0:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's around 3 in the morning, on March 10th, 1923, in Fairfax, Oklahoma. 0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Rita Smith sleeps in her bedroom. 0:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Her husband Bill is in the adjacent room. 0:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Their teenage white servant, Neddy Brookshire, sleeps upstairs. 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Five gallons of nitro glycerin sits beneath the house. 0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: the explosion obliterates the structure. 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors, three blocks away, feel their windows rattle. 0:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The Smith House simply disappears. 0:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Rita and Nettie die instantly. 0:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Bill survives barely with massive injuries. 0:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Four days later before he dies, Bill tells investigators something chilling. 0:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He says they got Rita and now it looks as though they've got me. 1:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He names his only two enemies in the world, Bill Hale, and Ernest Burkhardt. 1:11 [SPEAKER_00]: In the days before the explosion, dogs around the neighborhood had been poisoned. 1:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back friend to hometown history, the podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters and today we're exploring Oklahoma's Osage murders, the conspiracy that killed dozens, and created the FBI. 1:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That explosion was one murder in a conspiracy that claimed at least 60 lives between 1921 and 1926. 1:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The true toll likely reaches into the hundreds. 1:58 [SPEAKER_00]: All the victims had one thing in common. 2:01 [SPEAKER_00]: They were members of the Osage Nation, and they were incredibly wealthy. 2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1923, the OSAGE collectively received over $30 million annually in oil royalties. 2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: That's over $400 million in today's dollars. 2:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Each of the 2,229 tribal members held what's called a head-right, an equal share of underground mineral wealth. 2:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Quarterly payments reached $3,350 by 1925 at their peak. 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: An average o-sage family of five earned over $65,000 annually, while most Americans scraped by on a fraction of that. 2:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They drove purest era automobiles, they built terracotta mansions, they employed white chauffeurs, national newspapers called them the richest people in the world per capita. 3:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But this wealth came with brutal restrictions, Oklahoma law required Osage people to prove competency, or to be assigned white guardians who controlled every cent, 3:20 [SPEAKER_00]: full-blooded Osage were automatically deemed incompetent, regardless of education or business acumen. 3:29 [SPEAKER_00]: These guardians stole millions through a system of legalized exploitation, and some realized there was an even more lucrative approach, murder foreign heritants. 3:42 [SPEAKER_00]: What followed was a reign of terror that exposed not just individual evil, but an entire community willing to look away while their neighbors were poisoned, shot and bombed. 3:56 [SPEAKER_00]: The conspiracy was so vast and was so protected by local authorities that it required the federal 4:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back to Osage County, 1921, when the murders began. 4:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The Osage story begins not with oil, but dispossession. 4:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1808 and 1839, the Osage ceded 96.8 million acres for approximately $166,000. 4:38 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1870, under relentless pressure from white settlers in Kansas, they negotiated one final move. 4:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Using proceeds from selling their Kansas Reservation, the OSAGE purchased 1.5 million acres in North Eastern Oklahoma from the Cherokee Nation for approximately $1.1 million. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They chose rocky, hilly terrain. 5:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They hoped would be undesirable to settlers. 5:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They were tragically wrong. 5:13 [SPEAKER_00]: In October 1897, the Phoenix Oil Company drilled their first successful well along Butler Creek. 5:23 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1912, lease auctions were held under the famous Million Dollar Elm Tree in Pahasca. 5:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Picture this, Colonel Ellsworth Walters, calling out bids that reached a record $1,999,000 for a single $168 contract, nearly $2 million in 1912, for a single piece of land. 5:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The Burbank Field alone produced over 103 million barrels in 1926. 6:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1901 and 1930, 319 million barrels of Oklahoma crude were pumped from Osage County ground. 6:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The Osage had become spectacularly wealthy, but their wealth came with chains. 6:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Now you might think that kind of wealth would mean freedom. 6:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, it meant federal control. 6:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's how the system worked. 6:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The OSAGE Alotment Act of 1906 kept all mineral rights communally owned. 6:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Each tribal member received one head-right, an equal share of all oil revenues that could not be sold, only inherited 6:46 [SPEAKER_00]: This was strategic brilliance by Chief James Bigheart. 6:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Keep minerals, communal, prevent individual swindles, and ensure collective prosperity. 7:00 [SPEAKER_00]: But then came the catches. 7:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The Act of May 27, 1908, transfer jurisdiction over a sage minors and incompetence to local Oklahoma County probate courts. 7:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The Act of March 3, 1921 required O sage people to prove competency or be assigned guardians. 7:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Full-blooded OSAGE were automatically deemed incompetent, regardless of education, business acumen, or military service. 7:35 [SPEAKER_00]: College graduates, war veterans, successful business people. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Didn't matter. 7:42 [SPEAKER_00]: If you were full-blooded OSAGE, you were legally declared unable to manage your own money. 7:49 [SPEAKER_00]: County judges appointed white businessmen, lawyers, ranchers, or politicians as guardians. 7:57 [SPEAKER_00]: These guardians held near absolute control. 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: They managed all-head-right payments. 8:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They approved or denied every expenditure. 8:07 [SPEAKER_00]: One account notes control extended to purchases as small as a 8:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They could sell their wards land. 8:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They charged exorbitant fees, directly from the wards funds. 8:23 [SPEAKER_00]: A 1924 investigation by the Indian Rights Association documented that Guardians had stolen at least $8 million, directly from Ostage accounts. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The report described an orgy of graft and exploitation, where Osage were shamelessly and openly robbed in a scientific and ruthless manner, while quarterly head-right payments averaged $3,350. 8:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Restricted Osage received only $1,000. 9:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The Guardians pocketed the remaining $2,350. 9:06 [SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't a few bad actors. 9:09 [SPEAKER_00]: In Pahasca, a county seat with 8,000 residents, approximately 400 guardians operated, including eight lawyers. 9:20 [SPEAKER_00]: For comparison, Oklahoma City had the same number of lawyers. 9:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Oklahoma City had 140,000 residents, 9:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Think about that. 9:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The so-called Indian business was so lucrative that this small town supported the same legal infrastructure as a city 16 times its size. 9:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Into this system of legalized theft came William K. Hill, a man who realized murder could be even more profitable than guardianship. 9:57 [SPEAKER_00]: William K. Hale arrived in Oklahoma Territory around 1900. 10:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He purchased a ranch, established a cattle operation, and cultivated relationships with Osage families. 10:12 [SPEAKER_00]: By the 1920s, local called him, the King of the Osage Hills. 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He drove a green Cadillac, he loaned money at generous terms, he attended tribal events, he built influence. 10:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Most significantly, he married his nephew Ernest Burkhardt to Molly Kyle, a full-blooded Osage woman, with a head-right. 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest began working at Molly's family ranch. 10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1921, Molly's older sister and a brown disappeared. 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Two weeks later, her body was discovered in a ravine, with a bullet in the back of her head. 11:02 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1923, Molly's mother Lizzy died suddenly. 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The official cause, diabetes, no autopsy was performed. 11:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Just two months later, came the explosion that killed Molly's other sister Rita, and her husband, Bill Smith, the house obliterated by nitroglycerin. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: She and Ernest inherited significant, head-right wealth. 11:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Then Molly herself begins suffering mysterious symptoms, severe nausea, extreme weakness, rapid deterioration. 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The family doctor couldn't explain it. 11:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest insisted she continued taking the medicine he personally administered. 12:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But this wasn't just one family. 12:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1921 and 1926, at least 60 O sage people died under suspicious circumstances. 12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Some estimates placed the true toll at over 200. 12:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Henry Rown was found shot in his car, execution style, official verdict, suicide. 12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: George Bichart, son of the former chief, was found beaten and loved for dead. 12:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But before he died, he named Suspects. 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Those Suspects were never investigated. 12:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Charles Whitehorn was shot and killed. 12:47 [SPEAKER_00]: His death was ruled accidental. 12:51 [SPEAKER_00]: A common pattern emerged. 12:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Osage victims had married white spouses shortly before their deaths. 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Those white spouses inherited head-right wealth. 13:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Local law enforcement conducted cursory investigations 13:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Horner's issued convenient rulings. 13:12 [SPEAKER_00]: No one was arrested. 13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The Osage Nation hired private investigators. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Those investigators were murdered. 13:21 [SPEAKER_00]: They hired attorneys. 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Those attorneys died in suspicious car accidents. 13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The community terror was tangible. 13:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Osage families stopped speaking openly. 13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't discuss head rights. 13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: They mistrusted white neighbors, they mistrusted local law enforcement, because everyone understood the law wasn't protecting Osage people, it was protecting their killers. 13:54 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1925, the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, what would become the FBI received jurisdiction. 14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The 29-year-old director, Jay Edgar Hoover, saw opportunity. 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Solve this high profile case, prove the Bureau's worth, secure its future funding and authority. 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Hoover sent former Texas Ranger Tom White to lead the investigation. 14:24 [SPEAKER_00]: White arrived in Osage County with one mandate. 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Solve these murders using scientific investigation, not local connections. 14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: What White found was systemic corruption. 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Local sheriffs were on Hales payroll. 14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The county prosecutor, socialized with suspects, witnesses disappeared before giving testimony. 14:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Evidence went missing from evidence rooms. 14:54 [SPEAKER_00]: White realized traditional law enforcement wouldn't work. 14:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He needed undercover operations. 15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: White deployed agents who posed as cattlemen, insurance salesmen, and herbal medicine 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They gathered information slowly, methodically, without arousing suspicion. 15:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They documented financial records, showing hail had purchased life insurance policies on OSAG victims shortly before their deaths. 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: They traced nitroglycerin purchases, they found witnesses, OSAG people who'd been afraid to speak to law enforcement, but would talk to federal agents. 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The investigation revealed what Osage people had known all along. 15:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He systematic conspiracy to murder for headwrites, protected by local power structures, central to everything, William K. Hail. 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The breakthrough came when Ernest Burkhardt cracked under pressure. 16:03 [SPEAKER_00]: In January 1926, facing overwhelming evidence and threats of execution, he confessed. 16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: He admitted to poisoning Molly with the help of a corrupt doctor. 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He confirmed his uncle Bill Hale had orchestrated the murders of Anna Brown, Rita and Bill Smith, and at least two dozen others. 16:26 [SPEAKER_00]: He named accomplices. 16:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The contract killers, the corrupt law enforcement officials, the complicit attorneys. 16:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The conspiracy was vast. 16:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Hale had recruited men to commit murders. 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd arranged, alabies. 16:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd paid local officials to botch investigations. 16:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd manipulated probate courts, to ensure he controlled head-right inheritances. 16:55 [SPEAKER_00]: All designed around a simple calculation. 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Dead Osage people with white spouses, meant transferred wealth. 17:05 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1926 federal prosecutors charged William K. Hale and Ernest Brookhart with conspiracy to murder. 17:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The trials were moved to federal court in Guthrie, Oklahoma, removing them from Osage County's Corrupt jurisdiction. 17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Hale was convicted in October 1926 and sentenced to life imprisonment. 17:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest received a life sentence. 17:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Several accomplices were convicted, many others escaped prosecution through legal technicalities or fled jurisdiction. 17:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the bitter reality, the convictions covered only a handful of murders. 17:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The vast majority remained unsolved. 17:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Most conspirators were never identified, local officials who facilitated or ignored the 18:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Molly divorced Ernest. 18:06 [SPEAKER_00]: She survived one of the few intended victims who did. 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But her family was gone. 18:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Her wealth, the reason they targeted her family, felt like a curse. 18:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The O'sage murder investigation transformed the bureau of investigation into what became 18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It established precedence for federal jurisdiction over major crimes. 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It proved the value of scientific investigation, forensic evidence, undercover operations, systematic documentation. 18:46 [SPEAKER_00]: J. Edgar Hoover used the case to secure expanded authority and funding. 18:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The Bureau evolved from a small investigative unit into America's premier federal law enforcement 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1925, Congress passed legislation, transferring guardianship jurisdiction to federal authorities, removing it from corrupt local courts. 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1931, restrictions on competency were gradually reduced. 19:21 [SPEAKER_00]: These were real changes, but they came after the damage was done. 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The O.S.H. 19:29 [SPEAKER_00]: people never received full accountability. 19:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Most murders remained unsolved. 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Most conspirators escaped justice. 19:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The wealth stolen through guardianship fraud was never fully recovered or reimbursed. 19:47 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1940, William K. Hale was parrolled after serving just 14 years. 19:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He returned to Oklahoma and lived quietly until his death in 1962. 19:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest Burkhardt was released in 1947 and also returned to Oklahoma. 20:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They faced no further legal consequences. 20:10 [SPEAKER_00]: the trauma persists. 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Osage families still carry the knowledge of ancestors murdered for their wealth. 20:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Many victims remain unidentified. 20:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Many conspirators were never named. 20:26 [SPEAKER_00]: as O.S.H. 20:27 [SPEAKER_00]: historian Catherine Redcorn noted. 20:30 [SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't just a series of crimes. 20:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a systemic attempt to transfer wealth from Native Americans to whites, through murder, exploitation, and legal manipulation. 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The story of the Osage murders reminds us that justice delayed is often just as denied. 20:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And that the most dangerous conspiracies aren't the ones hidden in shadows. 20:57 [SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones operating in plain sight, while communities look away. 21:04 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of the Osage murders, a conspiracy that killed dozens, exposed systemic exploitation, and created the FBI. 21:16 [SPEAKER_00]: A story from Osage County, Oklahoma, that shaped American law enforcement, and revealed the deadly consequences of unchecked greed and systemic racism. 21:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters. 21:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Every hometown has a story. 21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: This one still echoes through a county where neighbors once looked away. 21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: If this episode moved you, consider sharing it with someone who asked hard questions or someone who wanders what they would do when silence seems safer than truth. 21:51 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a hometown story you'd like to share, reach out. 21:56 [SPEAKER_00]: My email is in the show notes. 21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, remember, every hometown has a story worth preserving.
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