Criminology - The Osage Native American Murders

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

The Osage Native American Murders were a string of murders of tribal members in Osage County, Oklahoma, between 1921 and 1926. This was a period of time known in that state as the "Reign of Terror." At least 60 wealthy full-blooded Osage Native Americans were murdered over land rights. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Osage Native American Murders. Of the many victims, five were from the family of Mollie Burkhart, a wealthy full-blooded Osage Native American. A massive investigation and the take-down of a powerful and influential man ended the murders, but the senseless killings will forever be a part of the history of the Osage. You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true-crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 119 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you?

I'm doing good. How about you, ma'am? I'm doing great. I really am. I've got my health. My family's got their health. I mean, what else can you ask for, man? I'm right there with you.

I look for the same things in life that you. you're looking for. More if we continue to see some great Patreon support. So let's give our shout outs. We had S. Vydia, Trish Ramey Neal, Lacey Valentine, Beatrice Vasquez, Eileen Heaney, Lynn Powell, and Tegla Ayanette. So thank you all for the tremendous support. Yeah, that's some, some amazing support we said every week and continue to be amazed by that. We appreciate it. If there's anyone out there that would like to support criminology on Patreon, they can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. So, Morp, last week's episode, the interview that you did with James Huddled, the former brother-in-law of Golden State Killer Joseph J.D. Angelo, we've gotten a ton of really good response from that interview. I think number one, people just cannot get enough information, right, about the Golden State

killer, DeAngelo, his earlier crimes, all of that. I mean, he continues to fascinate people. And I think it was very timely, right, with the court proceedings that, you know, have happened in the last couple weeks. And I think since the arrest, people have wanted to have an insight into, his mind and see things from a different perspective and maybe something like a discussion with James Huddle, you know, allows people to see DeAngelo from a different view. And I don't think he had any earth-shattering, bomb-dropping details that he gave us. But it was still, to me, interesting just to hear about how normal some things were for the most part and how well he hid the things that he was doing as good as he did. Yeah. No, I thought it was very interesting. Like you said,

I mean, there weren't there weren't any oh my gosh. I knew it back then or you know type of moments. But I think anytime you have a serial killer and especially one so prolific, somebody that committed crimes over such a long span of time, the desire of people to want to know some of those things, right, that really happened. I mean, we told the story, but we don't know, you know, everything that was going on in DeAngelo's life. I mean, heck, we didn't even know it was DeAngelo at the time. So, you know, anytime you can hear from a relative, some, a really good friend, something like that. I mean, they're going to shed some insight into this person. And I think that's fascinating. Yeah, and I think part of it also is that people just want some kind of explanation.

They're searching for something that says, okay, there has to be something that made him do what he did. And that's what they're looking for, I think. But maybe there isn't. Maybe there is no answer like that. Maybe we'll never know why someone like DeAngelo did what he did. Well, in some cases, a killer kind of bears all, right? Tells, the police, okay, here's what I was thinking. This is why I did it. But some of them don't. And when they don't, people are left to wonder and try to figure that out for themselves. But anyway, it seems to be getting a lot of positive response. We're getting positive feedback from it. So that's a awesome thing. All right, buddy, we have to jump into this case. We're talking about the Osage

Native American murders, which were a string of murders of tribal members in Osage County, Oklahoma, between 1921 and 1926. This was a time period known in that state as the reign of terror. At least 60 wealthy, full-blooded Osage Native Americans were murdered over land rights. Of the many victims, five were from the five. were from the family of Molly Burkhart, a wealthy, full-blooded Osage Native American. A massive investigation in the takedown of a powerful and influential man ended the murders. But the senseless killings will forever be a part of the history of the Osage. Osage County, Oklahoma is a state's largest county by area, and it's located in the north central part of the state.

It's home to the Osage Native American tribe and adjacent to the Osage Nation Reservation. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society's website, by 1760, the Osage of Missouri had increased their range to include present Osage County. They surrendered their claim to the region in 1825, and in 1839 were removed and transferred to a reservation in Kansas. In 1835, the Osage area was included in the perpetual outlet west, guaranteed to the Cherokee Nation under the Treaty of New Ashota. According to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the treaty gave the Cherokee's $5 million and land in present-day Oklahoma in exchange for their 7 million acres of ancestral land, and it provided the legal basis for the Cherokee people's forced removal from their ancestral homeland. in the south, their trail of tears. On July 15, 1870, under the Reconstruction Treaties of 1866, this sage bought approximately 1.5 million acres from the Cherokee Nation in present-day Osage County.

The Osage became the only Native American nation to purchase its own reservation, something that they were very proud of, and they looked forward to watching it flourish. In 1896, a man named Henry Foster received a ten-old. your oil lease on the entire Osage reservation and his brother, Edwin Foster, formed the Phoenix Oil Company to manage the contract. In October 1897, the company drilled the first successful oil well in the Osage Nation and Oklahoma Territory. Over the following two decades, it produced more wealth than all of the American gold rushes combined. The Phoenix Oil and Osage, oil companies merged in 1901 to form the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company,

which sub-lease the eastern part of the Osage Reservation. The company's lease was terminated in 1916, and 160-acre tracks were leased at public auctions. Congress passed the Osage allotment Act on June 28, 1906. It specified that property and mineral income was to be distributed at equal. among the 2229 members of the Osage tribe. One equal share was known as a head right. After being surveyed, platted, and appraised,

the first lot auction was held on January 1, 1906. Sometime around 1925, the annual headright income of an Osage family of five was more than $65,000. That's a lot of money for back then. Today, that would be the equivalent of almost a million dollars. But we know when the same, there's a lot of money involved, that sometimes it leads to greedy people doing bad things.

Unfortunately, the oil boom unleashed an error known as the reign of terror on the Osage between 1921 and 1926. One tribal family in particular was affected the most during this brutal time. Molly Kyle was born on December 1, 1866, to Jimmy and Lizzie Nica-Assay, the second daughter of four. Her sisters were Anna, Minnie, and Rita. Molly was only 10 years old when the first oil was discovered. Her father went by his Osage name, Nicaase. He and Lizzie both grew up on a reservation in Kansas. The couple married in 1874 and settled in Grey Horse, Oklahoma. A trader later started calling Nikahisei Jimmy. And soon after, so did other traders.

And eventually it replaced his Osage name. The same happened with his daughters. In 1894, the government forced Molly's parents to enroll her at a Catholic school called the St. Louis School in Pahuska. The government threatened to withhold its annuity payments if they didn't comply. Molly had to stop. wearing her Native American outfits at the school. And instead, she was forced to wear a plain dress. She was not allowed to speak in her native tongue. And she had to learn English. Molly attended school

eight months out of each year. Molly and her family each received a head right. Head rights could not be bought or sold. They had to be inherited. Unfortunately, this also made killing. a deadly but straightforward way to gain control of a headright. In 1917, Molly married Ernest Burkhart, the son of a poor Texas cotton farmer, and nephew of a prominent domineering cattle rancher named William K. Hale, who was known in Osage County as King of the Osage Hills. Ernest was white, and all of Molly's sisters also married white men, which back then wasn't common or accepted by many people.

By 1921, Ernest and Molly had two children, Elizabeth and James. The family lived in a beautiful home in Greyhorse and was well off financially. Molly owned several cars and had many servants. After Molly's father died in 1913, her mother, Lizzie Kyle, moved in with her and Ernest. Molly's sister Minnie died after a brief illness in 1918. Minnie's husband, Bill Smith, later Marysie. married many and Molly's sister Rita Kyle. The reign of terror began with the murder of Molly's oldest sister, Anna Brown. On May 21st, 1921, Molly was getting her home ready for a small

luncheon and she asked her husband to call Anna to see if she'd come over to help take care of their mother, Lizzie. When Anna arrived at Molly's home, she was noticeably drunk. Anna had once been married to Oat Brown, who owned a livery business. But he was often physically abusive to Anna, and the couple eventually divorced. But the breakup led to Anna's excessive drinking at the local bars. Guests had started arriving at the luncheon, and Molly was not happy with her sister's behavior. Two of Ernest's brothers, Brian and Horace, who lived nearby, were also there. They often helped out at their uncle's ranch.

On the day of Molly's luncheon, Anna brought along a flask of alcohol and regularly took swigs. She started making a scene and began flirting with Brian Burkart, who she sometimes dated. Eventually, Anna began to fight with the luncheon guest, so Brian offered to give her a ride home. It was the last time Anna Brown was seen alive. When Anna hadn't contacted Molly after three days, Molly sent Ernest to check up on her. When Ernest arrived to Anna's home, the door was locked. He knocked on the door, and Anna's servant answered. He asked her if she had seen Anna, but the woman said no. Upon hearing the news, Molly tried not to panic. After all, in the past, Anna had left for several days at the time,

often taking off to Kansas City and Oklahoma City. But as it would turn out, Molly had every reason to panic. On May 28, 1921, an oil worker named Jerry Fowler found a dead body around 10 a.m. on Dial Hill, about a mile north of Pahuska, near an old Derek on the Garnet Oil lease. The victim was male and had two bullet wounds to the forehead. The body was so badly decomposed that it was impossible to make an identification. Someone checked the victim's pockets and found letters addressed to a 25-year-old. old man named Charles Whitehorn. Whitehorn had gone missing a few days before Anna Brown. He and his wife had arrived in Pahuska several weeks before on a visit and were staying at a local hotel

when he vanished. Whitehorn was a member of the Osage tribe. The body was taken to a local funeral parlor for an inquest. Around the time Whitehorn's body was discovered. Two men, Jam Robinson and Andy Smith and one of the men's teenage sons were squirrel hunting near a three-mile creek, several miles northeast of Greyhorse. The son shot a squirrel and went to retrieve it. That's when he suddenly screamed for his father. The boy had found a dead body near the edge of the creek. The bloated corpse appeared to be of a Native American woman. She was lying on her back with her open eyes staring up at the sky. An empty whiskey bottle lie next to her on the ground. The man ran to get help, but couldn't find any lawman. So they were to be able to be able to. So they

They went to Scott Mathis, a local man who owned the Big Hill Trading Company, and they told him about their discovery. Mathis rounded up several men and headed to the scene to assist in retrieving the body. Because of the condition of the body, identification was impossible. But everyone there wondered if the woman was Anna Brown. They contacted Molly Burkhart to come and see if the victim was her sister. Molly and her husband Ernest, her sister Rita, and Rita's husband Bill Smith showed up at the scene. Unable to identify the body by looking at its face, Molly recognized Anna's clothes and positively identified the body as that of her sister Anna Brown.

Anna's body was hoisted into a wooden box. At the scene, Judge H.E. Wilson, who was acting as coroner, in the scene, in the scene, impaneled a jury and handpicked the jurors from among the white men at the location of Anna's body. These men had to determine whether Anna had died of natural causes or by way of a homicide. Two doctors who were brothers, James and David Shown, performed the autopsy on Anna's body while it rested inside the wooden box. Remember, this is the 1920s, a far cry from the controlled sterile environment that this type of of examination would be done in today. They examined her clothes for tears, four stains, but found nothing. Humidity and decomposition made it virtually impossible to determine the time of death.

But they estimated Anna had been dead between five and seven days. The brothers then examined Anna's head and found a bullet hole in the back of her skull. The bullethead entered just below the crown on a downward trajectory. Based on the evidence before them, they felt that Anna Brown had been murdered in cold blood. When the Shown brothers cut into Anna's brain to retrieve the bullet for evidence, there wasn't a bullet there. The local sheriff Harv Freeze and his men searched the area where Anna's body was found, but they never found the bullet. Someone did find one of Anna's earrings and returned it to her family. In a separate examination, the Shown brothers were able to retrieve two bullets from the skull of Charles White.

Horn and determined that they most likely came from a 32 caliber pistol. Authorities were hoping to see if the bullet that killed Anna Brown matched the bullets that killed Charles Whitehorn. Authorities now had two murder victims who were Osage and wealthy. Some felt that the murders had to be connected. It made sense because if not, they thought, okay, this would be a. huge coincidence that the victims went missing around the same time and their bodies were found the same day. Because Anna had divorced her husband, her head right went directly to her mother,

Lizzie, who had also inherited the head rights of her late husband, Jimmy, and her deceased daughter Minnie. Molly tried to get the authorities to investigate her sister's murder, but her cries fell on deaf ears because no one seemed to have concern for two murdered Native Americans. But even if they had shown interest in investigating Anna's murder, it would have been nearly impossible to solve. There were no eyewitnesses, no physical evidence, and the location of the bodies have been trampled on by several men who likely contaminated any evidence that may have been left behind. By July 1921, the Justice of the Peace had closed his inquiries into Anna Brown's murder and stated that her death was at, quote, the hands of parties.

unknown. He said the case would remain closed unless new facts or evidence came along. Molly and her family had lost so much in a short amount of time. Their pain was unbearable, but sadly, their loss did not end with Anna's death. On July 17th, 1921, Lizzie Kyle passed away. Even though she... In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Had been ill, her death was quick and completely unexpected. Molly's brother-in-law, Bill Smith, was. the first to become suspicious of the deaths in the family. His first wife, many, died unexpectedly like Lizzie in 1918. Now Anna and Lizzie were dead as well. Something wasn't right. Was what Bill Smith was thinking. He just had no way of proving it. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for.

I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontas, where you're a go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Frustrated with the local authorities, Bill took it upon himself to investigate the Kyle women's deaths. Lizzie's brief illness was a mystery. and doctors couldn't pinpoint what caused it. Bill believed someone had poisoned the matriarch, and he was pretty sure all three deaths were connected in some way to the Osage's subterranean oil

reservoir. Bill Smith went to the authorities with his suspicions in Lizzie's death, but by August 1921, authorities hadn't looked into it, nor had they made any progress in Anna's murder. The families of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn offered a $2,000 and $2,500 reward, respectively for information leading to the killer or killers. William Hale, whose nephew had married into the family, came forward and promised his own reward and was quoted as saying, we've got to stop this bloody business. The estates of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn hired private investigators and federal agents led by Agent John Berger were sent to Osage County. For nearly two years, they investigated the murders, their chief suspect in Anna's death was her ex-husband, Oat Brown.

Investigators tried locating him in Ponca City, 25 miles northwest of Greyhorse, but he had gone to Perry, Oklahoma. So the investigators took a train to Perry where Brown's father lived, but he wasn't there either. Then they heard he was in Pawnee County, so they traveled there. They found him living with the woman. he had married after Anna's death. While one agent, known only as number 46, tried getting information out of Brown, another agent, known only as Agent number 28, talked with a young Native American woman.

She told him that a woman named Rose Osage had admitted to her that she had killed Anna Brown. After Anna tried seducing Rose's boyfriend Joe Allen, Alan denied a romantic relationship. with Anna, the woman later admitted she lied about this conversation with Rose. Investigators eventually ruled out both Rose and Joe in Anna's murder. Investigators also concluded that Oat Brown did not kill his ex-wife. The private investigators then moved onto a possible suspect named Bill Smith, Molly and Anna's brother-in-law, mostly because he had married Rita shortly after Minnie's death, and that looked suspicious to them.

them. Mike Hal, the same man who had offered his own reward, came forward stating to Molly that he did not trust Bill. But Molly didn't believe that Bill was a killer. He was doing more work to solve the murders than the actual lawman, so much so that a few people thought he was getting too close to the truth. By February 22nd, the private investigators had reached an impasse in the investigation of the murders. Sheriff Freeze had been expelled from office after a jury found him guilty. of failing to enforce the law. One night in February, a man named William Stepson, the 22-year-old Osage champion steer roper, received a call and immediately left his house in Fairfax.

When he returned home to his wife and kids several hours later, he was severely ill. Hours later, he was dead. After authorities examined his body, they believed he had been poisoned, possibly with Stricknine after he had left his home. But a toxicology exam was not carried out. By this time, scientists had discovered various ways of detecting poison in a corpse. One was through extracting a tissue sample from the body and testing it for the presence of toxic substances such as strychnine. It's not clear why they didn't do this in this instance. On February 6, 1923, Henry Rome, formerly known as Henry Rohn Horse, and a cousin of Molly and Anna Brown, was found dead in his car by Chief of Police Bob Parker and Deputy Sheriff Jim Rhodes.

They had received a report of a car in a ravine, about four miles north of Fairfax, and they went to investigate. They found Rone dead in the car. He had been shot in the head from behind. The bullet entered the head just to the left and center and emerged near the right eye. Death was instantaneous. It turns out that Molly was briefly. married to Roan through an arranged marriage when she was very young. On March 10th, 1923, Molly Burckhardt suffered another tragedy when a bomb ripped through the home of Bill and Rita Smith, instantly killing Rita and her servant. Bill survived for four days. Before succumbing to his injuries, some believed Bill might have uncovered the person or persons

behind the murders, but if he had, he never said, not even as he lay dying. Then just over two weeks later, on March 26th, an Osage woman died from suspected poisoning. But no toxicology exam was performed on her either. The mysterious deaths didn't stop there. Four months later, on July 28th, another Osage man named Joe Bates received some whiskey from a stranger.

After he drank some, he collapsed. and die, leaving behind a wife and six children. Joe Bates' death reminded some of a strange death from the month before. On June 28th, a man named George Bigheart fell violently ill and was put on a train and taken to an Oklahoma City hospital. Doctors suspected George had ingested poison whiskey. After learning he may have been poisoned, George contacted his attorney, William Vaughn, and asked him to come to the hospital right away for an urgent meeting. and Vaughn agreed to come.

When he got there, George told him he had suspicions about who had committed the murders and had implicating documents to back up his claim. George died the following morning. His attorney, Vaughn, immediately after talking with George, boarded a train that night to return to Pahaska. Early the next morning, the porter went to wake up Vaughn and let him know the train had pulled into the station, but Vaughn had disappeared. His body was later found with a crushed skull on the railroad track near Phaust.

Pershing, Oklahoma. Investigators felt that whatever information George shared with Vaughn got him killed. By August of 1923, after the alarming death toll, the Osage people and their leaders demanded a thorough investigation into the murders and mysterious deaths. The Osage Tribal Council passed a resolution seeking the Justice Department's help. Several Osage convinced a wealthy white oil man. named Barney McBride to travel to Washington, D.C. and ask federal authorities to investigate the deaths.

Shortly after he arrived in the nation's capital, McBride was beaten and stabbed 29 times. When his dead body was found in a culvert in Maryland, McBride had only his socks and shoes on. And in one shoe was a card with his name on. Federal agents were sent to Osage County to investigate, but their investigation quickly fizzled. After spending weeks in Oklahoma, they concluded, quote, any continued investigation is useless.

By November 1923, the investigation had stopped. But authorities were convinced that the murders were connected, with the exception of Charles Whitehorn's death. In a January 1925 article from the Pony Courier Dispatch in Times Democrat, County Attorney-elect C.K. Templeton said, Whitehorn was undoubtedly killed during a drunken brawl. But the murder of Anna Brown, the blowing up of the Smith home, and the murder of Roan Horse was part of the plot. In 1925, Tom White, a special agent in charge of the Bureau of Investigation's Office in Houston, was summoned to Washington, D.C. by a young J. Edgar Hoover, the new director of the Bureau.

It wasn't until 1935 that the name changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Hoover ordered White and his team to Oklahoma to investigate the Osage murders, and he put White in charge of the Oklahoma City office. White and his team of agents spent two years working undercover in Oklahoma investigating the murders. Through the investigation, White heard from a number of people that, we were going to be able to William Hale was responsible for the killings, but proving it was extremely difficult. William Hale did have connections to the case. He was the man who had come forward offering a reward.

He was also the uncle of Molly's husband, Ernest Burkhart. Witnesses who could implicate white ended up dead. The agents felt that men in the area, including some lawmen, were part of Hale's criminal network. Any evidence they gathered was merely an unsubstantiated rumor. Eventually, though, White and his team earned the trust of some of the locals and members of the Osage who began opening up. The investigators discovered that Hal had persuaded his nephew, Ernest Burkhart, to marry Molly Kyle, a full-blooded Osage. Investigators theorized that Hal then arranged for the murder of her family. so he could cash in on each family member's head rights and insurance policies.

Molly Burkhart was the only one less standing in his way. By the time investigators had figured out who was behind the murders, Ernest had already started slowly poisoning Molly. On January 8, 1926, William Hale, Ernest Burckhart, and John Ramsey, Hale's hired hand, were arrested in the murders of Henry Rohn and the Smith family. On April 30th, investigators arrested Ernest Brother, Brian Burkhart, and Kelsey Morrison, another criminal hired by hell, for Anna Brown's murder. Brian confessed to aiding in Anna's murder and turned state's evidence, and he was never convicted. On May 18, 1926, Morrison confessed to Anna's murder.

He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In June, Ernest Burkhart received a life sentence for the murder. of Bill and Rita Smith and their servant, Nettie Brookshire. He was paroled in 1937 and pardoned by Governor Henry Bellman in 1965. Ernest lived to the age of 94. He passed away in 1986. Thankfully, Molly recovered from being poisoned and was granted a divorce from Ernest in 1927. She passed away 10 years later, and her children inherited her head rights. Hale and Ramsey

were ultimately convicted of murdering Henry Rohn and sentenced the life at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. Hale went through four trials before his ultimate conviction. He was never tried for the murders of the Kyle family. Ramsey confessed to his part in Roan's murder shortly after his arrest. He told agents that Hale paid him 500 hours and bought him a new car for killing Roan. According to him, he met with Roan near Fairfax, and the two drank whiskey together before Ramsey shot Roan in the head. Incredibly, William Hale was paroled in 1947, serving only 18 years of his life sentence. He then moved to Montana, where he worked as a cowboy and a dishwasher. His new life was a far cry from the one he had in Oklahoma. Hale died in Arizona in 166. Hale died in

1962 at the age of 87. The investigation into the murders of George Bigheart and his lawyer, William Vaughn, was never completed. Pahuska citizens petitioned state officials to investigate their deaths. Governor Jack Walton signed a special investigator named Herman Fox Davis to the case. But shortly afterwards, Davis was found guilty of bribery and sentenced to prison himself. Governor Walton later pardoned him, but George and Williams' desk went unsolved. In 1992, journalist Dennis McColliffe was the foreign desk copy editor at the Washington Post. He heard someone say that his Osage grandmother, Sylvia Bolton, had taken her own life in 1995 at the age of 22.

His family was led to believe she died from kidney disease. McCallough decided to research his Osage heritage and learn more about his grandmother. fate. He took a leave of absence from the Washington Post to visit the Osage tribe's oil-rich land in Osage County, Oklahoma. He was seeking information on his grandmother. McCallough thoroughly researched his grandmother's death and the reign of terror. He was convinced that his grandmother did not take her own life, but was murdered for her head rights. McCalliffe put his research findings into a book titled The Deaths of Sylvia Bolton and American history. In 1999, he published another book titled Bloodland,

a family story of oil, greed, and murder on the Osage Reservation. McCallif wasn't raised as Native American. His mother admitted to him one day when he was 15 years old that he was, in fact, part of sage. She told him this after she became ill and believed that she was dying, so she made a deathbed confession to him. But she didn't reveal why, she denied him of his heritage growing up. According to a February 1999 article in the Missoulian, quote, with the blood quantum inherited on his mother's side, he became an enrolled Osage tribal member.

Homeland Osages have since accepted him as one of their own. In 1925, the U.S. Congress passed a law prohibiting non-osage people from inheriting the head rights of tribal members with more than one half Osage blood. the bill was created to prevent another reign of terror. The U.S. Department of Interior managed most of the Osage wealth in trusts. Melissa Howell of the Daily Oklahoma wrote a few years ago that, quote, in 2000, the Osage tribe filed a lawsuit against the government alleging historical losses to its trust funds and interest income as a result of the government's mismanagement of the tribe's trust. assets. Over a decade later, in 2011, the Department of Interior settled with the Osage for $380 million. The law firm that represented the tribe said it was the largest tribal trust

settlement in U.S. history. The Osage Native American murders have been featured in many books. The most recent is the book, Killers of the Flower Moon, the Osage Murders and the birth of the FBI, written by Lost City of Z author David Grand. And the case will soon be featured on the big screen. And it's set to include a collaboration between Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro. Wow, Morph. I mean, you don't really get, you know, three much bigger names than those three people. You would think with names like that, it's going to be a very big movie. Yeah, I've been looking forward to seeing it ever since I read that they were going to do this film together.

And I know things because of what's going on have been delayed. So I don't know when this will actually come out, but I'm looking forward to it. You know, to me, morph, this is a case that is both extremely interesting, but also extremely sad. You know, the one thing that really jumped out of me as we were going through this case was the wealth that some of these Osage had accumulated. I mean, you know, you're talking in today's dollars a million dollars or more. I mean, these were wealthy people.

And I think anytime you have that, right, money is such a motivating factor when it comes to people committing crimes, we know it is, you're going to have people trying to figure out a way to get their hands on that money. And I think that's where the sad part of the case comes in. you know, how many people lost their lives because some greedy individuals wanted to get their hands on their money? I think it goes to show that almost 100 years later, a lot of murder still boil down to money, plain and simple. It's really sad to see the OCH people that had to endure all these years of violence, especially that one family that it, was especially hard hit by the evil plans that these people had.

But yeah, I think that was one big takeaway, right? So much loss within one family. And then I think the other thing that really jumped out at me and it's tough is the fact that, yes, these cases were investigated. But as we talked about, you know, in some of these, it seemed as though, okay, the investigation might have been a little on the light side. Maybe people didn't care as much because the victims were Native American. I mean, I got that sense. How about you? Yes. If this had happened in a predominantly white area where there was a lot of wealthy people in the same income caliber,

I think there's a very good chance that there would have been an all out attempt and efforts to solve these murders. And I think that's one thing. that, you know, gets pointed out, you know, especially in some of the older cases that we cover. But even with some of the newer cases, it's hard not to see the differences in how some cases are handled. There's just, there's no way to sugarcoat it. And hopefully that won't always be the case. Hopefully there'll be a way to put everyone on neutral ground so that everything gets handled properly and that every murder is investigated the same way regardless of who the victim is. Well, we are making a lot of strides, right? Today in our society, there's a lot of stuff going on.

This should be one of those pushes as well. I think you and I have covered some historic cases that go back to chapters in American history. And I think you are similar to me in that you like to read history and learn. from it. And it's nice if we can learn from history to improve things for future generations. Yeah. What's the old saying? If you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Is that, is that the saying? Yeah. It's so true. And why are, you know, why are we not taking these things that have happened in the past? You look at them. You see it's not right. So, okay, let's not do that again. It seems like such a simple concept. But I know it's, it's, it's,

not quite that easy. But that's it for the case of the Osage Native American murders. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. If you haven't done so, take a minute. Go out. Give us a five-star rating if you love the show. Keep telling your friends about the podcast. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for criminology podcast or joining our Facebook discussion group, which is criminology podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right.

Another episode in the books, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.