Killers of the Flower Moon: Chapters 8–15

When White entered the bureau, it still had only a few hundred agents and only a smattering of field offices.

The White brothers were part of a small contingent of frontier lawmen who were known inside the bureau as the Cowboys.

Despite his sensitivity to danger, he had experienced wild gunfights, but unlike his brother Doc—who, as one agent said, had a “bullet-spattered career”—Tom had an almost perverse habit of not wanting to shoot, and he was proud of the fact that he’d never put anyone into the ground.

During the Harding administration, in the early 1920s, the Justice Department had been packed with political cronies and unscrupulous officials, among them the head of the bureau: William Burns, the infamous private eye.

Hoover would rapidly reshape the bureau into a monolithic force—one that, during his nearly five-decade reign as director, he would deploy not only to combat crime but also to commit egregious abuses of power.

Other prisoners, meanwhile, began to share information, allowing White to uncover what was described as a system of “gilded favoritism and millionaire immunity.”

White and his cowboy hat loomed over the diminutive Hoover, who was so sensitive about his modest stature that he rarely promoted taller agents to headquarters and later installed a raised dais behind his desk to stand on.

John Palmer, the tribe’s well-known advocate, sent an angry letter to Charles Curtis, the Kansas senator, insinuating that the bureau’s investigation had been tainted by corruption: “I join in the general belief that the murderers have been shrewd enough and politically and financially able enough to have honest and capable officers removed or sent to other parts, and also to quiet dishonest officials whose duty it was and is to hunt the perpetrators of these awful crimes.”

When Hoover met with White, his grip on power remained tenuous, and he was suddenly confronting the one thing that he’d done everything to avoid since becoming director: a scandal.

Yet even a team wouldn’t overcome one of the main obstacles that had stymied previous investigators: the refusal of witnesses to cooperate because of prejudice, corruption, or, as an agent put it, an “almost universal fear of being ‘bumped off.’”

But White decided that these men were the only candidates who could handle such an assignment: infiltrating wild country, dealing with outlawry, shadowing suspects, going days without sleep, maintaining cover under duress, and handling deadly weapons if necessary.

White then enlisted a stocky, garrulous, and blond-haired former Texas Ranger who, according to a superior, was best suited for situations “where there is any element of danger.”

In a joint report, Burger and another agent had stated, “The Indians, in general, are lazy, pathetic, cowardly, dissipated,” and Burger’s colleague insisted that the only way to make “any of these dissolute, stubborn Osage Indians talk and tell what they know is to cut off their allowance...and if necessary, throw them in jail.”

The two operatives acting as cattlemen soon ingratiated themselves with William Hale, who considered them fellow Texas cowboys and who introduced them to many of the leading townsfolk.

The insurance salesman dropped by the houses of various suspects, under the pretense of hawking policies. Agent Wren made his own inroads, attending tribal gatherings and gleaning information from Osage who might not otherwise talk to a white lawman.

In 1894, Ida Tarbell, the muckraking journalist, wrote that any prisoner who passed through Bertillon’s system would be forever “spotted”: “He may efface his tattooing, compress his chest, dye his hair, extract his teeth, scar his body, dissimulate his height. It is useless.”

In 1894, Ida Tarbell, the muckraking journalist, wrote that any prisoner who passed through Bertillon’s system would be forever “spotted”: “He may efface his tattooing, compress his chest, dye his hair, extract his teeth, scar his body, dissimulate his height. It is useless.”

White hadn’t been able to substantiate Kenny’s allegations, but he wasn’t sure what to make of Comstock, either.

When one of his agents was questioning a seedy local attorney—who, according to an informant, was trying to “strangle” the government’s probe—the attorney betrayed a shocking knowledge of the inner workings of the case. Finally, he admitted that he’d “seen part of the reports made by the Bureau...and had an opportunity to see more of them.”

A U.S. attorney also discovered that the reports furnished to him by the bureau had vanished from his office. The breaches threatened the lives of agents and created insidious doubts, with officials questioning each other’s loyalty.

These private eyes leaked to several local officials that Morrison was working with the bureau, then went so far as to detain him on a trumped-up robbery charge. Agent Burger said that the conduct of one of these private detectives was “reprehensible” and was “certainly hurting our investigation.”

If Pike was telling the truth, it meant that Hale—a seeming paragon of law and order who had held himself up as Mollie Burkhart’s most staunch protector—had been lying all these years about Anna’s murder.

At the time, extrajudicial lynchings, particularly of blacks in the South, were one of the most egregious failures of the American legal system.

At all hours of the day, including on the Sabbath, Emmett would be summoned to hunt men. Criminology was still primitive: Emmett grabbed his gun, canvassed any witnesses to the crime, then mounted his horse and went in pursuit.

Tom, chastened, retrieved his rifle, and it was not long before he understood the sergeant’s urgency: they were being tracked by the rustlers.

She ordered him around in a way that few dared, but he didn’t seem to mind; for once, it was not incumbent upon him to be in command of the world around him or the emotions inside him.

Tom collected the Ranger’s body and transported it to the home of his parents, who couldn’t fathom why their boy was in a box succoring maggots.

The adjutant general wrote to Tom’s captain, saying that Tom had “proved an excellent officer” and that he would “regret to see him quit the service.”

After the shooting, Dudley’s corpse was transported home. A Ranger report noted clinically, “One wagon sheet, one bed sheet, one pillow, used in shipping Ranger White’s body.”

James Shoun, David’s brother, was equally adamant, telling the prosecutor, “He never did say who blew him up.”

During the meeting, James Shoun was named the administrator of the estate of Bill Smith’s murdered wife, Rita, which allowed him to execute her will. Such a position was coveted by whites, for it paid unconscionably high fees and provided ample opportunities for graft.

Although some white guardians and administrators tried to act in the best interests of the tribe, countless others used the system to swindle the very people they were ostensibly protecting.

One government study estimated that before 1925 guardians had pilfered at least $8 million directly from the restricted accounts of their Osage wards.

This so-called Indian business, as White discovered, was an elaborate criminal operation, in which various sectors of society were complicit.

In 1924, the Indian Rights Association, which defended the interests of indigenous communities, conducted an investigation into what it described as “an orgy of graft and exploitation.”

Some of the schemes were beyond depraved.

The Indian Rights Association detailed the case of a widow whose guardian had absconded with most of her possessions. Then the guardian falsely informed the woman, who had moved from Osage County, that she had no more money to draw on, leaving her to raise her two young children in poverty.

Roan seemed to have been unaware of these machinations; he trusted that Hale, his supposedly closest friend, was helping him. But there remained one impediment to Hale’s scheme.

Though one physician said that nobody would approve that “drunken Indian,” Hale shopped for doctors until he found a man in Pawhuska willing to recommend Roan; one of the seemingly ubiquitous Shoun brothers, James, also recommended Roan.

Though White had gathered circumstantial evidence implicating Hale in the murder of Roan, there were still huge holes in the case.

As White examined probate records for many of the murder victims, it was evident that with each successive death, more and more headrights were being directed into the hands of one person—Mollie Burkhart.

Anna Brown, divorced and without children, had bequeathed nearly all her wealth to her mother, Lizzie.

The wills of Rita and Bill stipulated that if they died simultaneously, much of Rita’s headright would go to her surviving sister, Mollie.

In either case, the plan was so brazen, so sinister, that it was hard to fathom. It demanded that Ernest share a bed with Mollie, and raise children with her, all while plotting and scheming against her family.

As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar:
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy:
Hide it in smiles and affability.