493 - Jazz Hands All Around

On today’s episode, Karen covers the Osage oil murders. For our sources, please visit https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode. Instagram: instagram.com/myfavoritemurder http://instagram.com/myfavoritemurder Facebook: facebook.com/myfavoritemurder http://facebook.com/myfavoritemurder TikTok: tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder http://tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder Watch full episodes of My Favorite Murder on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@my_favorite_murder Send your hometown stories to [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Join the Fan Cult to access ad-free episodes of My Favorite Murder. Members also receive merch store discounts, exclusive audio and video content and more! Visit www.fancult.supercast.com http://www.fancult.supercast.com/ to join. Shop for My Favorite Murder and other Exactly Right merchandise here: www.exactlyrightstore.com http://www.exactlyrightstore.com/. Rate, review and follow My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Karen Kilgariff?

  This is exactly right.

• 0:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Everyone loves the idea of spending an afternoon curled up with a good book.

• 0:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, grow up because it's almost impossible.

• 0:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Luckily, you can take your next great story with you on Audible.

• 0:15Karen 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.

• 0:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Whether you want a mystery, a true crime story, or something completely different, there's always something new to listen to.

• 0:29Karen Kilgariff?

  New members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com/mfm.

• 0:34Georgia 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.

• 0:50Karen 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.

• 0:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.

• 1:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Hello.

• 1:53Karen Kilgariff?

  And welcome.

• 1:54Georgia Hardstark?

  To My Favorite Murder.

• 1:55Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 1:56Georgia Hardstark?

  That's Karen Kilgariff.

• 1:57Karen Kilgariff?

  And we're about to podcast for you. Watch this.

• 2:00Georgia Hardstark?

  This is like, we have to think of something to say after welcome every week. And we're doing it.

• 2:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Every week for 10 years.

• 2:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Almost 10 fucking years.

• 2:08Karen Kilgariff?

  10 years. Ten years.

• 2:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Ten.

• 2:11Karen Kilgariff?

  So here's what I came up with for Georgia for this week.

• 2:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 2:14Karen Kilgariff?

  I started this sentence.

• 2:16Georgia 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?

• 2:23Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm gonna get.

• 2:24Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right. You said, I'm gonna get. And then you said, I'm gonna save it for the podcast.

• 2:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 2:28Georgia Hardstark?

  In my wildest dreams, I can't imagine. I can't imagine.

• 2:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Top three.

• 2:32Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm going to get another tattoo. Is that what it was? Another fish tattoo. Another.

• 2:39Karen Kilgariff?

  A second fish.

• 2:40Georgia Hardstark?

  A second salmon tattoo.

• 2:41Karen Kilgariff?

  But this one is five times the size of the first one.

• 2:44Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm going to get ready to walk out of here.

• 2:49Karen 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.

• 2:56Georgia Hardstark?

  And you're waiting until you're on, you're being recorded.

• 2:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, exactly. There's as many witnesses as possible.

• 3:01Georgia Hardstark?

  What could the last one be? I'm going to get more dogs.

• 3:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, I am.

• 3:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Are you?

• 3:06Karen Kilgariff?

  But I mean, that's not what it was.

• 3:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 3:07Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's gonna be so disappointing.

• 3:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, no, what is it?

• 3:10Karen 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.

• 3:20Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 3:21Karen Kilgariff?

  When I have no allergies, that's not the way I live my life.

• 3:23Georgia Hardstark?

  You're sick.

• 3:24Karen 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?

• 3:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Is that what it is?

• 3:34Karen Kilgariff?

  And then you're dab, dab, dab.

• 3:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Is that a thing too?

• 3:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 3:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Can we just blame everything on menopause now? That would be really.

• 3:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, I kind of do already, but.

• 3:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Our nose is gonna start running?

• 3:43Karen 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.

• 3:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my god.

• 3:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Onto my lip.

• 4:01Karen Kilgariff?

  I was not ready.

• 4:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, welcome to the fucking tissue world.

• 4:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Tissue club.

• 4:05Georgia 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.

• 4:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Ah, what the people, they want to hear about compounding pharmacies on this podcast.

• 4:20Georgia 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.

• 4:27Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not always like this.

• 4:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, let me fast forward. Let me, let me fast forward.

• 4:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Are you telling me that people aren't gripped by my story of I'm about to get, dot, dot, dot?

• 4:35Georgia Hardstark?

  And my guesses that mean nothing to nobody?

• 4:38Karen Kilgariff?

  None of this means anything to anybody.

• 4:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Anything to anyone and that's what we're here for.

• 4:42Karen Kilgariff?

  And that's the lesson of 10 years of podcasting.

• 4:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Hey.

• 4:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Hi.

• 4:46Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm gonna be in Ireland when this gets posted, when this gets.

• 4:50Karen Kilgariff?

  What part?

• 4:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Dublin.

• 4:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Hell, yeah.

• 4:52Georgia 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.

• 5:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, but it's Ireland, so they're more low key. The Irish up in your face is.

• 5:07Georgia Hardstark?

  No, they're not. They're Scottish.

• 5:09Karen 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.

• 5:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, okay. No, that sounds great.

• 5:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Your vacation is my vacation. This world.

• 5:20Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm going to the same.

• 5:21Karen Kilgariff?

  My world.

• 5:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Places.

• 5:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Edinburgh is one of the greatest cities there is.

• 5:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I'm really excited.

• 5:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Have you been before?

• 5:29Georgia 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.

• 5:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 5:37Georgia 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.

• 5:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Are you gonna spare your beer cup full of pee? Remember that moment?

• 5:53Georgia Hardstark?

  No, they always, oh my God. Fear, that's the thing. Thank God that doesn't happen at my favorite murder live shows.

• 6:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, you don't, I mean, not anything's possible.

• 6:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, that's a great 50th birthday.

• 6:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Karen Kilgariff?

  That'll be very fun.

• 6:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Karen Kilgariff?

  But then there's all the witchy things that you can do in Edinburgh.

• 6:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, like castle-y things and witchy things. Okay.

• 6:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm doing it all.

• 6:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Lot of tours and, I mean, there's just the oldest of cultures.

• 6:16Georgia 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.

• 6:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 6:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Is that what?

• 6:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Marty's on duty.

• 6:23Georgia 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.

• 6:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 6:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, it goes without saying.

• 6:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Mimi is going to be watching the house.

• 6:37Georgia Hardstark?

  For Mimi.

• 6:38Karen Kilgariff?

  And angrily watching the house.

• 6:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, she is. She'll scratch her fucking eyes out.

• 6:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Be careful of Mimi. All right, anything else exciting going on? I mean, that's a great, exciting trip to take.

• 6:48Georgia Hardstark?

  No, I mean, we're just planning for our live shows. It feels like it's coming up so fast.

• 6:52Karen Kilgariff?

  It is coming up fast.

• 6:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Go to myfavoritemurder.com/live to get tickets, please.

• 6:57Karen 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.

• 7:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Karen 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.

• 7:20Georgia 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?"

• 7:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus.

• 7:33Georgia Hardstark?

  That's from the 1960s. Why would she wear that?

• 7:36Karen Kilgariff?

  You're a Kathleen at a dress like that. Yes, that's a great idea.

• 7:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:40Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm always dressing for the opposite, whereas like, I don't want to hear it.

• 7:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't comment on my clothes.

• 7:44Karen 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.

• 7:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Karen 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.

• 8:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Karen Kilgariff?

  You better put pockets in your dresses.

• 8:02Georgia Hardstark?

  I bought a pair of pajama shorts recently, and they didn't have pockets.

• 8:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Come on.

• 8:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, where I, um...

• 8:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Where am I gonna put that little Apple remote?

• 8:09Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm not gonna be in bed the whole time. I'm gonna be walking around.

• 8:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Walking around with the Apple remote in your pocket.

• 8:13Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 8:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So you can wash it.

• 8:14Georgia Hardstark?

  And they go, "Where did I put that? Shit."

• 8:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It's gone forever.

• 8:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Where'd I put my headphones?

• 8:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. Yeah, so we're preparing to. Are you prepared for this tour?

• 8:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Prepared. Please come and don't throw your pee.

• 8:25Karen 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.

• 8:53Georgia 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.

• 9:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Boom, get in the Discord.

• 9:01Karen 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.

• 9:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you for doing that.

• 9:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yay. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Turning something you love into a career is exciting. Then come the invoices. Lucky for you, Squarespace can handle the business stuff so you can focus on your business. From consultations to events and experiences, you can showcase your skills with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a beautiful, professional, online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Get paid on time with professional invoices and online payments. Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Head to Squarespace.com/murder for a free trial.

• 9:53Karen Kilgariff?

  And when you're ready to launch, use offer code MURDER to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Goodbye. We've all had moments where dealing with healthcare or insurance feels completely overwhelming.

• 10:04Georgia Hardstark?

  You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next, and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork and trying to figure out who to call.

• 10:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care.

• 10:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues.

• 10:23Karen Kilgariff?

  That's why there's Solace Health.

• 10:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Solace provides personal healthcare advocates who average 16 years of healthcare experience and can help you get answers fast.

• 10:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Think of them as someone in your corner who understands the healthcare system and can handle the logistics while you focus on your health.

• 10:37Georgia Hardstark?

  They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.

• 10:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact on their care from working with an advocate.

• 10:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocacy improves outcomes and Solace advocates are covered by insurance nationwide.

• 10:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Eligibility varies by insurance plan.

• 10:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice or services must be 18 years or older.

• 11:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.

• 11:03Georgia Hardstark?

  It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.

• 11:06Karen Kilgariff?

  That's S-O-L-A-C-E health.com/murder.

• 11:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 11:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Vacation planning should feel like a breeze, not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal.

• 11:16Georgia Hardstark?

  With CheapCaribbean's Budget Beach Finder, you can search every destination and every date, all in one search.

• 11:22Karen Kilgariff?

  You'll save time and money with the Budget Beach Finder.

• 11:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Say goodbye to endless scrolling and tab hopping and hello to Budget Beach Bliss at your fingertips.

• 11:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Go to cheapcaribbean.com to try out the Budget Beach Finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.

• 11:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 11:38Karen Kilgariff?

  You know a favorite M-word?

• 11:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Magnesium. Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.

• 11:43Karen 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.

• 11:53Georgia 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.

• 12:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula.

• 12:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.

• 12:12Karen 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.

• 12:27Georgia Hardstark?

  And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?

• 12:30Karen Kilgariff?

  How dare you call my feet stinky?

• 12:33Georgia Hardstark?

  For wellness, you can feel find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.

• 12:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 12:41Georgia Hardstark?

  All right, well, this is a solo episode because

• 12:43Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right.

• 12:44Georgia Hardstark?

  it's summer, it's vacation, the live shows are coming up. So you tell me a story.

• 12:50Karen 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.

• 13:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 13:06Karen 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.

• 13:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:26Karen 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.

• 13:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 13:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you want to guess what that would be in today's money?

• 13:55Georgia Hardstark?

  175.

• 13:56Karen Kilgariff?

  $480 million.

• 13:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 13:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. And that's in one year.

• 14:01Georgia Hardstark?

  The person who did the accounting, the fucking white man who did the accounting, I was like, just send them there.

• 14:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 14:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Fired.

• 14:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, because, yeah, exactly. They're like, this is not our colonial plan where we're trying to oppress these people.

• 14:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 14:14Karen 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.

• 14:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 14:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Everybody gets a cut.

• 14:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Damn.

• 14:28Karen Kilgariff?

  And there's more than enough to go around.

• 14:29Georgia Hardstark?

  That is fair.

• 14:30Karen 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.

• 14:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 14:39Karen Kilgariff?

  So by the 1910s and into the 20s, the Osage were said to be the wealthiest people per capita in the entire world.

• 14:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God. Like, that's amazing.

• 14:49Karen 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.

• 15:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 15:04Karen 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.

• 15:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 15:23Karen 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."

• 15:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 15:36Karen 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.

• 16:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, this is an epic.

• 16:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 16:02Georgia Hardstark?

  This is, yeah, good job.

• 16:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Because when we're doing solos, we still want to give the people what they want.

• 16:07Georgia Hardstark?

  I definitely, yeah, you want a little bit of a, like, a showstopper.

• 16:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 16:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 16:12Karen 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.

• 16:26Georgia 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.

• 16:31Karen 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.

• 17:04Karen 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.

• 17:49Karen 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.

• 18:34Karen 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.

• 19:17Karen 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."

• 19:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Hmm.

• 19:55Karen Kilgariff?

  So that's pretty typical.

• 19:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Karen 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.

• 20:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. So it's in the bank and they still have to have someone keep an eye on it?

• 20:31Karen Kilgariff?

  A white man.

• 20:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they force someone to.

• 20:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 20:35Karen 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.

• 20:51Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 20:52Karen Kilgariff?

  It's so infuriating.

• 20:53Georgia 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.

• 21:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 21:02Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm sure.

• 21:03Karen 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.

• 21:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 21:23Karen 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.

• 21:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 21:39Karen Kilgariff?

  So love, it's like, everything is a scam.

• 21:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 21:43Karen 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.

• 21:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 21:55Karen 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.

• 22:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:08Karen 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.

• 22:17Georgia Hardstark?

  God.

• 22:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Nasty. Just like the worst feeling.

• 22:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely.

• 22:22Karen 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.

• 22:31Georgia Hardstark?

  But this time it's real, even though, look around. Oh, my God, how terrifying.

• 22:35Karen 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.

• 22:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, he is.

• 22:53Karen Kilgariff?

  And he's often described as simple and passive, which probably makes him feel safe to Molly.

• 22:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 22:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? He's not a scheming and like, smooth talker.

• 23:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:03Karen 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.

• 23:48Karen 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."

• 24:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 24:01Karen 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

• 24:45Karen 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.

• 25:29Georgia Hardstark?

  You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next, and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork, and trying to figure out who to call. Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care. Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues. That's why there's Solace Health. Solace provides personal healthcare advocates who average 16 years of healthcare experience and can help you get answers fast. Think of them as someone in your corner who understands the healthcare system and can handle the logistics while you focus on your health. They can help with appointments, insurance denials, medical bills, treatment options, and understanding doctor recommendations.

• 26:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Research shows 92% of patients report a positive impact On their care from working with an advocate.

• 26:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocacy improves outcomes and Solace advocates are covered by insurance nationwide.

• 26:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Eligibility varies by insurance plan.

• 26:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Advocates do not provide medical or legal advice or services must be 18 years or older.

• 26:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Go to solacehealth.com/murder to see if you qualify.

• 26:28Georgia Hardstark?

  It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.

• 26:30Karen Kilgariff?

  That's S O L A C E health.com/murder.

• 26:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 26:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Vacation planning should feel like a breeze, not a deep dive into countless travel sites searching for the best deal.

• 26:41Georgia Hardstark?

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• 26:47Karen Kilgariff?

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• 26:49Georgia Hardstark?

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• 26:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Go to cheapcaribbean.com to try out the Budget Beach Finder and see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.

• 27:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 27:02Karen Kilgariff?

  You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.

• 27:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.

• 27:07Karen 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.

• 27:18Georgia 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.

• 27:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula.

• 27:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.

• 27:37Karen 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.

• 27:52Georgia Hardstark?

  And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?

• 27:55Karen Kilgariff?

  How dare you call my feet stinky?

• 27:58Georgia Hardstark?

  For wellness, you can feel Find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle.

• 28:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 28:04Georgia Hardstark?

  The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+

• 28:09Karen 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.

• 28:16Georgia Hardstark?

  To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is

• 28:22Karen 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.

• 28:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?

• 28:33Karen 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.

• 28:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.

• 28:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 28:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 28:50Karen 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.

• 29:06Georgia Hardstark?

  A wasting illness.

• 29:06Karen 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.

• 29:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 29:28Karen 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,

• 30:12Karen 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.

• 30:22Georgia Hardstark?

  God.

• 30:23Karen 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.

• 30:33Georgia 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.

• 30:44Karen Kilgariff?

  It's her sister's husband's brother. Is one away, but still.

• 30:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Karen Kilgariff?

  You're totally right where it's like all of a sudden it all is a plot.

• 30:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Like this is the confirmation. She can't tell anybody.

• 30:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Karen 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.

• 31:40Karen 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.

• 31:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Two bullets each.

• 31:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep.

• 31:57Georgia Hardstark?

  And maybe they're not connected.

• 31:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Exactly. M O.

• 31:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 31:59Karen 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."

• 32:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 32:13Karen Kilgariff?

  That's just as far as it's going to go.

• 32:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Close the case.

• 32:15Karen 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.

• 32:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 32:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Is that now instead of being put in this place of like having to beg people.

• 32:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Karen 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.

• 32:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 32:46Karen 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

• 33:30Karen 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.

• 34:14Karen 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.

• 34:56Karen Kilgariff?

  When he comes back later that night, he is very, very sick. He dies within hours of making it back home.

• 35:03Georgia Hardstark?

  So someone called and were like, you gotta get over here and then something nefarious happened?

• 35:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 35:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 35:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And he makes it back home, just basically to die at home.

• 35:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 35:12Karen 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.

• 35:57Karen 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-

• 36:18Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 36:19Karen Kilgariff?

  And dumped in an alleyway.

• 36:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy sh- okay, that now you're like, are we, we're not being paranoid?

• 36:24Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's being paranoid. They weren't being paranoid the first time and now it's just like confirmation after confirmation.

• 36:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, how terrifying.

• 36:32Karen 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.

• 36:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yikes.

• 36:53Karen 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.

• 37:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 37:21Karen 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

• 38:05Karen 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.

• 38:49Karen 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

• 39:32Karen 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.

• 40:15Karen 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

• 40:59Karen 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.

• 41:43Karen 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,

• 42:27Karen 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

• 43:11Karen 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.

• 43:54Karen 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.

• 44:39Karen 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

• 45:19Karen 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

• 46:04Karen 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,

• 46:49Karen 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."

• 47:04Georgia 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.

• 47:13Karen 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

• 47:57Karen 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.

• 48:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 48:10Karen Kilgariff?

  She believed it was William Hale's baby.

• 48:13Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 48:14Karen 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.

• 48:59Karen 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.

• 49:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, God.

• 49:23Karen Kilgariff?

  When Brian is eventually charged in connection with Anna's murder, his trial ends in a hung jury and he's acquitted.

• 49:29Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 49:31Karen 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.

• 49:40Georgia Hardstark?

  You gotta suspect, right?

• 49:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, yes. I mean, like, if other people are dying

• 49:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:47Karen Kilgariff?

  of poison,

• 49:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:48Karen Kilgariff?

  you should have suspected it before you.

• 49:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 49:51Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, if you were clear on that, that would have been something you would have been all over.

• 49:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Karen 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.

• 50:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 50:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean,

• 50:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, no, for sure.

• 50:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 50:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, but good for her.

• 50:14Karen Kilgariff?

  The betrayal.

• 50:16Georgia Hardstark?

  It's something you thought was like...

• 50:18Karen Kilgariff?

  It's so heartbreaking.

• 50:18Georgia Hardstark?

  You loved.

• 50:20Karen Kilgariff?

  And that you had a family with, and it's like, Bill was her sister's husband, Bill was the real deal.

• 50:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. It's like, also, did he love the kids? Who the fuck?

• 50:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 50:30Georgia Hardstark?

  You'll never know, for sure.

• 50:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. Who were you this whole time? Could there be love if you're also then killing my mother, killing my sister, like?

• 50:38Georgia Hardstark?

  That's not how love works.

• 50:40Karen Kilgariff?

  No. Is your love good enough?

• 50:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 50:44Karen Kilgariff?

  David Grand writes that, quote, "Whenever her husband's name was mentioned, she recoiled in horror."

• 50:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Hmm.

• 50:50Karen 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.

• 50:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Great.

• 51:00Karen 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.

• 51:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 51:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Agent White. So they overlap.

• 51:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Weird.

• 51:29Karen 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.

• 51:43Georgia Hardstark?

  A pardon?

• 51:44Karen Kilgariff?

  A pardon.

• 51:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 51:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Ostensibly because his confession helped put Hale and the others away.

• 51:51Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 51:52Karen 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.

• 52:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 52:05Karen Kilgariff?

  As a pariah.

• 52:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 52:07Karen Kilgariff?

  So it's not like, he doesn't go back to life as he knew it in any way.

• 52:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, just these sad fucking loners who live out in a trailer together.

• 52:14Karen Kilgariff?

  And also.

• 52:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Where they belong.

• 52:16Karen 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.

• 52:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Of your own wife.

• 52:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And children.

• 52:32Karen 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.

• 52:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I thought that.

• 52:56Karen 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,

• 53:34Karen Kilgariff?

  but not before he billed the Osage Nation $20,000, the equivalent of $370,000 in today's money.

• 53:42Georgia Hardstark?

  For what?

• 53:43Karen Kilgariff?

  For the work his agents did on the William Hale case.

• 53:46Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm sorry. This is not like a fucking cleaning service that came and cleaned. You don't get a charge.

• 53:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, FBI bill.

• 53:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Taxes, bro.

• 53:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 53:57Karen 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.

• 54:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 54:36Karen 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."

• 54:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Damn.

• 54:44Karen 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.

• 55:29Karen 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.

• 56:10Karen 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.

• 56:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. I'm so glad the book was written about it because you'd never heard of it before.

• 56:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 56:44Georgia Hardstark?

  And it's a huge historical story.

• 56:47Karen 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-

• 56:56Georgia Hardstark?

  This specific moment.

• 56:57Karen Kilgariff?

  How it happens.

• 56:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Karen 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.

• 57:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Karen Kilgariff?

  We are the people who hold people accountable.

• 57:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 57:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And how do you make it so that everyone's a bad actor?

• 57:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Karen Kilgariff?

  On that side of the fence.

• 57:15Georgia Hardstark?

  There's no hope. Wow.

• 57:16Karen Kilgariff?

  It's gotta change.

• 57:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Good job.

• 57:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 57:19Georgia Hardstark?

  That was an epic story.

• 57:21Karen Kilgariff?

  It was a big one. Maren McGlashan, one of the great researchers of our time.

• 57:25Georgia Hardstark?

  All right. Well, great job.

• 57:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you so much. That's a solo episode.

• 57:29Georgia Hardstark?

  And that's how it's done.

• 57:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Feels like a tripler.

• 57:33Georgia Hardstark?

  We hope your sister enjoyed this.

• 57:35Karen Kilgariff?

  We hope your mother takes you up on this and comes back.

• 57:39Georgia Hardstark?

  All right, right. We hope your road trip's going well.

• 57:41Karen Kilgariff?

  We promise we won't swear as much next time.

• 57:43Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 57:44Karen Kilgariff?

  And stay sexy.

• 57:45Georgia Hardstark?

  And don't get murdered.

• 57:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 57:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Elvis, do you want a cookie?

• 57:57Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right production.

• 57:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

• 58:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

• 58:04Georgia Hardstark?

  This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.

• 58:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ally Elkin.

• 58:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected].

• 58:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.

• 58:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 58:20Karen Kilgariff?

  And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.

• 58:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 58:33Georgia Hardstark?

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• 59:17Georgia 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.

• 59:32Speaker 02

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