Episode 36: The Osage Nation Serial Murders that legitimized the FBI

0:20 Everybody in serial killer country. My name is Brittany. Ransom, my name is Brian Joyner. And this is when Killers get caught a podcast of a deep dives into the lives. And psyches of the Killer's, we love to learn about Out each week. Brian, I will find a True Crime Story that resonated with us. Then I'll discuss one well-known or lesser known killer, and go deep into their childhood lives methodology. And most importantly how they got caught and then we'll get a little spooky. We'll learn something about Cryptids or the supernatural with Brian. Yeah. Before we start, I just want to remind you all that our patreon is live. There are four tiers from five to fifty dollars. That offer you loads of fun things like a special extra podcast where Brian and I discussed. Spear see, theories, or you could even have a Groupon to chat. But not one on one, but you get to talk to us. Ask us any questions you want.

1:10 Its private. It's on the Discord. It's just a fun. You know, ask us anything kind of thing that you can do every month. Yeah, if you're interested in March, our website is www.pevs.com and that's where you can find links to pretty much everything we do. So, starting out this week in True Crime, I I have been following a case. I'm just the, the headline in itself is just interesting but I'm telling you, is that a 17 year old boy has been charged with the murder of his twin sister. His name is Benjamin Elliot and her name is Megan. He stabbed her in the next several times on Wednesday of this week. Oh, now Benjamin claims that he woke up between 2:30 and three in the morning, standing in his sister's bedroom with a knife and that he didn't realize he was in there. In fact, he thought he I was dreaming, he removed the knife and sat down beside her and called 911 according to claims, he's meeting Court.

2:13 Megan Elliott was pronounced dead at the scene. The 911 operator and instructed Benjamin on how to perform CPR, which he was in the process of doing when the deputies arrived at his house. Mmm, Moments after the call, the parents woke up. There's audio of them screaming after discovering that their daughter was dead. And so now, this is popping up in a bunch of my True Crime groups that I'm a member of them, Facebook and other forums with people. I'll just going, do we really think that he was sleepwalking? Hey, there are cases where, you know, the sleepwalking is a, you know, it plays a big role in it, so There have been some news reports that said though that the parents initially didn't want to allow the police in like, this is still something that is in the process of happening on interesting. So we shall see what's going on.

3:09 Yeah. It's just very interesting and I mean, has he have you reported history of him at sleepwalking or anything like that? Like in an appearance on winning the police and I mean, I would like it depends what time in the morning that he called the cops and the cops came. So he's saying that he Discovered that he was awake like he woke up and was like, oh no, this isn't a dream at about 3 a.m. but the police only got there at 4:45 which is a big gap from when he says he realized that he did it and when they called hmm they had they detain him. You know there's been now at this point like an initial like hearing and what. Yeah, yeah, but yeah.

3:54 They, they have the knife, they have everything, they had to get search, warrants to go, look in the house. It's just it's really interesting. This happened in Georgia by the way, of course Georgia. Mmm. So yeah. The police are officially charging him with murder regardless. As to what the family said, they're like listen the y'all can work that out in court with the lawyers but this is a clear cut and dry murder case. So he's already been like arraigned on the base charges His bond set at 100 thousand dollars. Oh, wow. Yeah.

4:36 But like, we don't know anything about that. So I'm guessing that's going to come up as a proper investigation happens, right? Because you have a history of sleepwalking, does he do strange things? I mean some Sleepwalkers just kind of walk through the house. There's actually a lady I fell in Tick. Tock she's a delightful woman but like her husband set up what it's like Sabrina spooky and she's one of those Jet Dad jokes and all the freaking puns I don't remember that she like she's a writer. Okay not there's another one that just sleepwalking through the blonde lady. She said Herbal. She also writes like spooky spooky books, too, but her They just set up cameras all over the house and there have been times that her husband has been like outside. Like you need to come inside the house and she's just like, but it's knowing some paranormal.

5:26 Only one hundred percent of sleep activity stuff. And she has what's it's more than just sleepwalking. It's another issue. Where There's a complete disconnect with her brain and rest, but yeah, she's cool, she's cool and he's very funny. I would like she just will post clips of her W like of the the footage, like the cameras in her house or just walking back and forth around the house like all sorts of interesting stuff. So there's things like that, but that's more than just your basic, right? Right. Sleepwalking 7. What he did? Well what he did if he was, sleepwalking is more than your basic sleepwalking, right?

6:09 So like if he doesn't have any history of this, then it's just like okay then was right was it something that was that came up in the hour? It took you to call the police? Yeah. Like did you just make this up? But yeah, I'm looking at right here to give the kid the benefit of the doubt for right now and then he killed his sister. I mean, okay, do it by accident, he probably feels terrible. If it was accident, I would assume you felt terrible but uh, So anyway onto my thing. So this one's a little bit funnier than Britney's. So apparently the streets of New York. Apparently just Queens is being terrorized by a rooster A rooster.

7:03 Rooster, it's very Rising. I was looking up the lady with the sleepwalking and then my brain just connected. Rooster. Yeah, yeah. So apparently, there's a, these are rooster apparently well known in the neighborhood as well and it just is attacking people. One person says that, I was just, you know, usually just casually walking, you know, the hedge, my bus to go to work. When I felt a peck, oh my left hand. And if that this thing kept coming is so vicious, almost evil is like Magpie levels of of bird violent. Blood was gushing.

7:52 Oh my God. I was trying to apply pressure to it and it kept charging at v-0. Oh man. Okay. And like I said, the Rusev's does have a reputation in the neighborhood and people who live in the area told me if you see that they've been terrorized for years by this rooster. So I'm not sure if this is just a random wild rooster to has just set up shop in Queens, but does this belong to somebody because there's lots of people. Yeah, up there who have chickens and roosters out in their yards because they like eating the eggs. It's very, you know, gentrified neighborhood. Ask this is true.

8:37 It could be just like a blow, the country white people show called a chickens. I was going to say is just that a bad thing. I mean, fresh eggs. I was going to say, Escape cockfight, horrible plan was so violent. Yes, he's like I'm ready to fight. Come on now. Where's my other was my opponents? And this person is like, I didn't sign up for this sir, and then I guess when the other neighbors they were laughing about it, like, kids can ride your scooters. You people can't walk in peace without being attacked by. What is Rooster is Rooster is terrorizing In neighborhoods and queens. Someone go out there catches rooster and fry it up. Wow, what if that's somebody's friend someone's violent friend I need to talk to her friend.

9:25 You can't talk to a rooster family. That's what it wasn't. You need to sit that Rusev jammed, talk to a cat. They only understand spray bottles. This is true. This is true. But yeah, no, you sit down to this rooster down, tell them like hey I heard you out there. Terrorizing everybody you need to stop order going to Cook you? You're gonna get it? That's that's this is we're right? This is funny. Look, I like to bring the levity up in here. You always ring the bell today, I'm bringing the conspiracy but not in the way that we handle like conspiracy Crypt. This is more of a well. So, Sometimes I get to looking into things.

10:18 Uh-huh. And you fall down into a rabbit hole and you can't get out of the rabbit hole until you've read everything. You can about the subject. I don't know if other people feel that way, but that's how I am. And so, what started me looking into this was that I was just looking up the FBI. And so, I was tracking back backwards to, like, when I started, you know, and, like J Edgar Hoover, and all that stuff. And imagine my surprise, when one of the FBI's first major cases involved a massive conspiracy, where members of the Osage Nation were murdered shortly after becoming the richest people in the world. After oil was discovered, beneath their reservation imagine that it's called the reign of terror and it lasted from 1921 to 1926. Now, according to Osage Nation history, there are still roughly 60 unsolved murders from this time, but ultimately the F be able the FBI was able to solve all about 24 of them. Not only is this story, just incredible. General.

11:17 There's actually a movie that's supposed to come out about it in like the next couple of months. Oh, nice. It's a Scorsese film to even better. So I figured before any of us go and see this movie. I'm going to feel everybody on what happened in dosage, Hills in Oklahoma, because, boy, was it, a wild ride and I've let everybody know listening. I've been hyping this up to Brian. Now, for a little while, I was like, oh, you don't even understand it's going to blow your mind, I'm having a consistent. But before we even start anything, let's learn a little bit about the Osage Nation. So they are an indigenous tribe in America who live in Oklahoma for a pretty long time. But we have found remnants of the tribe as far east as the Ohio River and the Mississippi River dating back to 700 BC.

12:02 Their name is a French version of their indigenous name which is was that shush which means mid Waters and the Dougie han-soo language. They migrated West after the 17th century and archaeologists have found evidence That there were three different routes that they took. During this immigration, period, one group, followed the Missouri. Osage River to Western Central Missouri and Eastern Oklahoma. Another groom took that same river to West Central Missouri. Then another cluster of about six different groups, followed the only Ottawa River and Iowa, and they ended at the Osage River, this happened because the Iroquois invaded, the Ohio Valley, where they had been living. And there were a lot of battles.

12:47 And I have to explain this because my family is linked to the Confederacy, it's referred to as the Iroquois Confederacy. It's the initial name for the five tribes, the name that we refer to is holding the shown a, those tribes are Mohawk, Oneida, that's my family. Onondaga Cayuga and Seneca later on. There was another trial, another tribe that was added. But at this time, there's only five So, when I say they were invading, this was five different tribes, invading an area. So I totally understand why the Osage people just said, I am a, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I'm a head out, a SpongeBob style. This is too much.

13:37 I'm not you, and I didn't want this, okay? Like they had a whole series of bloody battles through Kentucky, Virginia. Like they were just like, you know what, we got. Good. So from the 1700s to the 1900s, they were taking over territory. In the midwest, they were raiding their Santa Fe New Mexico. They explored Palos Verdes Peninsula on the coast of California, just before the 1800s, the largest group headed up towards Oklahoma and Kansas, and there were hostilities between the Osage Nation and the Cherokee Nation that in 1839, the US government stepped in and forced all of the different dosage bands of the tribe to leave Arkansas and Oklahoma. ah, and they move them into Kansas, which is where the tribe had agreed to settle in 1825 but like, you know, Part of that time period was we conquer him?

14:31 So, but the other issue was that didn't last? Because even though they had been forced into can't into Kansas, they got forced back into Oklahoma and 1871, this was actually their third and most terrible displacement, it was pretty traumatic for the tribe and there are tombstones across the entire area that show that the majority of the people who died during that third transition. We're Young mothers and infants. Wow. So it's pretty hard on the tribe in general. Now, solidly in Oklahoma, they settled in and then in 1894, large, quantities of oil, were discovered underneath a large Prairie that was owned by the tribe.

15:13 The Osage - they negotiated with the US and retained the rights for the minerals, under their land. this was called the Osage allotment Act of 1906 and it said that any subsurface minerals within the Osage Nation reservation were held in a trust by the US government, but we're still tribally owned and they were paid mineral lease royalties to the tribe and this started out as like, Tribal members is called Head rights actually but those people who were a lot he's in the tribe and had that head rate would get like $100 every couple months and then all of a sudden it was a thousand dollars every couple months and then by the early like the late like nineteen teens the tribe, I received millions of dollars at this point so they were at that moment, the richest people in the entire world. Oh nice.

16:09 Okay. Well, some awesome. Unfortunately, this isn't the only time that the the Osage tribe is going to have issues with this. There's a lot of really jacked up stuff that happens with that. The acts that were passed during that time period. But also recently they sued the US government for mismanagement of the trust Assets in the year 2000 and they settled for 380 million dollars in 2011. So it's been 100 Years of drama with this. Yeah. But we are specifically talking about the time period. It before the reign of terror, so we're back in 1921. The US government is in all that happy about how the Osage Nation is using their wealth. We are a, we're very racist, National Nation. Now, with a very racist past and there is nothing that makes broke white folks, more upset and seeing brown people drive rolls royces and building big old beautiful houses. In fact, the Press was obsessed with stories of the rich Redskins and they took delight and trying to cast the osich. Tribe as Savage spendthrift, everybody wanted to know how these people were spending their money. So Congress, passes a law, requiring, any member of the Osage Nation, who is at least half to be appointed a guardian until they can prove that they are competent enough to spend their own money.

17:32 Excuse me. Hmm. Now they, they, they set this up originally going well, a lot of these people who are getting this money, are minors their children. Who are, you know, full-blood? This is just one of the ways that the u.s. government has screwed indigenous people over using blood Quantum, but that's another conversation for another day. And the thing is, even if these miners had Parents, it didn't matter. The government was like, no, no. Everybody needs to have someone to help them with their money. No, it down to thank you. And this wasn't handled by the feds, but by local lawyers and businessmen and it was completely taken advantage of, in fact, So guys, tell you there's so much money here. The Osage Nation began auctioning off development rights to parts of their reservation for people who were hunting for oil.

18:24 And according to the commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1924 alone, their revenue was 30 million dollars in 1920. That's about 400 million dollars now. So, a family of four who were all a lot, he's who had had right? Could be collecting, roughly 600,000. U.s. dollars today just to exist. Wow, there's a lot of money and that guardianship was very corrupt. So this all really starts, the reign of terror May 27th, 1921 local Hunters, find a badly, decomposed body of 33, year old and a brown in a Ravine and Osage County.

19:09 Anna was known to go on sprees as her family called them where she got dancing and drinking with her friends until dawn. Also reminding you, we are still in the prohibition era. Mmm. So there's a lot of bootleggers and a lot of crime happening. She gone out on one of those fries on May 21st and her sister Molly Burkhart hadn't heard from her by May 24th and she was pretty alarmed there. They had a previous sister who had died in 1918 and Molly wasn't entirely sure. That one made sense, either Molly and her sisters and their parents were all on something referred to as the Osage role, which meant that they were registered tribal members and that they were all allottees who had head rate. This family all lived in his area called gray horse, which was one of the reservations older settlements. Also all the sisters were married to white man. That's going to matter later on.

20:05 Now the last time the Anna had been seen was a luncheon on the 21st that Molly had been the. What do you call that when you have a party host? Yeah, she was hosting a luncheon and I showed up drunk, she caused a scene with pretty much everybody there. Molly had to stop her sober up and Molly's husband's younger brother, Brian spelt with a. Why said he dropped her off at her house? Bryan, insisted that he had dropped her off at like 5:00. 30 in the afternoon before going to see a show that was called bringing up father with another man in town named William Hale, who was his uncle and also one of the most powerful people in Osage County but we will also talk about William a little more. Now after three nights of not hearing from her sister Molly slack.

20:54 All right y'all, let's get this going and she's like she sends people to go check on Anna's house. Nobody's been there and as servants or like she didn't come home. That's also when they learned that another Resident in on the tribe Charles Whitehorn had also vanished a week before, Anna. So, a week after an has been gone. Now, a different body is found on a hill, north of downtown Pawhuska. It had two bullets in its head, execution style, the body was so rotten, they couldn't identify it. And the only way, they figured out who it was was because the oil workers who found him checked his pockets and discovered a letter that someone had written to Charles Whitehorn Charles wife is white and Cheyenne Indian when within 24 hours, they also find Anna's body in the mud in a ravine partially submerged bloated. We didn't really do autopsies, then like we do now. Instead what they had was called a Coroner's inquest a group of people show up led by a justice of the peace and they have kind of a conversation over the body at the location where they find it.

22:11 So they do this with Hannah Brown. The reason why we had it like this is because after the American Revolution Americans were kind of not interested in cops citizens were afraid that they would become a symbol of Oppression America, how funny. Whoa. It's like history like repeats itself or something. Yeah. So these inquest were regular people from the town who were doing, they were filling the Gap that cops would do today. And to be fair, When these regular people found that an injustice had been done, it usually got real violent so like they would take their job, very seriously. Okay.

22:52 Cool. And Anna's inquest, they realized they like put her body on like a slab and they were just checking and stuff and they were like, oh yeah, no. She got shot in the back of the head. This definitely a murder. Because originally when they first found her body, there was like well when she just got drunk and like fell over in the woods and like exposure, But there was definitely a bullet hole. So the information about both these murders. Now falls on the local sheriff and Osage County. He's a 50 year old, former Frontiersman named harf Reyes who took his job, pretty seriously. But he also liked to get a little money on the side from his favorite criminals. Pretty much.

23:33 If you were like a moonshine Bootlegger, you knew that all you had to do was pay Harvard a little booze and he'd let you out. One harv learned about Anna. He was already knee-deep in investigating Charles white horns, murder. So, he was like, I need somebody else to focus on this, so he passed it off to the town Marshal, the Marshall shows up, and it's just like, okay. She was drinking at some point. Somebody definitely shot her in the back of the head. He did note that there were two sets of car tracks at the crime scene that were not from the people who had showed up, but we didn't know how to trace. The killer from just try to tracks and At best, like the best area where there was forensics, were like the major cities, your Philadelphia, your DC, Houston La New York middle.

24:21 Oklahoma didn't have really any forensic knowledge at that point, they didn't even photograph the crime scene back. Oh, come on. Yeah. And even if they had, it was already incredibly contaminated by roughly a dozen people. So, I traipse through this true, this caused a bit of a media frenzy, they recovered a bullet, from Charles white horns body. And it was roughly the same size as the whole and Anna's. Had they thought it was a 33. The theories are rampant. They're like two Indians dying in the same week. They're both wealthy ocid residence. And so people are like, well is this like HH Holmes in Chicago? Or is this just a coincidence?

25:07 Because that was the only like International serial type murder that we had any reference for at the time, right? Which was HH Holmes at the end of the 19th century. Some of the elders actually said that, they felt like finding that oil under the reservation was a curse on the Osage people and there was one quote from a newspaper that said after the fat checks from the great white father and I know My people will be happier. Hmm. Yes, they did refer to kind of how we say, like, Daddy Biden and we're being kind of facetious. That's kind of how they talked about checks from the government that chicks At that point. Local police were just kind of ready to be done with Anna's case, but Molly didn't wasn't having that. She reached out to William hail rich, man. Lot of land.

26:03 That he purchased a lot of it from the Osage people. He had worked his way up from just being a poor cow boy to a man who now walked around town in a bow tie and recited poetry like, he thought he was that guy. He was this yet. Okay. He even had a diamond-studded pain from the Masonic Lodge so you know, yeah. Those kind of connection, okay? Hale was also a reservation, Deputy in Fairfax. Now, that was mainly an honorary title, but a lot of the people in the Osage Nation, trusted him. And so, when he talked to Molly, he was just like, I got you, IMA get Justice for your sister. There was a small hearing after this and they went over all the details of the last day of Anna's life. They interviewed everybody who had anything to do with her servants, everybody, especially brianburkhardt His responses were a little weird, but they really couldn't prove anything from the fact that like, maybe, this guy was just a little nervous on the stand.

27:02 Mmm. The other issue we came into when this discussion at this hearing, was that, this area had a big issue with Outlaws because of prohibition, and the Osa chills were really nice place to hide if you were on the run because it was big, beautiful Wilderness. The other Theory though, was maybe it was somebody on the reservation and that made sense because the only people who would know, all of Anna's patterns, were people who knew her Molly was suspicious of Anna's. Urban Oda Brown and when he was questioned after Anna's death, he sobbed and put on a total show and everybody was like, yeah, he's lying. It also didn't help that.

27:49 After Anna's death Brown, got a lawyer and tried to get her share of the Osage allotment, but before, after they had gotten divorced, and I had changed her will so that all of her money will go back to her mom. Lizzie. Okay, cool. Aw So Brown didn't have any legal right to get that money and at this point, the only way you could get in a lot meant was either through an inheritance or a will. So or the natural way that money flowed if you like die. So if a spouse dies, goes to the next person. Who knows the family members right? A few weeks after Anna's Funeral, a man who was in jail for forgery, sent a letter to sheriff harv and was like, I know about the murder. So, both harv and hail rush to meet this man, and he claims that Anna's ex-husband Oda.

28:41 Brown paid him, eight thousand dollars to murder her. He told them, he shot her in the head and carried her body to the creek afterward which is why they hadn't been able to find the bullet because they've been looking in the wrong place. Hmm. OTA Brown was arrested, but there was no evidence that the forger had even been in Osage County, so, they just released Oda Brown. And officially, and his murder was listed. She was listed as Murdered by parties, unknown. Two months after her daughter's. Death, Lissie died as well. She had been ill for years, but it got like exponentially worse after Anna died. Okay, in fact, Molly's brother-in-law, Bill Smith was like this feels weird.

29:30 And so, he started digging into the idea that Lizzy had been poisoned. This made sense because now Lizzie would have had to allotment checks, she'd be getting after Anna passed, right? It was a lot of money, unfortunately, the local police showed absolutely no interest in pursuing Lizzy as a case, an elderly ill woman died of her illness and they were not going to do an autopsy or an inquest over it. Somali puts out a two thousand dollar reward for anybody who can give her information about the murder of her sister Anna. And the Whitehorn family goes bet you. We will also put out two thousand five hundred dollars for any reward on Charles body. So now, we're looking at almost five grand for help on these two murders that were discovered on virtually the same day. Hm, it seems like it'd be a good motivator, but then har Frey has got himself charged with failing to enforce the law. Law because he'd been accepted all those bribes from bootleggers and the Oklahoma attorney general was aimin to put him in jail, so he was kind of busy. He didn't have any time to look into the crimes because he was too busy.

30:40 Trying not to go to jail himself too. Busy the Oklahoma attorney general was like, Yeah, Sohail decides, I'm going to hire a private detective. Now in the early 20th century, detective agencies definitely filled the void where corrupt or underfunded or just downright inept police weren't doing their job. Just like now private detectives are very unwieldy. You never knew if you were getting somebody like Virgil vandagriff who helped capture her bone Meister, or if you were going to get a scammer who was going to take your money and run. So it was all over the place.

31:21 So hail chooses the detector from Kansas City who went by the name. Pike, first name only Anna estate was like, screw it. We're going to hire detective to and then the Guardians for both Anna and Lizzie. The his name was Scott Mathis. He put together a team of privatized and so did the white whore nasty. So, at this point now the three of these people have organized roughly, 50, different detectives who are all over those. Its reservation. Wow. Trying to find information and the thing is these weren't your average attack devs. These are all people who had previously worked for the Secret Service. They were considered to be better than Pinkerton detectives.

32:03 Really one of them was William J Burns who was referred to as America's Sherlock Holmes and he had a whole team of people under him. The information about them, like none of their names are listed in any of the information that you look up and the FBI. Actually just let you go on to their website and pull up all the data they have on us. So it's a lot of reading and it's very interesting but like so they were only know by code numbers and all of, if T of these code number people, kind of descended on the town and they began looking in. Every one, they were a lot of dead ends. A lot of false leads, but they did learn that Anna. Had been seen with two men from the oil fields before her death. Now while the detectives were out following every lead, a man, by the name of aw, Comstock showed up and gray horse to help as well.

32:57 William Burns had investigated him in the past for trying to help an oil company trick, the Osage Tribal Council into a badly and deal. Those charges couldn't be proven but Burns decided Comstock might be a good Ally to have. Hmm. Everybody was a sub-sect, but none of them were good enough suspects. They ended up finding out that Anna was pregnant and nobody knew who the dad was. And so then, that caused a whole series of rumors that Anna could have been sleeping with other people's boyfriends or husbands. And that's why she was murdered. It was all kinds of crazy. Well, okay, so February, 1922, nine months after both Anna and Whitehorn our dad, They don't know what to hails. Detective Pike, had abandoned the case entirely, Sheriff Harvey couldn't lead, any investigation? Because he had been officially kicked out of office. They had no more leads to follow. It was looking like, they didn't have any idea who it killed Anna or Charles, and then in late February, William steps in left his house.

34:01 And when he came home, a few hours later, he was visibly ill. He died before Dawn, unlike Lizzie William was only 29 and Considered to be in pretty good shape. So his death was very suspicious and when they decided to do an inquest in him they determined that he was poisoned the poison was assumed to be strychnine and even though we had the forensic ability to test for strychnine poisoning nobody did it. Why they just decide all you do is take like a flash sample. Yeah. Where I'm looking for is not flash but you know what I mean? Yeah.

34:42 You see it was like just a little bit of Flesh that flesh to go March 2016. 22, another Osage woman dies of poisoning, no toxicology done on her remains either. What's going on July 28th, 1922 Joe Bates, gets whiskey, from a stranger. And after a sip of it later, he begins frothing at the mouth and collapses. He's only in his mid-30s when he He dies. At this point. The Osage Nation is dropping like flies and they all are people who coincidentally are over that. 50% threshold, meaning, they get checks There were so many cases by August that the Osage Nation reached out to Barney McBride. Who was a wealthy Oil, Man.

35:39 And they were like, listen, you have connections to DC. We need help. Please go get, help. Someone is killing us, please. Right. So McBride was married to an indigenous woman and she had passed and he was trusted by the Osage people. He was actually raising their daughter within like the tribe trying to help her, you know, know her people. Right? Right. So he agreed to do it. When Barney gets to d.c., there's a telegram waiting for him in his rooming house. From a friend of his that just says Be careful. That night when McBride went out to play Billiards, somebody kidnapped him. And in the morning they found his body. He had been stabbed over 20 times been bludgeoned in the head, until his skull had collapsed and stripped naked, except for his shoes.

36:33 And socks had, they not been for a business card, which had been tucked in his shoe. They wouldn't have been able to ID him, which lets me know that the people who did this wanted him to be found. This was a warning The local police in Washington were like he was probably followed from Oklahoma. And they wanted to kill him before he could talk to anybody official was. I'm sorry, there was actually an article in the Washington Post that was just like conspiracy. Like, you know, borrow, you know, oil men murdered due to conspiracy to kill Rich, Indians like, major news. And then it goes quiet, there's no suspicious deaths, there's nothing.

37:23 Hmm, until February of 1923 This time, it started again, Henry Rowan, 40 years old found in his car Frozen, but he definitely didn't die from freezing, because there were two bullets in the back of his head just like, with Charles Whitehorn, there's making this stuff. Obvious, like, what we're gonna just like with, Anna, the deputies and Marshall show up at the Ravine. They look at the body. They noticed there are trademarks and the frozen mud from that moment on every OCT. As had electric lights put outside of their houses, and thing is, this would have been seen as like a really bougie thing to do.

38:06 Because everybody didn't have light like that in the nineteen a time, like, everybody didn't have the ability to drown your house and light like we do now, it was expensive but they got the money to do that, right? Well, that's what they're like, oh, these people, they have lights on all night long outside their houses, but they had that so that if they heard something outside their house, they could look and be like, yep. Play it. Safe. Molly and her family were still looking for a killer. Bill Smith is like I know this is okay, I'm on to something here, he's doing his own separate that's Molly's brother-in-law. Married to her sister Rita and he's just like I'm some is going on here.

38:49 I'm a follow this lead. He's doing this all on his own on a stick tape. Hmm. And Bill realized he must have been onto something because they started hearing people skulking around the house at night so much so that he and Rita had trouble sleeping. So they moved a month after Romans death this time. That was the house closer to the center of Fairfax where they had a lot of neighbors, whereas, before they were out more in the countryside in March, a Man shows up at their door and as like, I heard you So and farmland and bills. Like you are mistaken, sir, and Bill told his friends at the man, looked like he was casing the place.

39:33 Then all the neighbors. Dogs started, dying, one by one. All poisoned, come on. Bill Tells A friend of his, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna die soon. Hmm. So on March 9th, Bill drives a friend to a Bootleggers Ranch on the western side of the reservation. This Bootlegger is Henry grammar, he owned a ranch, and he was a well-known outlaw. With connections to the Kansas mob. So bill, and his friend got to the ranch grammar is not there. So they just grab a couple jars of whiskey. Have a couple of swigs, they drop, bill off back at home Rita's there. And so is one of their cermets named Nettie, Brookshire, who, sometimes would stay there overnight. Like if she was working late and about 3 a.m. everyone in town heard a loud explosion that radiated through the neighborhood, it bent trees, blew out windows people down the street, At the Fairfax Motel were thrown out of their ballads, like was there a bomb? Yes.

40:29 Molly and Earnest were over on the other side of the reservation and Molly looked out the window and went there's a fire. She thought it was Thunder at first but it was Bill Smith house and the entire house was gone. This was such a massive explosion that like it was just destroyed the town rushed out and they're like, we got to look for any survivors, anybody survive and they began moving rubble and after forever, they started hearing Bill screaming. Mmm, Rita was beside him in bed. They said it looked like she was peacefully sleeping, but when they moved her, they saw that she had been Hit by something in the back of her head, she was killed immediately.

41:11 They couldn't even find Nettie. A Justice of the Peace. Simply like looked at it and determined that she had been blown to pieces that he was only 19 years old. She was married and had a small child. There weren't enough remains for them to even do an inquest. And in fact, they sell, they found part of Nettie's, remains roughly 300 feet away burned into the side of a house. Wow, And all I could think of here was like damn poor Molly. She is literally now the only person left alive in her family. Yeah. Okay. The carry Bill to an ambulance, they took him to a hospital on the way to the hospital. He passed out originally when they found him, he was awake and screaming and when he found out read, it was gone. He asked one of the people to save him for their gun so he could kill himself to.

42:00 He was sad. Poor guy. They realized as they were taking him to the hospital that this had been planned. Specifically. Because roughly every like justice of the peace, all those people. Hmm. We're out of town for a court case. Oh, how convenient? They had to rush back in the middle of the night. Cops set up flood. Lights at all the access and actresses to the hospital. They posted an armed guard outside of his hospital room. Everybody was like if Bill was if this was because he said he knew something. He's got to tell us something now. Yeah. Yeah. Because he has time to take him for it, right. His friends say that like well he rambled on and on about stuff.

42:46 Sometimes he like woke up and he was like did I say something? Yeah. And they were like no no he's trying to stop himself or so worried that maybe he would say something that would call it. Like it was weird and then four days later he died. He never told anybody anything, huh? At least at this point. How did he die? It was just my explosion from his injuries. Okay I was about to say, what do I miss my games I was worried. Okay, question for you real quick so I don't, I'm not sure how reservations are set up. Uh-huh. Is there some type of security they have? There is a lot of them are big. Open areas. There are generally reservation, police, and they did have like hail was one of their reservation chair, right? Right.

43:34 Right. It's we're like right now we come. We run into issues in the u.s. when there's like a missing woman like the case that I talked about on Tick Tock last week. They don't know where she died or where this lady went missing. So they're not Sure who's in charge. Is it the reservation police? Is it the state? That's why a lot of times when there are reservation like people who go missing or die on reservations, it's handled by the feds because well, we least know that they're the ones in charge right. True. But as far as this was, it was just it was a massive area enemy. The thing is, they had people coming and going nonstop because they had boil Barons coming in. They were auctioning off land to make money. There were people, you know, digging, they just ran wheel.

44:17 There were loads of random people coming off and It's reservation today we might not have that, right? But at this point in history with the Osage Nation, they did have too many people on there which is also contributed to the confusion with whether this was an internal conflict or sore, somebody criminals on the outside trying to kill people, right? Okay. It's just like, is okay, kids. I told you. This is a tail. It's a tale, isn't it? That is for me and I like You like it so, April 23rd. Sorry, got April 23rd. But April of 1923 the Governor of Oklahoma, Jacksy Walton sends his top investigator Herman, Fox Davis, 2006 County because people and O's the chills were saying that the reason why they hadn't found the killers because it must be somebody in the local police department, or either someone in bed with the local police department.

45:14 Now Davis was also a former member of the burns detective agency and the governor Like bat listen. I hired the best man to protect me. He's got that within a few days though Davis was hanging out at the Bootleggers houses and in the gambling Den said he was no help. In fact by June, he ended up pleading guilty to bribery and got a two-year sentence. Oh my God, the governor pardoned him. Then when he got released, he killed it attorney and got life. What present do, yeah. That One didn't work out and following that Governor Walton got impeached in November of 1923 seems he had pardoned a lot of people including some of the oilmen. He was a getting that money to build a nicer house from sorry. Of course, of course, one day in June of 1923 though, George big heart called up his friend, an attorney WW1, he was sick, and he was being taken to Oklahoma City Hospital, George big heart. Said that he had information about the murders, and he was only going to speak to Vaughn in person. So, before Vaughn went to go to that meeting. See his friend, he goes and he says, his wife. Listen, I've been collecting evidence about this on my own. I have hit it at this location.

46:39 When van gets their big card is still alive. He shares the information with his friend. Apparently, it's very incriminating. Then Vaughn sits with his friend. As big heart dies Vaughn calls, the new Osage County, sheriff, and he's like, listen, I'm coming back tomorrow. I know everything about everything. You don't even got to worry about it. The sheriff's just like, well, do you know who killed Baker and he's like, not only do I know who killed my friend. I know more. Oh man. Let's go. Go. He was last seen boarding the overnight train and when the train pulled into the station, he wasn't on the train anymore. What know what They found his body about 36 hours later.

47:23 It was about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City on off the train tracks, he had been thrown off the train, his neck was broken. He had also been stripped naked, just like McBride so everything he had written down in that meeting and then when Vaughn's Widow went to that special hiding spot it was cleaned out to what the fuck. Okay, look, I know this isn't passed but guys, you gotta be quiet. Keep walking at this point, the reign of terror had claimed 24 people from just the Osage Nation, but it was also killing a bunch of people outside of an Asian to the Rancher who was trying to help the investigation, they found his body at the bottom of a flight of steps, and they were able to determine that he was drugged. Another guy was in a different city, he was an Oklahoma City and he got shot.

48:19 In broad daylight on his way to go talk to State officials about the case, my God. So now it's not just people with a head, right? It's anybody who's trying to get help for the tribe. Yeah. The justice of the peace was receiving Anonymous threats. Like at this point, he was just like, I don't even want to do inquests on the new bodies that are being found, the new County. Sheriff was just like, listen, you know, we don't gotta worry about this. It's just some Indians dying. What are you talking about? He was scared. And after the bombing of the Smith house, the Osage tribe began asking the federal government to send investigators. But specifically investigators who had no ties to Oklahoma at all because there was obviously a leak here, the tribal council actually sent a formal resolution to DC and I'm going to read you part of it, which says, whereas and no case have the criminals been apprehended and brought to Justice. Whereas the Osage Tribal Council deemed essential for the preservation of the lives and property. Of the members of the tribe that prompt and strenuous action. Be taken to capture and punish the criminals. Be it further resolved.

49:33 That The Honorable Secretary of the Interior be requested to obtain the services of the Department of Justice in capturing and Prosecuting the murderers of the members of the Osage tribe. Letters were also sent to the Kansas to Kansas Senator Charles Curtis who was part call and part dosage. And at the time, the highest elected official with an e and e, An ancestry like he was the highest you have been ever elected. While the tribe is waiting for a federal response, Molly is just living in fear. She's like, I'm definitely the next Target she heard people breaking into their car one night and Earnest was just like, just lay still, I don't do anything, let them take the car, who cares?

50:18 It's just a car. When her brother-in-law and sister had been killed, hail was in Texas. Hail shows up at Molly's house. In is like listen I'm gonna get you your Vengeance. I promise part of Hale's pasture is set on fire acres of land damaged. Hundreds of cattle dead. Molly just decided she wasn't going to leave the house anymore. She didn't let anybody visit. She stopped going to church. Molly's Faith was gone at this point, Her Health deteriorated. She ended up actually giving her third child with Ernest to other family members to raise because she was like, well, if I'm going to die, maybe one of us can live, so sad.

51:09 That was a her little two year old Anna at the time. Mmm, also she named the baby after this. Yeah, anyway, we don't hear a whole lot about Molly after this, the local Physicians, the shown Brothers began showing up and giving her injections for her health. That they told her was insulin would should have helped since her her health issue was diabetes raw. But it wasn't, it was not helping at all. And in fact, in 1925, Molly sent a secret message to a priest saying that she was in danger, and she was being poisoned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were now at the same time, Tom white is a special agent at the Bureau of Investigation as it was called. He was working in Houston and he received an urgent order from DC.

52:01 His new boss, J Edgar Hoover was like, I need to talk to you and I need to talk to you in person. Whitehead joined the bureau in 1917 after he had been barred from joining World War one due to a recent surgery, he still wanted to serve his country but there was also another issue. Tom white was not like a regular Lawman he was a cowboy hmm. He had been raised in the wilderness but he was noticing that the need for Cowboys was slowly shrinking in the u.s. we were moving away from the wild west era and so he was like maybe if I if I Don't get what the new times. I'm going to be left behind you. Yeah, unfortunately, now President Theodore Roosevelt had created The Bureau as a way to fill the void in law enforcement in 1908, it was so new that they only had a couple hundred agents in a few field offices Across America.

52:53 They hadn't really figured out exactly what they were doing yet. Sometimes they worked on bank fraud or antitrust cases, other times. It was shipments of stolen, cars films, smut all sorts of random stuff being stolen Across America. Other times, they hunted. Escaped prisoner and sometimes they were called in to deal with crimes on Indian reservations. Kind of like now because they're the only ones with jurisdiction because their federal agent They didn't really have any power to arrest, anybody back then, but they were very good at figuring things out. This was like, this was so new that ages didn't even carry weapons. As a part of being an agent Back, Then They Carried weapons because they knew that they were about to be about that business, right? But it wasn't like you have a special issued weapon, right? Okay.

53:40 So Tom white arrives at the bureau. He here, learns about the case in Osage County, and it had been two years since since the nation had sent, That letter and they had sent other agents to check it out. And all the other agents that said the same thing. There's nothing we can do here. The tribe. It actually sold part of their land to help fund the investigation, which is unheard of and messed up. They ended up selling about 20 thousand dollars worth of lamb which is about three hundred thousand dollars.

54:22 Now to be told that there was nothing that could be done. Wow. They were just going to drop it back into the locals hands and Hoover was like we need to do this and we need to do it differently. So he convinced the Governor of Oklahoma to release this guy who was known as Blackie Thompson and that's a super racist name because Blackie was literally just like a native man who was like a quarter Indian. He couldn't have been that dark for y'all to name him Blackie. I'm just saying I looked at pictures of him and he was probably a hair darker than I am. Oh wow. Well You know, they used to call I know, but you just go mad about it. So when I talk about him, I just end up writing about him as Thompson, do nothing.

55:12 Thank you. Like what? I was when I heard his name, I was like oh, he was probably a dark-skinned man. Know they was just racist. Yeah. Okay. Thompson was going to gather evidence working for the bureau. Because they were like listen, No One's Gonna question this convicted bank robber for navigating Osage County. This is where a lot of bank, robbers hide out in the Hills. Unfortunately, the agents had been said to keep an eye on him, lost track of him and it was a chills and he robbed another bank and killed a police officer, and it took them a long time to find them again. So that's kind of why there was that two-year Gap because literally everybody was Trying to deal with the Scandal that they had messed up.

55:58 In fact, like I said, Hoover had just gotten his job. So he was like, crap, we can't do this before. There was also a whole nother, like Federal Scandal that happened during that time period. So they were really worried about losing Federal funding and proving that the Bureau of Investigation was vital to the Department of Justice. So Hoover brings in Tom. Wait, a cowboy see, there were still. There were a couple of cowboys who worked for the feds at this point but all the new guys who were coming in were what Tom Wright referred to as the college boys. Oh these are people who are going to college and then joining the bureau which is how it works. Now, usually But Tom Wayne understood the assignment.

56:44 He's like you're not bringing in the military, former military, any former cops, you're calling in somebody who's a friend. Here is a man who has experience dealing with the wild west and osich Hills is the wild west. So they sat white to the Oklahoma field office and the field office, there was in desperate. Need of somebody who knew what they were doing, because they were inundated with crime. Just constant crime. The bootleggers. Is the gambling dens. Like, they were just like, there's so much crime, we can't keep up with it. Help us please. This was both an opportunity and if he messed up, this was going to be a death sentence to his career, other agents who have been sent to Osa chills and who had not done anything. Had either been sent to distant far away, field offices, or outright fired.

57:34 White was also aware that every single person who had gotten close to the truth here had been murdered, so he knew that he was going to have to operate differently, right? He spent the first part of the summer of 1925 cinch simply catching up on four years of murders and Mayhem in Osage County. He felt that there were had to have been clues in the original files that would like lead him to some answers. And he was surprised to learn that despite Molly Burkhart being the only surviving member of her family. Nobody had decided to interview her. So weird. Yeah, people dropping the ball laughter, right? He noted that Osage murders were definitely not that of a serial killer. We didn't call it a serial killer at the time, but he was just like it's not following any pattern. We had people shot stabbed poisoned, drugged bombs. It was random forms of murder but he noted in his writings that these were very planned out execution. Yes, they every single detail.

58:34 Nothing left to chance. White knew he couldn't trust anything from the local Lawman or the private detectives. Honestly, the giant file of stuff at the detectives wrote was just a lot of personal opinion just a bullshit basically like they were following stuff but like it was just they wrote down everything. There was no discernment. Oh okay, I got you like she talked about this in the sky was blue. That day. Yeah details I was just like this is so much. No wonder people were overwhelmed by it before. It wasn't an issue like we're sometimes. There were no leads, there were too many leads and they hadn't followed them down and figure them out.

59:16 Right? So he assumed he was like I need a team and he knew they were going to have a rough time because Witnesses at this point were terrified that they were going to be murdered. Why decided that he was going to be the face of the investigation along with two other regular members of The Bureau and everybody else who was involved will go undercover. He decided the only other people he was going to bring onto the team, we're Cowboys. So he brought in a 56 year. Old Sheriff from New Mexico with a talent for Assuming New identities. Also, a former Texas Ranger who was very well, versed in danger, He brought in a deep-cover agent who looked like an insurance salesman because he had been an insurance salesman, huh?

1:00:04 He kept one of the previous agents who had gone into Osage County before John Berger, John knew the case and had a list of criminal informants in Oklahoma. And he also brought in Frank Smith, Smith was also older and he was also a cowboy. The three of them were going to be like the front people who were doing the visible. Esta, gatien that everybody in town can see, right? Then they also their last member was a man by the name of John Ren. John ran is a former spy for revolutionary leaders in Mexico and he was also India. Mm-hmm.

1:00:45 Cool. Smart Ute, which is a tribe that lived in what is now Colorado and Utah. Ryan was it, incredible investigator but he had been fired because he hated to do paperwork. I feel that Hoover had actually only reinstated him, roughly a few months beforehand and was just like, you got to do what you're supposed to do. Man, I dunno supposed to, but paperwork is just like, it's above my pay grade, you know I'm saying, give me a raise, maybe white needed ran because in reading the old investigation papers, There was a lot of casual racism in the report and then also a little bit of jealousy just because little that casual Reese's one of the bits. I read said that the OCH people were lazy pathetic, and the only way to get make them talk was to cut off their allowance. Wow, that's the person.

1:01:37 Who's your tribe is. Paying you to be here and fix this? Yeah. Wow, fuck you. And here's the thing because the Osage tribe members could tell that these investigators didn't like them. Why would you feel Pell to go out on a limb to talk to these people. When anybody who talks the law enforcement is literally getting murdered like the next Market day. But you imagine you have paid three hundred thousand dollars for these people do an investigation about and they're calling you lazy and entitled. I like okay you can go right? Give me my money back. White tells Hoover these are who I want and everybody said was that a coded message that said proceed under cover immediately reporting to agent in charge.

1:02:21 Tom white the group, all slipped into town separately and under the radar with assumed identities. Two of them showed up at will actually want. He was one of like a quiet elderly Cattleman from Texas who was going to become friends with William hail The man who looks like an insurance agent. Open up an insurance business in. Downtown Fairfax. And he'd go door-to-door specifically, two suspects house has to go. Meet them agent Reynolds arrived as a medicine, man searching for his long-lost Osage relative. Yeah, Ryan attended tribal, Gatherings made friends with locals who told him things that they definitely were never going to tell white man. When white arrived with the other two, this was also the beginning of the FBI wearing the black soot Black, Tie, shiny shoes.

1:03:13 So that's how so white Smith and burger show up to town. So they they come with this appearance. So everybody knows where you guys investigating. Yeah, the four other guys show up working in the oil fields and I just looked in the regular Ranch in and I just like Other guys, they re set up their shops there before these guys even came there and they got they got their information already. Okay, cool. I mean this was done very well. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. Okay. I like it. So, the first thing that White and the other two agents, we're like go there. Like where do we start? Well, first thing is they go check the justice of the peace. Anna's inquest records are gone, stolen. None of Anna's evidence had been saved. Saved.

1:04:03 Literally, the only thing that was left was that the Undertaker had kept her skull because they had exhumed her body at one point. And the showing Brothers, the two medical doctors in town had like, literally chopped up her brain to try and find a tiny bullet in it. So the Undertaker was like, I'm just gonna keep this skull here. Yeah, they entered the rest of her. This was useful though because he was able to See what had happened. And he came to the same. Conclusion as the initial inquest her, there was no exit wound. That bullet should have been in there, so we do something. Find the hammer, found the bullet from Anna. So they stopped at the bring for no reason less. What they went back and looked at it again, but he was just like, no this what you like, he spoke to the Justice. He was like what you said originally was right there. Should have been a bullet in her brain, mmm. And that meant that one of the first people who were there at that inquest.

1:05:06 Probably took it. In fact, they went and they spoke to the show and brothers and they were like, we do know. We don't like you. Yeah. It's very obvious that they're involved at this point. Yeah, there was so much hearsay and that original those 50 privatized. That wiped is just like, you know what? I'm gonna interview everybody on my own your guys are going to help me. We're going to check out all their Alibis one by one agent Burger helped him with this together. They ruled out. Most all of the people that the Eyes left as Witnesses, including Anna's ex-husband, when they looked into the situation was that, oh, Des Browne was with a woman in another city.

1:05:51 And that was accurate. They were divorced. He was allowed to be out there. Slut right. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Do you think he was out there? You know, meet ladies, if living is best? Like, they looked into the rumor that and I had been killed by the girlfriend of someone. She was having an affair with what they realized through doing that investigation was that the private eyes had written down everything that everybody told them and white determined. Oh some of this is just straight lies. This is manufactured to specifically throw people off. Hmm. J. Edgar Hoover also helped a little bit from DC. He actually demanded daily reports. So they descent daily coated telegrams to him to DC, but he was just like, there's a white woman you have listed here. Her name is Nisha, Kenny and she's married to an Osage, man. And I think she's part of this conspiracy Kenny had a history of mental illness issues and she believes she was possessed and had tried to kill a local attorney, but Hoover had interviewed her twice and even had a government expert on Mental Health.

1:06:57 Evaluate her. They realize they were like, she's a bit paranoid, but she's very perceptive. So while she'll make a terrible witness, she will be able to help us with the leads, hmm? Okay, Hoover also pointed out that aw Comstock that Guardian. Was not the worst person, he had an issue like they had real beef because Comstock had criticized him to the bureau and threatened to turn Senator Curtis against Hoover. So initially Hoover was not on board with Comstock being a part of this, right, right.

1:07:38 White was just like he was showing up giving us a little bit of information then hiding again because Comstock realized that this was real. Real deal. People are still Dying by the end of July. White begins looking into brianburkhardt Molly's brother-in-law. The last person who'd seen alive. Anybody need a refresher. He swore that he took Ana home between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. and then gone into Fairfax to see a show with William Hale and his brother Ernest and two, other family members, and aunt, and uncle. This seemed like a solid Alibi. So agent Burger traveled to Brian's family's house in Northern Texas, which is Campbell, Texas, and lo and behold, William Hale had also grown up near Campbell Texas to oh wow, honey. When they got when Burger got to Campbells family's house, sorry to the house.

1:08:34 And in Campbell Ryan's Uncle wasn't there but his aunt was there and she launched into an entire tirade about how Earnest had married. One of those red Millionaires and she didn't like it, she was in the middle of this crazy conversation with agent burger and Brian's. Uncle comes in. And is like Brian was with us. Y'all need to leave. Uh-huh. Excuse me sir. But how the hell you know, how do you know what I'm here for? Yep, he was just like, listen stop. He was like Brian was with us. You'll need to look into this. He has an alibi. Y'all need to get out of my house.

1:09:15 Hmm, I don't trust, his Alibi is not very trustworthy. I don't think so either. So it's August of 1925, white undercover agents. Go into the town of Ralston. There was an old lead that Anna had been spotted by a group of white. Men who have been sitting outside of a hotel in Ralston on Main Street, previous detectives had spoken to the group of men and they were like, we have no idea what you're talking about. they track down an old man, who was originally kind of worried at them first, but once he realized that they were legit, he was like, oh yeah bat he was like I was there and I definitely did talk to Anna. In fact, I know I talked to her because I was like, hey, Annie And he said that she wasn't slumped over drunk and she was in the car with brianburkhardt and Bryant was driving.

1:10:06 He was definitely not in Fairfax because he was in Ralston at like midnight. Hmm interesting. There were other Witnesses who confirmed that Brian was driving the car too and this was the first kind of crack and brianburkhardt sli's there was no way he was both in Fairfax and Ralston at the same time. No you're not a time traveler sir. So It follows this lead and he follows agent Burgers. Network of informants and be they kind of create a timeline. So Brian and Anna had stopped at a speakeasy in Ralston and stayed there until 10 p.m. then they headed to another underground bar. A couple miles north of Fairfax Brian's Uncle from Campbell was spotted with them that night but he left before they left that bar at 1 a.m. then they kind of disappear for about two hours and other People who he interviewed him.

1:11:00 Ralston said that they saw Brian Anna and a third man. They didn't know at about 3 a.m. In fact, someone who knew Brian said that she heard him get out of a car. They were a like in Fairfax and he was yelling at Anna to get back in the car. That's the last time. They anybody in Ralston or Fairfax are hurt Anna, huh? And actually he found out from these witnesses that after they initially had, told that stuff to the private eyes. Someone had come around and paid everybody off.

1:11:40 Interesting. So at the end of the summer now, White's like there's definitely a mole in this investigation. One of his agents have been questioning a local like crappy attorney and the attorney knew a lot about the case, the attorney was like, oh, I've seen part of the Bureau reports and I can see more of them if I want to. This wasn't really anything new in the bureau's past breach has happened a lot, but the problem is this kind of a breach had was going to get a lot of people killed. Yeah. Like Literally as soon as someone says they have information, about this case, they go dying in the next day. On top of that, two of the previous Burns detectives, try to expose one of burgers, informants, Kelsey Morrison and they lied and told local PD that Kelsey Morrison had committed a robbery and he hadn't. So, Kelsey gets pulled into local PD. Ancient Burger reports that the local law men are trying to mess up their investigation.

1:12:46 After Morrison is released, he super freaked out and is like can you get these guys before they kill me? No agent Burgers. Like, you need to lay low, watch out for traps. Like if this was so like, when I say that the, the identities of those four men who were undercover were so important, white never met with them anywhere near Fairfax, and it was never during the day, they met in the middle of the countryside at night to exchange information. They all were told to always carry their weapons. Make sure you aren't being followed. In case your cover gets blown, you need to be able to defend yourself, right? Right. So that white looks into the private eye who hail hired in 1921 our boy.

1:13:32 Pike, the one who you know said that he just quit and left town. Yeah, right. Well, Why it's walking around town one. They're all like kind of just doing the regular thing. Agent Burger is just a random guy walks up to him and it's just like Pike and I work together. Pike has something he wants to tell you, but he's not going to tell you about it. Unless you pay him very well. Pike. He says Pike knows the identity of the third man who was with Anna at 3:00 before she died. Of course, Asian Burgers.

1:14:12 Like I do want to let you know, you are attempting to extort the federal government right now. Yeah. You should just have him come to us and talk to us. We could protect him and the guys like yeah, no. So they launched their own investigation to find Pike and they do of course he did because he gets arrested commit and highway robbery and Tulsa Oklahoma, dude. Come on. So when to attempt to get like a lesser, Sentence. Hike tells them that there was a local Gambler who had been with the three of them, but the Gambler had gone home before the third man arrived.

1:14:54 So this was a useless lead from Pike. Go to jail, don't collect $200. Yeah, but he was so pretty much Pike. Gave them another person they hung out with but not the one they wanted. Then why did he say that? He had information? You just want the money, these won the money. He was just trying to Extort them dumbass. Okay now they did learn something from Pike though. The three of them. Put a lot of pressure on Pike and he went I wasn't hired to find, Anna's killer. I was hired to conceal. Where Brian was that night? I was hired to falsify evidence. I was hired to create for fake Witnesses and to manufacture an alibi for brianburkhardt.

1:15:36 Ha ha ha ha. And he said This all came from William hail. Fuck you. Okay. Now he'll head and said, directly that Brian was the killer just that he needed. Brian to be clean. Mmm. That's his nephew. He's looking out for his family. It was a big deal though because literally everybody in this town, trusted. William hail. And now, Tom white has evidence that William Hale is big bad guy. So yeah he'll had well Not only that he'd been lying to Molly for four years. So, they asked him. Is Hale involved?

1:16:20 Or is he just covering for his family? Pike isn't sure, but he's just like Sometimes when I would meet with hail Brian was there and so was Ernest, Molly's husband? Ernest Burkhart was in on this from the jump. So he must have been a third person that was there. Then we'll see at this point. It's very obvious to the investigators that the Burkhart family is part of this conspiracy and he's like. Did Bill Smith figured this out? Is that why he got blown up? Because that was his brother-in-law, you know, they were related through marriage, right? Smith hadn't, covered that lizzi had been poisoned and he was following the trail related to the Head Right money. Remember, I told you that bill would wake up and start panicking that like he said something. Yeah.

1:17:13 Shortly before build died, James and David shown. Thus doctors called bills attorney and had him come to the hospital. Why way specifically met with Bill and made? Sure. There were no nurses around. Tom white is very suspicious of the shown Brothers. At this point, you should be, he was already suspicious because of that missing bullet. And he questioned, everybody who'd been in the room. The doctor said they called those lawyer hoping that he would tell them who was attacked. But Tom was like why don't you call Justice of the Peace or somebody who could have arrested somebody?

1:17:55 Yeah, they like it didn't matter. Bill didn't say anything. He didn't name his Killers but what he did tell us attorney was that he only had two enemies in this world. William K hail the king of Osa chills and his nephew Ernest. Becker. Okay. Now, Tom, wait, Tom and his agents determined that the shown Brothers had orchestrated that kneeling for their own purposes. The lawyer had been called in to bring paperwork and that paperwork. They got built a sign when he was just Lucid enough. Allowing his brother to be appointed to his wife's estate.

1:18:38 So Rita Rita's had right money. They had Bill sign it away. but the problem was Well, okay, so this is obviously the first direct connection to these murders being super tied to the Head, Right? Mm-hmm. White, look more into it and it was just corruption on top of corruption. Some of the Guardians had been appointed to the Osage tribe were decent, but most of them were just straight up robbing people of their money. Like, he would find out that like a person be like, hey, I want to use my money to buy a car and the guardian be like, bet I'll go get you a car and he buy the car for about $250 and then sell it to his client for 1012 $250. Wow. Eating the thousand dollars himself Guardians were getting kickbacks from the banks that held the money stores that they, that the people shopped at, sometimes they would just outright buy land in the name of their clients but it was for them.

1:19:35 Hmm. Even worse the US government was looking at these purchases and going, the Osage people are really spending frivolously and the O's is people are begging for like to use their money. To like bite to build schools, right? They want to do good for a community, a government study actually was launched after this whole thing happen and it showed that those Guardians stole eight million dollars from the Osage people, just in the early 1920s. What the fuck? And all those Guardians were the most prominent men in town, local judges lawyers prosecutors. There was one judge who legitimately was telling people, if you vote for me, I'll make sure you get on this Guardian action, that's sickening.

1:20:26 Some of the Guardians would clean out the account and then tell their client, you don't have any more money. And just leave the person to just live in poverty. There was one instance where a guardian let a child die instead of giving them money from the account, what the fuck. And the thing is, it wasn't that the Osage people weren't aware of what was happening. It was just that they were like, this is just another way that the u.s. government is screwing us over. It like that again they couldn't do anything about this either because they were appointed, Guardian government Guardians. Yeah. Goes was like this. This is Christ startling for white because He had read a lot of the same newspaper stories and other Americans read was that the Osage people all had 11 cars and they all lived in fancy money and they were all stupid.

1:21:11 Wealthy. Yeah. Beloved car is not all my name. Well, they all right. Yeah, they're all my name but guess what? I don't drive any and his cousin and uncle. Yeah. Everybody else has a car. I don't have a car. Exactly. God. So what we learned was that people felt helpless and that they had nobody on their side which was why they fell. Ain't no real desire to talk to anybody who came to help him about this. So, in September of 1925, the undercover insurance agent stops at a gas station in Fairfax and starts talking to a woman who worked there. He's like, hey, I've been here for a couple months and I think I want to buy a house and the lady is just like, oh yeah. Well you got to talk to Bill hail. He owns everything here.

1:21:56 She said that she had brought her home from Hale and she lived pretty close to him. And that one night, thousands of Acres of Bill's land had been set on fire and it was meant to seem like it was for other reasons but she knew the real reason and the real reason was that bill hail wanted insurance money. And in fact he had collected 30 thousand dollars from that stretch of land being burned. White's going to look in the helm or remember Henry Rowan. Yeah. Who'd been shot in the head twice and found in his car. He's Frozen. Yep. Well Bill. Hail made this big to-do about how he and Henry Rowan were best friends and that Rowan had been kind of cheated by his guardian and didn't have any money. And so, Bill Hale had given him over twelve thousand dollars because they were such good friends. I don't give that kind of money to my friends. Anyway, well just before Rowan died. There was an insurance policy that was taken out on his life 25,000 dollars.

1:23:08 And Bill was the beneficiary, of course you was, and, of course, right after that, Ron ended up with a bullet in his head. But no one had even interviewed bill as a suspect. And so, white track down the insurance agent, who told a very different story than Hale had tone of hounds book. Remember because bills, like, we're such good friends. He listed me because I was the last person, you know, they were like, well, why not? His wife was like, oh, that's because his wife was cheating on him with somebody else of course, which was true, but he was like he just didn't want her to have any of the money but beside the point what the insurance agent said was that Hale had pushed for the policy and the insurance agent was like well most people only need about 10,000 dollars Max especially indigenous people because once the town got wind of all that money, it became very expensive to bury indigenous people and the area of course and they I jacked up the price of funerals for the Osage tribes members to the tune of roughly 8,000 dollars.

1:24:14 That's a lot of money. Now, that's way too much money back then for a funeral. Yeah, yeah. So, the typical amount that they would give for something like that was about 10 grand for an indigenous person to pay for their funeral, things of that nature, you know, help the family out a little bit. I mean, they would have been fine because eventually the head right money would come in the next couple of months, and the family would be able to do what they need to do. Right, right. Hale says, he'll pushes the policy from 10,000 to 25,000 saying that Rowan owned him money white, didn't think that, that was real. Because if it was real all Hill would have had, Do was present proof of that debt to the Rowan estate, and it would have been paid back because that money is still dropping into an account. It's possible that Rowan never even knew that this policy was taken out on his life.

1:25:11 I'm Imagine and after Rowan's funeral, they tried to pin the murder on the man who had been sleeping with his wife. And in fact, hail like was like you need to lead run and actually the guy was like, know if I run people are going to think. I did it. He was right. Yeah. I mean yeah. You were going to you did it real. He'll also visited Rowan's Widow and left a bottle of whiskey for her and she need to supposed to have it because she was Like think that's poison. Yes, it was. I guarantee you, it was fucking poison white discovered that Hale had even tried to buy Rowan's head right previously, but that literally went against the government's ruling, there was no way you could sell your own head, right? But the only way it could Pat be passed down. Was through inheritance or like dual will white followed the head rates and realized that these were all being slowly trickling back to Molly Burkhardt and if she It would go to her children and her husband, Ernest Burkhart, ours. Just get the fuck out of here.

1:26:20 You get hers out of this man has money went to Lizzie. Lizzie's money was dispersed back to her kids when she died Rita's. Money was actually supposed to go to Mali to the killer hadn't intended for Bill, to outlive Rita, which is why they had to go and have him have Bill filed that document before he died. Right. Right. But the bulk of all of these had rights Now, belong to Molly. Burkhardt she's received be receiving roughly four or five times her normal allotment girl. Watch out, they looked into, it's got Mathis. Who was the guardian of both Anna Brown and Lizzie in the back pocket of hail every bit of corruption that agent, white found in Fairfax had a connection to William hail, and that made it very hard to get any justice.

1:27:10 So, in the fall of 25 white told who Hoover. I have to get evidence to put hail away and his accomplices, there was pressure from White's bosses but also presage pressure from the Osage people who were, like we really appreciate what you're doing but we're still scared. Hmm. White was finally kind of on the same line with usage people, which was that there is no way. Any of the corrupt, white citizens of osich hills were going to implicate one of their own people and murdering Indians. So he turned to The Outlaws instead, these men were any less racist but some of them wanted Hale gone too. He specifically talk to Dick.

1:27:53 Greg, a well-known Outlaw who had information, but he didn't want to tell it all white met with him. And realized that dick Greg would easily backstabbed roughly anybody, he knew but not William. Hail Greg did however let agent white know that Hale had met with the outlaw out Spencer and his gang which Greg had been a part of in 1922 and that Hale had offered them two thousand dollars to kill Rita and Bill Smith. Al Spencer had declined saying we're criminals but we're not hit men and we're not just going to murder some innocent lady. Yep in her bag. So white ended up then going to Henry grammar the Bootleggers who Bill visited Just like every other witness against Hale, grammar have been killed shortly after Bill died in 1923, there was a clear sign that if you were a business, if you were a criminal who did business with William hail you were going to die after your business was concluded, oof they still had their other informant Kelsey Morrison, who told white really bad news Beal?

1:28:58 Hell knows you're onto him. One of the undercover agents had gotten close to Hale. And when they talked about the case, he'll was like, it's all good. I'm bulletproof. Oh really now sir? So at that white was like, okay we're safe for now, they don't think we're a real threat, they just know that we know about it. October of 25 agent white gets a tip, a prisoner named Bert Lawson knew a lot about the Osage murders. So white and Frank Smith go to Macalester, prison to talk to him, Lawson had been a ranch hand for Bill Smith, and threw him had met the rest of the Hale family, all the brothers and all that. So when Bill Smith and Lawson had a falling out, Ernest Burkhart had gone to Lawson and was like, listen, I need you to kill my brother-in-law, Bill Smith. I'll give you five grand and lost them was like listen, it's not really what I do.

1:29:59 But then lost and got arrested and he needed lawyers. So he said that he agreed to do it out of desperation and that Ernest, provided him with nitroglycerin and it even dropped him off at Bill's house to do the deed. And then they snuck him back into the local jail while the cops were at the explosion. On October 24th. 1925 white sends a telegram to Hoover saying, they have a confession of the person who set the bomb Hoover was like bet. Congratulations. This is when Comstock starts receiving threats for helping with the investigation and have even found Dynamite planted in like his windows at his house. Like it opened the windows. Yeah. To let the air in and he was just like there is there's a but I know might hear this not good because a boom stick in my window. So John ran, the UK Jack had spoken to Molly's priest and Molly's priest was like, yeah she hasn't been to church in like a long time but she did send me a message saying She was poisoned.

1:30:58 And so the priest was told Ren. I told her don't drink any alcohol under any circumstances. Wasn't alcohol. That's the thing. They didn't realize that it was the insulin injections that were being poisoned and Molly was 100%, right? It was just happening, very slowly, as to present itself as an a slow ending illness, just like her mother. Yeah. Finally, it was December 1925. Agent. White couldn't wait any longer. He sent out warrants to arrest, will help William Hale and his nephew Ernest Burkhart Earnest got picked up right away and they took him to a jail and got three which was a roughly like Southwest like 80 miles.

1:31:39 He'll actually couldn't be found and they had learned that he liked bought a fancy new outfit and then he strolled into the Sheriff's Office and was like understand. I'm wanted oh my God. And so they took him to jail and Guthrie to they were held separately and they actually put our In this area of the prison that was hot as hell like. So he would be super uncomfortable. They in fact, all the police in Guthrie were like Earnest is gonna break first. He he just seems like he would no one breaks in the first 24 hours, Ernest, just sit there saying over and over your informant is lying.

1:32:20 Hales like I have an alibi. I was I literally got a telegram in Texas and signed for it. How was I there for bills assassination? White goes out in a lamb and he decides I need to bring Blackie Thompson it. Forgot all about Blackie got you will remember. They had originally used him and then had to put him back in prison because he was a little too rowdy. Yeah, so he didn't even. So here's the thing. White didn't even like talk to Hoover about this because had he asked for permission Hoover would have said, no, because that had been a big scandal at had gotten him in trouble. But what he did do was Whitehead Thompson.

1:33:03 Always under an armed guard. They he legitimately had a Rifleman on a nearby building. Always with his rifle on Thompson the entire time. He was there. Like they took every attempt to make sure Thompson did not Escape So they bring in Thompson, he's initially kind of hostile and rude. But when agent white goes, listen, I don't want to know about anything else you're doing. I want to know about, Bill Hale and your connections to him and osich else. And that's when they noticed that Thompson was like no longer as aggressive. He told white, told him.

1:33:51 Listen, I can't shorten your sentence. You're literally in jail for life. But eventually Thompson began talking and he said that he had also been offered money to Kill Bill and Rita Smith. So they took that back to Burkhardt and they said listen we have a second witness willing to testify that you conspired to Kill Bill and Rita Smith and so Earnest is like nah nah you don't and he's like who recommend? So they bring in Thompson into the same room with Earnest and Earnest Burkhart is shook. Circus Thompson. Looks at Earnest and goes listener and eat.

1:34:33 I told him everything. Burkhart is almost like he wants to talk but he's too scared multiple times, he liked starts the conversation and discuss I can't They take Thompson back to his cell white goes home. A little bit defeated. He's like, maybe the whole that Hale has on his nephews is just too much. In the middle of night though, he gets a phone call and he's worried, he's like, oh God it's a phone call like midnight. Does that mean Tom said escaped or somebody killed himself or something like that? No, it was the prison aren't. His Burkhart is ready to talk. Oh, okay. Brock Holt was told his rights, he And a paper saying he waved them and he made a statement implicating not just his uncle in the bomb plot but connecting hail to a lot of the criminals that agent Smith had learned about Burkhardt told them that Lawson actually had lied and the bomber was not Lawson. It was a demolition expert that they had found named ASA Kirby. ASA, Kirby had been eliminated, just like all the other criminals, that's why you haven't heard of them, right? That's why loss of the still alive. If he had been the one who done it, he dead very true. He said that bill Hills.

1:35:51 Alibi was real. He had just paid Kirby to do the murder Burke her. Turned out on a lot of people. He implicated a man named John Ramsey, unknown cow Thief for killing Henry Rowan. Ramsey initially played dumb until they brought Burkhart signed confession to him and he went I guess it's on my neck now. Get your pencils. The only person that Ernest dimming implicating, his confession was his brother brianburkhardt. Why not? And Brian was the Prime is this Brother? Come on, man, his uncle but honest to give them the name of the third man who was with Brian and Anna was in Earnest now who was Is it Kelsey Morrison the informant that they'd had the entire time. He didn't want to implicate himself what, in fact, Kelsey Morrison is the person that killed Anna. Wow.

1:36:49 Okay. So they went to go gather Morrison and they decide to check on Molly Burkhardt. He was near death. And coincidentally, as soon as her husband was locked up and the injection stopped, Molly got better. To the damn Brothers, what we're brothers at Hearn has never admitted to poisoning his wife, the show and brothers were brought in and they were asked about what they were using to treat Molly, they never gave a straight answer. Like I read the interviews there. So kg like, like I said, like, explain to you the answers that the show and brothers gave were the same, but also very cagey. Like, at one point he was just like, Well, why'd you ask the nurse to leave?

1:37:36 He was like, I don't remember asking the nurse to leave. He was like, well, did she lie? And he's like, no. If she said, I asked her to leave I did, but there's lots of reasons why I could ask a nurse to leave, okay? It was that kind of stuff. Like it was so cyclical. And honestly, I think that I would white was just like, I'm fed up with y'all. I want to choke that unlike you better answer my questions correctly. No, it was always, it was really kg. It was very cyclical every time. Like they were like, oh, you know, are you sure it was insulin that you were giving Molly Burkhart? Well, we thought it was insulin, we don't know. We just get the syringes, we're not putting it in there, you are putting it in her. So you should know what you're giving a patient.

1:38:20 Paige I hate. Yeah, there they are. The two. I hate In This Very Room of all the people. You're mad at your mad at David show at these two people you're pissing me off. Okay. Anyway, on this, though, Molly's like I really want the people who killed my family to go to prison and they're like everybody. And she's like, yeah, everybody. And they're like Ernest, she's like, I love Earnest, she's really struggling. She's just like, no, it's not him. It was Earnest to with all the other confessions agent white goes back to hail. He's like, listen, we have all this evidence against you. An it's going to be so messy.

1:39:03 Your family is going to be implicated. It's going to be a big shame to your family. Do you really want to do all this? He'll was like I'll fight it. Oh okay. So, I went to court hail and the co-conspirators were tried in both state and federal court between 1926 and 1929. It was state and federal court because some of the murders were done off the reservation. So those were tried in local Court, whereas the ones on the reservation, we're done. We're heading federally, I'm going to save you. A lot of the sort of details, there were a lot of Deadlock juries there were appeals overturned verdicts. halfway through Earnest trial, like he was messed up like he was just He's described during his trial as just looking Haggard at one point Hale and him have the same attorney and they bring him in too. Like he walks in and he was like wait. He's on our side and so they make him go talk to that attorney.

1:40:15 And when he comes back, he starts recanting, all of his confession on the stand. That gets everything. Shut down. It's a big craziness. And finally, that night, after Earnest was put back in prison, he actually requested the judge and he was just like, I don't want to do this anymore. The judges like what do you mean? He's like why aren't you talking to your attorney? He's like, they won't let me do what I want to do and judges like what do you want to do? He's like, can I just go to prison for life? Can we just be done with us? This is really stressful and so the judge was like okay he's like no death penalty, you just go to jail forever. Hmm. He turned State's evidence and told the police that Hale had.

1:40:58 Also gotten George big heart killed as well. George big heart has been to see hail And then come home and I'd he implicated his uncle in the poisoning of Joe Bates. The trials were pretty heated, Kelsey Morrison finally admitted to killing Anna Brown at the request of hail and he said that Brian was his. Accomplice Brian also turns State's evidence, it took four separate Charles to get hail convicted. Wow. October 29th 1929, he was only convicted for one murder. Come on, huh? We didn't rear Owen?

1:41:40 Okay. Well, how long is he put away for Or he was given life in prison and sent to Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, okay? Unfortunately. He was paroled on July, 31st 1947 after serving 17 years in prison, he moved to Montana because he literally lost everything in Oklahoma good where he became a ranch hand. He died in Arizona and 1962 and was buried in Wichita, Kansas, what'd he, die of natural causes, damn it cools old by then he was in his 80s. Despite all the setbacks this was seen as a major win for the bureau, which would become the FBI in 1935, that's awesome and become its own.

1:42:24 It wasn't just a part of the Department of Justice anymore. It was its own Federal Bureau of Investigation Bernie's Burkhart received life in prison and got a full pardon from Oklahoma, governor Henry bellmon in 1965, he wanted to go to jail, I know. Molly divorced, her husband. Got remarried to a man named John Cobb. They were very happy. Actually, during Ernest trial. Their daughter Anna died. She was 40. It was really just devastating for her because she was like, damn, I sent her to go live with her other family and be safe. And now she's gone.

1:43:05 Yeah. Molly died of natural causes in 1937. Her head right went to her. Surviving older children, Tom on Tom white went on to have an illustrious career in the FBI. He actually ended up becoming one of those college boys that he never liked. He had a stroke in 1971 at 90 years old and died. December twenty. First two months later after this was all exposed, the US government changed the head right law saying that the allotment could be passed. Down to two. Nobody other than other postage tribe members yes in an attempt to make sure the reign of terror never happened again. No more white men coming in.

1:43:49 Pretty much didn't matter if you married into the family. If you weren't, if you, you had to be at least 50% blood-quantum for you to have this head, right? That's like I said, they do still have the treaty. Mmm, not the treaty. I'm sorry, they do still have had Ray and they do still get That allotment but there has been continuous issues with. The guardianship it's not the same as it was then but there was still major mismanagement on a bigger level Kimberly is still going on. Hey Miss, it's not the guardianship. Oh my God if we Brittany free free days, right?

1:44:30 Well anything is pointed to a lot of people that conservatorships and guardianships and things of that nature are very easily. Get manipulated, manipulated and taking advantage of Lily. I'm sure some of the, the children of the Osage tribe, where some of the people who were just straight robbed because they would have never even looked at their accounts. Yeah, no they were kids, there is more to this story. That was recovered. It was discovered later when reporters looked into the cases, I'm gonna leave that up to the people listening. The majority of this podcast today was sourced from the Book killers of the flower Moon, by David Graham, it is totally worth reading. You should get yourself a copy.

1:45:19 There is a whole third section that discusses the newer information that has discovered been discovered. Recently, there's also another book that I read called the deaths of Sybil Bolton by Dennis make Olive who learned way later in life, that his grandmother Sybil Bolton was poisoned during the reign of terror. That's what the movies called to. Yes, the Is called Killers, the flower moon. It's called the Osage murders in the birth of the FBI together. It is one hell of a story. I totally understand why it's a movie now. Yeah, Leonardo playing Ernest. Yeah. Well, I mean ours was a white guy. So I know it's interested in who's gonna play the indigenous women because like, who's playing Rita and Lizzie and yeah, are they first Nations actresses?

1:46:07 Because I would really like that. Yeah, Lily Gladstone, playing Molly. Is that but yeah, I don't know. But it was like I said, one hell of a story. I got it and this just happened. Yeah, in our history. Holy cow. Goodness gracious. That was a story. I told you like, I was so hype. That's like, this went way longer. I looked at my notes and was like, oh dear, we're at like 17 pages, but totally, absolutely incredibly worth. And if you listen to, thank you so much, mmm-hmm. So, we got some spook in to talk about. Now, we got some scrutiny to talk about. Well, not spookin, okay.

1:46:53 People who investigates broken though? Oh okay, okay, so about talk about our boy Zak Bagans. Again, I never talk about I will never there would never be an episode where I talk about him, maybe definitely not. Maybe he gets a rest of my for doing it. Douchebag stuff. Anyway. No today I'm going to start this off by apologizing, okay, recanting, I guess whatever. Oh Lily Gladstone as a First Nations actress knew ye I just didn't know she was I looked her up. I've heard her name before it is in no way. I'm gonna start it off by apologizing to anybody who's listened or who is listening goes back and listens to any of our earlier episodes when I first started talking when I was talking, I mentioned Harry, Houdini and then and then I hear.

1:47:45 I mentioned Harry price as well. Okay. And I got Harry price next up with Vincent Price. Oh dear. Because of the same last name, right? But Vincent Price. Yeah. So I'd even Pete that the day you started. Yeah. It's okay. Like it was earlier episodes, but I'd confuse Harry price of admission price in the Scooby-Doo. It's appraised price is like Like awesome. Awesome people. Yeah, I know Harry price is awesome people to okay but I just wanted to go back and correct that it was Vincent huh. Are we talking about Vincent? No but maybe I should one day because whole dude Adventure price is.

1:48:30 Yeah. He's one of those pillars that I like to think about because when I think of is the price, I go. I know, right? Yes. You know, weird eyebrow thing. Oh my God. Yeah, he did. Well, ya know, the animated him in the Scooby-Doo movies, but oh wow. Yeah, he was in. That is fucking awesome. Anyway. No, I'm talking about the other price today. Okay, Harry price. Okay. So do you know who Harry price was cat-like? Offhand name him. okay, well, Since I already talked about Harry Houdini, yes I'm gonna talk about her price. Also, Harry price was basically was he also a magic man. He did sleight of hand.

1:49:15 Oh but here your price was basically the. Yeah, the UK version of Harry Houdini. Okay? Okay, so what did he do? The things like that? I'm locked up inside of a big old giant case of water situation like those ones. No, no, no. I feel so anxious. When I watch this, nothing like that. I'm watching a murder because look, what Houdini, he kind of like, started out as a magician, right, and like stage magic and stuff like that. And he became, you know, but then he was into like the defrauding of the mediums of stuff like that. But even then after that he did stuff that was he did The Escape of rotting mediums. Yeah. So like his whole career wasn't like the medium thing is who's kid.

1:50:00 That was towards the. Yeah. And mainly that was because he got mad about the mediums and his Look look, understandable. Yeah, listen, I don't want you to mention anybody. Who I know who has died, fam, tell me about some stranger's, but if the person mentioned somebody, I know me. Mad too. Yeah. Especially if you get it wrong because like he's like, yeah, your mom learned English and the afterlife get out of here. Oh, mama is Hungarian how she won't learn English. She ain't speak English dies. Oh my God. Yeah, but did okay, so what Harry price do? Something similar here plays, did you something similar? So, here, price, he started his career out, basically with the Supernatural and then what a paranormal, and then he learned sleight-of-hand magic and stuff like that on his on his way. So this is a story.

1:50:56 I'm going to tell this it's going to be like a multi-part because I got another your other cases from Harry price. I want to talk about. Oh, so you're talking about one particular A price case. I'm going to I'm going to do like a little sure what to say because I do I did tell you that I wrote too much and I was like, okay well let me just stop right now. You could have gone with no three-hour episode. We can have a three hour episode like next week. Okay. No it probably won't be as long bet. Are you know I'm going to talk about next week. I already planned it. So there you go. Won't be as bad also. I got a I got stuff to do after we record next week. That's right. You do hit me. Never mind not 3 hours. 3 hours anyway. Maybe episode 50.

1:51:49 So in London I don't think this was cool on his part but he kind of wanted to change some details about his early childhood. Oh dear. Basically, mainly where he was born, people always to do that, though. So he wanted people. Like, if you read, I read one of his books when I was writing this up Confessions of a ghost hunter, okay? I think that's what it was called and he States in her, he was born. In. Oh, so fry shove cephalic.

1:52:32 No, not so folk, it's sh ROP. Shi re it's something sure. Yeah. Yeah I'm not getting all the letters you're saying. But literally somebody on my timeline the other day was just like rope, she likes to sure. They literally were like, if I have nothing to tell Americans it's was sure. It is what? Yes, it's Schroeder. Shire is sure. It's that I know for sure is Shropshire, that's not sure. All right. And not where he was born, that's not where he was born, but he did study there and it's a really nice place. I guess it's a lot of wealthy people live there at that time. So he wanted people to think I got wealthy parents and stuff like that.

1:53:22 Why was that something he worried about? I don't know. Sure, he was actually born in New cross and his father was a traveling salesman. Nobody liked traveling salesman. We stay still. Don't, it's a weird one of those jobs that like was necessary, but people hated that, The same way that people hate when people come to your door now. Yeah that's why I had that. I have that nice. No soliciting sign that says no soliciting don't render Bill, don't knock, don't make it weird. I have received so much, Mormon stuff in the last, like, two months crazy. Someone Mormon must be moved into this apartment. I was like, am I just don't even want to talk to you? Please don't talk to me. Oh my God.

1:54:03 I got a thing. Do you have a church? Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Anyway, at the age of 15, he found it. The Carlton dramatic society, which is now called the carton theater group, okay? It's place where amateur actors, they go us, nice, play rates and stuff like that. And this is where he wrote his first play, the skeptic, which was an account of his first ghost experience while he was investigating his first haunted house. So as at age 15 like there was a haunted house in there and you know people Oil, they were reporting Poltergeist type activity. So, you know, he goes there, he checks it out and he writes this play about it and this is basically the only reason why he founded this kolchin Dramatic Society is so he could write this play about him.

1:54:58 Going to investigate this haunted house. Okay, yeah. But yeah, he goes into great detail about this in his book, The confession of a girl's ghost hunter, okay? You can find on arxiv.org. It's the whole thing is there. I've looked for other books that he has other books are but they're like. That one's actually really good. So he was also interested in our College archaeology, which is really cool. It was a coin collector to and you know, just small little tidbits of things that you know make him awesome. An early influence to his life's work was the great.

1:55:44 I cannot pronounce his name. I tried it so many times is it's like, okay, so it's basically, I'm not saying it. I'm not seeing any, but it's a traveling Merchant basically. Yeah, right? Yeah, it did SSE cue, You ch. The any EQ? Yeah uch uch. Are you eh? Yeah yet? Even spell it. You I forgot you hate your writing. So anyway we're not talking about the right now. Sequitur.

1:56:27 Yeah, there you go. So it's like that, that word. So basically, this person is like a traveling Merchant or they like a traveling Medicine, Man. Okay? Like, oh, that makes sense like a. It sounds a digital. Yeah. Like, a flim-flam man sort of that sale snake oil and stuff like that too. So I looked up the name, snake oil salesman and it's like, there's a whiskey neat after his to, or some type of alcohol, is really cool looking. But yeah, so they did like magic and stuff like that. So, Hee hee. After you know, after he devotes his life to like this stuff he goes into the society is called a magic circle.

1:57:14 Okay. It's a British organisation made for promoting the Arts of magic. So, here is where he learns his sleight-of-hand and some like little parlor tricks. So he's in the society about magic and in the society amount of magic he's also learning about like, Conjuring things, you know, I magicians, they conjure, I don't know, rabbits out of hats or, you know, doves out of her arms and stuff like that. So that counts is Conjuring and I mean, that's probably not the kind of conjuring, he was learning but that's what I'm thinking.

1:57:58 Yeah. So this gives them like a leg up on wanting to learn more about paranormal. So he after you know, he's in this magic circle, he joins the society for physical research in 1920, okay? And he was interested in mediums like Houdini but unlike Houdini Price, He endorsed, who did, he endorse mediums that he actually believed were like, correct? Yeah. So unlike Houdini, who was just like, I'm not going to believe anything. I like what the meetings.

1:58:43 Yeah. Hmm. I'm more like Houdini well, trust your dad files. Okay, her name is Amy. I forget her last name, but I like her show. It's corroborated by a police officer. Oh wow. Okay. Well, former police officer who seems like a nice guy, you know, that means something to me. Okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. Your benefit of the doubt. Hmm, But yeah. So he endures mediums that you don't want a real deal. So here is one of his earlier cases. All right? Like one of his very first cases so this is interesting because this guy Started out amateur Ghost, Hunter at 15, grows up, he's an immature, Willis Hunter archaeologist coin collector.

1:59:29 He wrote plays starting to feel very much Jack of all trades, master of none. Just say, So February 1922 price in a group of some magicians that were in his group. They go, they're investigating one of the most famous spiritual photographers of the time. His name was William hope, okay? And hope so hope was a member of the crew Circle. So this is a group of people who Were basically just all spare photographers, okay? And what hope would do, you know, he would offer his services to people.

2:00:20 Of course, he gets pure Spirit, photographs taken. And the way he would do this is that he would get people that hold plates, I guess, and their pictures. And after, you know, pictures were developed, they develop and have a spirit behind them. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen these. Yeah. Yeah, they're actually some really beautiful ones from him. There's the one with the two people in the front and then there's a lady with a veil right behind them. Super cool. Yeah, fake as hell. Very cool though. That's a creepy picture, but yeah, like it's really hard for me because I went to school for photography. So and I got to use old timey cameras.

2:01:03 Literally, all you have to do to make a spirit. Photographed is while the camera is just sitting there with the silver exposure, right? And past, it's because it took so long for the exposures to saddle that it anything that just darted by. So, there are pictures of like bugs zoom in by that like cause people to fix this with superiors. If it was from the 1920s, I don't trust it. As far as the spirit photography goes like, I said, he did some Oppressive thing, you know, they didn't look blurry, they looked cool. Ya know, some of his pictures. They were like I looked at them. They're actually really, really nice. Really good. As I just know. The one, the one, with the lady in the veil.

2:01:44 That's the one that I've seen that, I think is incredible. There's another one, there's one of Richard Price. He got one taken not Richard. Got Richard Harry Potter Harry price. God, I want to see that one here. You prior Richard Pryor hold on, Richard Pryor the comedian Ryan. Hold on here. Um, it's picture. The picture one Harry price. This one right here. Now look at this picture and tell me that's not a fucking. Just look at it. It's another lady with a veil but look at that lady's face. you can tell it's like a It's not.

2:02:28 Oh yeah she looks like a mask. Yeah it looks like a freaking statue or also fun fact. Yes. So the way so you've used Photoshop, you are, you know, that the different things on Photoshop or referred to as layers layers? Yeah. That goes back to stuff that you had to do in Dark rooms, which I also learned how to do in college when we had a whole dark room year. Where you physically layered things on top of your, like exposure. And that's when you like, turn the light to expose it. So there were actually ways that you could, it's very plausible, he did that here. Yes, said of catching it in picture because like I said, when people walked onto the exposure, it showed us blurry. This looks almost like two separate pictures next to each other.

2:03:21 Yep, which he very well could Could have merge those together in the dark room. It's really intriguing. I didn't know any of that stuff and tie. I did it officially in school. It's just recourse, you know, I grew up on digital cameras. So we spend the whole first year just learning the old ways. Goodness pain-in-the-ass carrying around that big old Honker I believe it and setting it up in Philadelphia. so, another person got their picture taken is Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle really love it. Do you remember him from Houdini episode? No, Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle. Oh yeah, of course.

2:04:03 He's loves his, he loves the spiritualism. He's and he's, you know, he's in that scene. So I'm not gonna lie, Sir, Arthur Conan Doyle Spirit picture. So yeah, the picture you got was of his dead sister. and oh, his looks way more janky, but Pricing price had this whole group his magicians. They had this plan to see if they could prove this this disproved. I love it.

2:04:43 This is so funny. Look at this one. This proof hope. Yeah this looks so bad. Yeah. It's just it's like a picture just plopped on top of another picture freaking terrible. Who are these people being the ghosts for? Haven't, you know, I need to find a book about Mm hope because I'm like, I'm sure Lord, who was, who are these actors? Who are like, bat. I'm gonna get my like five dollars for the day to be a ghost verbally. Him hope. I know. I think it's could you use anybody else at that point? Once you were in one picture, he couldn't use you again. Yeah, probably not. Oh, it's beautiful. It's just super funny when you put this on YouTube, you just have to show all these pictures that I'm laughing.

2:05:28 This is the good one. Okay, there is the mask. Isn't it? Looks it looks a little bit like a mass, but she also looks kind of real. It's just a weird Veil. And I just like chilling. They're like okay, we're taking a picture. Okay, okay but my thing is, when you think it was like a little bit Suspicious that he was able to get all of these Spirit photos and show many of them are in just such good detail and it's 1922, that's why he had investigators coming to check him out. Okay, so like I said Harry price and his crew magicians they have this they have this method worked out and so What it was, is it consistent of presenting, hope, with a set of glass negatives that had been secretly marked with x-rays. So it's trap worked.

2:06:22 So when hope return the plates, the one, the one continue the extra Spirit image. Yeah, showed no sign of the markings he used his own. Yep. So you switched out the ones that the X-ray ones with his own, gotcha. So yeah, like I said, but you could very easily just been like, oh, I like to use my own supplies but he let people bring their own plates in the stuff too. Okay. So it was just weird that he would switch it out, you know? They're mean if you have people bring us up. Okay, so he's called they're like okay dude we know you switched out, this is this this is what happened and you know so he was doing this during the the - process.

2:07:07 Yeah. So, after, you know, they find him guilty of this spiritualist spiritualism was like, no, no, you guys just out here. You're trying to frame our boy for. Okay, you guys little medium buddies to show. Ya trim. Frame of really hope like the community. They are supportive but for the wrong. Oh, no. He's better wrong. They're wrong for supporting him because he definitely picked it and they were Faking it to they were if you mess it, if you mess him up, you mess us up. So yeah, they're like you're wrong for trying to like expose him as a fraud.

2:07:48 Like even Conan Doyle he was like, he came to the, you know, Harry price and screws like hey guys, could you like recant what you said about Hope? Because I believe he's. All right. And there we else's, and we don't want to see anything. Like, let's see, him going down the time, basically, we just want to believe in ghosts, but there are people out there who believe in this, and they're being hurt by this. You know, like what the Houdini thing, people are going to these mediums like, expecting an actual real experience, and they're going to be putting their entire life savings on these mediums. They spent all of their money chasing after this idea that they could see or hear, or talk to their dead relatives again, it was real bad. Yes.

2:08:39 So I do feel bad about that. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, so once Okay so When when Conan goes to price and he's like can you do this in prices like nah? Brah. Like this is this is what I do so. So he goes and writes his pamphlet about his side of the story and how you know it's serious when there's a pamphlet. Oh yeah. Definitely in about you know how hoped William hope is like this?

2:09:22 He's right about this stuff. I'll remind you guys Conan Doyle. He was a believer of all things, paranormal and spiritual and he didn't like being wrong. So he even went as far as the contacting his good buddy. Harry Houdini at this time to. I think they're still friends at this time. He's before they like completely had that following. Yeah, I believe so. Can you get your fellow magic buddy and tell him to leave me alone and Houdini was kind of like conflicted, right? When because at this time, he was also on his way to go investigate. Hope this like this man is just lying. That wasn't really your sister.

2:10:18 Oh my God. L write another book so I have what he wrote to Houdini. So he wrote this letter to ready on April 13th. 1922 and he writes I've written a book on Psychic photography with special reference to the crew. Circle the evidence in their favour is overwhelming though. What happened on a special occasion with two, amateur conjurer's out of his stunts in a third dingwall behind them? What it is, is more than I can say. We found that another test was in dependably carried out about the same time. Well, I guess my other is situation. So they're talking about the, the silver plates, right? The ones that they that means is how you did photos back that. Yeah.

2:11:11 And so, they're saying that they had little bits in the, the silver plates. I don't think what they got. I think Hope was a total fraud, but I don't think what they got was really enough to say. He was a complete and total fraud, I guess, since he switched the plates out, Could he could have come up with an E lot. Like it'll come up with loads of logical reasons why you may be a broke. You know, the array. I'm so sorry. Your Originals got messed up. I had to use my own instead, like I feel like you was just a bad shyster because I'm come up with a good lie as to why he used a different one. Well, you probably wasn't caught before either church and so he's like, oh yeah, little that we call that. Like, they think that they're like, you know, a humorous. Yeah, he had a little bit of that hubris. And that's like, really, what messed him up. Up them, like I can think of a million reasons why I would be like nah, I use my own stuff.

2:12:03 Yep. So after he writes this letter to, you know, Houdini Houdini's like, hmm, not really impressed by this sir. So, like I said, yeah, well I love his reasoning. Listen, I wrote a book and like if you release this information, my books going to be wrong. He thinks ticklish. So like can you know, I can you like comment down over there with Your and I get it but like I have a book to sell sir. So like doesn't matter because after where they're no longer friends anymore? Yeah. So like I said, burn that bridge, right? He really did, he really did it was bad Houdini was already on his way?

2:12:47 Well, he was yeah, he was planning on going to investigate William hope, but they got there first. Okay, what do scheduling Houdini couldn't go? So he had someone else it in on and get a picture taken for him. He did the same thing. That that price did. What do you know the plates? And I will say, it's It shows some level of skill, we're talking mid-1920s being able to to do that and make it look like oh, yeah, absolutely Sir, Arthur Conan Conan. Doyle's, actual sister. Yeah, that's skill. That means that he had to manufacture a lot of drawing and adjustments, which also explains why he couldn't use, just that one play here because he was probably using multiple layers of to get that image.

2:13:39 You could tell like that one. You just showed me what the big face and like the middle. You can tell it's like different plates on top of. Yeah, yeah. So I mean that would explain why he didn't have. It wasn't done with just one. Yeah. It was done with multiple layers, you still very interesting. It really is like you, you put in the work for this. I like you're still faking a fraud, but you put into words what an impressive way of using your skill set? Oh, goodness. There's, there's important things you can do in post like the whole concept of like dodging photos and things of that nature, that's done in post, when you're, you know, making something darker, making something lighter, that that process is useful and can make the picture look better.

2:14:23 Yeah, he just did all that stuff. Just to lie to make a quick buck. So after, you know, Houdini does this thing. Sir, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Okay, he writes another letter to Houdini. Oh no, basically saying that. Okay, so we're not friends anymore. No nothing. He writes and says, hey, those place, I had those x-ray markings on them. Those x-ray markings they disappear after a while. So, obviously he wasn't used. He did use their place at the They did that, they brought but the X-ray markings disappeared.

2:15:09 Hmm. So, after you get this letter, Houdini was like all right, sometimes I'm tired of being like the middleman. So he goes and he contacts price. So Harry price in Houdini Dirk under buddy, buddy. So they're kind of cool guys together. And he tells price about the, you know, the X-ray, your stuff in prices. Like dude, I'm all right. On top of this because I know for a fact, he's x-ray markings, don't disappear. Yeah. When you said that my face did a what? Yeah that's not how that works at all. I'm like whatever sir the whale.

2:15:51 Yeah and who do you like all right cool. Cool long as you know All right. So I like that, though. I'm not a professional courtesy for people uncovering fraud. Absolutely, just letting you know, he's saying that you gave him bad plates. It disappeared. It was your fault. He's like, no. No, don't worry. I got this. Yeah, there's there's this whole back and forth between these three guys. Okay, the Houdini just being the middleman with Nicole. You couldn't do it. You just coming to him and saying, hey, your body price is wrong about this and this is why it would be so annoyed. Yeah, and phrases like, yo, get your boy Conan Doyle out of here because he's, he's harassing the hell out of me and my group.

2:16:40 We're just trying to take pictures of ghosts. God. Oh my God. I tell ya, I only want to see a picture of a ghost somewhere that I'm never coming back to. Because if his ones in my house like this yellow house now, fam, Guess you live here? Yeah but soon years later. Okay Conan Doyle he admits defeat. After years years of harassing Harry price about just this one thing. Like I mean they didn't ever released the book though. The pamphlet? Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you did well. Did he release the book about how he had studied ghosts photography and all that stuff? I'm pretty sure he did.

2:17:22 We look up. If you look him up, I'm pretty sure you'll find it. But I want to know he's like I'm just gonna release this book anyway. Screw it. But yeah, that's funny but like I said they dropped their whole career Harry price in Sir Arthur Arthur Conan Doyle. They never saw eye-to-eye to fight. They just stopped to fight each other. It's crazy. It was crazy. And like paraphrase, he was like the nicer version of Houdini. Like, he gave me was a benefit of the doubt and Houdini was like, all right. I know you're faking from. Neither thing. Is that Houdini's? Just like, I'm just gonna have some He crawled under this fucking tape.

2:18:09 Watch your legs. Oh my God. So after exposing after this whole situation, whole thing is blown over now. And after exposed like this is his first case I mind you. So after exposing a few more people at the spr Harry price, he starts his own organizations called the National Laboratory of physical research. He gets a little bit of flak from the spr that he was in, because he actually paid his median, the mediums that he came that came in to his test. He paid them for a time and they're like, don't don't be paying these mediums.

2:18:51 Like, they might be frauds, how are you paying these frogs? You know what I mean? You're just giving money to frogs. I'm just saying because that's like, yeah, but like, they're there. Spr whole thing was, you know, we're going to find out these, you know, or find these mediums that are, you know, doing fraudulent readings and stuff like that. But here prizes like well yeah, but they're coming to me to do the readings and stuff. So I'm gonna give him the painting for the time and you know, it's only fair and I agree with you like what he did there. so, there are many more cases like I said in the beginning that your price was involved in this was this one was just like the tip of the iceberg, like his starting point, and I will be covering One or two more, maybe like there's a big one. I'm going to cover it like next week's. Okay.

2:19:53 But either way, Price was praised for his work at, you know, the bunking, fake mediums and his paranormal investigation skills. Okay, there have been several biographies written about Harry price, some critical some sympathetic so very, very critical. There was one that was released in 2006. I about how he was a con man in stuff like that. It was like, dude. Dude, I'm pretty sure know that that he was exposing the con people, true. I mean, yeah, we're out here to bunking things and mediums.

2:20:36 There are people out there who are writers and who don't like you even write bad things about you. Yeah no I understood. Yeah so price would later died at his home or March 29th. 1948 from a massive heart attack and that's what I got for this week. It's not as long as I should just wait until next week. I got some stuff for you. It's going to make you laugh and it's going to be funny. So we interesting, it's gonna be compelling All right.

2:21:20 Well, I'm interested more stories. Good, you're getting more, you're going to get more. What do you like it or not? Goodness. Well, I just interesting path we've taken today. Yeah, I just, I don't know. I just like, I like the game of telephone between these grown-ass, man. I just like how you got here your price or just know. They're they're doing the same thing. So they're buddies, they have their own community, and then you have Conan Doyle out here with his group of spiritualist. And they're just like, look, we're gonna curse you and you all this stuff, if you don't stop telling the truth.

2:22:05 Oh, I just love. I just love to debunking and just invasive investigation into the stuff. It's really awesome. But yeah, that's it for me. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode this week. Yeah, I think we had a good time. Yeah, always. Have a good time. Is always fun. And then your story is always. They always throw me for a loop. That's because the the shortened version of what we know. Like, there's always so much more to it, so there's always a backstory to something. Yeah, somebody told me that they listen to last week's podcast three times. What?

2:22:48 Yeah, I was like, oh well. Thank you. Oh, my God. Why why did you do that? I guess they were really into You mad at me? Were you also mad that you learned? What was as Catherine night? Yeah, you learned that her first husband or whatever was cheating on her when she was accusing him of cheating on her and I was like, no, he was cheating on her, but he's actually cheating on her. Yeah, you were really upset when I brought that point out. You were like, wait, no, like, how dare you sir? Oh my God, dang it for being a scoundrel. He still didn't deserve to be like beat with a frying pan.

2:23:29 No fan. Okay, no, he did not but he also, but regardless, thank you for listening to the 30-some percent of people who stay till the very end do. Yeah, you're also do stay in the end. I actually just would love to invite you to be a part of this with us. We have so many ways that you can talk to us more. Some of those are through patreon, you can send messages, we respond through patreon. Ryan talks to people on there. Like I said, for people who do do the 50, Dollar tear, you get to have a Q&A with us once a month. You can talk about whatever you like. You can give us any sort of criticism that you want. We have our own little like I am a once a month you have access to the extra podcast.

2:24:17 Yep which is gonna get spooky this October. Oh goodness, working on it along with a lot of other things. So, thank you for listening. Yeah, we appreciate it a night.