officers “were
all away.” After hearing the news and rushing back to Fairfax,
lawmen set up floodlights at the front and rear exits of the
hospital, in case the killers planned to finish off Bill there. Armed
guards kept watch, too.