Pod Insights Infamous America ENCORE: OSAGE MURDERS Ep. 5 | “The Confession” About this episode Throughout 1925, Special Agent Tom White and his team produced more results than all the other investigators combined. But even White’s investigation stalled. And then, he received a miracle: an inmate in an Oklahoma prison possessed vital information about the murders. The inmate’s confession led to shocking revelations and the first arrests in the cases of the Osage Murders.
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1:08 Speaker 01 Throughout the second half of 1925, from July to December, the Osage witnessed a monumental amount of progress in their murder cases. The previous four years, from the discovery of the bodies of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn in 1921 to June of 1925, must have seemed like they were moving at a snail's pace. They crept forward in tiny increments, and frequently stopped and waited for more progress, all while watching their friends and family members die. But now, they were rocketing forward at a profound speed. In July of 1925, the acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover,
1:51 Speaker 01 assigned Special Agent Tom White to the case of the Osage murders. White was the quintessential old-school frontier lawman. He was a former Texas Ranger who didn't have much use for fancy scientific methods of investigation. He looked at the evidence, talked to witnesses, identified suspects, and then went after them. On the surface, it seemed like a pretty simple formula. Yet, in four years, none of the other lawmen or private detectives who worked on the case had made even a fraction of the progress that Tom White made in his first month on the job. He started in July, and by August, he had eliminated the people who were considered
2:33 Speaker 01 the prime suspects in two of the Big Three murder cases. White and his small team didn't have the resources to thoroughly investigate every murder or suspicious death. J. Edgar Hoover constantly pressured White for fast results, so White had to focus his attention on three cases: the murder of Anna Brown, the murder of Henry Roan, and the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith. He had eliminated the primary suspects in Anna Brown's case and uncovered new information about her movements on the night of her murder back in May of 1921. In the process, White had discovered that three men were now highly suspicious.
3:15 Speaker 01 Four years ago, they would have been three of the last people on a list of suspects. But now, everything had changed. At the top of the list was the most influential man in Osage County, a white rancher named William Hale. Right below him were his two nephews, Ernest and Brian Burkhardt. Ernest was married to Molly, Anna's sister, and Brian occasionally dated Anna. Special Agent Tom White had discovered that Brian Burkhardt was with Anna all night on the night she was killed. White still couldn't prove that Brian had committed the murder, but he now knew that Brian had been lying for four years about the events of that night.
3:57 Speaker 01 White knew that Brian's uncle, William Hale, had paid a private detective to manufacture an alibi for Brian and help shield him from the investigation. Whatever was going on, Hale seemed to be a big part of it. It was starting to look like Hale and his nephews, and maybe other people as well, were systematically eliminating members of the Osage tribe so they could gain access to Osage oil money. People who tried to help the Osage were also eliminated. One was brutally murdered outside Washington, DC. One was shot and killed in Oklahoma City. One was thrown off a train between Oklahoma City and Osage County. And those were just three cases. There were many more.
4:41 Speaker 01 And as Tom White and his team dug deeper into the murder of Henry Roan and the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith, they learned more details that pointed toward William Hale and Ernest and Brian Burkhart. One of the three men made a confession that turned Osage County upside down.
5:08 Speaker 01 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 five, The Confession.
5:26 Speaker 01 Henry Roan was murdered in the final week of January 1923, and his body was discovered a week later. He was a full-blood member of the Osage Tribe and had a wife and kids. It was reported, probably by his wife, that Henry left home on the day he disappeared and bought whiskey from a man named Henry Grammer. Grammer was the criminal kingpin of Osage County. He was the largest producer of illegal liquor, and his name was connected to all three of the murder cases that were being investigated by Tom White. A week after Henry Roan left home and never returned, his body was found in his car outside the town of Fairfax. He had been shot in the back of the head.
6:10 Speaker 01 There were no direct suspects in the murder, but Henry Grammer's name would remain in the mix, and it would gain extra attention in the very near future. But before that, Special Agent Tom White and his team made a discovery. They learned that William Hale held a life insurance policy on Henry Roan. The policy was for $25,000. Presumably, when Henry died, William Hale received the $25,000. That's the equivalent of $430,000 today. Henry Roan and William Hale were supposedly friends, but the policy gave Hale a powerful motive to kill Henry.
6:53 Speaker 01 Tom White's team learned that it took Hale quite a bit of work to put the policy in place. By the time of Henry's death, he had been a heavy drinker for a fair amount of time. When Henry learned that his wife had been having an affair with a white man named Roy Bunch, Henry's drinking became even worse. The affair was not a secret, and Roy Bunch was the logical first suspect in Henry's murder. Special Agent White and his team thoroughly investigated Roy Bunch and cleared him as a suspect. Then they focused on William Hale. There were multiple suspicious aspects of that life insurance policy. First, because of Henry's drinking, most insurance companies wouldn't offer a policy at all.
7:38 Speaker 01 Hale had to search long and hard to find an independent insurance salesman who would write the policy. When he did, he had to convince the salesman that it was okay for him, Hale, to hold a life insurance policy on a person he wasn't related to. Hale told the salesman that Henry owed him thousands of dollars, and the life insurance policy was Hale's way of collecting in the event of Henry's sudden and unexpected demise. Hale didn't offer any proof of the debt, and the salesman thought it was a little strange. But since everyone in Osage County was making money off the Osage one way or another, the salesman didn't press it. He just wrote the policy.
8:21 Speaker 01 The money the Osage earned from their oil rights could only be inherited. A person couldn't buy the rights from a member of the tribe. So, since Hale couldn't buy access to Henry's oil money, and Hale wasn't in Henry's will to inherit the money, the only way for Hale to benefit from Henry's death was the life insurance policy. The Osage murder cases were like a really complex jigsaw puzzle, but Special Agent Tom White was starting to put some of the pieces together. He knew that William Hale had directly benefited from Henry Roan's murder. White was confident that Hale's nephew, Brian Burkhardt, had been with Anna Brown all night on the night she died.
9:03 Speaker 01 Brian's brother Ernest had directly benefited from Anna's murder. Anna's money had passed to her sister Molly, who was Ernest's wife. William Hale had helped cover up Brian's association with Anna on the night she died, and helped mislead investigators for four years. And then Rita Smith, Molly and Anna's sister, was killed in an explosion. Someone put a bomb in Rita's house that killed Rita, her husband Bill, and their 19-year-old servant Nettie. If the brazen murder had gone according to plan, Rita's fortune would have passed to her sister Molly, and once again Ernest Burkhart, as Molly's husband, would have benefited.
9:46 Speaker 01 And by extension, William Hale and Ernest's brother Brian probably would have benefited as well. But Rita's husband Bill didn't die in the blast. He survived for four days, during which time he inherited Rita's money. So if the master plan was to kill Molly's sisters so that Molly would inherit their money, and then kill Molly so that Ernest would inherit the accumulated fortune, there was a problem. When Bill survived the bomb, Molly didn't inherit Rita's money. But right before Bill died of his severe injuries, two local doctors convinced him to sign some papers. They were James and David Schoen, and they were also connected to virtually all of the murder cases.
10:30 Speaker 01 They convinced Bill to give James Schoen control of Rita's money. Special Agent Tom White now had several pieces of the puzzle, but he needed to explore the bombing of Bill and Rita Smith to figure out how they all fit together.
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11:54 Speaker 01 Tom White and his team interviewed an outlaw named Dick Gregg. Gregg was a member of the notorious Al Spencer gang, a group of killers and thieves who terrorized Oklahoma. Gregg threw more suspicion at William Hale. Gregg said that Hale had organized a meeting in the summer of 1922, about nine months before the bombing. Hale wanted to pay Al Spencer and Dick Gregg to blow up Bill and Rita Smith. According to Gregg, he and Spencer said no. They were gangsters who would do anything to stay free, but they weren't going to blow up innocent people. It was an interesting story, but unfortunately, Tom White couldn't verify it. The only other person who was at the meeting,
12:39 Speaker 01 gang leader Al Spencer, was dead. He was shot and killed by a posse two years ago. As the suspicion of William Hale grew, Tom White's team looked closer at Hale's associates and his movements around the time of the bombing. They uncovered a tantalizing story. William Hale was on record as saying he was in Fort Worth, Texas at the time of the bombing. Now, White heard that Hale's alibi was none other than the criminal kingpin of Osage County, Henry Grammer.
13:14 Speaker 01 By 1925, Hale and Grammer had known each other for at least 15 years. They were photographed together back in 1909 at a steer roping contest. Before Grammer became the king of the bootleggers in Osage County, he was a world champion steer roper. And before Hale became a successful rancher who was called the king of the Osage Hills, he was an authentic Texas cowboy. So, according to the story, William Hale and Henry Grammer went down to Fort Worth together right before the bombing. And there was some circumstantial evidence to support the story. The night before the explosion, Rita's husband Bill and one of his friends drove out to Henry Grammer's ranch.
13:59 Speaker 01 The ranch was the headquarters of Grammer's illegal whiskey operation, and Bill and his buddy wanted to enjoy a couple jars. But Henry Grammer wasn't there. Bill Smith and his friends stayed for a little while and then returned to the town of Fairfax. Bill dropped his friend off, went home, and then he and his wife and their servant went to bed. A couple hours later, a little before 3:00 a.m., the bomb exploded and killed Rita and the servant instantly. That was March 10, 1923. Almost exactly three months later, on June 14, Henry Grammer died in a car crash. Initially, it looked like an accident, but then investigators discovered that someone
14:44 Speaker 01 had tampered with his car in a deliberate act of sabotage. Fifteen days later, one of Grammer's associates, Asa Kirby, died in an attempted robbery. He and some criminal buddies tried to rob a jewelry store in the middle of the night, but the owner was waiting for them. The owner blasted Kirby with a 12-gauge shotgun and killed him on the spot. Again, initially, the event didn't look suspicious, but when Tom White's team looked closer, there was more to it. The store owner knew that his store was going to be robbed that night because William Hale warned him. Hale was a reserve deputy sheriff, but he didn't warn the county sheriff or the town marshal.
15:28 Speaker 01 He only told the store owner. He said he had heard that some outlaws were going to rob the store that night, probably the same outlaws who were committing all the murders in Osage County. But how did a well-respected rancher like William Hale hear that a group of outlaws were going to rob a jewelry store on that specific night? With the suspicion that was now swirling around Hale, new theories could be discussed. What if Hale organized the robbery to kill Asa Kirby in a way that wouldn't look suspicious? If so, why would he want to kill Asa Kirby? One easy reason jumped out. What if Kirby planted the bomb in Bill and Rita's house? The dots could connect like this.
16:13 Speaker 01 Hale tried to hire outlaws Al Spencer and Dick Gregg to plant the bomb, but they said no. So Hale turned to the next group of outlaws, the one that was run by his old friend Henry Grammer. Hale probably paid Grammer, Grammer gave the assignment to Kirby, and Kirby planted the bomb. Then Grammer and Kirby had to die, so they couldn't implicate Hale. It lined up almost too well to be true, and that was the problem. Tom White didn't have evidence for any of it. But then, out of nowhere, he received a miracle. A man came forward with a story about Hale and the bombing. It led agents down a whole new path, but the path ended up leading them right back to the theory
16:58 Speaker 01 that they believed was the truth.
17:04 Speaker 01 In October of 1925, after about three months on the case, Tom White received a tip from the office of the governor of Oklahoma. Apparently, the governor's office had been receiving information about the bombing from a convict at McAllister State Prison. White and one of his team members hurried to the prison to meet the convict. The inmate was Bert Lawson. He was serving seven years for second-degree burglary, and he had a fascinating story to tell. Lawson said he had worked as a ranch hand for Bill Smith for three years, from 1918 to 1921. In 1921, Lawson said Bill Smith was having an affair with his wife.
17:47 Speaker 01 According to Lawson, the affair broke up his marriage and forced him to leave his job at Bill's ranch. Obviously, Lawson hated Bill Smith. Then, one year later, Lawson said Ernest Burkhart made a proposition. Ernest would pay Lawson to get revenge on Bill Smith. Ernest wanted Lawson to blow up Bill's house and kill Bill and his wife Rita. Lawson said no, and then he received a visit from William Hale.
18:21 Speaker 01 Hale offered Lawson five thousand dollars, that would be almost ninety thousand dollars today. Lawson still said no, and then Lawson put himself in a compromising position. He was arrested for murder. He was accused of killing a fisherman and taken to jail. William Hale was a reserve deputy sheriff, and he visited Lawson in jail. He pressured Lawson to go through with the bombing. He didn't offer to get the charges dropped, but he offered to help with the considerable legal expenses that Lawson now faced. Lawson agreed, and on March 9, 1923, Hale and Ernest showed up at the jail in the dead of night.
19:02 Speaker 01 A deputy sheriff unlocked the door to Lawson's cell, and Lawson walked out with Hale and Ernest. The two men drove Lawson to Bill Smith's house. They gave Lawson a wooden box that contained the components for a nitroglycerin bomb. Lawson snuck into the back of the house and crept down into the cellar. He sat and waited for everyone to go to sleep. Later that night, Bill Smith came home from his trip to Henry Grammer's ranch. He and Rita and Nettie turned out the lights and went to bed. Lawson waited a little while longer, then lit the fuse on the bomb. He hurried out of the house and ran a few blocks down the street. He heard and probably felt the explosion behind him.
19:48 Speaker 01 Hale and Ernest picked him up and drove him back to jail. The deputy sheriff returned Lawson to his cell as if nothing had happened. Special Agent Tom White and his team immediately started trying to verify Bert Lawson's story. If it was true, then it added an enticing new layer, and it didn't count out the other layers. Henry Grammer still could have been involved in the planning stages and providing an alibi for William Hale. And Grammer's associate Asa Kirby could have made the bomb, and then Lawson set it off. Whatever the combination, Grammer and Kirby were now dead, and White had to hurry so he didn't lose Lawson as well.
20:30 Speaker 01 White spent the next two months trying to corroborate Lawson's story. In December, he felt he couldn't wait any longer. If he was gonna make arrests based on Lawson's information, he had to do it now. There were still problems with Lawson's story, like the fact that he claimed William Hale was directly involved on the night of the bombing. That contradicted eyewitness accounts that placed Hale in Texas with Henry Grammer. But Tom White felt he had to act. On January 4th, 1926, he secured warrants for the arrest of William Hale and Ernest Burckhardt for the murders of Bill Smith, Rita Smith, and Nettie Brookshire.
21:11 Speaker 01 White and his agents partnered with US Marshals and local lawmen to arrest Ernest Burckhardt. They took him to jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma, about 60 miles from Fairfax and a few miles north of Oklahoma City. The lawmen then grew worried. They couldn't find William Hale. As connected as Hale was, he could easily have learned that he was a target of the investigation. He could have fled the county, the state, and the country if he had wanted to. But he didn't. After causing some panic, he casually walked into the sheriff's office and said he'd heard they were looking for him. The lawmen arrested William Hale, drove him to jail in Guthrie, and installed him in a cell near his nephew Ernest.
21:54 Speaker 01 Hale's easy demeanor said two things. If it came to a courtroom trial, he was confident he would win. And before that, he would be very hard to break during an interrogation. With that in mind, White and his agents went to work on Ernest Burckhardt.
22:17 Speaker 01 Molly Burckhardt probably never felt so alone. She was essentially trapped in her home. And yes, she had her three kids, but she had arguably lost more than anyone in the Osage Nation. Her mother and youngest sister died of a mysterious illness that could have been caused by poison. Her two other sisters were murdered, one by a bullet, the other by a bomb. And now, her husband had been arrested and thrown in jail as a suspect in one of those murders. As she stayed home in fear for her life, she may not have realized that her life might already be in danger. She had suffered from diabetes for years, and now she was receiving injections of a new drug called insulin that was supposed to help.
23:02 Speaker 01 Or at least, that's what the doctors said she was receiving. Those doctors were James and David Schoen, who now controlled her sister Rita's money. Molly wasn't getting better. Whatever the injections were, they either weren't helping, or they were making her worse. And soon she would start to hear unbelievable things about her husband Ernest. And in Molly's case, that was literal. She refused to believe. She couldn't believe. But there was a reckoning coming. In Guthrie, Tom White moved Ernest Burkhart into a meeting room in the federal building. White and another member of his team grilled Ernest for hours.
23:45 Speaker 01 They confronted Ernest with Bert Lawson's story, and Ernest stated flatly that Lawson was lying. The agents pressed Ernest deep into the night, but he didn't break. The agents were left to wonder if they had misjudged Ernest. Maybe he wasn't as weak as they thought. And maybe he wasn't cracking because he was innocent. Maybe Bert Lawson really was lying. Maybe the agents had pinned their hopes on a con man who was about to humiliate them. And if Lawson humiliated the agents, then he humiliated the Bureau. If he humiliated the Bureau, then he humiliated J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had already been humiliated once by an Oklahoma outlaw.
24:28 Speaker 01 Ironically, that's why this improved investigation was happening in the first place. Hoover was scared that the American public would learn that his Bureau tried to use an outlaw as an undercover operative to solve the Osage cases. It had backfired spectacularly. Federal agents pressured the governor of Oklahoma to release a bank robber named Blacky Thompson from prison.
24:53 Speaker 01 The agents supervised Blackie and sent him undercover into his old criminal circles. They hoped he would learn valuable information and report back. But the agents lost contact with Blackie, and he robbed a bank and killed a policeman. He was captured and sent back to prison, but Hoover was terrified that the scandal would become public. Hoover was one year into his dream job, and a scandal could ruin his career. He had been named Acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation back in May of 1924. In December, he was given the job outright and named Director of the Bureau. Hoover didn't care about the Osage murder cases, but he damn sure cared about being embarrassed by the Blackie Thompson scandal.
25:39 Speaker 01 So, in an effort to make up for the backfire with Blackie Thompson, Hoover assigned Tom White to the Osage cases. And White knew that Hoover would lose his mind if he found out what White was gonna do next. So, White went way out on a limb and didn't tell his boss about the desperate move he was about to make. The day after Ernest Burkhart stayed strong during his interrogation, William Hale announced that he could prove he was in Texas during the bombing. He had received a telegram and signed for it. The case that had been so promising just a couple days ago, now seemed on the verge of collapse. White had no idea how long it might take for Hale's lawyers to produce the telegram,
26:24 Speaker 01 so he had to act fast. White arranged for Blackie Thompson to be moved to Guthrie. White was gonna have to try to enlist the help of the last person he should trust, and the absolute last person Hoover would approve of.
26:43 Speaker 01 At first, Blackie was hostile and uncooperative, but then he slowly began to talk. He said he and his fellow outlaw Curly Johnson had been approached by William Hale to kill Bill and Rita Smith. It sounded like they had agreed to do it, but then Blackie was arrested for car theft and sent to jail, and they weren't able to follow through on the murders. If the story was true, then William Hale had approached every prominent criminal outfit in the area to kill Bill and Rita. And notably, Curly Johnson ended up dead a short time later. It was suspected that Hale fed him some poisoned whiskey. If Blackie hadn't been in prison so often, he'd probably be dead too.
27:27 Speaker 01 So, Blackie started talking. It was unlikely that Tom White could put Blackie on a witness stand in a courtroom trial, but maybe he could use Blackie in another way. White brought Ernest Burkhart into an interrogation room. Ernest stuck to his story and remained confident that he could get out of this if he just kept his mouth shut. Then Tom White walked Blackie Thompson into the room and sat him down across from Ernest. And that was the beginning of the end. Blackie announced that he had told the agents everything about the plan to kill Bill and Rita. Ernest was clearly rattled for the first time, but even so, he stayed strong.
28:12 Speaker 01 Eventually, the agents gave up in frustration, again. Around midnight, they sent Ernest back to his cell and they all went home to get some sleep. Later that night, a phone call jolted Tom White awake. One of his agents gave him the news that he desperately wanted to hear. Ernest Burkhart would talk. Tom hurried to the federal building, and Ernest signed a statement that said he was about to give a full and truthful confession. And then he started talking. He confirmed that William Hale organized the bombing and murder of Bill and Rita Smith. He confirmed the sequence of events that White had heard from other suspects.
28:52 Speaker 01 First, Hale tried to hire Blackie Thompson and Curly Johnson to plant the bomb. But then Blackie went to jail and Curly ended up dead. Next, Hale tried to hire gangsters Al Spencer and Dick Gregg, but they said no. Hale then turned to his friend, the bootlegging king of Osage County, Henry Grammer. Grammer agreed to help, and he instructed Asa Kirby to build the bomb and carry out the murders. Three months after the bombing, Grammer and Kirby died within two weeks of each other. But it doesn't sound like Ernest talked about their deaths. And then Ernest said Bert Lawson was lying. Lawson claimed Hale had basically forced him to do the bombing,
29:37 Speaker 01 but now ironically, Lawson's elaborate lie led Tom White to the truth. But Ernest wasn't done yet. White started asking about the other two murder cases. Ernest said that Hale had also worked with Henry Grammer to murder Henry Roan. Henry Roan had been found dead in his car, shot in the back of the head, almost exactly three years ago. Ernest said a man named John Ramsey was the shooter, and he was part of Grammer's gang, just like Asa Kirby. As far as anyone knew, John Ramsey was still alive. If so, the manhunt to catch him would begin immediately, before Ramsey ended up dead like Grammer and Kirby.
30:20 Speaker 01 And then Ernest moved on to talk about the murder of Anna Brown, his wife's sister. White knew that Ernest's brother Brian was lying about his movements on the night Anna died. Brian claimed he dropped her off at home, late in the afternoon, on May 21, 1921, and then didn't see her again. In reality, he met up with her later that evening, and they spent the whole night partying. Simple logic said that if Anna died that night, and Brian was with her all night, he had to be involved. But Ernest refused to say anything that would implicate his brother. He did, however, reveal the identity of the mysterious third man
31:03 Speaker 01 who was seen with Brian and Anna at one point in the night. The existence of a third man made sense, based on the evidence at the scene of Anna's murder. There were two sets of tire tracks, which meant Anna and Brian likely drove out to the isolated spot in one car, and the third man followed them in another. Ernest said the third man was a small-time bootlegger named Kelsey Morrison, and Morrison fired the bullet that killed Anna Brown. That revelation was a blow to Tom White. White had been using Morrison as an undercover informant to investigate the murders, and now it turned out that Morrison was one of the murderers.
31:45 Speaker 01 Agents would have to track him down quickly, just like John Ramsey. Ernest Burkhart's confession was a milestone, but Tom White and his team still had a mountain of work to do. They wanted to put William Hale, Ernest Burkhart, Brian Burkhart, John Ramsey, and Kelsey Morrison on trial for murder, but it would be nowhere near that easy. Special Agent Tom White thought he'd hit his lowest point a few months earlier when his investigation seemed stalled before the Burt Lawson miracle. But White would soon learn that his lowest point in the cases of the Osage murders was still to come. The courtroom trials would showcase corruption, and scandal, and shocking reversals.
32:29 Speaker 01 It looked like all his hard work might have been for nothing.
32:43 Speaker 01 Next time on Infamous America, the courtroom trials begin, and they quickly turn into spectacles and fiascos that made headline news from coast to coast. The prospect of justice for the Osage dangles by a very thin thread, and the final round of surprises plays out next week on the season finale of the Osage murders, here on Infamous America.
33:11 Speaker 01 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.
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