three in the morning, the attorney parked his Model T at the ranch
and went to sleep in the car. Before long, he was jolted awake by a
fierce-looking man pressed against his window, demanding to
know why he was trespassing. It was William Hale. The attorney
explained his purpose, and Hale realized that he knew the
attorney’s parents, who had once sheltered him during a blizzard.
Hale promised to turn out the vote for him. One of the attorney’s
advisers remarked that Hale “would not lie to anyone, and if he
said he would do something, he would do it.” On Election Day, the
attorney carried every single precinct in that part of the county.
Hale had remained close with the county prosecutor and
conferred with him and other officials about Anna’s murder.
Eventually, the county prosecutor decided to look again for the
bullet that had eluded investigators during Anna’s autopsy. A court
order was obtained to unbury Anna. Scott Mathis, the Big Hill
Trading Company owner who was friends with Hale and Mollie,
was asked to supervise the grim task, and he went to the cemetery
with his undertaker and a grave digger. The grass on Anna’s plot
had barely had time to grow back. The men began to prod the
unforgiving earth with their spades, then reached down and lifted
up the once white casket, now dirt blackened, and forced open the
lid. An awful vapor, death itself, filled the air.
The Shoun brothers, who had performed the first autopsy,
appeared at the cemetery and renewed their search for the bullet.
This time, the brothers put on gloves and took out a meat cleaver,
cutting Anna’s head into “sausage meat,” as the undertaker later
put it. But, once again, the brothers found nothing. The bullet
appeared to have vanished.
By July 1921, the justice of the peace had closed his inquiries,
stating that Anna Brown’s death had come at “the hands of parties