investigators. He had told agents that he was sure he could secure
critical evidence—if only he could have access to the bureau’s files.
White refused to share any confidential records. Still, Comstock
would routinely come to see White, sharing helpful tidbits of
information and checking on the progress of the investigation.
Then he would disappear into the streets with his gleaming
English Bulldog.
By the end of July 1925, White had turned his full attention to
the last of the listed suspects in Anna Brown’s murder: Bryan
Burkhart, Mollie’s brother-in-law. White learned that during the
inquest, in 1921, Bryan had stated that on the night Anna
disappeared he’d taken her straight home from Ernest and
Mollie’s house, dropping her off between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m.;
Bryan then headed into Fairfax, where he was seen with Hale,
Ernest, and his visiting uncle and aunt, who went with him to
watch the musical Bringing Up Father. There wouldn’t have been
time for him to go to the creek, shoot Anna, and return to town
before the show started. His alibi seemed airtight.
To corroborate it, Agent Burger and a colleague had earlier
traveled to Campbell, a town in northern Texas, where Ernest and
Bryan’s aunt and uncle lived. The agents sped past the old trails
that cowboys had once followed—trails that were now supplanted
by cattle cars pulled by shrieking locomotives. Agents discovered
that Hale had grown up in a wooded grove only a few miles from
Campbell. His mother had died when he was three years old—the
King of the Osage Hills, too, burdened by a past.
In Campbell, agents stopped at the austere house of Bryan’s
uncle and aunt. The uncle was away, but the aunt invited the
investigators inside and launched into a venomous rant about how
Ernest had married one of those red millionaires. Burger asked