They released an outlaw named Blackie Thompson hoping he would work as an undercover informant, but he instead robbed banks and killed a police officer. This week I'm bringing you another story about a family that now has many members, but back in 1887 there was only one in Pawhuska and his name was Fred Drummond. GRANN: Yeah. In his new book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann tells the riveting story of the murders of the world's richest people per capita in the 1920s. His accomplice, Bryan Burkhart, another nephew, had turned state's evidence. And it becomes apparent that they are now moving into a realm in which it is very hard for them to know who they can trust and that the very power structure within the community is more than likely complicit within these crimes. And they took him out of jail, and he was supposed to work for them. Then they. There are no statistics about how many American-Indian agents were in the bureau at the time, but I suspect he was the only one. He was a master bureaucrat. In 2017, New Yorker staff writer David Grann publishedKillers of the Flower Moonabout the Osage Murders. He was born on 18 May 1869 in Knox County, Kentucky; died on 29 June 1923 in Oklahoma; and was buried in Pawhuska Cemetery in Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma. Many of them were starving. These private investigators were often, though, sordid characters. And Ken Tucker will review a new album by the Philadelphia-based band, The Menzingers, which features songs about getting older. Doubleday. He can be found online at www.christopherklein.com or on Twitter @historyauthor. Her heirs became fabulously wealthy. The next morning, he was found in a covert in Maryland. Randy Krehbiel paints him as a "shady character involved in blackmail and possibly embezzlement, armed robbery, and even murder." After securing Tulsa's top law enforcement spot in April 1920, Gustafson still moonlit as a private detective, working "cases that might have been more properly handled by the police." Grann's new book is both an absorbing murder mystery as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI takes on its first murder investigation and also a dark journey into the hard-edged racism that allowed whites to view Native Americans as subhumans who ought to be relieved of their newly acquired wealth. What happened to the well-being of the nation? These three books deal with the absolutely despicable history of the Osage Indians being cheated out of their oil rights in the 1920s in Oklahoma. The BOI sent Tom White to lead an investigation. In 1923 alone "the tribe took in more than thirty million dollars, the equivalent today of more than four hundred million dollars. By the early 1900s, the Osage - these 2,000 or so on the tribal roll - began to receive quarterly checks for the money that was used to pay for leases and royalties. I'm Terry Gross. In the late 1600s there were possibly seventeen thousand Osage. The setting was the Osage Indian Nation in the 1920s when oil deposits had brought enormous wealth to the members of the tribe. Instead, he slipped away, robbed a bank and murdered a police officer. Most of the murders were never prosecuted, but some men were convicted and sentenced including William Hale, who ordered the murders of his nephew's wife and other members of her family, to gain control of their oil rights. Vaughan complied, and the two men met that night. It was very easy for the powerful to buy the law, to tilt the scales of justice. An Indian Affairs agent said, "The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?" The Osage trusted him. The short film explores the systematic murders of the Osage from 1910 to 1930 in an organized effort to rob them of their oil and money. and the treaties in which it has been promised, there arises the duty of protection, and . The oil boom was in full swing, and the Osage people were prosperous due to ownership of mineral rights. Subsequently, Ramsey changed his story, claiming that the actual killer was Curly Johnson. None of these people had college educations or whatnot. But hundreds of millions of dollars was swindled. The Osage Indian murders were a series of murders of Osage Native Americans in Osage County, Oklahoma, during the 1910s1930s; newspapers described the increasing number of unsolved murders as the Reign of Terror, lasting from 1921 to 1926. Ernest Burkhart: The Background. are now White (Albino) or Mulatto. But ultimately their devious activity would catch up with them. And there was a certain kind of unmooredness to the society. White pursued the case when many people believed the people they were pursuing were untouchable because they were white and the victims were Native Americans, Grann says. Hale fraudulently arranged to make himself the beneficiary of Roan's $25,000 life insurance policy. His body was eventually found 24 hours later lying along the tracks. "Killers Quotes" Written Portion Below are 9 thematic threads. In The 1920s, A Community Conspired To Kill Native Americans For Their Oil Money. [c] By that time, Lizzie had headrights for herself and had inherited the headrights from her late husband and two daughters. (Credit: David Grann), The Osage became the richest people per capita in the world. There were so many people who were either directly profiting from these crimes or were silently complicit in them. And maybe most heartbreaking is that this involved a man who had become very close to even married Osage women and had betrayed those relationships. And the white man won't be able to farm there, and they'll finally leave us alone. GRANN: Well, by now, this was known as the Osage reign of terror. As the body count rose in the early 1920s, the Osage saw no action from local and state law enforcement personnel. I met with a descendant of Mollie Burkhart. As best-selling author David Grann details in his new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the Osage reservation was soaked in blood because it was awash in oil. Anna would be merely one of the first victims in a five-year-long Reign . You slowly can't breathe, but you're conscious throughout until finally you mercifully suffocate. DAVIES: So the Osage looked to the federal government - let's get a federal investigation of this. [11] Roan also had a financial connection with Hale, having borrowed $1,200 from the cattleman. Driven from their lands in Kansas, the Osage had bought a swath of northeast Oklahoma in the early 1870s. And she looked down in the direction of where her sister's house had stood, and she could see a large, orange fire rising into the sky. And you often didn't quite know who they were working for, who they were leaking to. So Mollie - who had an enormous amount of courage because, by crusading for justice, she was putting a bull's eye right upon herself, but she did. Nevertheless, impatient settlers massacred several of the Osage, mutilating their bodies and scalping them. GRANN: Yes. White oil men are blowing fortunes and going bankrupt. We're now over 20 victims at this point. In 1870, the Osage people had purchased nearly 1.5 million acres He was part of a tribe of lawmen. This is FRESH AIR. GRANN: Yeah. It wasn't just Mollie's family that was being methodically killed on Oklahoma's Osage Nation Reservation in the early 1920s. What appears to have been a common means through which many Osage were poisoned? NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Hale was even the self-proclaimed King of the Osage Hills. He was a wealthy rancher with several banking and business interests throughout Osage County. Often they had criminal backgrounds. DAVIES: What happened in the first trial? It should be noted though that number of homicides increased slightly from 2014 to 2017, although figures. DAVIES: Wow. The body of another Osage, Brown's cousin Charles Whitehorn (also known as Charles Williamson), was discovered near Pawhuska on the same day as hers; Whitehorn had been shot to death. The Osage would hang lights around their houses so that at night they would be illuminated. DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, David Grann, welcome to FRESH AIR. DAVIES: We're speaking with David Grann. There was a great deal of lawlessness. The Department of Interior continued to manage the trust lands and pay fees to Osage with headrights. It was, he said, about how, in early 1920s, swaths of the Osage Nation, in Oklahoma, were systematically slaughtered. "The Osage Murders: Oil Wealth, Betrayal and the FBIs First Big Case." Posted national youth concerto competition. "[7], In 1925, Osage tribal elders, with the help of local law officer James Monroe Pyle, sought assistance from the BOI when local and state officials could not solve the rising number of murders. Ironically, Tom White, the leading FBI agent on the Osage murders, was appointed Leavenworth's new warden when Hale arrived to serve his sentence. And nobody at first knows who was responsible for the murder. DAVIES: OK. That said, there was a lot of wealth controlled by the Osage. On February 6, 1923, Henry Roan, another cousin of Brown's (also known as Henry Roan Horse), was found in his car on the Osage Reservation, dead from a shot in the head. Ramsey met Roan on a road outside of Fairfax, and they drank whiskey together. Yeah, so there were many shootings. And they've taken enormous efforts to protect themselves from this kind of criminal conspiracy again. Investigators soon discovered that Mollie was already being poisoned.[13]. That loophole proved the genesis of a calculated, cold-blooded plot to gain inheritance rights from tribe members before killing them. It's hard to even put a number on it. If you were a full-blooded Osage, you were deemed, quote, unquote, "incompetent" and given a guardian who oversaw your wealth. And he said, if you speak to the Osage, will you please tell them that for me? Interview by Keith Donohue. "With the help of independent producers, Dan Bigbee and Lily Shangreaux, we were . All along, it wasthe UnitedStates thatheld the threads of the lives . Working for two years, the agents discovered a crime ring led by Hale, known in Osage County as the "King of the Osage Hills". GRANN: Well, early on when - in the early 20th century, there was just a little bit of oil. You feel it must be a serial killer. $28.95. The coroner ruled the cause of death was "suspicious," but did not rule that it was murder. This is FRESH AIR. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It was a very fledgling period with federal law enforcement. He's an interesting guy. The suit was settled in 2011 for $380 million and commitments to improve program management.[3][4]. And they were able to slip into their treaty for allotment a very curious provision at the time which essentially said that they will maintain the subsurface mineral rights to their land. Tell us that story. It does not seem the kingpin was connected to all the murders. The first chronicle is told largely from the perspective of an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart, whose family had become a prime target of the murder conspiracy. There were other murders happening throughout the community, other Osage being targeted. Her sister Anna had been discovered in a ravine in May 1921 with a bullet wound to the back of her head. The Osage had shrewdly retained the rights to any mineral discoveries, and oil barons such as J. Paul Getty, Harry Sinclair and Frank Phillips paid grand sums for leases at outdoor auctions held under the boughs of a vast tree dubbed the Million Dollar Elm. Each member of the Osage tribe received quarterly royalty payments, and as the years progressed, so did the number of digits on their check, growing into the hundreds and then the thousands of dollars. I mean, it was literally asked, and there was a belief that white men would not be convicted for these crimes and that white jurors would not find them guilty. They had a deed to it. The forced migrations had depleted their numbers. Partly that was because the victims were Native Americans. GRANN: He was found to be a part of the conspiracy. Combine these these terms with the event or person you are researching. He wanted to remake the FBI. One descendant of a murderer I spoke with sent me a note at one point. He is somebody who is born around the same time on the frontier in a log cabin in Texas. So it was very hard to know who to turn to, who you could trust, who would stop these crimes, who would truly investigate them. His father had been a frontier lawman, a local sheriff. GRANN: And the tragedy and shocking to Tom White was that it ended in a hung jury, and evidence later revealed that there had been a elaborate conspiracy to obstruct justice including buying a juror. Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence once the defendant is dead. His doubts arose from a variety of conflicting evidence. [1] The Bureau of Investigation (BOI), the preceding agency to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), found a low-level market in contract killers to kill the Osage for their wealth. And when his wife, the next day, went to the safe where he had stored his materials everything had been cleaned out. DAVIES: Mollie is married to a guy named Ernest Burkhart. At one point Hoover wanted to get out of it and turn it back to the state, but after the scandal he didnt have a choice., Tom White and Hoover. And by the 1920s, the Osage collectively had accumulated millions and millions of dollars. how many osage murders might there possibly have been? In 2000, the Osage Nation filed a suit against the Department of the Interior, alleging that it had not adequately managed the assets and paid people the royalties they were due. He realizes given the danger, given the fear in the area, given the corruption the team will have to go in undercover. Had there been no intervention, in all probability Mollie, who was already ill from poison, and Ernest would have soon died, with the manipulative Hale receiving the Kyle-Burkhart estate. He got documents from him. So one of the things that happened back then because - you know, we think of ourself as a country of laws, but these institutions back in the '20s in the United States were very fragile. Hale was formally charged with the murder of Roan, who had been killed on the Osage Reservation land, making it a federal crime. He grew up at a time and became a lawman at a time when justice was often meted out by the barrel of a gun. By . Then, that evening, he walked out of the boarding house. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! By David Grann. Thought that involved a certain level of forgiveness and understanding. [19] Ernest Burkhart's attempt to kill his wife failed. It's about the size of Delaware. What are their methods? This was a GRANN: Yeah, the white man. phenols may certain rubber and plastic materials / rfl meaning in recruitment / justo b rapper how does a narcissist react to being blocked 0 "The Osages, who were forced to sell . Subsequently, an autopsy revealed that the cause of Brown's death was not alcohol, but a bullet fired into the back of her head. The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI By David Grann Doubleday, New York, NY, 2017 352 Pages, $28.95 Reviewed by Hannah Laufe In The Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann recounts the terrible and al-most inconceivable story of the injustice and violence inflicted upon the Osage Nation. GROSS: We're listening to the interview FRESH AIR's Dave Davies recorded with David Grann about his new book "The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI" (ph). And the third chronicle is told from my perspective in the present. Just explore that with us for a moment. They could deal with escaped federal prisoners, smutty books crossing state lines. They involve lawmen who then would not investigate them. And that's why so many killers ultimately escaped justice. GRANN: Yeah. [5] McAuliffe found that when Bolton was a minor, the court had appointed her white stepfather, attorney Arthur "A.T." Woodward, as her guardian.