Infamous America - OSAGE MURDERS Ep. 6 | “Is This Justice?”

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

The courtroom trials were dramatic. They were surprising reversals and bold acts of jury tampering. But finally, after years of heartbreak, the Osage received some justice. Four men who were involved in many of the killings went to prison. The Bureau of Investigation closed the collective case of the Osage Murders, but that didn’t mean all the crimes were solved. To this day, one hundred years later, mystery still surrounds many of the victims of the Reign of Terror. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show today! jordanharbinger.com/start Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured 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

Back in 1921, the bodies of Charles Whitehorn and Anna Brown were discovered on the same day. That was the start of five years of conspiracy and murder that would be called the reign of terror. On the day the bodies were discovered, people flocked to the scene of Anna's murder. Her body was found in a ravine by a father and son who were out hunting. They rushed into the town of Fairfax and spread the word of their discovery. Anna's family and friends hurried to the location to see if the body, which was unidentified at that point, was Anna. She had been missing for a week, and everyone feared the worst. Family, friends, doctors, and lawmen gathered at the scene, and they confirmed the identity of Anna Brown.

But the shocking news also drew people who were considered at the time to be morbid curiosity seekers. They rushed out to the ravine for the entertainment value. On that day, May 28, 1921, it appeared as though no one in the crowd knew what had happened or who killed Anna. The lawmen took statements from the relevant people, and those people all claimed they didn't know what happened. But at least three of them were lying, and the killers were right there in the crowd. Now, five years later, in January of 1926, the truth started to come out. Special Agent Tom White of the Bureau of Investigation spent the last six months of 1925 thoroughly investigating three prominent murder cases in the Osage Nation. Then he arrested two well-known men, William Hale and his nephew Ernest Burkart.

Hale, a wealthy rancher and one of the most influential men in Osage County, was suspected of being the criminal mastermind behind numerous murders and suspicious deaths. Ernest was suspected of being an accomplice. He eventually gave a full confession to Special Agent White that proved he had a lot of knowledge, but White didn't yet know if Ernest had actively participated in any of the crimes. Ernest confirmed that his uncle, William Hale, had hired various criminals to kill members of the Osage tribe so that he, Hale, could make money off their deaths.

When Ernest started talking about the murder of Anna Brown, he revealed the identity of the man who shot her in the back of the head. The killer was a small-time crook named Kelsey Morrison. Morrison was one of the people who rushed out to the ravine when news spread of the discovery of a body. At the time, he looked like one of those morbid curiosity seekers. He just wanted to be part of the excitement. But now Tom White believed he knew the truth.

Morrison was the murderer. That ignited some panic in White's team because they had been using Morrison as an undercover informant for months, with no idea that he was actually one of the people they were looking for. After Ernest confessed, White knew his team would have to move fast. They would need to find Morrison and arrest him before he ran. But there was one thing Ernest refused to talk about. Special Agent White was confident that Ernest's brother Brian had participated in the murder of Anna Brown.

But Ernest stayed silent on that point. By talking about everyone except his brother, Ernest basically confirmed the theory that Brian helped with Anna's murder. Ernest, Brian, and Kelsey Morrison were all at the ravine when Anna's identity was confirmed, and they pretended to know nothing. When it was all said and done, the Osage would look back with horror on the thought

that the people who were responsible for many of the murders in the Osage Nation were their friends, family members, and trusted allies. The murders weren't the work of some marauding gang of outlaws. They were the work of calculating methodical insiders. But in 1926, for the first time in a long time, the Osage had hoped that it might finally end. 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 six. Is this Justice? In an interview room in the federal building in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Ernest Burkhart revealed the truth that had eluded investigators for nearly five years. His uncle, William Hale, had organized the murder of Anna Brown in 1921, and Henry Rhone and Bill and Rita Smith in 1923.

Anna and Henry had been shot in the back of the head, and Bill and Rita had been killed by a bomb. And the accusations didn't stop there. Special Agent Tom White learned that Hale had benefited from the deaths of two more Oathage men. George Big Hart died of poison in the summer of 1923. Hale claimed Big Hart owed him $6,000. When Big Hart died, Hale wanted the dead man's estate to repay the debt. When Joe Bates died, probably from poison,

Hale magically produced a deed that he said gave him all of Joe's land. According to Hale, Joe Bates decided to leave his land to Hale instead of his wife and children. Then, to cover his tracks, Hale probably organized the deaths of some of the criminals he had used to carry out the murders. Henry Grammer, Asa Kirby, and Curley Johnson all died under suspicious circumstances. Special Agent White confronted William Hale with all the evidence and information, and Hale didn't flinch. He was confident that his money and influence would get him out of trouble, and for a while it looked like he would be right.

Tom White and his team quickly captured John Ramsey and Kelsey Morrison. According to Ernest Burckhart's confession, Ramsey murdered Henry Rohn and Morrison murdered Anna Brown. White believed Ernest's brother Brian had helped with Anna's murder, so Brian was arrested as well. With all five suspects in custody, Hale, Ramsey, Morrison, and the Burkhart brothers, Tom White and the prosecutors took them to court. By today's standards, the trial process happened exceptionally fast.

William Hale and John Ramsey were charged in federal court with the murder of Henry Rohn. Hale was accused of being the mastermind, and Ramsey was accused of being the trigger man. Prosecutors hadn't charged earnest with anything yet. He had provided a valuable confession, and they wanted to see how much more he would cooperate during the trial process. They received their answer a little over a month later, and it was devastating. In March of 1926, Ernest walked into a packed courtroom to give his first public testimony. He was about to testify against Hale and Ramsey in a preliminary hearing, but before he could say a word, one of Hale's lawyers shouted that he wanted to talk to Ernest,

privately. The judge allowed it. The two men left the room, and the crowd waited in suspense for 20 minutes. The judge ordered the bailiff to go get him, but he returned with Hale's lawyer. The lawyer asked to postpone the hearing until the next morning so he could continue to talk to Ernest. The judge granted the request. The next morning, Ernest took the stand and shocked Agent White and the prosecutors. Ernest testified in defense of Hale and Ramsey. He completely recanted his confession. Prosecutors were furious, and they immediately charged Ernest as an accessory in the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith.

They thought they could win back the momentum by gaining a conviction against Ernest first, so they shuffled the trial schedule. Ernest Burkhart went on trial six weeks later, in May of 1926. His wife Molly was in the crowded courtroom, as she had been during the dramatic preliminary hearing. She still refused to believe that he played a part in the murders. Rita Smith and Anna Brown were her sisters, and it was simply beyond comprehension that her husband could be involved in their brutal murders. And on top of that, Molly's youngest sister Minnie and her mother Lizzie had both died of something called wasting sickness. It was a mysterious illness that doctors said they couldn't treat.

Now, many people suspected it was caused by poison. And Molly herself may have been a victim until very recently. She had suffered from diabetes for years. For months, she had been receiving injections of what she was told was insulin, a new drug to treat diabetes. But instead of improving, her condition worsened. She had been receiving those injections from the two local doctors, doctors who had suspicions swirling around them.

But then over the last couple months, federal agents put pressure on everyone in Osage County. They arrested Hale and Molly's husband Ernest. And gradually, when Molly was no longer around the suspicious doctors or other conspirators, her health improved. Now, as she was finally feeling better, she was forced to sit in the courtroom and slowly come to terms with the fact that her husband was involved with the men. who had decimated her family. Courtroom spectators were in for a treat.

Ernest Burckhart's trial was even more dramatic than his abrupt reversal during the preliminary hearing. When the trial began, it looked bad for the federal agents and the prosecutors. First, the corruption that pervaded Osage County reared its ugly head. William Hale tried to bribe the entire jury. They were dismissed, and a new jury was selected.

Then Ernest's lawyers, who were from William Hale's team, put Hale on the stand. Hale, who was still a respected member of the community and loved by many, testified under oath that he had been tortured by Special Agent Tom White. He said the agents electrocuted him to try to get him to confess. Ernest Burkhart and John Ramsey supported Hale's testimony and said they too had been tortured. The testimony was spellbinding for the, audience and damning for White and the prosecutors, it was all lies, of course, but the prosecutors couldn't prove it. There was obviously no film footage or video footage or audio footage of the

interrogations. The prosecutors just had to move past it quickly. So in the first week of June, they put their star witness on the stand, Kelsey Morrison. Morrison told the chilling and heartbreaking story of murdering Anna Brown. He said that he and he and his his wife and Ernest's brother Brian drove Anna out to the ravine on the night of May 21st, 1921. They took two cars, a fact that was supported by the two sets of tire tracks at the scene. Morrison's wife waited in their car while Morrison and Brian walked Anna down to the ravine. Anna was so drunk that she could barely stand up, so Brian had to hold her. Morrison shot her in the back of the head, and they left her body near the edge of

a creek. When Morrison finished, his wife took the stand. She corroborated the story. But since she had stayed in the car, she didn't witness the murder, though she did say that Anna left the vehicles and never came back. Technically, Ernest was on trial for accessory to murder in the case of the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith. But the prosecution was building a case to show that Ernest had a wealth of knowledge that applied to multiple murders. Ernest's wife Molly had been improving physically, but mentally and emotionally, this was really tough stuff to hear. And then tragedy struck her family again. On June 3rd, right in the middle of the trial, her youngest child died of some sort of sickness. Molly had named her four-year-old

daughter Anna after her sister. Now Molly had lost both parents, all three sisters, and one of her three children, and her husband was on trial for helping destroy her family. At that point, it seemed like at least some of the darkness and the severity of the situation finally caught up to Ernest Burkhart. Four days after his daughter died, the next dramatic moment happened, and this one topped them all. As Ernest was being led out of the courtroom, he slipped a note to the deputy sheriff who was guarding him.

The note was for the prosecutor, and it instructed the prosecutor, to visit Ernest at the jail that night. Ernest had something he wanted to say. Two days later, Ernest walked into the courtroom and instead of going to his normal seat, he walked up to the bench and whispered to the judge. He told the judge that he had hired a new lawyer and he wanted to change his plea from not guilty to guilty.

He simply couldn't keep lying anymore. Ernest admitted that he acted as a messenger during the planning stages of the bombing of Bill and Rita's house. His reversal was momentous, and it made the front page of the New York Times. Twelve days later, Ernest Burkhart received a life sentence for helping murder his wife's sister, her husband, and their 19-year-old servant. It was the first bit of justice for the Osage, but it was small when compared with what was coming next.

Five weeks after Ernest received his sentence, the trial of William Hale and John Ramsey began. Hale had vowed to fight to the bitter end, so his trial didn't feature a surprising reversal, but it was just as dramatic, and it pushed Special Agent Tom White to his lowest point. William Hale was the suspected mastermind behind multiple murders, but the prosecution needed to focus on the case that had the best chance of success.

That was the murder of Henry Rhone. Three and a half years earlier, Henry had spent a period of time drinking heavily. He learned that his wife was having an affair with a white man. In late January, Henry left home with a reported purpose of driving out to the ranch of the biggest bootleger in the area to buy some whiskey. A week later, Henry's body was found in his car on a muddy road outside the town of Fairfax. He had been shot in the back of the head. William Hale was charged with aiding and abetting the murder, organizing it, and John Ramsey was charged with the actual killing.

Now that Ernest Burkhart had switched sides, he provided the bulk of the testimony against both men. Ernest told a story that confirmed several suspicions. He said Hale discussed the murder with the biggest bootleggar in the county, Henry Grammer. Henry Rhone said he was on his way out to Grammer's ranch to buy whiskey on the day he disappeared. Ernest said the first plan was to sell Henry Rhone poisoned whiskey. That likely caused the Osage in the courtroom to grumble and nod their heads. They had long suspected that someone was feeding poison whiskey to members of the tribe. And that would be an easy

way to kill Henry Rohn. Henry was a heavy drinker, grammar was the largest supplier of illegal whiskey in the area, but eventually Hale and Grammer decided on a different plan. Hale wanted to make Henry Rohn's death look like suicide. Grammer chose one of his associates, John Ramsey, to carry out the task. But Ramsey screwed it up. He was supposed to shoot Henry in the front of the head and then leave the gun near Henry's body to make it look like suicide. Instead, he shot Henry in the back of the head and took the gun with him,

which clearly proved the act was murder. After about a month of testimony, the case went to the case. the jury. And that was when the prosecution's anxiety went through the roof. The jury deliberated for five long days, which appeared to show obvious doubt about the guilt of Hale or Ramsey or both. On August 25, 1926, the jury returned and announced they were deadlocked. They couldn't reach a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. Special Agent Tom White couldn't believe it. By this point, he had worked on the case for a solid year. He and his team accomplished more than all the other investigators combined.

This was probably their only shot at convicting the man whom they believed was the architect of much of the violence in Osage County. Osage men and women were outraged. Even here, in federal court, they couldn't trust anyone. White and the prosecutors launched an investigation. William Hale had already been accused of bribing one jury, so surely he could do it again. The investigation uncovered a trail of corruption.

Hale and his lawyers bribed jurors and witnesses, and in at least one case, threatened murder. The prosecutors were livid but undaunted. They went through the steps to secure a second trial, and that one lasted just eight days. It began on October 20, 1926, and ended on October 28th. The next day, October 29th, the jury reached a verdict. They found Hale and Ramsey guilty of first-degree murder.

It was a big victory for the Osage, the federal agents, and the prosecutors. But it was blunted somewhat by the jury's next statement. In Oklahoma, a conviction for first-degree murder was supposed to come with a death penalty, but the jury wouldn't do it. They would only agree to a sentence of life in prison. The Osage would have to settle for it, but at least William Hale and John Ramsey were going to prison for a long time. They would be joined by Ernest Burkart, and possibly his brother Brian and Kelsey Morrison as well. Brian and Kelsey's trial for the murder of Anna Brown was yet to come.

One year after William Hale, Ernest Burkart and John Ramsey were convicted, Brian Burkart and Kelsey Morrison went on trial for the murder of Anna Brown. It's possible that Brian Burkart had been through his own trial previously and it ended in a mistrial, which signaled more corruption in the system, but the stories are confusing so it's hard to tell. Either way, in the summer and fall of 1927, Burkhart and Morrison were on trial for murder. During the trial, Brian Burkhart flipped from a defendant to a witness. The prosecutors gave him immunity to testify against Morrison. Morrison tried to renounce his confession and now claimed he was innocent, but no one believed him.

Burkhart laid out the details of Anna's murder, and that sealed Morrison's fate. He was convicted and received a life sentence. Brian Burkhart, because of his cooperation with the prosecutors, was the only man of the five who didn't see the inside of a prison cell. But as it turned out, the other four wouldn't spend nearly as much time in prison as everyone, thought. By the time Brian Burkart and Kelsey Morrison went through their trial in 1927, most of the other major players had moved on. The three convicted felons were in prison, and coincidentally, the man who put them there was supervising two of them. In November 1926, just a few days after they were

found guilty, William Hale and John Ramsey walked into Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. The new warden greeted them at the door, and if they didn't know his history, he was probably the last person they expected to see. Special Agent Tom White of the Bureau of Investigation was now the warden of Leavenworth Prison. White might have seemed like an unusual choice for warden, except for the fact that he had cleaned up the notorious federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, right before he began the Osage case. Now he had the same task ahead of him. Leavenworth was one of the oldest prisons in America. and one of the worst. The federal government was hoping Tom White could work the same magic at Leavenworth that he had worked in Atlanta. And while Hale and Ramsey settled into federal prison

in Kansas, Ernest Burkhart settled into state prison in Oklahoma. After he pled guilty and testified against Hale and Ramsey, Ernest went to McAllister State Prison, which presented another coincidence. That was the same prison where Burt Lawson was serving time. It was Lawson's false confession that triggered the chain of events that led to the only trials and convictions in the cases of the Osage murders. Now, Bert and Ernest shared the same prison yard. When Kelsey Morrison was convicted of killing Anna Brown, he was sent to prison in Atlanta to keep him away from William Hale.

Hale was once called the King of the Osage Hills, and now he's called the devil. He used Brian Burkhart and Kelsey Morrison to kill Anna Brown. He used Henry Grammer and John Ramsey to kill Henry Rohn. He used Grammer and Asa Kirby to bomb Bill and Rita Smith, but only after he tried to hire at least two other groups of outlaws to do the job. Then Grammer and Kirby died, and it's easy to wonder if Hale was responsible and covering his tracks. Hale was suspected of poisoning Curly Johnson,

one of the outlaws he tried to hire to kill Bill and Rita. Hale was suspected of killing a possible. witness in the Henry Rohn case. He might have been bribing or coercing the local doctors, the Shone brothers, to do sloppy work during their investigations of the murder victims. The brothers always denied any wrongdoing, but they weaseled their way into Rita's money after the bombing, and they were directly connected to multiple people who suffered from the mysterious wasting sickness. The Osage began to believe that the strange, seemingly untreatable illness was caused by poison. The brothers had been treating Molly Burkart for diabetes, using injections that they

said were insulin, but Molly kept getting worse. As soon as they stopped treating her, she started getting better. Technically, it's all speculation, but it can't be ignored. And neither could a couple more things that the Osage viewed as injustices. The four men who were convicted all received life sentences in prison. But it turned out, a life sentence wasn't really a life sentence. Kelsey Morrison was paroled in 1931, just four years into his life sentence. He returned to Fairfax in Osage County, and six years later, he was shot and killed by a police officer during an altercation. That same year, 1937, Ernest Burkhart was paroled. He served just 10 years of his life sentence. When he was released, he returned to Osage County, but then he got arrested for robbery and went back to prison.

While he was serving his second sentence, William Hale became a free man. Hale was paroled in 1947 after serving 20 years of his life sentence. He was released largely because of his advanced age. He was 72 years old, and when he was released, he was forbidden to return to the state of Oklahoma. He moved to the Southwest and lived for another 15 years. He died in an Arizona nursing home in 1962 at the age of 88. Hale's co-defendant, John Ramsey, the man who murdered Henry Rhone in 1923, walked out of Leavenworth three months after Hale.

He was paroled in 1947 after serving 20 years of his life sentence. He then moved to Idaho to live with his son. and throughout these years there finished the stories of Ernest and Molly Burkhart. Ernest was released from prison the second time in 1959. Like Hale, he was forbidden from living in Oklahoma. He moved to New Mexico and was living there when Hale died in 1962. Four years later, in 1966,

Ernest wanted to move home to Osage County. He applied for a pardon from the state of Oklahoma. A review board of four of four years, five people looked at his case and decided to recommend the pardon by a vote of three to two. There was uproar from the Osage Nation, which is not surprising. The governor of Oklahoma granted the pardon, and Ernest Burkhart was free from the justice system. He moved back to Osage County and lived with his brother, Brian. Brian, amazingly, had married a full-blood Osage woman and stayed in Osage County.

Ernest lived for another 20 years until he passed away in 1986 at the age of 93. From one point of view, it was probably merciful that Molly Burkart didn't live to see any of those events. It probably would have added to the heartbreak, especially after Molly rebounded

after nearly a decade of heartbreak. Between 1918 and 1926, she lost three sisters, her mother, and one of her children. Her husband was sent to prison for helping murder one of her sisters, and his brother helped murder another. But in 1928, two years after Ernest went to prison, Molly seemed to find true love. She divorced Ernest and married a man named John Cobb. John was part white, part creek, and they were together for nine years.

During that time, the Osage succeeded in toppling two factors that fueled the reign of terror. The U.S. government began to remove the guardian system that prevented members of the tribe from controlling their own money. And back in 1925, while Tom White was beginning his investigation, the Osage convinced the government to pass a law that said the only people who could inherit the mineral rights from the Osage were people who were at least half Osage. From 1925 forward, a white man like Ernest Burkhart could no longer marry a full-blood sagewoman like Molly and then inherit her money when she died. In 1931, the U.S. government finally declared Molly Burkart a competent human being.

She was 44 years old, and for the first time in her life, she had full control of her money. Sadly, she only lived another six years. She passed away in 1937 at the age of 50. Exactly 80 years later, her story became the centerpiece of a best-selling book called Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gran. That book and The Osage Indian Murders by Lawrence Hogan were the primary sources for the production of this series. In 2023, the movie Killers of the Flower Moon adapted from the book will be released by Apple. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio Robert DeCaptio, Robert DeMarie, Nero, Jesse Plemons, and many others in its all-star cast.

The story of the Osage and the murders that totaled at least 24 is inextricably tied to oil. Oil made the Osage some of the richest people on earth, when society became reliant on oil to fuel, automobiles, airplanes, boats, ships, trains, and tanks, not to mention the machines in the factories that produced all those things and more. and then in 1929, when the American stock market crashed, that wealth evaporated almost as fast as it appeared. But that was long after a select group of men made millions in Osage County. John Paul Getty, who was once the richest man in the world,

started making his fortune in the Osage Hills. So did Harry Sinclair and Frank Phillips. In America, the next time you pull into a Phillips 66 gas station, you'll know that the company, like many others, began in the Osage Hills. After securing four convictions, J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation considered all the cases closed. Hoover accepted all the credit and glory for the victories, and he used it to boost the profile of the Bureau. But in a more real sense, the rest of the cases of the Osage murders were never closed. They were never solved,

and they remained mysteries to this death. Thanks for listening to the story of the Osage murders here on Infamous America. In our next season, we'll spin the clock forward 50 years to the 1970s and tell the wild and often comical story of two young men who were maybe the worst spies in history. A tale of international espionage begins in a couple weeks here 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 your writer, 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.