And he was considered honorable and not corrupt. The first chronicle is told largely from the perspective of an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart, whose family had become a prime target of the murder conspiracy. Driven from their lands in Kansas, the Osage had bought a swath of northeast Oklahoma in the early 1870s. Mollie Burkhart (right) with sisters Anna (center) and Minnie (left). In 1923 alone, the 2,000 tribe members collectively received $30 millionthe equivalent to $400 million today, according to Grann. . Fixico) and as Vaught in others (e.g. To gain part of the wealth, Hale persuaded Ernest to marry Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded Osage. He has to wear a suit and a fedora where he had once ridden on a horse back with a 10-gallon hat. An Indian Affairs agent said, "The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?" NewsOK. These guardians were believed to have swindled their charges out of millions of dollars. But they also had jurisdiction over American-Indian reservations which is why they got jurisdiction over this case and why it became one of their first major homicide investigations. . And because of racial prejudice, it was a enormous challenge, and many people believe that the locals would never convict fellow white men for killing an Osage Indian. The setting was the Osage Indian Nation in the 1920s when oil deposits had brought enormous wealth to the members of the tribe. Weren't they? [d][e] There, doctors suspected that he had ingested poisoned whiskey. The former Texas Ranger put together an undercover team that included a Native American agent. [c] By that time, Lizzie had headrights for herself and had inherited the headrights from her late husband and two daughters. That's exactly right. But then, he never arrived. why does my poop smell different after covid / who sings as rosita in sing / how many osage murders might there possibly have been? It has its own government. The Osage oil murders were a series of murders based on Native American discrimination that took place in the 1920's, in order to steal the wealth of the Osage tribe. And a fascinating little moment is that they send a lawyer, John Palmer, to Washington as they're negotiating this arrangement with the U.S., and he gets something. In some instances, white settlers even married their marks to legally become the next of kin before murdering their spouses. And what a headright was essentially a share in the mineral trust. With $3,000 from his mother, he first went to Texas where he purchased a herd of cattle, but a drought . Interview by Keith Donohue. Its a system rooted in racism, done under the pretense of enlightenment that the Osage needed protection, Grann says. As one person told me, yes, we were victims of this murder, but we don't live as victims. This is FRESH AIR. Aprenda agora mesmo! And it was utterly devastating to her as anyone would imagine. Thats one of the more outrageous details, Grann says. GRANN: You know, Tom White is in many ways like Mollie Burkhart in that he is a transitional figure in this country. A headright was hereditary, passing to the immediate legal heir of the deceased allottee. [1] Along with tens of thousands of oil workers, the oil boom attracted many white opportunists to Osage County; as the writer Robert Allen Warrior characterizes them, some were entrepreneurial, while others were criminal, seeking to separate the Osage from their wealth by murder if necessary. Children were not allowed to wander the streets. But there was also a great deal of corruption. So it was very hard to know who to turn to, who you could trust, who would stop these crimes, who would truly investigate them. Hale and his associates were convicted in state and federal trials from 1926 to 1929, which had changes of venue, hung juries, appeals, and overturned verdicts. GRANN: So - yeah. He - because he was last seen with Anna Brown, he is initially questioned. Osage is a tribe in North America who suffered deeply on the hands of greedy people. GRANN: Yes. And in 1870, they needed to find a new homeland. By . He was sometimes called "Will". Non-Osages were able to inherit an Osage headright, and this was the motive for the Reign of Terror. They had to pay for justice.. He went out of his house. And The Washington Post later reported what had become increasingly evident, which was that - there was a conspiracy to kill rich Indians - was the title of their article. As a youth he had been told she died of kidney disease, then as a suicide. They had servants, many of whom were white. Farris, David. In 1923 alone, the Osage received what today would be worth more than $400 million. He was part of a tribe of lawmen. [11][a] Brown was divorced, so probate awarded her estate to her mother, Lizzie Q. They are rich people with a reservoir of oil and other minerals in their homeland. In some cases lawmen were directly complicit or turned a blind eye, Grann says. She said, in many cases, they don't fully know even what their ancestors did, but we live side by side. GRANN: The public, the whites, not just in Oklahoma, but across the United States, were transfixed by the Osage wealth which belied images of Native Americans that could be traced back to the first brutal contact with whites. ["The Data Are Pointing to One Major Driver of America's Murder Spike . Vaughan's body was later found with his skull crushed beside the railroad tracks near Pershing, about five miles south of Pawhuska. Randy Krehbiel paints him as a "shady character involved in blackmail and possibly embezzlement, armed robbery, and even murder." After securing Tulsa's top law enforcement spot in April 1920, Gustafson still moonlit as a private detective, working "cases that might have been more properly handled by the police." . And then it turned out that lo and behold, this land was sitting upon some of the largest deposits of oil then in the United States. They involve morticians who would then cover up the crimes. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? DAVIES: It was in fact Mollie Burkhart's own husband Ernest Burkhart who was found to be a part of the conspiracy. His doubts arose from a variety of conflicting evidence. She's in her 80s now. What happened there? The United States Congress changed the law to prohibit non-Osage from inheriting headrights from Osage with half or more Native American ancestry. There were at least 24 Osage who had been murdered. GRANN: No, I mean, they lived in the community, and they presented a certain face and concealed often what they were about. [21] Other witnesses and participants were murdered as investigation of the conspiracy expanded. These three books deal with the absolutely despicable history of the Osage Indians being cheated out of their oil rights in the 1920s in Oklahoma. The press referred to them as, quote, unquote, "the red millionaires and the plutocratic Osage." Theyre scalping our souls out here, complained one exasperated Osage. Attorneys who have been following the six-week-long Alex Murdaugh double-murder trial say the outcome remains uncertain, but that a guilty verdict or hung jury is likely. And by 1923, just to give you. There are some real characters among them. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior sent four agents to act as undercover investigators. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and National Geographic Traveler. And there are about 20,000 members who now belong to the nation. GRANN: Well, early on when - in the early 20th century, there was just a little bit of oil. Investigators who probed the case too deeply also had a propensity for turning up dead. But within a few years, they began to be forced off their territory. And she had pulled out a box of documents, and she told me about the death of her grandfather who had been run over, who had been poisoned. Methodical, incorruptible and fearless, White put together a team that, having eliminated all alternative explanations, concluded the Osage killings were directed by Ernest Burkhart's uncle, William Hale, a wealthy rancher known as "the King of the Osage Hills", who had tried to cash in a $25,000 life insurance policy on Henry Roan. What are their methods? DAVIES: OK. That said, there was a lot of wealth controlled by the Osage. By the early 20th century, because of this kind of clash of cultural forces, so many whites were coming into the area because of the well, so many oil workers and oil men. There was a tremendous amount of corruption in Osage County. [5] McAuliffe found that when Bolton was a minor, the court had appointed her white stepfather, attorney Arthur "A.T." Woodward, as her guardian. He had been a longtime private eye, had a criminal history. Because of the large number of leads and the perception that the police were corrupt, White decided he would be the public face of the investigation while most of the agents would work undercover. And within two months, she was dead. Initially it was for maybe $100, and then it grew to 1,000. They were driven off their lands. The U.S. murder rate in 2020 was 42% lower than the suicide rate (13.5 deaths per 100,000 people) and 71% below the mortality rate for drug overdose (27.1 deaths per 100,000 people, as of the third quarter of 2020), the CDC data shows. For more than a decade, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were quietly . But with the arrest of William K. Hale it all stopped. March 1, 2011. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? Hale lived to be 87 and is buried in Wichita, Kansas. DAVIES: And is the population of the Osage Nation about what it was or more or less? On May 27, 1921, the partially decomposed body of a 25-year-old Osage woman named Anna Brown was discovered in a ravine in Osage County, Oklahoma, dead from a bullet to the back of the head. [11] Two of his accomplices had died before the BOI investigation was completed. GRANN: So the Osage issue a tribal resolution where they plead for federal investigators to come in, those who will not be tainted or connected to the local power structure. What is so hard to fathom is that the crimes involved a calculating quality where you had to befriend these people, you had to pretend to love them, you had to sleep in their house, in some cases you had children with them and then you systematically targeted them. "The Great Depression had wiped out many Osage fortunes that had already been diminished by guardians and thieves. And the white man won't be able to farm there, and they'll finally leave us alone. He had been stabbed, I think, at least 20 times. And what allotted meant - this happened to many American tribes in that period - where the federal government was forcing them to break up the reservations, break up their communal way of life, turn them into, quote, unquote, "private property owners." And then within about 30 years because of oil deposits under her land becomes one of the wealthier people in the United States and is living in a mansion and married to a white husband, has a couple children. And he said, if you speak to the Osage, will you please tell them that for me? 9. Several people who had tried to catch the killers themselves had been killed. It was somebody who Mollie thought loved her. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? Many Osage moved to California. how many osage murders might there possibly have been?splash cafe clam chowder recipe. Best-selling author David Grann talks about his new book that details one of the most chilling murder conspiracies in American history and the FBIs first major homicide case. Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence once the defendant is dead. [1] However, newer investigations indicate that other suspicious deaths during this time could have been misreported or covered up murders, including people who were heirs to future fortunes.[2].