James Shoun and his brother denied any wrongdoing, and
White could not prove who was responsible for the poisoning.
When Mollie was feeling better, she was questioned by
authorities. Mollie was not one who liked to be seen as a victim,
but for once she admitted that she was scared and bewildered. At
times, she relied upon an interpreter to help with her English—a
language that now seemed to convey secrets beyond
comprehension. An attorney assisting the prosecution explained to
her, “We are all your friends and working for you.” He informed
her that her husband, Ernest, had confessed that he knew
something about these murder cases and that Hale had apparently
engineered them, including the bombing of her sister Rita’s house.
“Bill Hale and your husband are kin-folks, are they not?” he
added.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
At one point, the attorney asked her if Hale was at her house
around the time of the explosion.
“No, he was not there. Just my husband and my children was all
that was at home.”
“No one came there that night?”
“No.”
“Was your husband at home all evening?”
“Yes, all evening.”
He asked her if Ernest had ever told her anything about Hale’s
plot. She said, “He never told me anything about it.” All she
wanted, she said, was for the men who did this to her family to be
punished.
“It makes no difference who they are?” the attorney asked.
“No,” she said adamantly. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe
that Ernest had been involved in such a plot. Later, a writer quoted