who later worked under him recalled, “The Warden was strict with
the inmates but would never stand for any mistreatment or
heckling of them.” White once sent Rudensky a note that said, “It
takes a good deal of nerve to change a course that you have been
on for years and years—more so, maybe than I realize, but if it is in
you, now is the time to show it.” Because of White’s support,
Rudensky recalled, “I had a ray of hope.”
Though White encouraged efforts at rehabilitation, he had few
illusions about many of the men contained in the Hot House. In
1929, Carl Panzram—a repeat killer who’d confessed to slaying
twenty-one people and insisted, “I have no conscience”—beat a
member of the prison staff to death. He was sentenced to be
hanged inside the penitentiary, and White, though opposed to
capital punishment, was given the grim task of overseeing the
execution, much as his father had done in Texas. On September 5,
1930, as the sun rose over the prison dome, White went to take
Panzram from his cell to the newly built gallows. White made sure
that his two boys weren’t present when the noose was looped
around the neck of Panzram, who shouted at his executioners to
hurry up: “I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around.”
At 6:03 a.m., the trap opened and Panzram swung to his death. It
was the first time that White had helped to end a human life.
After arriving at Leavenworth, William Hale was assigned to
duty on the tuberculosis ward. Later, he toiled on the prison farm,
where he tended pigs and other animals the way he had during his
early days on the frontier. A prison report said, “He does high
grade work caring for stock, and is able to do such operations as
opening of abscesses and castrating of animals.”
In November 1926, when a reporter wrote to White fishing for
gossip about Hale, White refused to provide any, insisting that