Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 493 - Jazz Hands All Around About this episode On today’s episode, Karen covers the Osage oil murders.
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Transcript 10,609 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Karen Kilgariff? This is exactly right.
0:06 Georgia Hardstark? Everyone loves the idea of spending an afternoon curled up with a good book.
0:10 Karen Kilgariff? Well, grow up because it's almost impossible.
0:12 Georgia Hardstark? Luckily, you can take your next great story with you on Audible.
0:15 Karen Kilgariff? Audible has a massive selection of titles to choose from, including This American Life, new books by Michael Connelly, along with classics from Magathah Christie, and so much more.
0:24 Georgia Hardstark? Whether you want a mystery, a true crime story, or something completely different, there's always something new to listen to.
0:29 Karen Kilgariff? New members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com/mfm.
0:34 Georgia Hardstark? Audible, stories that speak to you. Goodbye. The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Sonny's life is pretty great until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception, his mom.
0:50 Karen Kilgariff? Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nivola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.
0:58 Georgia Hardstark? Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.
1:00 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye.
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1:52 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
1:53 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
1:54 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder.
1:55 Karen Kilgariff? That's Georgia Hardstark.
1:56 Georgia Hardstark? That's Karen Kilgariff.
1:57 Karen Kilgariff? And we're about to podcast for you. Watch this.
2:00 Georgia Hardstark? This is like, we have to think of something to say after welcome every week. And we're doing it.
2:05 Karen Kilgariff? Every week for 10 years.
2:07 Georgia Hardstark? Almost 10 fucking years.
2:08 Karen Kilgariff? 10 years. Ten years.
2:10 Georgia Hardstark? Ten.
2:11 Karen Kilgariff? So here's what I came up with for Georgia for this week.
2:14 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
2:14 Karen Kilgariff? I started this sentence.
2:16 Georgia Hardstark? How did I say it? And we're gonna podcast at you? Oh, yo, oh, just now. Right before we started, you said, I'm going to, right?
2:23 Karen Kilgariff? I'm gonna get.
2:24 Georgia Hardstark? That's right. You said, I'm gonna get. And then you said, I'm gonna save it for the podcast.
2:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
2:28 Georgia Hardstark? In my wildest dreams, I can't imagine. I can't imagine.
2:32 Karen Kilgariff? Top three.
2:32 Georgia Hardstark? I'm going to get another tattoo. Is that what it was? Another fish tattoo. Another.
2:39 Karen Kilgariff? A second fish.
2:40 Georgia Hardstark? A second salmon tattoo.
2:41 Karen Kilgariff? But this one is five times the size of the first one.
2:44 Georgia Hardstark? I'm going to get ready to walk out of here.
2:49 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, storm out. The best storm out is when you warn people seven minutes in advance that you're gonna angrily stand up and walk.
2:56 Georgia Hardstark? And you're waiting until you're on, you're being recorded.
2:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, exactly. There's as many witnesses as possible.
3:01 Georgia Hardstark? What could the last one be? I'm going to get more dogs.
3:05 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I am.
3:05 Georgia Hardstark? Are you?
3:06 Karen Kilgariff? But I mean, that's not what it was.
3:07 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
3:07 Karen Kilgariff? And it's gonna be so disappointing.
3:09 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no, what is it?
3:10 Karen Kilgariff? When you play games like this, you can't help but set yourself up to be like, I'm going to have to get a bunch of Kleenex because my nose has started randomly all the sudden running.
3:20 Georgia Hardstark? What?
3:21 Karen Kilgariff? When I have no allergies, that's not the way I live my life.
3:23 Georgia Hardstark? You're sick.
3:24 Karen Kilgariff? No, all of a sudden, just it's menopause. Do you know? It's the single stream of just something coming out of your nose. You're like, what the hell?
3:33 Georgia Hardstark? Is that what it is?
3:34 Karen Kilgariff? And then you're dab, dab, dab.
3:35 Georgia Hardstark? Is that a thing too?
3:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
3:37 Georgia Hardstark? Can we just blame everything on menopause now? That would be really.
3:39 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I kind of do already, but.
3:41 Georgia Hardstark? Our nose is gonna start running?
3:43 Karen Kilgariff? It's the thing we used to talk about during the show. We were like, I have to have Kleenex because all of a sudden my nose will just run. And I'm like, okay. Okay. And then like some point this weekend, I was just sitting outside, literally like sipping a Diet Coke and it was like going like.
3:58 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
3:58 Karen Kilgariff? Onto my lip.
4:01 Karen Kilgariff? I was not ready.
4:02 Georgia Hardstark? Well, welcome to the fucking tissue world.
4:04 Karen Kilgariff? Tissue club.
4:05 Georgia Hardstark? It sucks. It's annoying. Although my allergies are much better. I've been taking these drops. You can get like allergy drops made. They test you and then they like give you these drops. Fascinating stuff for a true crime podcast.
4:15 Karen Kilgariff? Ah, what the people, they want to hear about compounding pharmacies on this podcast.
4:20 Georgia Hardstark? What they want to tune into. I always think of in the beginning of these when we're talking stupid shit like this of the girl who's playing it for her sister or her mom being like, just wait, they get, it gets better.
4:27 Karen Kilgariff? It's not always like this.
4:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, let me fast forward. Let me, let me fast forward.
4:30 Karen Kilgariff? Are you telling me that people aren't gripped by my story of I'm about to get, dot, dot, dot?
4:35 Georgia Hardstark? And my guesses that mean nothing to nobody?
4:38 Karen Kilgariff? None of this means anything to anybody.
4:40 Georgia Hardstark? Anything to anyone and that's what we're here for.
4:42 Karen Kilgariff? And that's the lesson of 10 years of podcasting.
4:44 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
4:45 Karen Kilgariff? Hi.
4:46 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna be in Ireland when this gets posted, when this gets.
4:50 Karen Kilgariff? What part?
4:51 Georgia Hardstark? Dublin.
4:51 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yeah.
4:52 Georgia Hardstark? And then we're going to Edinburgh, which I'm a little nervous about because the Fringe Fest is going on and it looks like every street performer is just up in your face the whole time.
5:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, but it's Ireland, so they're more low key. The Irish up in your face is.
5:07 Georgia Hardstark? No, they're not. They're Scottish.
5:09 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, that's right. Oh, sorry. I was thinking about when I went to the Galway. You're talking Fringe Fest. I was thinking of the Galway Arts Festival.
5:16 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, okay. No, that sounds great.
5:17 Karen Kilgariff? Your vacation is my vacation. This world.
5:20 Georgia Hardstark? I'm going to the same.
5:21 Karen Kilgariff? My world.
5:22 Georgia Hardstark? Places.
5:23 Karen Kilgariff? Edinburgh is one of the greatest cities there is.
5:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I'm really excited.
5:28 Karen Kilgariff? Have you been before?
5:29 Georgia Hardstark? I went as a broke 25 year old with my friends who were doing a festival tour all over Europe. And so I just like bummed along with them.
5:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
5:37 Georgia Hardstark? So I didn't have any money for anything. We were there for like 24 hours. So now I'm going back all fresh. We're gonna see Oasis on Vince's 50th birthday. So excited. This is, this is it.
5:50 Karen Kilgariff? Are you gonna spare your beer cup full of pee? Remember that moment?
5:53 Georgia Hardstark? No, they always, oh my God. Fear, that's the thing. Thank God that doesn't happen at my favorite murder live shows.
6:00 Karen Kilgariff? Well, you don't, I mean, not anything's possible.
6:04 Karen Kilgariff? Well, that's a great 50th birthday.
6:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:06 Karen Kilgariff? That'll be very fun.
6:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:07 Karen Kilgariff? But then there's all the witchy things that you can do in Edinburgh.
6:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, like castle-y things and witchy things. Okay.
6:12 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
6:12 Georgia Hardstark? I'm doing it all.
6:13 Karen Kilgariff? Lot of tours and, I mean, there's just the oldest of cultures.
6:16 Georgia Hardstark? I feel like I have to say that someone's gonna be living at my house while we're gone, so no one breaks in.
6:21 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
6:21 Georgia Hardstark? Is that what?
6:22 Karen Kilgariff? Marty's on duty.
6:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, that's what 10 years of this podcast will do to you, is you get so paranoid that you have to, you know, do that. People should know, though, I have pets, so clearly someone's gonna be staying there.
6:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
6:34 Georgia Hardstark? Like, it goes without saying.
6:35 Karen Kilgariff? Mimi is going to be watching the house.
6:37 Georgia Hardstark? For Mimi.
6:38 Karen Kilgariff? And angrily watching the house.
6:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, she is. She'll scratch her fucking eyes out.
6:41 Karen Kilgariff? Be careful of Mimi. All right, anything else exciting going on? I mean, that's a great, exciting trip to take.
6:48 Georgia Hardstark? No, I mean, we're just planning for our live shows. It feels like it's coming up so fast.
6:52 Karen Kilgariff? It is coming up fast.
6:53 Georgia Hardstark? Go to myfavoritemurder.com/live to get tickets, please.
6:57 Karen Kilgariff? That's right, and we do want to thank everybody for all of your excitement. We announced, and you showed up, and you've bought tickets, and we were scared that maybe you wouldn't, and you really did.
7:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
7:06 Karen Kilgariff? So, thank you so much. There are a couple tickets left, though. Pasadena, San Diego, Salt Lake City, I think those cities still have a couple, so go to myfavoritemurder.com/live and get what is now available at the airing of this podcast.
7:20 Georgia Hardstark? I'm picking out so many dresses, you guys are gonna... I'm picking out dresses that I looked at, and I'm like, Karen's dad would say, "What the hell is she wearing?" I don't know why, like, that's my goal, is for your dad to, "What in the hell is she wearing?"
7:33 Karen Kilgariff? Jesus.
7:33 Georgia Hardstark? That's from the 1960s. Why would she wear that?
7:36 Karen Kilgariff? You're a Kathleen at a dress like that. Yes, that's a great idea.
7:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
7:40 Karen Kilgariff? I'm always dressing for the opposite, whereas like, I don't want to hear it.
7:43 Georgia Hardstark? Don't comment on my clothes.
7:44 Karen Kilgariff? Don't want to hear it. But I have to say, I was doing some shopping this weekend. It's so great to have an excuse like that, where it's like, I have to go to the mall.
7:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
7:52 Karen Kilgariff? And I did try something on that I loved, and it didn't have pockets, and I was like, this just doesn't even make sense anymore for women of today.
8:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
8:00 Karen Kilgariff? You better put pockets in your dresses.
8:02 Georgia Hardstark? I bought a pair of pajama shorts recently, and they didn't have pockets.
8:05 Karen Kilgariff? Come on.
8:05 Georgia Hardstark? Like, where I, um...
8:07 Karen Kilgariff? Where am I gonna put that little Apple remote?
8:09 Georgia Hardstark? I'm not gonna be in bed the whole time. I'm gonna be walking around.
8:11 Karen Kilgariff? Walking around with the Apple remote in your pocket.
8:13 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
8:13 Karen Kilgariff? So you can wash it.
8:14 Georgia Hardstark? And they go, "Where did I put that? Shit."
8:15 Karen Kilgariff? It's gone forever.
8:17 Georgia Hardstark? Where'd I put my headphones?
8:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. Yeah, so we're preparing to. Are you prepared for this tour?
8:22 Georgia Hardstark? Prepared. Please come and don't throw your pee.
8:25 Karen Kilgariff? Please don't pull an Oasis audience on us. Oh, that was legendary. Um, well, we'll go into highlights. Let's do it. Would you like to live deliciously? Well, now you can with ad-free episodes of My Favorite Murder. You get that and so much more when you join our fan cult. You can also get exclusive audio video content. You get merch discounts. You get access to the private Discord page where all the other fan cult members are chatting it up. Get in there.
8:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they're talking about meeting up before the shows, live shows. So get in there if you're going alone and you want to like have a drink with some murderinos beforehand.
9:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
9:00 Georgia Hardstark? Boom, get in the Discord.
9:01 Karen Kilgariff? So if you want to be in the fan cult and you haven't joined yet, head to fancult.supercast.com and join it now.
9:08 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you for doing that.
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10:13 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care.
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10:37 Georgia Hardstark? They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.
10:43 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact on their care from working with an advocate.
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11:00 Karen Kilgariff? Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.
11:03 Georgia Hardstark? It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.
11:06 Karen Kilgariff? That's S-O-L-A-C-E health.com/murder.
11:09 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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11:36 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
11:38 Karen Kilgariff? You know a favorite M-word?
11:39 Georgia Hardstark? Magnesium. Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.
11:43 Karen Kilgariff? Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt, it's designed to help you relax and get in the right state of mind for a good night's rest.
11:53 Georgia Hardstark? If you need a reset after a crazy day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to get a boost of topical magnesium that can help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.
12:04 Karen Kilgariff? Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula.
12:08 Georgia Hardstark? Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.
12:12 Karen Kilgariff? I was kind of blown away the first time I used this spray because I do have problems sleeping. And when there's something this simple, you just spray it on your feet and suddenly you're asleep and the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? Like, it actually is that easy.
12:27 Georgia Hardstark? And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?
12:30 Karen Kilgariff? How dare you call my feet stinky?
12:33 Georgia Hardstark? For wellness, you can feel find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.
12:38 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
12:41 Georgia Hardstark? All right, well, this is a solo episode because
12:43 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
12:44 Georgia Hardstark? it's summer, it's vacation, the live shows are coming up. So you tell me a story.
12:50 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. It's my chance to shine. Now, there was a very famous movie very recently about these murders that I'm going to tell you about. We begin today in Osage County, Oklahoma, home to the Osage Nation.
13:05 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
13:06 Karen Kilgariff? This wasn't always the Osage Nation's home in the 1870s. After having already been pushed out of their ancestral lands in what are now Missouri and Arkansas, the Osage are then forced to relocate from Kansas to eastern Oklahoma on land that white authorities have deemed worthless for farming.
13:25 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
13:26 Karen Kilgariff? But decades later, underneath that same worthless land, oil deposits are discovered. So when the Osage realize that they're sitting on a gold mine, they meet with the federal government and shrewdly negotiate to maintain their reservations mineral rights, flipping a very racist power dynamic on its head. So in 1923 alone, those oil royalties brought in around $30 million for the Osage Nation.
13:52 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
13:53 Karen Kilgariff? Do you want to guess what that would be in today's money?
13:55 Georgia Hardstark? 175.
13:56 Karen Kilgariff? $480 million.
13:58 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
13:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. And that's in one year.
14:01 Georgia Hardstark? The person who did the accounting, the fucking white man who did the accounting, I was like, just send them there.
14:05 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
14:06 Georgia Hardstark? Fired.
14:06 Karen Kilgariff? Well, because, yeah, exactly. They're like, this is not our colonial plan where we're trying to oppress these people.
14:13 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
14:14 Karen Kilgariff? So how the Osage decide to handle it is they pool that money and then they divide it equally among the 2,229 people listed on the official Osage tribal roll.
14:26 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
14:26 Karen Kilgariff? Everybody gets a cut.
14:27 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
14:28 Karen Kilgariff? And there's more than enough to go around.
14:29 Georgia Hardstark? That is fair.
14:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. And so each person's share become known as their head rights. And we'll refer to head rights kind of for the rest of the story.
14:39 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
14:39 Karen Kilgariff? So by the 1910s and into the 20s, the Osage were said to be the wealthiest people per capita in the entire world.
14:47 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God. Like, that's amazing.
14:49 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. But of course, with that money came an increase in tribal member deaths. Between 1907 and 1923, it's estimated that members of the Osage Nation died at about one and a half the national rate.
15:03 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
15:04 Karen Kilgariff? And many of these deaths were suspicious. But as grieving families fought for accountability and justice, they were often dismissed by the white authorities. No shock there. Writer Dennis McCullough Jr. is an Osage tribal member who learned that his own grandmother's 1920s murder was covered up as well.
15:22 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
15:23 Karen Kilgariff? And he writes, quote, "Deliberate poisonings were chalked up to drinking bad liquor. Shootings got labeled as suicides. Autopsies were often skipped, burials rushed, and death certificates falsified."
15:35 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
15:36 Karen Kilgariff? So then in the early 20s, in Osage County, driven by the persistence of the Osage people, one of the FBI's very first major homicide cases is going to be investigated. And decades later, it will serve as the subject of David Grant's bestselling book, Killers of the Flower Moon, which was then adapted into Martin Scorsese's 2023 Oscar-winning film. This is the story of the Osage oil murders.
16:00 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, this is an epic.
16:01 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
16:02 Georgia Hardstark? This is, yeah, good job.
16:03 Karen Kilgariff? Because when we're doing solos, we still want to give the people what they want.
16:07 Georgia Hardstark? I definitely, yeah, you want a little bit of a, like, a showstopper.
16:11 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
16:11 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
16:12 Karen Kilgariff? Jazz hands all around of talking about what is essentially, it typifies a true crime story in the most government-signed-on, worst-way, horrifying way possible.
16:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, like, oh, people say that this, the government's not after you. And it's like, well, here's a story where they literally are after you.
16:31 Karen Kilgariff? Entirely kind of like, you say government, say, you know, your town, whatever it is, where it's so much worse than you can even begin to imagine. So we begin today with the Osage family that play key figures in this FBI investigation and whose experiences serve as the backbone for the book Killers of the Flower Moon. The patriarch of this household is Nakai Se Y, who prefers his Osage name, but many people call him Jimmy. Again, colonialism.
17:04 Karen Kilgariff? So he passes away before much of our story takes place and his widow is named Lizzie Q. And they have four daughters together that are born in the 1880s and early 1890s. The oldest daughter is Anna, then there's Molly, followed by Minnie and Rita. And we spend most of our time in this story with Molly, who in Scorsese's movie is played by Lily Gladstone. Yes, amazingly. And she earned lots of awards for that portrayal and she became the first Native American woman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Wow. And she won the Golden Globe for the same category. Amazing. Lots of firsts and groundbreaking, kind of glass ceiling breaking took place during that.
17:49 Karen Kilgariff? Which is amazing and also just the fact that getting this story to the general public. Yeah. Is the kind of history that we all need to learn. So Molly's family experiences this huge transformation of Osage County firsthand. They lived in the abject poverty after being pushed out of Kansas and forced by the government to assimilate into mainstream American culture, which meant that they had to either abandon or hide their Osage identities, customs, traditions, or else food and funds would be withheld. Jesus. Then, when Molly's around 10 and her sisters, being close in age to her, are also close to that age, that's when the oils discovered. Suddenly, Osage families go from barely scraping by to moving into large homes that are often staffed with white domestic servants.
18:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. I mean. God, what a fucking moment. What a moment. This should be a TV show. That should be a TV show. Like the upstairs downstairs kind of style thing? Absolutely. Is it a comedy? I think it could be. Okay. I think the people who made Reservation Dogs. Oh, yeah. Could easily give us a kind of a retro. Yeah. Let's capture this for the moment that it is. Yeah. All right, there's your pitch. Not for me to say, though. Not for me to pitch, but, okay. So there's nothing that a member of the Osage Nation who is getting a cut of this oil money can't buy, including couture from Paris, expensive cars and chauffeurs to drive them. Oh, my God. Anything that basically you could dream of.
19:17 Karen Kilgariff? One New York newspaper reports that, quote, "Lo and behold, the Indian, instead of starving to death, enjoys a steady income that turns bankers green with envy." Jesus. Yeah. End quote. So this materializes as an influx of white settlers into Osage County. In the 1910s and 20s, their numbers swell and many of these transplants are bad news. An FBI report will later note that, quote, "The rich oiled fields produce not only an abundance of oil, but also grift, easy money, gambling, whiskey, and parasites bent on milking the Osage out of all he owned."
19:54 Georgia Hardstark? Hmm.
19:55 Karen Kilgariff? So that's pretty typical.
19:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
19:58 Karen Kilgariff? But these schemes used by white settlers are endless. Some open businesses that sell goods or services to Osage customers at extremely inflated prices. There's also a rash of robberies and con men in the area. And then there are also these so-called guardians who are mandated by the federal government. So guardians are basically white people who monitor Osage men and women's bank accounts because the government has deemed them, quote, "incompetent" when it comes to handling their oil wealth.
20:27 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. So it's in the bank and they still have to have someone keep an eye on it?
20:31 Karen Kilgariff? A white man.
20:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, they force someone to.
20:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
20:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
20:35 Karen Kilgariff? To keep tabs. It's not only overtly racist. These so-called guardians aren't trained accountants. Many of them are just local white businessmen, but they oversee every aspect of their ward's spending, approving or denying whatever expenditures they see fit.
20:51 Georgia Hardstark? What?
20:52 Karen Kilgariff? It's so infuriating.
20:53 Georgia Hardstark? So I bet they like can't just take all their money out and leave. You know what I mean? You're thinking like, go move to New York City. It's like, they don't have access to that money, even though it's theirs.
21:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
21:02 Georgia Hardstark? I'm sure.
21:03 Karen Kilgariff? Their spending is controlled in a way that serves the white infrastructure. And unsurprisingly, many of these guardians abuse this power and steal directly from Osage accounts. Another type of grifter are the white settlers, typically single men, who swoop into Osage County looking to marry into oil headrights.
21:22 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
21:23 Karen Kilgariff? By law, headrights can only be passed along through an inheritance or marriage. They cannot be sold or given away. So joining an Osage household is a direct way for white men to access the oil money, as they often wind up serving as the guardian for their Osage wives.
21:38 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
21:39 Karen Kilgariff? So love, it's like, everything is a scam.
21:42 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
21:43 Karen Kilgariff? Everything. So by the late 1910s, Molly and her sisters, Anna, Minnie and Rita, are in their late 20s to early 30s. Like every Osage person, they know that white people are here to swindle and con them.
21:55 Georgia Hardstark? Sure.
21:55 Karen Kilgariff? So trust is not something that comes easily. But at the same time, there's only around 2,000 people on the official tribal roll. And so the number of young eligible Osagemen and women is a small pool.
22:07 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
22:08 Karen Kilgariff? Because of that, many of them do wind up marrying white settlers in the face of the very real possibility that their partners have ulterior motives.
22:17 Georgia Hardstark? God.
22:18 Karen Kilgariff? Nasty. Just like the worst feeling.
22:22 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely.
22:22 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, oh, I'm gonna hold out and wait for the biggest sociopath who is the most convincing to basically be like, no, no, no, but I really love you.
22:31 Georgia Hardstark? But this time it's real, even though, look around. Oh, my God, how terrifying.
22:35 Karen Kilgariff? Horrible. So in 1917, when Molly's around 30 years old, she meets a World War I vet named Ernest Burkhart. He is in his mid-20s and he's new to town. So at first Molly's not so sure about Ernest. He's a good-looking guy. In the movie, he's played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
22:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, he is.
22:53 Karen Kilgariff? And he's often described as simple and passive, which probably makes him feel safe to Molly.
22:58 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
22:59 Karen Kilgariff? Right? He's not a scheming and like, smooth talker.
23:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah.
23:03 Karen Kilgariff? Also, given the power he would have over their household, it seems to be a green flag that Ernest doesn't seem particularly shrewd or ambitious. It also doesn't hurt that Ernest is the nephew and sort of adoptive son of one of the most powerful men in Osage County, a man named William King Hale. So Hale is in his 40s and he's a white cowboy from Texas who's got a rags-to-riches story that mirrors the Osages' own rise to wealth. He started out leasing grazing land from the Osage tribe and slowly acquired more acres and more cattle, and then a bank, and then a general store, and ultimately, he became one of the county's wealthiest ranchers. It's unclear, though, if he came by all of that money, honestly, every time in every deal.
23:48 Karen Kilgariff? Dennis McCall of Jr. reports that, quote, "A portion of his fortune allegedly came from insuring his pasture for a dollar an acre and having his cowboys torch 30,000 acres in one night."
24:00 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
24:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. But in the area, in the county, Hale has a great reputation. He's seen as easygoing and generous, the kind of guy who donates to schools, gives money to build hospitals, and positions himself as the, quote, "best friend of the Osage." So like, a lot of scheming going on in town. Yes. A lot of high level. Yeah. It's kind of that thing where people get scammed and then they're so embarrassed, or like, how could I fall for it? Yeah. Because the person who was scamming you was dedicated their life to scamming you. Totally. That's what they do. Right. So you're just, like, you're having this, like, oh, my god, we won the lottery. Yeah. Except for it turns everyone into an enemy. Right. So Molly and her family know William Hale very well, so when Ernest begins to pursue
24:45 Karen Kilgariff? Molly, there's some, just kind of, pre-established trust. She figures that Ernest must like her for her and not her money, because he doesn't need the money. William Hale will always take care of him, presumably. Okay. So Molly eventually marries Ernest, and they do seem like a loving couple. She has diabetes, which can be fatal at that time. Right. So she depends on Ernest to care for her. And even though Molly speaks English fluently, Ernest learns to speak the Osage language so that the two can communicate in her native language. Okay. An act of love. Yeah. Some might say. One would think. One would like to assume. Right. We've all had moments where dealing with healthcare or insurance feels completely overwhelming.
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26:34 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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27:01 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
27:02 Karen Kilgariff? You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.
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27:37 Karen Kilgariff? I was kind of blown away the first time I used this spray because I do have problems sleeping and when there's something this simple, you just sprayed on your feet and suddenly you're asleep and the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? Like, it actually is that easy.
27:52 Georgia Hardstark? And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?
27:55 Karen Kilgariff? How dare you call my feet stinky?
27:58 Georgia Hardstark? For wellness, you can feel Find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.
28:03 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
28:04 Georgia Hardstark? The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+
28:09 Karen Kilgariff? Sonny's life is pretty great, until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his with one exception, his mom.
28:16 Georgia Hardstark? To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is
28:22 Karen Kilgariff? As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.
28:29 Georgia Hardstark? Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?
28:33 Karen Kilgariff? Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.
28:40 Georgia Hardstark? Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.
28:43 Karen Kilgariff? Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
28:47 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
28:50 Karen Kilgariff? About a year later, in 1918, Minnie, who's Molly's second youngest sister, suddenly dies. She was only in her late twenties. She'd always been very healthy. The doctors, the white doctors chalk it up to, quote, "a wasting illness," and that's that. They never look further into it.
29:06 Georgia Hardstark? A wasting illness.
29:06 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm. Just a few months later, Minnie's widower, who's a white man named Bill Smith, marries the younger sister Rita, who's the youngest daughter in Molly's family. It sounds weird, but it's actually an antiquated custom that many cultures around the world practice, which is kind of like if someone dies, you marry back into the family through another sibling.
29:28 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
29:28 Karen Kilgariff? So Minnie's head rights are now split between their mother, Lizzie, and Minnie's widower, Bill, and now Bill also has claim to Rita's head rights. Three years later, it's 1921. Molly and Ernest now have two small children, and Molly's mother, Lizzie, has moved into their house. But Molly's oldest sister, Anna, is struggling. She's recently divorced a white settler named Oda Brown, and her sisters have noticed that she's been drinking a lot lately. And then in May of that year, Anna goes to visit Molly and Ernest, and she gets a ride home from Ernest's brother, Brian, who she's actually gone on a few dates with. After that, Anna vanishes. Her family members don't hear from her for several days,
30:12 Karen Kilgariff? which is extremely out of character for her. A week later, squirrel hunters find the body of 36-year-old Anna dumped in an Osage County ravine.
30:22 Georgia Hardstark? God.
30:23 Karen Kilgariff? She's been shot twice in the head. And even though there are no exit wounds, the white doctors who perform her autopsy can't seem to find the bullets in her skull.
30:33 Georgia Hardstark? God, like her last moments realizing that. It was all a scam. She they've been betrayed. Her sister's husband. Like who's about to go back to her is fucking.
30:44 Karen Kilgariff? It's her sister's husband's brother. Is one away, but still.
30:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:48 Karen Kilgariff? You're totally right where it's like all of a sudden it all is a plot.
30:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:53 Karen Kilgariff? Like this is the confirmation. She can't tell anybody.
30:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:55 Karen Kilgariff? Horrifying. So those bullets could be critical evidence, but of course they just simply quote unquote, can't find them. On the same day that Anna's body is found, a second body is found under some brush near the town of Pawhuska, which is also in Osage County. The victim here is male, but like Anna, he is Osage. He's wealthy. He's in his 30s and he's been shot twice in the head. There's a letter addressed to a Charles Whitehorn in his pocket, and that's how authorities identify him. So these two murders send shockwaves through the Osage Nation. And the expectation, of course, is that both deaths will be properly investigated and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.
31:40 Karen Kilgariff? But despite a few people being brought in for questioning, including Anna's ex-husband and Ernest's brother, Brian, the man who drove Anna home the night she went missing, no one is charged in either case and police don't even determine whether or not the murders are connected.
31:55 Georgia Hardstark? Two bullets each.
31:56 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
31:57 Georgia Hardstark? And maybe they're not connected.
31:58 Karen Kilgariff? Exactly. M O.
31:59 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
31:59 Karen Kilgariff? Same day. Yeah. In July of 1921, about two months after those bodies are found, the inquiry into Anna's death is officially closed with the determination that she was murdered, quote, "at the hands of parties unknown."
32:12 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
32:13 Karen Kilgariff? That's just as far as it's going to go.
32:14 Georgia Hardstark? Close the case.
32:15 Karen Kilgariff? Cold case closed. This is the same verdict reached in the Charles Whitehorn investigation. So with the white authorities failing to take real action, the victim's loved ones are forced to investigate themselves. So that is the advantage of this oil boon.
32:29 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
32:30 Karen Kilgariff? Is that now instead of being put in this place of like having to beg people.
32:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:34 Karen Kilgariff? They can hire private investigators. So that's what they do. Both families hire private investigators and they soon uncover a bombshell. It turns out that Anna was pregnant at the time of her murder.
32:46 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, shit.
32:46 Karen Kilgariff? No one knows who the father might be. So now the families post rewards for any information that could help solve the cases, with Molly's family offering $2,000, which is $35,000 in today's money. Wow. Yeah. They also enlist William Hale's help, who talks to his buddies down at the police station and at the DA's office. That's the head guy, guy around town. Yeah, so he is like- So he's like, "I'm gonna help." He just is like, "I'm friendly." "I'm friends to the Osage people." He's also basically saying, "I'm gonna pull some strings," being the uncle, the kind of, or Zat's uncle of Ernest. Yeah. Around the same time, Molly's mother, Lizzie, gets very sick and dies. Lizzie did have some underlying medical issues, and some people wonder if the grief
33:30 Karen Kilgariff? of losing two daughters within just a couple of years was just too much for her to handle. But Molly, Rita, and Rita's husband, Bill, share a nagging suspicion that there is more to that story. But no doctors are interested in investigating Lizzie's cause of death any further. Right. So meanwhile, Lizzie owns several valuable headrights. She has her own, she has her late husband's, and then she has the partial ones she inherited back from both Minnie and Anna. So now, following her death, these headrights will be divided between two households, Molly and Ernest's, and Rita and Bill's. Okay. This is a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Molly and Rita have now lost two sisters and their mother, all in close succession, and they are deeply in grief.
34:14 Karen Kilgariff? But Rita's husband, Bill, is becoming very vocal about his belief that their family is systematically being murdered. Oh my god, how scary. Yeah. He even takes it upon himself to investigate the murders alongside the private investigators they've hired. But he always stops short of accusing anyone by name. Yeah. Because he's not an idiot. They are surrounded. Right. Meanwhile, across the county, more members of the Osage Nation are dying under strange circumstances. In 1922, a 29-year-old champion steer-roper named William Steppson picks up the phone at his home in the Osage County town of Fairfax, where he lives with his wife and two children, and he receives some sort of message that then prompts him to leave the house immediately.
34:56 Karen Kilgariff? When he comes back later that night, he is very, very sick. He dies within hours of making it back home.
35:03 Georgia Hardstark? So someone called and were like, you gotta get over here and then something nefarious happened?
35:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:08 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
35:09 Karen Kilgariff? And he makes it back home, just basically to die at home.
35:12 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
35:12 Karen Kilgariff? Many Osage immediately suspect William was poisoned that night, but beyond hiring private investigators and posting rewards, there are very few avenues to meaningfully investigate as local police just refuse to acknowledge the possibility that it was a murder. A few months later, an Osage man in his 30s named Joe Bates starts, quote, frothing at the mouth after drinking whiskey he'd purchased from a stranger. He collapses and dies not long after, leaving behind a wife and six kids. The Osage Nation suspects yet another poisoning, but again, local officials decide not to investigate. So now the Osage Nation have a completely lost faith in the local white-run institutions. And they basically feel forced to take matters into their own hands.
35:57 Karen Kilgariff? So about a month after Joe Bates's murder, tribal leaders enlist a white 55-year-old oil man named Barney McBride, whom the Osage trust and consider to be an ally, to head up to Washington DC and lobby the federal government to send investigators to Osage County. But shortly after arriving in DC, Barney is ambushed, stabbed to death-
36:18 Georgia Hardstark? What?
36:19 Karen Kilgariff? And dumped in an alleyway.
36:20 Georgia Hardstark? Holy sh- okay, that now you're like, are we, we're not being paranoid?
36:24 Karen Kilgariff? No one's being paranoid. They weren't being paranoid the first time and now it's just like confirmation after confirmation.
36:30 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, how terrifying.
36:32 Karen Kilgariff? And the suspicious deaths continue. In January of 1923, the body of 40-year-old Henry Rowan, who is Molly and Rita's cousin, is found north of Fairfax in his car, slumped over the steering wheel, having been shot in the back of the head. This is another clear homicide and the police do not meaningfully investigate it.
36:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yikes.
36:53 Karen Kilgariff? Months later, in June of 1923, an Osage man in his 40s named George Bigheart becomes very sick. He suspects he's been poisoned. And from his deathbed, he asks to see a 54-year-old white lawyer named WW Vaughn, who, like Barney McBride, is widely seen as a true Osage ally. And he shares with him what he claims is key information about the murders, along with a stack of incriminating documents.
37:19 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
37:21 Karen Kilgariff? After George dies, W.W. Vaughn calls his wife, who has just given birth to their 10th child. Oh, my God. To tell her where he stashed some money in case anything happens to him. Because he knows. He then contacts the sheriff. He's saying he's on the way with evidence. Once he leaves that hospital, he vanishes. Yeah, that's gotta be scary. That's gotta be the scariest. Yeah. To be that guy. Yeah, but he did it anyway. He sure did. You know what I mean? Like, he fucking did it anyway. He truly was acting on the Osages' behalf, clearly. Yeah. A few days later, W.W. Vaughn's dead body is found near some railroad tracks, having clearly been thrown from a moving train. Jesus. Neither his nor George Bigheart's killers
38:05 Karen Kilgariff? are ever found, nor are the documents that George gave Vaughn at the hospital. Just gone. Yeah. Now, it's spring of 1923, and the violence and lack of accountability are so extreme that many Osage believe that white officials, the cops, doctors, politicians, all of them, aren't just covering up their white friends' murders. They're actively participating in what is like a conspiracy to ostensibly steal their victims' fortunes. Yeah. There's a sense that any Osage person might be next. Wow. This fear is so intense that Rita and Bill move from the countryside into a more populated Fairfax neighborhood, hoping that being around other people will help keep them safer. It's like a systematic execution of this whole. Of the whole family.
38:49 Karen Kilgariff? Community and family. Molly and Ernest, who have just welcomed the third daughter named Anna, named after her aunt, they live just down the street. So, one night in March of 1923, Molly and Ernest wake up to the sound of a massive bang. Molly jumps out of bed, runs to the window, and sees a huge, orange fireball rising above her sister's house. Rita and Bill's home has just been bombed. The property is reduced to rubble. Oh, my God. Rita and the family's teenage maid, a woman named Nettie Brookshire, die instantly. Bill lives through the explosion. He hangs on for several days and then succumbs to his injuries. Holy shit. His doctors inject him with so much morphine
39:32 Karen Kilgariff? that he isn't able to say much before he dies, aside from this quote. Okay. "They got Rita, and now it looks like they've got me." Damn. End quote. So, aside from Ernest and their children, Molly is now the only member of her immediate family that's left alive. Oh, my God. This means all of their assets and head rights, her father's, her mother's, and her three sisters are transferred to her in earnest. Oh shit. Yeah. So now, meanwhile, up in Washington DC, a 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover, who Leonardo DiCaprio has also played in a film, Oh yeah. has just been made the acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, which is the early incarnation of the FBI.
40:15 Karen Kilgariff? And even though homicides aren't really the Bureau's purview at the time, they're more known for tackling white collar crimes. They have technically been working on the Osage case for a couple of years, even though it is a complete mess. So in 1925, Hoover sends a respected lawman named Thomas B. White to take over the Oklahoma field office and to shake up this investigation. Agent White is a six-foot-tall Texan in his 40s with a no-nonsense, incorruptible reputation. He has a sterling background as a Texas Ranger and as a special agent for railroad companies. We've actually talked about this man before in episode 410, which was entitled "The Bossy One", because he will eventually become a prison warden
40:59 Karen Kilgariff? that gets taken hostage during the Leavenworth prison break of 1931. That's right. I remember that. Wow. Yeah. So that same guy. So Agent White, this is younger years, he assembles a team of agents, including undercover operatives, to go into Osage County. But right away, they hit a wall of silence because people are very afraid to share what they do know or even what they suspect. Yeah, everyone could be the enemy. Yes. Because if you aren't acting with the enemy, then you'll just get killed too. Totally. So as Agent White interviews people and digs around in the case files, he's finding signs of a clear conspiracy, which corroborate what the Osage have been suspecting all along. Important pieces of evidence go missing. Autopsies are hastily prepared.
41:43 Karen Kilgariff? Witness statements are never followed up on. Alibis go unchecked. And one of the people that Agent White really wants to speak to about this is Molly Burkhardt. But when he first meets her, he is stunned by how sick she is. Ernest explains that Molly suffers from diabetes and that she's recently started taking insulin, which is hard to come by and considered experimental at the time. But instead of improving, Molly seems to be getting worse because of this insulin. Agent White suspects that Molly is being poisoned by someone. Yeah. He can't do much with this suspicion until he pulls some evidence together. But fortunately, a tip comes in. An incarcerated man named Bert Lawson spills that back in 1923,
42:27 Karen Kilgariff? he was hired to blow up Bill and Rita Smith's home using nitroglycerin. Wow. He was paid $5,000 to do this, which is 90,000 in today's money. And the man who hired him? None other than self-professed best friend of the Osage himself, William Hale. And his nephew Ernest Burkhart, Molly's doting husband, served as his intermediary. Damn. Agent White then learns that William Hale was the beneficiary of victim Henry Rowan's $25,000 life insurance policy, which is worth nearly $450,000 today. Despite Henry leaving behind a wife and children. So for some reason, he's got a life insurance policy that names this dude
43:11 Karen Kilgariff? and not his immediate family. Not long before Henry's murder, Hale shopped around to different insurers before finding one that was willing to sign off on such a suspicious policy. An insurer will eventually claim he'd actually asked Hale if he was planning on killing Henry for the payout. And Hale reportedly said back, quote, "Oh, God, I am. Hell, yes." Okay, and then, "Just sign here, sir." Like, what the fuck? "Just sign here so I can go on my white way and never say a fucking word about it." Oh, my God. On my white way. It's the new follow-up Yellow Brick Road. Please, no. Every time we tell a story about the white way, it's not great. Got to say.
43:54 Karen Kilgariff? Agent White theorizes that the motive here is obvious and straightforward. William Hale profited from Henry Rowan's death and stood to gain even more with the help of his compliant nephew Ernest. Molly's mother and sister's estates and oilhead rights funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars straight into Ernest's control and by proxy, William Hale's. Yeah. These estates are worth millions and millions in today's money. As the investigation closes in, people who Agent White believes are tied up in this conspiracy wind up dead. Many of these are white men suspected of working with Hale, who were then silenced before they could talk, turn on him, or testify. Yeah. The three Ts. I threw the second T in because I wanted it to be three.
44:39 Karen Kilgariff? Agent White himself becomes a target. One of his relatives will later tell David Grant that, quote, "Once, when he went to open his window, he found sticks of dynamite behind the curtain." Oh, no. End quote. Just by chance. It's like a fucking cartoon. Winnie Tunes cartoon. So White starts sleeping with a gun, and he keeps his head on a swivel anytime he's out in public, knowing that William Hale wants him dead, and actually has enough power to make that happen in Osage County. For sure. Then Agent White starts meeting with Ernest Burkhart, who little by little starts talking. It all gets very complicated, but essentially Ernest shares just enough to
45:19 Karen Kilgariff? implicate one of William Hale's goons, who then in turn says just enough information about Hale and Ernest to implicate them. As the men slowly reveal more and more information, a tangled web of white settlers is exposed and taken into custody for the murders of Anna, Rita, Bill, the Smiths' maid, Nettie Berkshire, and Henry Roan. Wow. And the only reason Minnie and Lizzie's deaths are not part of this FBI investigation is because their cause of death remained unclear. Wow. Meanwhile, Molly has now become so sick that she's actually nearing death, so she's rushed to a hospital, and while she's there, her condition quickly improves, and that's
46:04 Karen Kilgariff? how it's determined that her insulin injections were being laced with poison. Yeah. Those shots were being administered by the same white doctors, known as the Shown Brothers, who had, quote, "treated her mother, Lizzie, before her death, injected Bill Smith with so much morphine following the blast that he couldn't speak, and determined her sister, Minnie, had died of a, quote, 'wasting illness.'" And suspiciously, the ones who couldn't find the fatal bullets in Anna's head during her autopsy. Shocking. So here's your conspiracy made real. Yeah. Horrifying. And of course, these doctors just happen to have a very chummy relationship with William Hale. So in 1926, the first trial in this case kicks off, but there will be many in the coming years as prosecutors unravel this conspiracy and work to convict William Hale,
46:49 Karen Kilgariff? Ernest Burkhart, and their accomplices. The Tulsa Tribune describes the packed courtroom as filled with, quote, "well groomed businessmen and society women, as well as cowboys in broad brimmed tats and Osage chiefs in bearded garb."
47:04 Georgia Hardstark? It's pretty surprising that they even like were brought to trial. I mean, I would suspect that they would just never get caught and never brought to justice, but it's pretty incredible.
47:13 Karen Kilgariff? They get brought to justice and then in this way where like people get to show up. I mean, it's why they cut people off from money, because money is power. Money is that voice that you get to hire in a lawyer that makes that real. So Molly herself is there, and with Hale and Ernest both pleading not guilty, she seems to be standing by her husband, presumably because she can't fathom what he's being accused of, a conspiracy to this level. And because of her support of her husband, Molly is shut out by much of the Osage community. At the same time, she's shunned by the white people who blame her for William Hale's downfall. Molly is also enduring the horrific testimony about her beloved family members and their
47:57 Karen Kilgariff? deaths. For example, in a particularly shocking twist, prosecutors reveal in court that her sister Anna had confided in close friends the identity of her unborn child's father.
48:09 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, shit.
48:10 Karen Kilgariff? She believed it was William Hale's baby.
48:13 Georgia Hardstark? No.
48:14 Karen Kilgariff? This is a married man, so if he did get Anna pregnant, presumably because they had an affair, this suggests another possible motive for her murder. Tragically, Molly and Ernest's youngest daughter Anna then dies of whooping cough around this time, and that seems to fundamentally shift something in Ernest Burkhart. He decides to rescind his not guilty plea and come clean, and he names Hale as the mastermind of this entire conspiracy, while duly admitting to facilitating the bombing at the Smith House and the shooting death of Henry Rowan. Ernest wasn't the guy who lit the fuse or pulled the trigger in either of those murders, but he found men willing to do it and he made sure the jobs got done.
48:59 Karen Kilgariff? And while Ernest's exact knowledge on the plan to kill Anna isn't clear, we do know that his brother Brian was directly implicated. A man named Kelsey Morrison eventually confesses claiming that William Hale hired him to kill Anna. Kelsey testifies that Brian was right beside him as he pulled the trigger that night, and he'd even driven Anna to the ravine in Ernest's car.
49:22 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God.
49:23 Karen Kilgariff? When Brian is eventually charged in connection with Anna's murder, his trial ends in a hung jury and he's acquitted.
49:29 Georgia Hardstark? No.
49:31 Karen Kilgariff? The one thing Ernest does always maintain is that he had no idea that they were poisoning Molly's insulin. And no one knows if that's true or not.
49:40 Georgia Hardstark? You gotta suspect, right?
49:42 Karen Kilgariff? Well, yes. I mean, like, if other people are dying
49:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:47 Karen Kilgariff? of poison,
49:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:48 Karen Kilgariff? you should have suspected it before you.
49:50 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
49:51 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, if you were clear on that, that would have been something you would have been all over.
49:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:55 Karen Kilgariff? Regardless, Ernest admitting to everything shifts something in Molly, of course. She can no longer cling to the hope that he is somehow innocent. She files for divorce and refuses to ever look at him again.
50:08 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
50:09 Karen Kilgariff? I mean,
50:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, no, for sure.
50:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
50:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but good for her.
50:14 Karen Kilgariff? The betrayal.
50:16 Georgia Hardstark? It's something you thought was like...
50:18 Karen Kilgariff? It's so heartbreaking.
50:18 Georgia Hardstark? You loved.
50:20 Karen Kilgariff? And that you had a family with, and it's like, Bill was her sister's husband, Bill was the real deal.
50:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. It's like, also, did he love the kids? Who the fuck?
50:30 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
50:30 Georgia Hardstark? You'll never know, for sure.
50:31 Karen Kilgariff? Right. Who were you this whole time? Could there be love if you're also then killing my mother, killing my sister, like?
50:38 Georgia Hardstark? That's not how love works.
50:40 Karen Kilgariff? No. Is your love good enough?
50:42 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
50:44 Karen Kilgariff? David Grand writes that, quote, "Whenever her husband's name was mentioned, she recoiled in horror."
50:49 Georgia Hardstark? Hmm.
50:50 Karen Kilgariff? In the end, some semblance of justice is served, which many Osage were not expecting. Both Ernest Burkhardt and William Hale are sentenced to life in prison.
50:59 Georgia Hardstark? Great.
51:00 Karen Kilgariff? Of course, Hale serves just 21 years before being paroled in 1947, although he is barred from ever going back to Oklahoma. He dies quietly in an Arizona nursing home in 1962 at the age of 87. What's weird is, when Hale is, goes to jail for this stint, he's sent to Leavenworth, and that's where Thomas White will soon become the warden.
51:25 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
51:26 Karen Kilgariff? Agent White. So they overlap.
51:28 Georgia Hardstark? Weird.
51:29 Karen Kilgariff? At that jail. Ernest Burkhardt also gets parole, but it happens a bit earlier, in 1937. He's arrested not long after that for robbing a house. Somehow, he still receives a full pardon from the then Oklahoma governor in 1965.
51:43 Georgia Hardstark? A pardon?
51:44 Karen Kilgariff? A pardon.
51:45 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
51:46 Karen Kilgariff? Ostensibly because his confession helped put Hale and the others away.
51:51 Georgia Hardstark? No.
51:52 Karen Kilgariff? But the pardon does allow him to go back to Oklahoma. Ernest winds up moving into a trailer in Osage County that he shares with his brother, Brian, and he dies there in 1986 at the age of 94.
52:04 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
52:05 Karen Kilgariff? As a pariah.
52:06 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
52:07 Karen Kilgariff? So it's not like, he doesn't go back to life as he knew it in any way.
52:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, just these sad fucking loners who live out in a trailer together.
52:14 Karen Kilgariff? And also.
52:15 Georgia Hardstark? Where they belong.
52:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, whether he's a tool of his evil uncle or a part of the plan, this idea that you think you could go anywhere where people would be like, hey, you served your time for a betrayal to that level.
52:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
52:29 Karen Kilgariff? Of your own wife.
52:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. And children.
52:32 Karen Kilgariff? Of course, children. As for Molly Burkhardt, she maintains a low profile for the rest of her life. We know she eventually remarries and that she dies young at the age of 50 in 1937 of an unspecified illness. Molly's death is not considered suspicious. Except for maybe by me and you. Maybe coincidental that she dies the same year Ernest is paroled.
52:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I thought that.
52:56 Karen Kilgariff? So Molly's two children and Ernest's two children inherit her estate. But at this point, by the time they inherit it, it's dwindled because of the Great Depression. So it's nothing like it was before. But this isn't the end of the story. Despite Agent Thomas White's commendable work in Oklahoma, this case does not conclude with the FBI swooping in and catching the bad guys, even though J. Edgar Hoover, ever the egotistical, power-hungry guy, was very eager to frame it that way. Hoover, like his agents and just about everyone in the Osage Nation, knew very well that there was a much larger, more insidious conspiracy going on here, and he chose to ignore it,
53:34 Karen Kilgariff? but not before he billed the Osage Nation $20,000, the equivalent of $370,000 in today's money.
53:42 Georgia Hardstark? For what?
53:43 Karen Kilgariff? For the work his agents did on the William Hale case.
53:46 Georgia Hardstark? I'm sorry. This is not like a fucking cleaning service that came and cleaned. You don't get a charge.
53:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, FBI bill.
53:54 Georgia Hardstark? Taxes, bro.
53:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
53:55 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
53:57 Karen Kilgariff? And that is something that was not captured in the movie, but it's a point David Grand drives home in the book Killers of the Flower Moon. Basically, William Hale was not some homicidal mob boss behind every unsolved Osage County murder like J. Edgar Hoover wanted him to seem. Instead, he was one-bagged actor of many who were all operating within a culture of complicity and violence geared at making white settlers richer at the expense of Osage Nation members and also at the expense of their neighbors, their friends, and even their family members, which is essentially colonialism.
54:35 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
54:36 Karen Kilgariff? As David Grand has put it, quote, "This is not a story about who did it. It's a story about who didn't do it."
54:42 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
54:44 Karen Kilgariff? Just gave me a weird. Yeah. For example, Charles Whitehorn, the man whose body was found the same day as Anna's body, is widely assumed to have been murdered by a white man in collusion with Whitehorn's white widow, Hattie, presumably for his head rights. Damn. Hattie once even told investigators, quote, "If I tell you what happened, you will send me to the electric chair." Shit. The other suspicious deaths, the ones of William Steppson, Joe Bates, George Bigheart, Barney McBride, and W.W. Vaughan, are never solved, but they are not thought to be directly tied to the William Hale conspiracy. Which means they're just from their own either conspiracy of a different group or anyone else that these people were exposed to with no protection from.
55:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, who had the same goal in mind. So in the mid 1920s, laws are finally passed that make it more difficult to transfer head rights to non Osage people, even through marriage. But for many, this happens way too late. We will almost certainly never have a conclusive death toll for this period of time in Osage County. The most modest estimates put that number in the dozens, but a historian named Louis Burns has said, quote, "I don't know of a single Osage family that didn't lose at least one family member because of head rights." Wow, yeah. End quote. Today, the Osage Nation has a population of around 10,000 people, many of them live outside of Oklahoma.
56:10 Karen Kilgariff? And of course, the oil boom days are over, as are the big checks that came with it. But the ripple effects of this dark chapter are still widely felt among the Osage people. In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grand interviews the great grandson of Henry Rowan, who says that the murders are, quote, "Still in the back of our minds. You just have it in the back of your head that you don't trust anybody." End quote. And that is the story of the Osage oil murders.
56:38 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. I'm so glad the book was written about it because you'd never heard of it before.
56:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
56:44 Georgia Hardstark? And it's a huge historical story.
56:47 Karen Kilgariff? And it's the kind of thing I think that when white people hear about that, it's like, oh, yeah, bad things happen. And we know that bad things happen. But it's like, no, we should actually talk about-
56:56 Georgia Hardstark? This specific moment.
56:57 Karen Kilgariff? How it happens.
56:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
56:58 Karen Kilgariff? So it doesn't happen anymore. Then the responsibility of people who are going to go in there and say, we are the police. We are the sheriff.
57:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
57:06 Karen Kilgariff? We are the people who hold people accountable.
57:09 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
57:09 Karen Kilgariff? And how do you make it so that everyone's a bad actor?
57:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
57:13 Karen Kilgariff? On that side of the fence.
57:15 Georgia Hardstark? There's no hope. Wow.
57:16 Karen Kilgariff? It's gotta change.
57:17 Georgia Hardstark? Good job.
57:18 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
57:19 Georgia Hardstark? That was an epic story.
57:21 Karen Kilgariff? It was a big one. Maren McGlashan, one of the great researchers of our time.
57:25 Georgia Hardstark? All right. Well, great job.
57:27 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you so much. That's a solo episode.
57:29 Georgia Hardstark? And that's how it's done.
57:30 Karen Kilgariff? Feels like a tripler.
57:33 Georgia Hardstark? We hope your sister enjoyed this.
57:35 Karen Kilgariff? We hope your mother takes you up on this and comes back.
57:39 Georgia Hardstark? All right, right. We hope your road trip's going well.
57:41 Karen Kilgariff? We promise we won't swear as much next time.
57:43 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
57:44 Karen Kilgariff? And stay sexy.
57:45 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
57:47 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
57:49 Georgia Hardstark? Elvis, do you want a cookie?
57:57 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right production.
57:59 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
58:02 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
58:04 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.
58:06 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ally Elkin.
58:09 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
58:12 Karen Kilgariff? Follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
58:15 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
58:20 Karen Kilgariff? And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
58:25 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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59:17 Georgia Hardstark? and you'll be all set. I've actually started doing this and I'm obsessed with magnesium. It does everything. Something like this is just like, it's simple, it's easy, and it actually works. Totally. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's Magnesium Spray online or in your local bath aisle. Goodbye.
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