RedHanded - Episode 246 - The Osage Reign of Terror

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Cowboys, private eyes, poisonings, bomb plots, shootings, and the birth of the FBI. This is the story of how in the 1920s, one Native American tribe became the richest human beings per capita in the world and the diabolical conspiracy that led to hundreds of their people being murdered in cold blood. Classic merch is out now: redhandedshop.com Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact Sources: Sources: Book: Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=MI036 https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1404375 https://osagenation.s3.amazonaws.com/G/G.1.a.ReignTerrorFactSheet.pd https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/the-forgotten-murders-of-the-osage-people-for-the-oil-beneath-their-land https://www.shortform.com/blog/martha-vaughan-osage/ https://www.litcharts.com/lit/killers-of-the-flower-moon/chapter-1-the-vanishing https://www.bookcompanion.com/killers_of_the_flower_moon_character_list2.html https://edmondlifeandleisure.com/a-look-at-the-osage-indian-murders-p11200-76.htm https://eu.examiner-enterprise.com/story/news/2014/11/27/part-5-to-destroy-with/27370985007/ https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/inside-the-story-of-the-systematic-murder-of-osage-indians-in-the-20s-2 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/osage-murders-photos-killers-of-flower-moon https://www.osagenation-nsn.gov/news-events/news/did-you-know-osage-murders https://www.famous-trials.com/osage-home/2378-the-osage-reign-of-terror-murder-trials-an-account https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvs3V-spwLA https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/killers-of-the-flower-moon-inside-david-granns-new-true-crime-epic-122690/ https://www.famous-trials.com/osage-home/2376-the-osage-reign-of-terror-murder-trials-a-chronology https://www.famous-trials.com/osage-home/2381-osage-reign-of-terror-murder-trials-images https://www.famous-trials.com/osage-home/2379-maps-of-osage-county-murder-locations https://www.famous-trials.com/osage-home/2378-the-osage-reign-of-terror-murder-trials-an-account https://www.legendsofamerica.com/osage-indians/ https://eu.examiner-enterprise.com/story/lifestyle/2021/12/15/chief-bigheart-leaves-legacy/6506942001/ https://osagenation.s3.amazonaws.com/B/B.5.a.Lands&Minerals1872-TodayFactSheet.pdf https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS006 https://www.litcharts.com/lit/killers-of-the-flower-moon/characters https://www.shortform.com/blog/guardianship-laws-osage/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, where this week I'm actually going to break the number one rule of podcasting. And we take these fucking headphones off. We've got this like clicking going on and I think it's going to send me into a conniption if I keep them on. So don't do this, podcasters. Don't try this at home. But this is the sound of me taking them off. Oh no. I can also hear it and it's really irritating. I'm just going to keep an eye on my waveform. Yeah.

Okay, welcome to Red Handed. There's merch. There'll be merch. Here'll be merch. So get yourself over to redhandedshop.com where you can get all of those merches. Spooky bitch. Not in this economy. No fuck boys.

All there. Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick. Just in time for your summer swooning. Get yourself a giant hoodie for the summer. Yeah, great. Why not? And a no fuckboys hat for the...

Fuck the sun. Fuck the sun, exactly. Oh, yeah. We've got a live show coming up, but it's sold out, so don't worry. But we'll be, for the first time ever, releasing the footage. The footage? The recording. Just audio. Yeah, just audio of that from, releasing the footage. The footage? The recording. Just audio.

Yeah, just audio of that from Islington Assembly Hall. So that's quite exciting. And we've had some feedback that sometimes when podcasts do live shows, that incorporates some sort of visual element. It's quite irritating for the listeners at home who don't know what that visual element is. We have listened and we're going to be putting our visual elements on our website so you'll be able to watch and listen along at home under your own steam.

So that's that. And this is this. This is one of the most surprising stories, I think. It's just a classic Western, which is not something we've ever even come close to doing. So I'm pretty pumped for this one. It reads like the plot of a Western noir. Yes, exactly.

It's like there will be blood. No country for old men. Yeah, crossed with... Murder on the Midnight Express. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. So strap in. In May 1921, a teenage boy was out squirrel hunting with his dad and his friend near Three Mile Creek in the town of Fairfax.

The boy ran ahead of the other two, shot a squirrel and chased it down a woody slope. But it wasn't just the body of a squirrel that he found down there. The two men heard the boy scream and ran to see what had happened. There they found the bloated and decomposing body of a Native American woman lying on her back. Her skin was black and her body was swollen, close to bursting. The body was brought back into the town to the undertaker, who wondered if this was Anna Brown, a wealthy member of the Osage tribe who hadn't been seen for a week. But with most of her face missing, he struggled to tell. So he called one of Anna's sisters, Molly Burkhart, to help to identify the body.

Molly instantly recognised the clothes because she'd washed them for Anna just before she disappeared. Molly broke down in tears. She had just lost her other sister, Minnie, a few years before. Minnie had only been 27, and by all accounts in excellent health, until she suddenly contracted what the family doctors, the Schoon brothers, called a, quote, peculiar wasting disease, which is very 1918s of her yeah i think that's what they used to call syphilis isn't it oh really the wasting disease yeah or maybe tb yeah i think it's one of them

consumption i think yeah there's definitely one that was like specifically called the wasting disease yeah i think it was probably just some sort of TB strain. I think syphilis was like the madness. They've gone mad. And their nose has fallen off from all that shagging. Oh, yeah, fact I learned the other day, speaking of mysterious diseases. I desperately tried to read this book called The Silk Roads when we were on holiday, but I couldn't, I failed. But one tidbit that I did pluck out of that book is that the first round of bubonic plague happened before Islam was established as a religion. Wow.

Isn't that topsy-turvy town? That's crazy. I know, you told me by the pool, and I was so shocked. But coming back to the 1920s and people dying of peculiar wasting diseases, Molly was bereft. She'd lost Minnie, and now she'd lost Anna. Molly only had one sister left. Molly had thought that Anna had been dancing and drinking in the surrounding

boom towns. Like we said, she'd been missing for a week. Anna was, after all, a bit of a party animal and she'd just divorced her husband. So I guess everyone's just thinking she's on some renegade one-woman divorce party. And boomtowns full of single men. Well, there you go. You know, I saw something really depressing the other day, and I'm going to show you. I hope I still have the screenshot because it really is needed to do it justice,

but I don't know if it made me so depressed I deleted the screenshot. So while we were away in Bali, you remember I told you that somebody back here had gone to Ibiza and was at some like fucking 24 hour rave. And so I just went on the Instagram of that party club promoter. I don't even know. And they were advertising this. Please, please tell the people, Hannah. Yes, yes I will I will give you a dramatic reconstruction of what I'm looking at I'm looking at a blue ticked Ibiza account and it's a lady coming out of the water and there's writing and the writing says no ring comma no tan line full

stop winky face emoticon like we're in the fucking 90s and then it says discover the divorce package this summer so they do i beat the divorce packages called no ring no tan line which is maybe kind of hilarious because there's probably a market there but also quite depressing which is why it's in my deleted yeah i'm depressed fucking hell oh actually so I asked her yesterday to do some hinging for me and then we got really distracted and then forgot so yesterday well last night I went rogue on my own so one of his things is like oh what's your biggest fear and he was like deep waters so I messaged him and said I don't want to set off your fear, but do you know about the Loneliest Whale? No response.

I mean, I think it's like 10 messages per 10. I can't even get the matches, mate. Yeah, mate. That's my last match in a week. It's grim. It's grim. It'd be grim. It'd be grim.

Maybe just go to No Ring No Townline. Fucking maybe. Maybe it's my only option. I've been saying for years I was going to have to wait for the first round of divorces. Maybe this is my time. Maybe we go to take you to the boom towns. Yeah. The boondocks.

Anyway, coming back to what's going on in our story. Yeah. Everybody just thought that Anna was a bit of a party animal. She's out. She's letting off some steam and she'll be back. Obviously not because now she's dead. But nobody ever saw this coming, especially Molly. And she had no idea that the death of her sister was just the beginning of a series of mysterious deaths and one of the most diabolical conspiracies in American history that's since been dubbed the Osage Reign of Terror.

Like their parents before them, Molly and her sisters had their names on the Osage roll, which meant they were registered members of the Osage tribe. It also meant that they were absolutely bazonka salt and paper stinking rich. Really, really rich. In fact, the Osage people were the richest human beings per capita on the planet at that particular time, which is quite the achievement. There is so much of this story that I just did not know. Firstly, this story, somebody sent it in as a request, one person, one single solitary person. Smarty pants. And they were clearly very pleased

with themselves when they found out i wish i remembered your name i'm so sorry give yourself a pat on the back if it was you it's a wild one also did you know that scorsese is currently turning this into a film only because your brother told me yes coming out soon leo is gonna be in it of course i'll watch the show of. He's so overrated. Okay. Look, fight me. I don't think Leonardo DiCaprio is a very good actor. I don't think he's a good actor at all. I think he just yells. Do you know who he...

Are we watching the same person? I don't know. I just think he yells. He commits 100%, but I don't think he's a very good actor. I don't think he yells once in The Great Gatsby. No. I'm not convinced by him. Okay.

Moving on. Moving on to my favourite bit, the red-handed rundown of how the Osage tribe, people, family made their fortune. The ancestral lands of the Osage lay between the Missouri and Arkansas rivers. And as was the case

for the majority of Native American tribes, they were forced to leave their land by the US government in the early 1870s. They were initially made to relocate to a reservation in Kansas, but they sold it on to settlers shortly after. Their chief decided it would be more prudent to move to land that the whites had no interest in so they'd be left alone. And so they paid for a million and a half acres of seemingly worthless, barren, rocky land in northeastern Oklahoma and made that their

home instead. The federal government wanted the Native Americans to give up their way of life and assimilate into white society. And one way they went about this was through the Dawes Act. The Dawes Act, which is D-A-W-E-S, which I realise in my British accent might sound like I'm saying doors, like a door. Dawes Act? Anyway. Dawes Act. Anyway. And essentially, the Dawes Act of 1887 essentially turned Native Americans into private property owners, making it easier for whites to buy their land from them. Another reason for this was that the U.S. wanted to absorb the tribal territories into the state of Oklahoma. But in order to do so, all the land had to be individually owned. But since the Osage had paid for their own reservation land,

they were exempt. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

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The Osage chief at the time was a man called Chief James Bickhart, who spoke seven languages, Ponca, Sioux, Cherokee, Osage, French, English, and Latin, baller, Bighart made the incredibly wise decision to include the following unique provisions in the Osage Allotment Act in 1906. Firstly, the Osage would keep their mineral rights, meaning the right to mine or produce oil and gas, rocks and minerals under the ground. And secondly, the tribe's mineral rights would be shared equally amongst each individual tribe member. And these rights to the mineral interest income were known as head rights. And these head rights could only be passed on from generation to generation by inheritance. They could never be bought or sold.

Chief Bighart may have not known it at the time, but these stipulations would go on to completely reverse the economic misfortune of his people. Eyes on the contract, eyes on the fine print. Because as it so turned out, the worthless land that the Osage had bought, remember they bought that rocky, barren million and a half acres so that the white people would leave them alone, was actually sitting on some of the largest oil deposits in the world at the time. Honestly, this episode just feels like a film. Imagine, they're just like, we're going to go live here

so that we can just live our lives in peace boom oil and over the following two decades the osage's underground reservation generated more wealth than all of america's gold rushes combined you know if i didn't know what was going to happen yeah i would now go off on, you know what, you'd just love to see it. The land looking after its own people. It happens for some times. Sometimes. Sometimes it do be like that. So in order to drill on Osage land, oil companies had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties.

And these did not come cheap. In 1923 alone, the tribe made more than $30 million. $30 million in 1923. In today's money, that is $400 million. were living in brick and terracotta mansions with chandeliers hanging from their ceilings. They wore diamond rings and fur coats and travelled around in expensive chauffeured cars. In many cases, they even had white servants. And there's nothing that white people hate more than brown people with more money than them. Can confirm we really don't like that.

Especially in the 20s. Nobody was a fan of that. Also, if history's taught us anything, it's that when white people are not happy, especially when you're talking about the pasto times, bad shit happens. Yeah, famously, bad losers. But let's put a pin in all of that information that we've just learned for now

and get back to where we left off, the discovery of Anna Brown's body. The two doctors who cared for Molly's sickly mother, the Schoon brothers, were tasked with performing the autopsy. I imagine there wasn't that many people kicking around able to do it. And based on her state of decomposition, they guessed that Anna had been dead for about a week. And when they turned Anna's head to the side, her scalp slipped off and exposed a bullet hole in the back of her skull. So it was official. Anna Brown had been murdered. It's quite difficult to shoot yourself in the back of the head. Strangely, even though there was no exit wound in Anna's skull, the doctors, the Schoen brothers, claimed that they couldn't find the bullet in Anna's head.

But they did note that it was likely from a.32 caliber gun. What's more, the discovery of Anna's body came during the same week as the body of an Osage man named Charles Whitehorn had been discovered in Pohaska. He'd been shot twice between the eyes and two bullets were found in his head. Both were, you guessed it,.32 calibre. I feel like they're always.32 calibres. How many calibres are there? I feel like it's always a.32..22,.22,.32, they're the two I know. Yeah, those are the two. Those are the two ones. It's important to note that although this was the 20s, this particular part of America was pretty much still the Wild West.

When we were like putting this case together, I had to look up actually when the Wild West ran from and ran till. It actually ended in the 20s, or like 1920, but this part of America, it was slow to let that lifestyle go. Well, especially if there's still oil pissing out of the ground. Exactly. So given how lawless this part of the country was at this time, authorities had next to no forensic training and were essentially amateur gunfighters who were just tasked with bringing in criminals dead or alive. But nevertheless the sheriff determined to be useful went down to the creek where Anna was found. He wasn't that useful he didn't find the missing bullet but he did manage to find some blood smears on a rock by the bank next to a half

empty bottle of moonshine. From this he assumed that Anna had been sat there drinking when someone came up and shot her in the back of the head. He also found two sets of tyre tracks. He didn't take casts of the tracks, or even bother to dust the bottle for fingerprints. And he didn't take a single photo of the crime scene. Despite this, Molly still had hope that Anna's killer would be brought to justice.

And that's because she had a supremely powerful ally. Like many Osage women at the time, including her three sisters, Molly had married a white man. Ernest Burkhardt had grown up in Texas, son of a poor cotton farmer. Until he packed up and moved to Osage, enticed by the stories of cowboys on the last frontier. He began working for his uncle, William Hale, who became a sort of surrogate father to him. And speaking of his uncle, Ernest once said, quote,

he was not the kind of man to ask you to do something. He told you. When William Hale arrived in Osage County, a couple of decades before, seemingly out of nowhere, he turned up in town. And again, this is just so like, movie, so cinematic. And like, guys, we're not even just pumping up the fact that it's cinematic, like this is one of the most fucking bonkers cases we've ever covered. So stay tuned. So yeah, when he turns up in Osage County, William Hale turned up with nothing but a copy of the Old Testament and a relentless energy to accomplish whatever task he set his mind

to. Initially, he found work as a cowboy on a ranch laboring day and night until he eventually saved up enough money to buy his own herd of cattle. As his profits grew, Hale gradually bought more and more land from the Osage and the surrounding settlers, until he had around 50,000 acres of land and a small fortune. Hale turned in his dirty cowboy clothes for a fancy suit and was named the Reserve Deputy Sheriff in Fairfax. It was an honorary title, it didn't really mean anything. But this is the Wild West, after all, and the US. So of course, William Hale carried a badge and a gun.

It seems like no one who was carrying a badge and a gun actually meant much. I don't think you needed to pass like an exam. He's like, but look at me, I have a suit. And I am the Reserve Deputy Sheriff of Fairfax. And look at this badge I definitely didn't make for myself. And my 32 or 22 calibre gun. And scoff as we might about his potentially arts and crafts badge, William Hale was actually very, very powerful because his influence grew to the point that local politicians knew

that they could not win an election without his support. Hale was one of the few white men who had helped the Osage people before they made their oil fortune and he'd done that by donating to charities and paying for medical bills that they couldn't afford. He once wrote a letter to the assistant chief of the Osage tribe saying quote, I never had better friends in my life than the Osages. I will always be the Osages true friend friend. And William Hale was regarded by many as the king of the Osage Hills. And that's why Molly was hopeful

that Anna's murder would be solved. Hale had promised her that he wouldn't rest until the killer was found. He described Anna as a mighty good friend and he was not about to let that go. And to be honest, by the sounds of it, he sounds like the best place man to figure it out. I mean, he's saying things like mighty good. I have faith in him.

There's nothing more charming. Ernest's brother, Brian, told investigators that he dropped Anna off at her house on the day she was murdered at around 5pm and then never saw her again. People suspected that the killer was somebody from off the reservation, possibly Anna's ex-husband, Oda Brown. Possible motive was obviously the divorce, and then after the divorce, Anna had struck Brown off her will, denying him any inheritance, and signed almost all of her fortune over to her mum.

But motive isn't enough. There was no solid evidence to go on. Molly's family, together with William Hale, offered up a huge cash reward to anyone who came forward with information leading to the killer's arrest. But still, nobody ever did. And while all this was going on, Molly's mother, Lizzie, grew more and more ill.

She seemed to be suffering with the same symptoms that Molly's sister Minnie had had with her peculiar wasting disease. And eventually, Molly's mum Lizzie passed away that July. Molly had one surviving sister, Rita. Her husband, Bill Smith, suspected that there was no wasting disease at all, and that they had actually been poisoned. Bill Smith is onto something. Bill knows. Bill Smith in the wild, wild west.

That's part two. What a banger. What a tune. In fact, Bill was convinced that Minnie, Lizzie and Anna's deaths had something to do with their valuable headright in Osage Oil. He just couldn't prove it. As time went on, it became clear that the local law officials weren't getting anywhere with their investigation. And so William Hale hired a private detective from Kansas City, a man named Pike. Come on. A man named Pike? Yeah. Who's from Kansas City, a man named Pike. Come on. A man named Pike. Yeah. Who's from Kansas City, which may or may not be in Kansas. Oh, I'm not getting into that again. Oh my life. I know I'm feeling

reckless. Kansas City is apparently in two states. That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Let's move on. Sort it out. Right. Okay. So a private detective, the man named Pike from Kansas City. Yeah. We don't know which side. Call it out. Right, okay, so a private detective, the man named Pike from Kansas City. We don't know which side. Call me Pike. He turns up with a toothpick in his mouth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Call me Pike.

Call me Pike. About nine months after the murders of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn, the investigations, no matter how spiky Pike's cocktail stick was, ground to a halt. Pike had actually all but given up. And in the meantime, more and more Osage members were dying in strange circumstances.

In February 1922, a 21-year-old Osage man called William Stepson suddenly got a call and left his house in Fairfax. He came home to his wife and children a couple of hours later, but there was clearly something very wrong with him. He collapsed and began having violent convulsions. Within a matter of hours, he was dead. Investigators suspected Stepson may have been poisoned with strychnine. Forensic toxology, surprisingly, had been around for quite a while by the 1920s, but the coroners in Osage hadn't caught up with the times, so it was pretty useless. And it also meant that poisoning was essentially the perfect way to get away with murder. The following month, an Osage woman died in what was believed to be another case of poisoning,

followed by a couple more. And as the bodies racked up, a number of Osage people got together and sought the help of Barney McBride to get the federal government's attention. McBride was a wealthy oil man who regularly did business with the Osage. They trusted him because he'd always treated the Osage people fairly and because he had a number of connections in the capital, he was the perfect man for the job.

And so after learning about the string of suspicious deaths of Osage people, McBride went directly to Washington DC to try and bring a federal investigation into the murders. But when he arrived at his hotel room in the capital, McBride found a note on his bed that read, be careful. I mean, this is just, I know this is a pasto case, but it really is just so on the nose, isn't it? So shrugging off the ominous note on his bed, McBride headed out for the night. And when he was leaving a pool hall, someone

put a burlap sack over his head and snatched him off the street. Why not? Sure. Listen, I know you're incredibly busy being an oil man, but we really, really need you for the sack race down the road at the primary school. So if you could just kindly come with me. Absolutely. You're completely misunderstanding this. No one's abducting you. I'm talking to you in a very calm voice. Please stop screaming. If you're a good boy, we'll let you win the egg and spoon.

Well, there you go. And whatever happened at that sports day must have been fucking wild because McBride's body turned up the following morning and he'd actually been stripped naked and stabbed 20 times. And his skull had also been caved in. Investigators believe that he had been followed all the way from Oklahoma by multiple assailants. Six months passed, and in that time, there were no more suspicious deaths of the Osage people.

That is, until one cold winter's day in February 1923, when two hunters found the body of a 40-year-old Osage man, Henry Rowan. He was frozen solid in the driver's seat of his Buick, a few miles outside of Fairfax. At first, they thought he'd just been drunk and fallen asleep, until they looked a bit closer and realised that, just like the others, he had been shot in the back of the head. Hale was one of the first people to be notified about Rowan's murder. The two of them had been best friends, and here's an example of Hale helping out Osage people.

Rowan borrowed money off him often because his account was restricted, and Hale said that since he had loaned Rowan so much money, Rowan actually listed him as a beneficiary on his $25,000 life insurance policy, which you could argue puts Hale in the frame a bit. After Rowan's murder, the Osage people felt like they were being hunted down, with good reason, and they began hanging light bulbs from their roofs and windowsills, hoping that they'd stop anybody creeping up on them in the dead of night. Understandably, there was a thick air of terror amongst the community.

But regardless, Rita's husband, Bill Smith, continued with his investigation into the murders. Because remember, Bill's the only one. Well, no, people know what's going on, but Bill doesn't even believe in this whole, like, consumption bullshit. No, Bill's the one that raises the alarm first, I think. Yeah, everyone else is looking at the people that have been shot in the back of the head. Bill's like, there are other people dying who haven't been shot in the back of the head.

Yeah, I feel like we should take a look at this wasting disease that's come out of nowhere. And Bill even told a number of people that he felt he was getting warm. Don't say that, Bill. Don't tell people that. Don't tell random people that he felt he was getting warm. Don't say that, Bill. Don't tell people that. Don't tell random people that you think you're getting warm. Yeah, please keep your mouth shut. Exactly. And it was just a few weeks after this that Rita and Bill started hearing strange noises outside their house at night, as if somebody was lurking in the darkness.

They decided it was best to move into the centre of town for the safety of their children. So they packed up and moved into a large two-storey house in the middle of Fairfax. They felt safe there. Not only was it a busy neighbourhood, but the neighbours all had guard dogs that barked the second a stranger walked by. One night, a strange man knocked on Bill and Rita's door, claiming that he wanted to buy some land. Bill told him that it wasn't for sale, but the shifty-looking stranger seemed more preoccupied with looking around the house,

almost as though he was scoping it out. Earlier that March, the neighbours' dogs began to die off, one by one, and their bodies would be discovered on the front porches or in the middle of the street. And the dogs looked like they had been poisoned. Ah, the wasting disease has crossed species. Yeah. And then, after the dog poisonings, things got quite a lot worse. Because around 3am on the 10th of March, the people of Fairfax woke up to the sound of an enormous explosion.

Bill and Rita's large two-storey house was now nothing more than a pile of smouldering wood and brick. The explosion had been so powerful that the windows and doors of neighbouring houses had been shattered, lampposts and surrounding trees had been pulled from the ground. Firefighters searched through the wreckage and found Bill and Rita still in their bed. The back of Rita's head had been blown off in the blast. But miraculously, Bill was still alive, but just barely. David Schoen, remember he's the hospital doctor man, injected Bill with morphine and took him to Fairfax Hospital. Rita's body was embalmed before Molly could even see her. Molly was now the last remaining sister in her family.

David Schoen barely left Bill's side in hospital for a moment. And finally, when he regained consciousness after two days, Bill could barely utter a word. And although he had survived, it wouldn't be for long. Because just 14 days later, Bill Smith died. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone.

Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom.

But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. A 54-year-old man named W.W. Vaughn, who was a former prosecutor and attorney living in Pohuska, had been helping with the investigations as much as he could.

One day in June 1923, Vaughan answered a call from George Bighart, the nephew of the legendary former Osage chief, James Bighart. George was in hospital in Oklahoma City after having been poisoned and he didn't have much time left. George told W.W. Vaughan that he had information on the murders in Osage but he wouldn't speak to anybody but him and George wasn't about to say what he had to say over the phone. So W.W. Vaughan, knowing that time was of the essence, packed his bags and jumped on the first train to Oklahoma City.

Just before he left, he told his wife where he'd stashed all the evidence he'd gathered so far on the murders, along with money for her and their ten kids, if, for whatever reason, he never made it home, struck down by a peculiar wasting disease, perhaps. Vaughan made it to the hospital and spent hours talking to George Bighart before he died.

He then phoned the Osage County Sheriff to tell him that he knew who had killed George, and a hell of a lot more. Then he jumped on the next overnight train back. But when the train pulled into Pohuska, Vaughan was nowhere to be found. Almost two days later, W.W. Vaughan's body was found with a broken neck lying on the train tracks about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City. He'd been stripped naked

and thrown off the moving train in the dead of night. All the documents that George Bighart had given him were missing, and the hiding place Vaughan had told his wife about had been cleared out before she got there. In the summer of 1925, 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover was the new head of the Bureau of Investigation, and he called on Special Agent Tom White to report to him in D.C. immediately. Tom White was a 6'4", former Texas Ranger who headed the Houston field office.

He was exactly what we would think of today when we picture a frontier white knight cowboy. If you think of the absolute opposite of Mummy's Boy J. Edgar Hoover, that is what Tom White was. He still wore his cowboy hat and carried the Winchester rifle and six-shooter that he'd used as a ranger when he used to track down criminals on horseback across the prairies. Roosevelt had created the Bureau of Investigation in 1908 in an attempt to bring about some structure to federal law enforcement.

But at the time, the Bureau's hundred or so agents didn't even have the power of arrest, nor were they, strictly speaking, authorised to carry weapons. But who was? They mainly investigated theft and fraud, but Hoover wanted to change that. Hoover had upped the standards of requirement for new special agents, and most of them were college boys with accountancy degrees. But Tom White was one of a few special agents who'd been a frontier lawman, and a small group known in the Bureau as the Cowboys. White met with Hoover in his office in D.C.,

where Hoover told him that he was to head up the biggest murder investigation the Bureau had ever undertaken, the Osage murders. And he added, the failure was not an option. White took over the Bureau's field office in Oklahoma in 1925 and began going through the mountains of documents regarding the strange killings in Osage County. There were records of 24 Osage murders at this point, including the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith and the shootings of Anna Brown, Henry Rowan and Charles Whitehorn. There wasn't much to link them all, except for the obvious. They were rich members of the Osage tribe and they'd all been murdered. And, of course, that Anna Brown, Rita Smith and Lizzie were all related.

White found it strange that nobody had ever interviewed Molly Burkhart, the last remaining sister. And another strange thing he recognised were the methods, shootings, poisonings, and a huge bomb blast. And White realised, being the smart cowboy he was, that that meant there was likely to be multiple killers possibly working for one singular, intelligent and calculated mastermind pulling the strings.

And although he did prefer to work alone, White knew this case was too big for one man, no matter how big his cowboy hat. So he put together a team of the Bureau's cowboys and sent them undercover, one by one, into Osage County. White began looking at Anna Brown's autopsy records and couldn't get his head around how a bullet was never found when there was no exit wound. It had to be in there somewhere.

It could only mean that somebody at the autopsy had swiped it. He wondered whether it could have been one of the Schoon brothers who carried out the autopsy, so that would make the most sense, but he couldn't be sure. As the summer of 1925 was coming to an end, White was fully focused on the last person to have seen Anna Brown alive, Molly's brother-in-law, Brian Burkhart And if you remember, cast your minds back Brian Burkhart was obviously the one who spoke to the police and said

Oh yeah, I dropped her back at home at 5pm, the day she went missing Apparently he had done that and then gone to the theatre in Fairfax with his brother Ernest and Uncle William Hale And Hale and Ernest and Uncle William Hale. And Hale and Ernest backed up this alibi, and a few other witnesses also claimed that they had seen the group out together in Fairfax too. But there had been rumours that Anna had been seen with Brian in a car in the early hours of the morning, outside a hotel in the town of Ralston. White found these witnesses,

and they insisted that they'd seen Anna, Brian Burkhardt, and a third man in a car together. White then found out that Brian, Anna, and this unknown man had been drinking in a speakeasy until 3am. This was the first crack in Brian's alibi. But the problem was, after this last 3am sighting, nobody had a clue where Anna had gone. But Brian's neighbour said that he'd seen Brian arriving home alone that night

and said that Brian had paid him not to tell anyone. It wasn't long before White looked into the PI that Hale had hired to investigate the murders back in 1921, tobacco-spitting Pike from Kansas City. He heard that Pike apparently knew the identity of this mystery man who was seen with Anna and Brian before her death. So White and his squad of cowboys tracked Pike down, and after a lengthy interrogation, Pike revealed that Hale had never actually hired him to investigate the murders. Instead, Pike revealed that Hale paid him to cover up Brian's tracks on the night of Anna's disappearance. Hale had also instructed him to help solidify Brian's alibi

by creating false evidence and coaching witnesses. Hiding in plain sight with a PI named Pike. I feel like Pike could have tried a bit harder to maintain his professional integrity. He's just like, oh yeah, this is what happened, this is what I did. See you next week. Thank you, come again. Pike couldn't tell White what he wanted to know the most, though,

which was, was Hale simply covering for his nephew? Or was Hale the final boss? In September 1925, White began to wonder whether Bill Smith had figured out the case before he'd been blown up. So, White went to the hospital where Bill died and spoke with the nurse who had treated him. The nurse told White that before Bill had passed away, the Schoen brothers and a lawyer had paid him a visit. And so, White, who already suspected that the Schoen brothers may have been responsible for swiping the bullet during Anna's autopsy, brought them in for questioning. After a few hours of interrogation, the brothers revealed that Bill had told them that he only had two enemies in the whole world. William K. Hale, the king of the Osage Hills, and his nephew,

Ernst Burkhardt. White and his team began digging through the paperwork and found out that James Schoen had been named as the administrator of Rita Smith's estate on the day they'd visited Bill in hospital. And as the administrator, guess what? James Shearn would be paid huge amounts of money. Another thing that never sat right with White was how Hale had come to be named as the beneficiary of Rowan's 25,000 life insurance policy. And as it turned out, White discovered that a number of insurance companies had rejected Hale's attempt to take out life insurance on the 40-year-old Rowan, who had liver damage from drinking moonshine and had once crashed his car from drink driving. Not the best bet. Pre-existing

conditions and recklessness. And a tendency to smash into things with his car. So not ideal for life insurance. But after Hale had the Schoen brothers write up false medical reports and he forged some creditors' notes, the insurance was eventually accepted by someone. White also found out that Hale had attempted to buy Rowan's head rights, something which we already know because you've all been listening, was impossible because they couldn't be bought. They could only be inherited. And it wasn't lost on White that all of this was merely circumstantial evidence.

But something began to add up. With each death, more and more head rights were being inherited by just one person. And if you've been paying attention, dear listener, then you know that that one person who's passing, going, collecting head rights all over the place and mysteriously not wasting away is none other than Molly Burkhart, who just so happened to be married to Hale's nephew, Ernst Burkhart.

Gasp. I know, I know. This story is fucking wild. It's bonkers. Iasp. I know, I know. This story is fucking... It's bonkers. ...wild. I wonder who's playing Molly. Ooh. I wonder what the film's called.

Anyway, we're not sponsored by Martin Scorsese's upcoming film on this. So the more White thought about it, the clearer the plot became. Anna Brown, who had no children or spouse, was the first to be killed. And she gave away almost all of her head rights and money to her mother Lizzie. By killing her first, Hale would have made sure that her money wasn't split up amongst several more people. Then next up was her mother Lizzie, as she was set to give the majority of her wealth to her two remaining daughters, Rita and Molly. And then Rita being married to Bill Smith, who was sniffing around and running his mouth, were the next obvious targets. Only Hale knew that he had to kill them at the same time so that Rita's money would go straight to her sister, Molly, and not circumvent round

anyone else, which is why he used the bomb to get them both at once. But because Bill Smith had somehow survived the blast for weeks, he inherited the money and gave some of it away to a relative in the meantime. Still, however, after Bill died, the majority of the money ended up going to Molly, whose money was controlled by her husband and financial guardian, Ernest Burkhart. White wondered whether the sinister plot had begun with Ernest marrying Molly. Had he married this woman, lived with her for years, pretended to love her and raised three children with her, just as a part of a sinister scheme to steal her

family's money? We'll come back to that. But before we do, what's a financial guardian, we hear you ask? Well, basically, it's the US government Britney-ing the Osage people. It's a conservatorship. It is. So the US government had decided that the Osage people were too incompetent to manage their own money. And so they put in place what's known as financial guardianship, a.k.a. Britney-ing these people. This scheme meant that any wealthy Osage member would be officially deemed unable to control their own finances. Instead, a prominent local white person

would be put in charge of their financial affairs. A guardian would oversee and authorise all of their Osage ward's expenditures, down to the toothpaste they bought. Of course, these are incredibly horrendously racist laws, but things became even worse in 1921, when all Osage bank accounts became quote-unquote restricted. Which is why Rowan had to borrow money off Hale in the first place.

Uh-huh. Basically, this meant that even if a member of the Osage tribe had literally tens of millions of dollars in their bank accounts, they weren't allowed to withdraw more than a few thousand dollars of their own money each year. It didn't matter if they needed the money for their sick children's hospital bills or for their education or for shoes or for anything.

It wasn't up to them. And although some Osage members were fortunate enough to have a white guardian who actually had their best interests at heart, the vast majority of guardians did everything they could to swindle their wards out of as much money as they possibly could. Just like Britney's dad.

A government study found that before 1925, these white guardians stole as much as $8 million from Osage members' restricted accounts, which is around $130 million in today's money. And these Guardians were made up of the most prominent people in society. They were typically judges, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, ranchers and politicians. Yet another revelation came when White's team were told by an informant that the person who had made the bomb that killed Rita and Bill Smith was an outlaw named Asa Kirby. But the thing was, Kirby had had his head blown off during a botched robbery of a jeweller's.

Everyone's just getting fucking blown up all the time in this. I know it's the Wild West, but they're just like, oh yeah, he got himself blown up during a robbery at a jeweller's. That's the end of that then. When White spoke to said jeweller, he said that Hale gave him the heads up that Kirby was planning on robbing him that day. Pun intended. It also turned out that Hale was the one who had suggested to Kirby Pun intended. to the bomb plot. Cowboy White paid Molly a visit. She'd understandably become somewhat

reclusive and overcome with fear. On top of that, she was also dying from diabetes, despite receiving regular injections of the new miracle drug insulin from the Schoen brothers. White and his team, of course, found this to be suspicious and removed Molly from their care and admitted her to a hospital, where miraculously she began to get better. And that's because the Schoen brothers, if you hadn't got there yourself, were the ones poisoning Molly and the ones who had been poisoning everyone else.

Feeling that they had enough damning evidence to get Ernst Burckhardt and Hale to confess, the Department of Justice issued warrants for their arrests on the 4th of January 1926. Hale refused to talk on his way to jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma. But Burkhart wasn't quite as tight-lipped. Burkhart told the agents that Hale had organised the plan to blow up Rita and Bill Smith's house so that Molly would inherit the head rights. He also went on to reveal that Hale had hired an outlaw named Ramsey to shoot Rowan,

after Hale had managed to get the life insurance policy on him. The agents brought in Ramsey for questioning, and he confessed to everything in a signed statement, including that Hale had paid him to commit the murder. Ernest Burkhart's trial began in June of 1926. Initially, he recanted his confessions and was adamant that he and his uncle were innocent. But something changed in Ernest

when Molly's youngest daughter passed away during the trial. Suddenly, he dismissed his attorney and pleaded guilty to all charges. He was sentenced to life in prison and even volunteered to be the star witness against his uncle in his trial the following month. And lo and behold, on the 20th of October 1926, Hale was found guilty and sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in Leavenworth. It was revealed during the trial that Brian Buckhart had been present when an

outlaw named Kelsey Morrison shot Anna Brown in the back of the head on Hale's instructions. But Brian was given immunity because he was cooperating. And with that, the trials were over. But it didn't mean that justice had been done. There were countless murders of the Osage that had never been solved, and their killers have never been found. Many were just overlooked and never tried, like the terrifying Schoen brothers.

During his federal trial, Molly divorced Brian and remarried. My God. I know. And she eventually died in 1937, at the age of 50, which, in the 30s, yeah, alright. Ernst Burkhardt was paroled in 1937,

but arrested again for robbing a bank. We just can't, can't stop. You know what? The outlaw life. Is the life for him. Yeah, it shows him. He was eventually released again in 1959 and lived the rest of his years in a trailer home with his brother Brian. And then that leaves us with just William Hale,

who only ended up serving 21 years in Leavenworth before being paroled in 1947. He died in a nursing home in Arizona in 1962. Imagine going to prison in 1926 and coming out in 59. Like imagine how much of a mindfuck that would be. Not that any sympathy but just no no no I know what you mean I know what you mean. Just fascinated by the passage of time. Yeah no. According to the FBI the official death toll of the Osage reign of terror was 24 but historians and investigators now believe the true number to be somewhere in the hundreds. At the end of his incredible book,

Killers of the Flower Moon, Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI, David Graham reveals that there are recorded murders of the Osage for their headrights even after Hale's arrest, so perhaps he wasn't the only one at it. Maybe he was the mastermind behind one of the bloodiest series of murders, but he just can't have been the only one involved. Maybe a better question would be, who wasn't involved? Yeah, I feel like this was one genius scheme that probably William Hale came up with, where he was like, okay, you just

murder down the line. You murder everybody, inherit the head right, inherit the head right, inherit the head right, marry that person marry that person and then kill them and then you get everything and everyone was like wait a minute have you seen what he's doing and then they're all at it oh yeah i mean he gets caught so he's clearly not the the brightest pixie in the forest i imagine that quite a lot of people came up with the same idea because it's like you know you literally the only way you can get your hands on it is to inherit it it doesn't take that many cognitive steps yeah and you can and you can go after anybody in the Osage tribe because like that original contract was settled that everybody

in that tribe was going to get equal head rights so it just left everybody right for the picking from these terrible people. And for this incredible story, we only have David Grant to thank, really. He spent five years digging through historical archives and records, piecing together this incredibly complicated story. So without his book, Killers of the Flower Moon, which we cannot recommend enough, this episode would not have been possible. So go out, buy it, immerse yourselves into the wild west world and of course maybe go and see the martin scorsese film that comes out later this year we think next november this year robert de niro is playing william hale that's that's good casting okay i can see that yeah all right well i'm looking forward to it i'm pumped so that's probably the weirdest

most bonkers fucking story you've never heard of yes yeah we finally lived up to what we promised absolutely so there you go you can take that all the way to the podcast bank enjoy it if you would like to come listen to us talk about something else you can head on over now and become a patron firstly at patreon.com slash red handed if you sign up for any tier you'll get an extra smattering of bonus red-handed content delivered directly to your phones every single week including under the duvet in the news and bonus episodes that we release once a month so go check that out and get your merch and be nice to each other exactly and. And we'll see you next time.

I might not. I might run away. No, bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

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Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken

people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.