The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann, 2017
This book was one of our Old Town Book Club selections and I’m so glad it was. It is a fantastic, well-written non-fiction account of what some very evil white men did to Osage Indians in the 1920’s.
The Osage Indians were moved to a hilly area of Oklahoma. Through the brilliant work of several Osage, they were able to keep the mineral rights of their land in a 1906 agreement, before anyone even knew how valuable oil would be and how rich in oil their land would be. In the 1920’s, the Osage Indians were rich beyond belief and had mansions, cars, servants. Osage Indians began dying suspiciously; they would be fine one day and dead the next, or suffer slow wasting diseases and die. The book opens with the murder of Anna Brown, the 2nd sister of Mollie Burkhart to die, but Anna was clearly murdered; shot in the back of the head. There were no federal investigators in those days and Mollie hired private investigators that never came up with anything. In the meantime, more and more Osage Indians die suspiciously. Finally, J. Edgar Hoover sends a Texas Ranger, Tom White, to investigate. It takes years and tons of sleuthing against all sorts of corruption, deceit, and dangers, but Tom White and his team uncover the villain: William Hale, acting as a benevolent, caring rancher and town father. He was really out to get Molly’s oil rights as well as those of her whole family. He had one sister poisoned, Molly’s mother poisoned, sister Anna murdered, sister Rita and her husband blown up in their home. And they were not the only people murdered and William Hale was not the only murderer. There were literally hundreds of unsolved deaths that extended about 30 years. Against all odds, William Hale and his nephew, Ernest Burkhart, were convicted and did time. William Hale was the true evil, though. The only reason he was eventually convicted was due to the persistence of Tom White. William Hale had bought off seemingly every official in Oklahoma. They were all corrupt. The Osage Indians were treated miserably. Thank you, David Grann, for writing this book! I had no idea about this and it is a story everyone should know and that should never be forgotten!