I did do some research on ancestry.com and talked to my granddad, who did remember the people in the picture. It’s his mom and dad (Lewis and Dalia Brooks) holding an unknown baby, Lunetta Hodges (the younger girl – not Dalia’s mother Lunetta, but a cousin) William Walter Hodges (my great grandfather’s mother’s brother) and his wife, Dixie Lee Brownen.
As it turns out, the story is true. Will Hodges DID die shortly after this picture was taken, and they suspected that Dixie poisoned him but they couldn’t prove it, so she never went to jail and lived to a ripe old age.