Infamous America - ENCORE: OSAGE MURDERS Ep. 3 | “No Rest For The Wicked”

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The winter of 1923 saw more murders in the Osage Hills, but no one was prepared for the brazen and brutal attack that happened in March. In the aftermath, the Osage pressed the U.S. government and the state of Oklahoma for help, but their efforts produced few results. And then, criminals in Osage County started dying. The masterminds behind the conspiracy began covering their tracks and further proved no one was safe.   Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another, and then, of course, I have a brainstorm about something new. That lights the fire, and then I'm in real trouble. To calm my mind, the only things that have ever worked with any consistency are sleep gummies. Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies from Mood.com come in various combinations of THC, CBD, and CBN, so you can get something that's very low in THC, but higher in CBD, which helps turn off the stress,

and CBN, which is the thing that makes you sleepy. The brain shuts up, the racing thoughts stop, and it's off to sleep. Mood is federally compliant. The gummies are legal and delivered right to your door. At Mood.com, get 20% off your first order with our promo code, Infamous. Go to Mood.com and use the code infamous to get 20% off your first order. your first order, and they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. June 1923 was probably the deadliest month in Osage County, though the fatalities were not confined

to the Osage or Osage supporters. Two notorious Osage criminals would also die suspicious deaths that month. But the death that pained the Osage nation was that of George Bigheart. George was the nephew of a truly legendary chief, James Bigheart. James was the chief of the Osage from 1875 until his death in 1906. He led the tribe through all of those turbulent changes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He helped end the rationing system that forced the tribe to rely on the U.S. government for food and clothing. He helped create a better allotment system for the Osage so they could keep all their land and divided amongst their own people

rather than have it taken away by the government and offered up to white settlers. And he spearheaded the pivotal deal that allowed the Osage to keep their mineral rights. He passed away right before the first payment was made to his people, but he accomplished something historic. It made the Osage wealthy beyond belief, but of course it also inadvertently led to the time period

that was known as the reign of terror. And in 1923, James' nephew, George was suspected of being its newest victim. In late June, George was rushed to a hospital in Oklahoma City with some sort of sickness. The common suspicion of poison whiskey immediately popped up, but no one knew for sure. All the doctors knew was that George's case was severe. He was dying, and he didn't have long to live. George was able to call his friend, W.W. Vaughn, a white lawyer who was outraged by the corruption

in Osage County. George said he had valuable information about the murders. Vaughn had worked diligently with private investigators to solve the murders, and he kept his notes and files stashed in a secret location. When he received the call from George, Vaughn told his wife about the secret hiding spot. She had just given birth to their 10th child, and Vaughn said that if anything happened to him,

she would find money for the family in the hiding spot, and she should immediately take his information. to the authorities. Then he hurried to Oklahoma City, and there are two conflicting stories about what happened next. In one, Vaughn didn't make it in time, and George Bigheart passed away before he could reveal his information about the murders. In the other, more tantalizing version, Vaughn arrived in time and was able to sit with George for his last few hours. George told Vaughn everything he knew and gave him some documents. Then Vaughn called the new sheriff of Osage County and said he was rushing home on the next train. He said he knew who the killer was and had

more information on top of that. W.W. Vaughn did hurry to the train station and board the next train to Pahuska, the Osage capital and his home in Osage County. There's no conflict about that or about what happened next. Vaughn never made it to Pahuska. When the train arrived, he wasn't on it. He had vanished. His broken body was found next to the train tracks 36 hours later. Whatever documents he might have had from George Bighart were gone. When Vaughn's wife learned of her husband's demise, she went to the hiding spot, and it was empty. Clearly, it wasn't as secret as Vaughn had believed. Someone had cleaned it out. The possible identity of the killer or killers and the details about the conspiracy. were gone. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling a tragic story of conspiracy, greed, and betrayal that became known as the Osage Murders. This is episode three. No rest for the wicked. Rita Smith and her husband, Bill, lived on an isolated acreage outside of the small town of Fairfax, Oklahoma. Fairfax was

one of the four towns that were central to the Osage story. Rita's sisters, Mollinger, and Anna live near one of the other towns, a tiny village called Grey Horse that was about four miles away. Anna's body had been found in a ravine, a couple miles outside Greyhorse, almost exactly two years ago, in May of 1921. That had been the start of the worst of the terror in the Osage Nation. There had been strange deaths and disappearances before 1921, but when the bodies of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn were found on the same day, that signaled an escalation. Since then, there had been at least seven murders or suspicious deaths. That number included Rita, Molly, and Anna's mother, Lizzie. She died of a mysterious illness

two months after Anna was murdered. Now, in February of 1923, Rita and her sister Molly were the only ones left in their family. They had inherited the wealth from their parents and their two sisters, all of whom were deceased. As it became clear that someone or a gang of someone's was killing members of the Osage tribe to gain access to the fortunes they had made from the oil on their land, it was also clear that no one was safe. Three members of Rita and Molly's family had already died under suspicious circumstances, including the outright murder of Anna, and there was no reason for Rita and Molly to think they wouldn't be next. On February 6, 1923, the most recent victim was discovered.

40-year-old Henry Rohn was found dead in his car on a road outside Fairfax. He had been shot in the back of the head, and as with the other murders, there were virtually no leads. There was no pattern to the violence, other than an overwhelmingly affected full-blood members of the Osage tribe who had lots of money to lose. The money the Osage made from leasing their land to oil companies could only be inherited. The mineral rights could not be sold. which meant that if an outsider wanted access to the money,

he or she would have to marry a member of the tribe or benefit from a member's death. By February of 1923, it seemed pretty clear that there was a sinister conspiracy at work. Someone was trying to benefit from the murders, but thus far, investigators had failed to make any meaningful progress. And the killers were still on the loose, so the Osage were understandably terrified.

They began leaving lights on outside their homes. But in the case of Bill and Rita Smith, that didn't seem to be enough. Just a matter of days after the body of Henry Rhone was discovered, Rita and Bill heard strange noises outside their house in the middle of the night. Several nights later, they heard more noises. They were convinced that intruders were prowling around outside and possibly looking for a way in. They fled their home and bought a house right in the middle of Fairfax.

The man who sold it to them was James Shone, one of the pair of brothers who were doctors in many of the murder cases. It was an expansive two-story house that was in a style similar to what would be called a craftsman home today. A deep porch extended off the front of the house, and the stairs up to it were framed by brick pillars that supported wooden columns beneath a pitched roof. The house came with a garage, where Bill parked their state-of-the-art studebaker automobile. And there, in the former home of a well-known person and surrounded by other homes and other people, they believed they would be safe. But they were wrong. On the night of March 9, 1923, Bill Smith left his new home in Fairfax with a friend. They drove out to the ranch of the biggest bootleggar in the area, Henry Grammer.

Grammer was in his early 40s, and he was an old-time cowboy who had been living in Osage County for 20 years. He was one of the most famous men in the area because he was a world champion steer roper. He had performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and he had traveled Europe with Wild West shows. He prided himself on being a gunfighter like the outlaws of previous generations. Nearly 20 years earlier, he had shot and killed a sheepherder in Montana, but only received three years in prison for the crime. Now in the 1920s in Osage County, he ran a small criminal empire, and he and two of his associates would become highly suspicious. Henry Grammer's name was already connected to two victims, Henry Rohn and Anna Brown. Reportedly, when Henry Rohn left home the day he disappeared,

he was going out to Grammer's ranch to buy whiskey. A week later, Henry Rohn was found dead in his car, and Anna Brown was also known to buy whiskey from Grammer, and now Bill Smith was headed to Grammer's ranch. Henry Grammer's moonshine operation was running full bore. He had huge copper stills that held hundreds of gallons of whiskey. He built his own private power plant so that his electric lights could burn all night and allow his men to keep working after dark.

Grammer wasn't home when Bill Smith and his friend arrived, so Bill accepted a jar of moonshine whiskey from one of Grammer's workers, and they passed some time on the ranch. Later that night, Bill and his friend drove back to Fairfax. Bill dropped off his friend and then headed home. He parked his studebaker in the garage as usual and walked into his house. His wife Rita and their 19-year-old servant, Nettie Brookshire, were still awake. But soon they all went to bed.

It was common for Nettie to spend the night. though no one at the time knew that this would be the worst night to do so. A little before 3 o'clock in the morning, the house exploded. The explosion was thunderous, and its effects were felt and heard and seen for miles around. Shrapnel from Bill and Rita's home smashed into the homes around them. Windows shattered, and wood cracked and splintered. The blast blew out windows in the nearby Fairfax Hotel. The night watchman was injured by flying glass.

and a person in one of the rooms was thrown to the floor by the concussion. A couple miles away, Rita's sister Molly and her husband, Ernest, felt the blast in their home. It shook the house like an earthquake. When they looked outside, they could see a blazing fire in the distance that lit up the night sky. In Bill and Rita's neighborhood, people ran out of their homes and rushed to the scene of the explosion. The home was completely demolished. It was reduced to a massive pile of brick and wood and twisted metal. The garage collapsed onto the couple's studebaker and crushed it until only the front grill was visible.

Legions of people rushed to the scene to help look for Bill, Rita, and Nettie. Volunteer firefighters tried to douse the flames, and searchers scoured the rubble. James Shone, the doctor who had sold the house to Bill and Rita just a short while ago, arrived with his brother David. Local business leaders joined with neighbors to try to find any survivors, and as they worked, they heard a voice buried somewhere in the destruction. They tore apart the rubble and uncovered Bill Smith. He was horribly burned and wailing in agony. His condition was beyond anything even the doctors James and David had ever seen.

They found Bill's wife Rita lying next to him in bed. She actually looked peaceful and unharmed, but she wasn't moving or saying anything. thing. When they picked her up, they saw the reason. The back of her skull had been crushed by debris. The searchers never found Nettie Brookshire. They were forced to theorize that her body had been destroyed by the blast. She left behind a husband and a young child. The Shone brothers lifted Bill into an ambulance that rushed him to the Fairfax Hospital. David Shone gave him morphine for his injuries, and that, plus the searing pain, made Bill pass. out before lawmen could ask him any questions. As lawmen flooded Fairfax, they realized they needed

to take extra precautions with Bill. He was the sole survivor of a blast that everyone viewed as a deliberate act of murder. It had to have been a bomb. Most of the lawmen from the Osage area were down in Oklahoma City when the bomb went off. Oklahoma City is about 80 miles from Fairfax as the crow flies. But with the roads and automobiles of the time, it would have taken quite a while for the lawmen to get back. Even if they took the train from Oklahoma City to Osage County, it would keep them out of the county for those crucial first hours after the crime. They did not believe the timing was a coincidence. At the hospital, the authorities erected floodlights around the outside of the building to dissuade anyone from trying to sneak in and finish the job

of killing Bill Smith. Armed guards stood watch, and doctors and friends anxiously waited for Bill to regain his senses. In the first two days after the bombing, he roamed between conscious and unconscious. In his delirium, he veered between rambling nonsensically and knowing his wife was dead. On the third day after the bombing,

Bill regained consciousness, and some suspicious characters began to show themselves. Local doctors James and David Shone met with Bill. They, like everyone, were anxious and hopeful that he would revoke. reveal critical details of the bombing. By some miracle did he know who did it? If not, did he see anything suspicious that night? Did he hear anything suspicious? Sadly, Bill didn't have any direct knowledge that could help. But the Shone brothers weren't there to help the investigation.

If they did learn something that was important, that would be great. But they didn't bring with them a sheriff or a marshal or a prosecutor or the justice of the peace. They brought Bill's lawyer with them. They eventually convinced Bill, who was severely injured and taking strong painkillers, to sign some papers that made James Shone the executor of Rita's estate. Bill's wife Rita was already wealthy, and she grew more wealthy after her sister Anna and her mother Lizzie died. Rita and her sister Molly Burkart inherited the fortunes of their deceased relatives. Bill was in really bad shape, and if he didn't survive, the Shone brothers wanted him to give James full control of Rita's money. Bill gave in and signed the papers right before he died. On March 14th,

four days after the bombing, Bill Smith succumbed to his injuries. He had briefly been a suspect in Anna Brown's murder, and he clearly had his faults. But it seemed now that he was a target like everyone else. Thus far, if there was a mastermind with a master plan, it seemed to be working. Everyone who had been targeted had died. But this was the first major twist in the story of the Osage murders. Obviously, whoever planned the bombing and whoever carried out the bombing, wanted and expected Bill Smith to die in the blast.

If he had, if Bill and Rita had died at the same time, then Rita's money would have passed to her sister Molly. But because Bill somehow survived and lingered for four days, he inherited Rita's money. If someone's master plan was to make sure Molly Burkart inherited her sister's money, then there was now a problem. That hadn't happened. So what would the mastermind do next? Would he or she send trusted doctors to Bill's bedside to convince him to sign some papers? How suspicious were the doctors? Were James and David shown the architects behind all of the violence in Osage County? Given everything that seemed unlikely.

But could they be working on behalf of an archvillain? The quality of their work, especially in the Anna Brown case, was questionable. Or were they just greedy? Did they recognize an opportunity to get their hands on Rita's money, and they simply got there first, before the matter. mastermind could figure out a plan B after Bill survived the bomb. Those were open questions in 1923, but they would eventually help lead investigators to answers. And one of the things that bolstered the investigations in the future was this.

Before Bill Smith died, he reportedly said one more thing. He said he only had two enemies in the world, William Hale, the most influential man in Osage County, and Ernest Burkhart, Hale's nephew and Molly's husband. Ten days after Bill Smith died, the Osage resumed a campaign to push and maybe beg the federal government for help. The Osage rightly believed that they needed investigators from outside Osage County. Undercover operatives from the Burns Detective Agency had tried things that local lawmen hadn't thought of. Ultimately, those things didn't solve any of the cases, but they were steps in the right direction.

direction. Now, a lawyer who was half Native American and worked with the Osage sent a letter to a sympathetic U.S. Senator from Kansas. The lawyer strongly urged the Senator to get the federal government's Department of Justice involved. The lawyer said the situation in Osage County was more dire than anyone realized. The man who responded on behalf of the government was William Burns, the founder and namesake of the Burns Detective Agency. At the same time that he was running his private detective firm, he was running the Bureau of Investigation for the federal government, and his leadership produced less than stellar results.

The Bureau of Investigation was created by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1908. He took a group of agents from the Secret Service and spun them off into the country's first national police force. It took years for the new agency to find its identity within the government and the landscape of law enforcement. And it took years for the Bureau to navigate the congressional and legal hurdles to gain the resources it needed.

In the early 1920s, the Bureau was still very new and still finding its footing. It was a mix of young, scholarly investigators and old-time frontier lawmen. And in those days, agents could not make arrests or carry guns. They could conduct investigations, but when it came time to make arrests, they could only assist. They had to find a local lawman to actually slap on the handcuffs.

William Burns had been running his successful private detective agency since 1909, and in August of 1921, the U.S. Attorney General asked Burns to lead the Bureau of Investigation. In the space of two years, from 1921 when Burns took over to 1923 when the Osage begged, for help, Burns cut the workforce nearly in half. In March of 1923, Burns sent agents to Osage County in response to the request for help. They conducted some sort of half-ass investigation, for lack of a more delicate phrase, and they reported back to their boss that the Osage murder cases were hopeless. It was certainly the quick and easy conclusion to reach. There was so little hard evidence and no witnesses to the crimes other than the court.

and the killers themselves, that the investigation may have seemed like a useless endeavor. In a year and a half, an old-school frontier lawman would prove them all wrong, but for the moment, the investigation stalled yet again. Then in April 1923, at about the same time that the Bureau's investigation was fading out, the governor of Oklahoma sent a special investigator to Osage County. Within days, the hand-picked investigator was seen interacting with known criminals in the area. Within two months, another investigator caught the first one accepting a bribe from a man who ran an illegal gambling operation. The governor's special investigator ended up pleading guilty to bribery and spending two years in prison.

And by the end of 1923, the governor himself was in trouble for accepting bribes. The governor was impeached in November 1923 for receiving bribes and abusing his pardon power. The streak of bad luck for the Osage seemed endless. It seemed like everyone they turned to was corrupt. And by that time, the second half of 1923, there were already an estimated 24 murders or suspicious deaths related to the Osage tribe. Anyone with eyes could see that there was a deadly criminal conspiracy at work in Osage. County. But the Osage couldn't find a single honest lawman or civic leader who genuinely could help. And there's really no other way to put it other than to keep using the same phrase. It was about

to get worse. Though not just for the Osage. Members of the tribe kept dying. That was almost a given at this point. Molly Burckhart's whole family was dead and she was about to reach her lowest point. But members of the criminal underworld in Osage County started dying as well. It seemed like someone was trying to cover his or her tracks and silencing accomplices. By June of 1923, Molly Burkart had buried her last family member. All three of her sisters were now dead. Two were obviously murdered, Anna and Rita, and her youngest sister, Minnie, had died five years earlier of a mysterious illness.

That same illness had claimed Molly's mother, and it was increasingly easy to look back and think that both women had been killed by poison. It was still hard to know how they had ingested it, but poison now seemed the more likely cause than a strange, indefinable sickness that baffled doctors. With all of her immediate family members dead, Molly retreated into herself and into her home. She isolated herself from the outside world. She stopped associating with friends and neighbors. she stopped going to church. She and other members of the Osage

had adopted the Christian religion, but Molly increasingly cut herself off from outside influences of all kinds, and it was hard to blame her. She had inherited much of the money from her dead relatives, which made her the next obvious target for elimination. She stayed home and raised her three kids

with her husband, Ernest. It was the darkest time in Molly's life, but the extreme tactic kept her safe as the body count spiked in June of 1923. Henry Grammer was probably the top criminal who was headquartered in Osage County. Other outlaws like the Al Spencer gang, Blackie Thompson, and Curley Johnson, roamed the Osage Hills, but they came and went. They committed their crimes, and then they moved on. But Henry Gramer had lived in Osage County for more than 20 years,

and that it helped him build a small criminal empire. As the county's number one bootlegger, he was connected to lots of people, which included three murder victims, Anna Brown, Henry Rohn, and Bill Smith, and two more by extension, Bill's wife Rita and their servant Nettie. On June 14, 1923,

Henry Grammer suffered a fatal car crash. He had been out driving when some part of the steering mechanism malfunctioned, and the brakes failed. Grammer crashed the car and died in the wreck. It was commonly accepted that someone tampered with Grammer's car, which made his death murder. But like all the other murders, there were virtually no clues and no leads or witnesses.

And without any of those, it was impossible, at least at the time, to link his death with the Osage murders. He was a notorious criminal who undoubtedly had a long list of enemies. so the likelihood of finding his killer was very small. But two weeks after Henry Grammer died, the stench of conspiracy began to waft in the direction of his death. Grammer had two henchmen whom he kept close, Asa Kirby and John Ramsey.

On the night of June 29th, the same day George Bigheart died in an Oklahoma City hospital and his friend, W.W. Vaughn was killed. Asa Kirby and some other outlaws tried to break into a jewelry store in Osage County. The store owner was waiting for them, and he unloaded with a single-shot 12-gauge shotgun. Kirby took the full force of the blast and died at the scene,

and the other outlaws fled. The store owner was lying in wait because he had been warned about the robbery. William Hale, the powerful, influential and well-connected rancher, had somehow heard about the robbery in advance. He told the store owner about the raid, and the man chose to handle it himself rather than notify the police. From one point of view, it appeared as though Hale was maintaining his status as a believer in law and order. He had heard the store was going to be robbed, so he warned the store owner. It seemed natural and logical.

But Hale was also a reserve deputy sheriff, and he knew every lawman in the county. If he thought a robbery was going to happen, why didn't he warn the store? sheriff as well as the store owner. Agents from the Bureau of Investigation would ask similar questions in the near future, and they would be very curious about the robbery and death of Asa Kirby, and their curiosity would extend to the suspicious death of Henry Grammer. They would begin to hear about a connection between Henry Grammer and William Hale, and the agents would learn about Hale's connection to other associates of Henry Grammer,

and other murder victims like Anna Brown and Henry Rohn. When a new crop of lawmen came to town, things finally started to change in Osage County. But, seemingly as always, it was going to have to get worse before it got better. Next time on Infamous America, Osage County must suffer more murders and a disastrous false start by the Bureau of Investigation. But its new director, Jay Edgar Hoover, finally gets it right. He assigns an old-time lawman to the case, and that man finally starts producing the case. results. The truth finally starts to reveal itself next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes.

They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm host and producer Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram

and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.