0:15

Pushkin, wealth,

0:19

greed, desire, murder. These are

0:21

just some of the plagues that befell the Osage

0:23

people after vast oil reserves

0:26

were discovered beneath their land. Killers

0:28

of the Flower Moon tells a story of

0:30

the disregard for human life and betrayal

0:33

and greed. Today on Revision's

0:35

History, we're presenting a special episode

0:38

of Cautionary Tales. You'll hear the

0:40

story behind David Grant's book Killers

0:43

of the Flower Moon, which has been adapted

0:45

for the screen by Martin Scorsese and

0:47

is now exclusively in theaters. Plus

0:49

hear about the investigation that began almost

0:52

ninety years later. Here's

0:55

the episode. Listen to Cautionary

0:57

Tales wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00

This cautionary Tale is based on David

1:03

Grand's book Killers of the Flower

1:05

Moon and produced in association

1:07

with Apple Original Film. The

1:09

film of the same title is now exclusively

1:12

in theaters.

1:26

Once upon a time, the O

1:28

Sage Nation stretched across the

1:30

center of the North American continent, from

1:33

the Rocky Mountains through to what is now Missouri,

1:36

Kansas, and Oklahoma. President

1:39

Thomas Jefferson viewed the O

1:41

Sage people with wherey respect

1:44

when in eighteen oh four, he met with a

1:46

group of towering O Sage chiefs

1:49

at the White House. He remarked that

1:51

they were the finest men we

1:53

have ever seen.

1:55

The wary respect did not

1:58

last.

2:00

By eighteen seventy, the O Sage

2:02

people had been pushed into buying land

2:04

that one observer described as broken,

2:07

rocky step and

2:10

utterly unfit for cultivation. Ravaged

2:14

by smallpox, the death of the buffalo,

2:16

and brutal attacks from settlers,

2:19

only a few thousand of them remained

2:21

alive. The

2:23

O Sage chief wati Ankhar,

2:26

tried to look on the bright side.

2:28

My people will be happy in this land.

2:31

He said. There are many hills

2:33

here.

2:34

White man does not like a country

2:37

whether a hills, and he will not

2:39

come.

2:41

But the white man did come.

2:44

O Sage children were forcibly enrolled

2:46

in Catholic boarding schools, days

2:48

travel away from their parents, and made

2:51

to change their names and their clothes to the European

2:53

style. The United States

2:56

policy was that the Indian

2:58

must conform to the white man's ways

3:01

peacefully if they will, forcibly

3:04

if they must. In

3:12

nineteen oh six, the US government wanted

3:15

to create a new state, Oklahoma,

3:18

and handed over to white settlers. They

3:21

pressed the Osage nation to agree

3:23

to a new deal concerning the rights

3:25

to the land they had purchased. The

3:28

O Sage negotiators played a weak

3:30

hand well. Under the

3:32

deal that they agreed, the entire

3:34

tribe of two thousand, two

3:36

hundred and twenty nine souls collectively

3:39

held the rights to whatever lay

3:42

beneath their land. And

3:44

what lay beneath, as the Osage

3:47

negotiators suspected and

3:49

the white man had not guessed,

3:52

was oil vast reserves

3:54

of black gold. As

3:58

the oil started to flow, so

4:00

did the money. Every quarter,

4:03

every member of the Osage tribe received

4:05

a check to reflect the money being paid

4:08

by the oil. Then at first it

4:10

was little more than a pocket mine. Soon

4:13

each check each individual

4:15

was the equivalent of tens of thousands

4:18

of dollars in today's money every quarter,

4:21

and the checks kept growing. Newspapers

4:25

couldn't get enough of stories about what

4:27

they called the red millionaires.

4:30

O Sage girls dressed in the latest Parisian

4:32

fashions. O Sage cookouts

4:35

a circle of expensive automobiles

4:37

surrounding an open campfire where

4:39

the bronzed and blanketed owners are cooking

4:42

meat in the primitive style O

4:44

Sage elders arriving for a ceremonial

4:47

dance in a private plane.

4:50

Luck had finally smiled

4:52

on the O Sage nation, or

4:56

had it. I'm

4:59

Tim Harford and you're listening to

5:02

cautionary tales.

5:26

Minnie Smith was the first

5:29

of the four sisters to die.

5:31

She'd been young, fit and healthy,

5:35

and then she'd grown ill quite suddenly.

5:38

The doctors in Osage County were

5:40

baffled by her death, but of

5:43

course they had a diagnosis, a

5:45

peculiar wasting illness.

5:48

Maybe peculiar, it

5:50

certainly was. Minnie

5:53

left behind a husband, a white

5:55

man called Bill Smith. A

5:58

few months after Minnie's death in nineteen

6:00

eighteen, Bill married

6:02

another of the sisters, Rita.

6:06

Then there was Anna. She had also

6:08

married a wife man, but she had divorced

6:10

him, and at the age of thirty four, she

6:13

had a habit of disappearing on wild

6:15

nights of drinking and dancing. She

6:18

had plenty of places to go as

6:20

the oil flowed in Osage County,

6:23

once modest settlements became bustling

6:25

towns full of oil workers,

6:27

bootleggers, and gangsters. One

6:30

overnight oil rush town was named

6:33

wiz Bang, where people whizzed all

6:35

day and banged all night.

6:39

Anna enjoyed such places that

6:41

they were risky. She always kept a small

6:44

pistol in a hot purse. And

6:46

then one night in nineteen

6:49

twenty one, she went out partying

6:52

and didn't come home. Not the

6:54

first night, not the second,

6:57

and not the third. Which

7:01

brings us to sister number four, Molly,

7:04

the serious, responsible sister, the

7:06

one who ended up taking care of all

7:08

the other and their mother too. In

7:11

her hunt for her missing sister, Molly

7:13

could call on perhaps the most influential

7:16

man in Osage County, her

7:18

husband's uncle, William

7:20

Hale, the man they called

7:23

the King of the Osage Hills.

7:26

Hale had been a cowboy when he was young. Now

7:29

he was a bespectacled, three piece

7:31

suit wearing pillar of the community.

7:35

Behind his owlish glasses, he

7:37

remained a formidable character. He

7:40

was not the kind of man to ask you to do

7:42

something he told you, said

7:44

Molly's husband Ernest. But

7:47

although Hale was rich, powerful

7:50

and domineering, he was also a

7:52

reverend and a deputy sheriff, and

7:54

widely regarded as the most public

7:57

spirited man in Osage County.

8:00

He had supported local schools and charities

8:02

before the Osage people struck oil.

8:05

One doctor said, I couldn't begin

8:08

to remember how many sick people

8:10

have received medical attention at his expense,

8:13

nor how many hungry mouths have

8:16

tasted of his bounty. William

8:18

Hale himself once wrote, I never

8:21

had better friends in my life than

8:23

the o Sages. Uncle

8:26

William was like a guardian angel

8:28

for Molly's family. If anyone

8:31

could help Molly find her sister, it

8:33

would be him.

8:45

In the second half of the twentieth century,

8:48

economists began to observe a pattern

8:52

striking oil is not the guarantee

8:54

of national prosperity that you might expect.

8:58

Indeed, the reverse is often true. Think

9:01

of Iraq and Iran, Venezuela

9:03

and Nigeria. There are plenty of

9:05

countries with vast reserves of oil,

9:08

and few of them them seem to have flourished

9:10

as a result. Even

9:12

the wealthy exceptions, such as Saudi

9:15

Arabia often have a thin

9:17

and brittle kind of wealth. It's

9:20

a challenge to build foundations

9:22

for enduring prosperity for

9:24

something that will last longer than whiz bang

9:27

when the oil money is gone.

9:30

Economists debate the causes

9:32

and cures of this problem.

9:34

And they call it the resource curse, but

9:37

I prefer a more lyrical description by

9:40

a former Minister of oil, Rich

9:42

Venezuela, when he was asked to

9:44

describe the effect of all that black

9:47

gold on his country. It

9:49

is the devil's excrement,

9:53

he declared. We are drowning

9:56

in the devil's excrement. The

10:01

oce age had never heard of the resource

10:04

curse or the devil's excrement,

10:07

though one of their elders. He seemed

10:09

to anticipate the idea. Someday

10:12

this oil will go, he

10:14

said, and there will be no more

10:17

fat checks every few months from

10:19

the Great White Father. There'll

10:21

be no fine motor cars and new

10:23

clothes. Then

10:26

I know my people

10:28

will be happier. But

10:33

were those fat checks involved

10:35

in the peculiar death of one sister

10:38

and the disappearance of another? Uncle?

10:41

William Hale had quietly expressed

10:43

his doubts about Bill Smith. He'd

10:47

married Minnie, remember then

10:49

she had died suddenly and mysteriously.

10:52

Months later he married her sister,

10:55

Rita. Marrying one

10:57

o sage woman would set a man up for life.

11:00

Marrying two. You had

11:02

to wander about Bill's motives

11:06

but then it wasn't as if Bill had

11:08

stood to gain financially from Minnie's

11:10

death. Under the system of head

11:12

rights, it wouldn't be Bill who'd

11:15

keep getting those fat checks. Instead,

11:18

Minnie's head right passed to her

11:20

mother, Lizzie. So

11:23

would Anna's head wright if anything

11:25

had happened to Anna. And after

11:28

Anna had been missing for a week, there

11:31

was news a rotting corpse

11:34

had been discovered. The undertakers

11:37

scattered salt and ice on it

11:39

to reduce the swelling and the stink.

11:43

By the time the sisters Molly and Rita

11:45

arrived, the vultures were wheeling

11:48

overhead. Was it

11:50

Anna? The face

11:53

of the corpse was unrecognizable,

11:56

but Molly knew the traditional blanket

11:58

and the clothes were Anna's.

12:01

She had washed them.

12:01

Freshly for her sister the last

12:04

time she saw her alive a week ago,

12:07

and there was anna distinctive

12:10

gold filling. It was her

12:12

for sure. Rita

12:15

wept. Molly was

12:18

resolute. She hired

12:20

private detectives, and she had help

12:22

from her husband's uncle, William Hale,

12:25

who swore he'd get justice for Anna.

12:28

He got his personal doctors to perform

12:30

an autopsy. They found

12:32

a bullet hole in the woman's skull, although

12:36

even after chopping her brain into

12:38

mints, they never could find

12:40

the bullet. Curious,

12:44

but as both the sheriff and the

12:47

private investigators started to

12:49

look into the mystery, it wasn't

12:51

just Minnie's and Anna's deaths that

12:53

they'd have to solve. Another

12:56

one of the sisters did not have

12:59

long to live. Cautionary

13:03

tales will return in a moment.

13:10

The Indian must conform to the

13:12

white man's ways. But

13:15

not like this, decided the federal government.

13:18

Not with luxury cars and private

13:20

planes. Congressional committees

13:23

took to pouring over reports

13:25

of O Sage expenditure, like

13:27

disapproving parents, scrutinizing

13:30

the bank account of a teenager, and

13:32

their devised a system just like

13:34

the one you'd impose on a child.

13:37

If the US Department of the Interior

13:40

decided that a member of a Native American

13:43

tribe wasn't competent to manage

13:45

their own affairs, their finances

13:48

would be handed over to a guardian. The

13:51

idea of competence was a sham.

13:54

In truth, the system of guardianship

13:57

was purely a matter of racism.

14:00

Full blooded O Sage people would

14:02

always be pronounced incompetent

14:05

and assigned a guardian. Guardianship

14:10

was supposedly intended to protect

14:12

O sage people from themselves. In

14:16

fact, and of course, and

14:19

by design, it made them easy

14:21

to exploit. Guardians

14:23

had to approve any item of expenditure,

14:26

down to toothpaste and groceries. The

14:29

guardians were the ones writing the checks,

14:32

and it was the easiest thing in the world for

14:34

a guardian to steal from their O sage

14:37

ward. One's gam for example,

14:40

was for a guardian to buy a car

14:42

for a couple of hundred dollars, then

14:45

parted onto their ward for

14:47

one thousand. Since O

14:49

sage people were forbidden to have direct

14:51

control of their own money, they

14:53

might not have known about the deception, but

14:56

in any case they were powerless

14:59

to do much about it. At

15:05

least some O sage people had white

15:08

friends. Molly didn't have to

15:10

rely on some exploitative stranger

15:12

for guardianship. Her own husband,

15:15

Ernest was her guardian. That

15:17

meant she had as much control over her money

15:19

as most women of the day, and

15:22

just as you'd expect from the nephew of the

15:24

upstanding William Hale, Ernest

15:27

took good care of Molly. She

15:29

suffered from diabetes. He

15:32

made sure she went regularly to his uncle's

15:34

trusted doctors, the ones

15:36

who had performed Anna's autopsy.

15:39

They gave her the regular injections of

15:41

insulin she needed to stay alive.

15:45

But the private detectives that Molly hired

15:48

weren't making much progress in figuring

15:50

out who had shot Anna and

15:53

why. They interviewed

15:55

Ernest's brother, the last person who'd

15:57

seen her alive. Anna's ex

15:59

husband was grilled too, but

16:02

he had nothing to gain from her death. Anna's

16:04

money went to her mother, Lizzie.

16:07

The evidence to charge anyone seemed

16:10

thin anyway.

16:12

The local sheriff and his deputies were busy,

16:15

busy taking bribes, busy colluding

16:17

with bootlegging gangs, and soon enough

16:20

they were busy dealing with other untimely

16:23

deaths. A mood

16:25

of fear set in o

16:28

Sage. People began to install electric

16:30

lights outside their homes, pushing

16:34

back the darkness in the

16:36

hope of dissuading the

16:37

creep of

16:39

the assassins who

16:42

would be next. At

16:44

one stage, even the powerful friend

16:46

of the Osage, William Hale, seemed

16:49

to be a target. Unknown men

16:52

set fire to his pastures, and the

16:54

flames spread for mile upon

16:56

mile. If the King

16:59

of the Osage Hills could be attacked,

17:02

nobody was safe.

17:05

Rita's husband, Bill Smith,

17:08

developed his own suspicions about what

17:10

was going on. He hired his own

17:12

private detectives. He told

17:14

friends he was determined

17:17

to get to the bottom of the killings and

17:20

that he was getting warm, but

17:22

perhaps his enemies were getting warm

17:24

too. On several

17:27

nights, Bill and his wife Rita

17:29

were awoken by movement outside

17:31

the house. It sounded

17:34

like intruders scouting around

17:37

getting the lay of the land. Rita

17:39

and Bill were scared. Leaving

17:43

many of their possessions behind, they

17:45

abruptly moved to a neighborhood in

17:47

the town of Fairfax. Most

17:49

people there had a guard dog, but

17:53

over the course of a few days, one

17:55

by one the neighborhood guard

17:58

dogs began to sicken, lay

18:00

down, and die. In

18:04

the early hours of March tenth,

18:07

nineteen twenty three, the entire

18:10

town was jolted awake. Close

18:15

to the blast, windows shattered,

18:17

timber snaps, stors flew

18:19

from their hindes. People were not flat

18:23

further away. The town shook

18:26

and shook, and wouldn't stop.

18:29

A rush of bewildered townsfolk headed

18:32

towards the epicenter.

18:34

It was Bill and Rita's new

18:36

house.

18:38

There was nothing left of it but

18:41

rubble and choking black smoke.

18:44

Apparently Bill Smith's

18:47

investigation had got a

18:49

little too warm.

18:54

Molly was the only one of her

18:56

sisters left, and despite

18:59

regular injections to treat her diabetes,

19:02

Molly herself was getting

19:05

sicker and sicker. In

19:14

nineteen twenty five, a lawman

19:17

strode into Osage County,

19:19

Oklahoma. Tom White

19:22

was a movie caricature of a Western

19:24

hero. Six foot four, square,

19:27

jawed, incorruptible, and fearless.

19:31

He wore a big cowboy hat even

19:33

when in the office of the office

19:35

itself was the Bureau

19:38

of Investigation at Washington, DC,

19:41

a new organization run by

19:43

an ambitious young man, j

19:46

Edgar Hoover. Hoover

19:48

wanted to make the reputation of his new bureau

19:50

by solving a high profile case,

19:53

a case that had gripped the nation,

19:56

so he had sent Tom White

19:59

to Osage County.

20:04

The authorities in Oklahoma had

20:06

made no progress in solving

20:08

any of the craft times, neither

20:11

the deaths of Molly's family, nor

20:13

around twenty other murders

20:15

of the Osage and their allies.

20:18

There were too many possible suspects,

20:21

too many rumors and stories, and

20:24

no hard evidence. Witnesses

20:27

had a tendency to die in strange

20:29

circumstances, the car crash,

20:33

bad whiskey falling down

20:35

the stairs. When

20:37

the cowboy hatted, Tom White

20:39

agreed to go to Osage County. He

20:41

knew that investigations had been stalled

20:44

for years, that the local officials

20:46

were corrupt, and that some previous

20:49

investigators had been murdered

20:51

themselves. If he took the

20:53

job, he'd have a target on his

20:55

back. It

20:59

wasn't going to stop him. Tom

21:01

White summoned a posse of undercover

21:04

agents to join him in Oklahoma

21:06

City. The only member

21:08

of a Native American tribe who worked

21:10

for the bureau, John Wren, who

21:13

was part ute several experienced

21:15

gunslingers who could easily pose as

21:17

cowboys or rustlers, a

21:20

former insurance salesman whose

21:22

cover story was that he was an

21:25

insurance salesman. More

21:29

than twenty o Sage people had

21:31

been murdered, along with several other

21:33

locals. White decided

21:36

to focus on a few, including

21:38

the sisters, Anna who

21:40

was shot, Rita, whose

21:43

house exploded. In

21:48

his book Killers of the Flower

21:50

Moon, David gran describes

21:52

Tom White's investigation as taking

21:55

place in a wilderness

21:57

of mirrors. Evidence

22:00

inexplicably vanished. Why

22:03

hadn't the doctors managed to find the bullet

22:05

in Anna's skull? Useful

22:07

looking leads turned out to be deliberate

22:10

deceptions. One woman

22:12

initially said Anna had been killed

22:14

by a jealous wife after fooling around

22:16

with the husband, but later admitted

22:19

that a strange White man

22:21

had come to her house and forced

22:24

her to sign a fake statement. And

22:27

Tom White realized something else.

22:30

Some unknown person in

22:32

his team was a double agent,

22:36

leaking the bureau's internal reports,

22:39

feeding back everything to the men

22:41

they were pursuing. Who

22:44

were those men? After spending

22:46

the summer of nineteen twenty five trying

22:49

to navigate the wilderness of mirrors,

22:52

Tom White started to piece together

22:55

a theory. One of

22:57

the murdered o Sage men had a

22:59

life insurance policy for twenty

23:01

five thousand dollars, a

23:03

huge sum, but rather

23:06

than naming his wife as a beneficiary,

23:09

he had named his wealthy

23:11

friend, William

23:14

Hale, the King of

23:16

the Osage Hills. That

23:19

seemed strange, although Hale

23:22

explained to White that the poor

23:24

man had discovered his wife was having an

23:26

affair, and Hale had comforted

23:28

him in his distress. That would

23:31

explain everything. Then,

23:34

a woman who lived near Hale's

23:36

farm told investigators that

23:38

when Hale's land had been set ablaze,

23:41

it was by Hale's workers

23:44

on Hale's orders. He had

23:46

collected thirty thousand dollars

23:49

in insurance money. Hale

23:51

controlled everything around here, she

23:54

told the agents.

23:56

White looked more and more.

23:58

Closely at Hale's affairs.

24:01

Those head rights, the unbelievably

24:04

lucrative rights to the money from o

24:06

Sage County's oil fields, couldn't

24:09

be bought or sold. They could

24:11

only be inherited. Minnie's

24:14

and Anna's head rights had gone

24:16

to their mother, Lizzie.

24:19

Then Lizzie herself had died

24:21

from a mysterious illness,

24:24

all of her accumulated head rights

24:26

went to Molly and her sister Rita.

24:30

This slow burning family

24:32

tragedy started to develop a remorseless

24:35

logic in Tom White's mind,

24:38

even the use of a bomb to murder

24:41

Rita and her husband Bill, because

24:44

their will specified that if they

24:46

died simultaneously, everything

24:49

would pass to Molly. Molly

24:51

herself was very ill. Despite

24:55

the close attention she was

24:57

receiving from William Hale's

25:00

personal physicians. She

25:02

hadn't died, not yet, but

25:06

perhaps the killers weren't in a hurry

25:08

since Molly's money was all

25:10

controlled by her husband, Ernest,

25:14

a man who was absolutely

25:16

loyal to his uncle William

25:19

Hale. Earnest, it

25:21

seemed, might be complicit

25:24

in the plot to murder every

25:26

member of his wife's family and

25:30

presumably his wife

25:32

herself. Solving

25:40

the mystery was one thing, Securing

25:42

a conviction was quite

25:45

another. In an

25:47

Oklahoma court, everyone

25:49

from the sheriff to the juries would

25:51

be bought and paid for by William

25:54

Hale. Even if

25:56

Tom White could get the case tried in a

25:58

federal court, would a white

26:00

jury convict. As

26:03

one o Sage elder commented,

26:06

the question for them to decide is

26:08

whether a white man killing an osage

26:11

is murder or merely cruelty

26:14

to animals. The

26:21

trials were a sensation,

26:24

I say trials, since there

26:26

were several murders and several

26:28

murderers working for Hale. One

26:31

was declared a mistrial after it became

26:34

clear that members of the jury had

26:36

been bribed. Ernest

26:39

made a full confession of his and

26:41

his uncle's crimes, then

26:44

withdrew it and agreed to testify

26:46

for his uncle's defense, then

26:49

repented and confessed again. It's

26:52

hard to know why he changed his mind,

26:55

but perhaps it was the sight of his wife,

26:58

Molly, sitting silently

27:01

in the courtroom day

27:03

after day, solemnly

27:06

watching as it became clear that

27:08

the man she had loved had

27:10

conspired to murder every

27:12

member of her family, including

27:15

her. Finally,

27:18

a jury reached a verdict.

27:23

The clerk read it out to

27:25

the charge of first degree murder.

27:28

William K. Hale had

27:30

been found guilty,

27:35

but the jury ruled out the death

27:37

penalty that would normally be a foregone

27:39

conclusion. Hale and others

27:42

would serve long prison terms

27:45

for their appalling crimes.

27:54

Awson Wells once said that if

27:56

you want a happy ending, it

27:58

depends on where you stop the story. It's

28:02

tempting to stop the story. On November

28:04

seventeenth, nineteen twenty six,

28:09

Tom White has gone out on a high,

28:12

retiring from the Bureau to

28:14

take a more settled job does the

28:16

warden of Leavenworth Prison,

28:19

and he's just learning the rope of the new job

28:22

when some new inmates shackled,

28:25

pale, and blinking in the sunlight,

28:28

are walked up the prison driveway

28:30

at the US Marshals. White

28:34

recognizes the distinctive round.

28:37

Face of William K.

28:39

Hale, and Hale

28:41

recognizes him too

28:44

by Hello, Tom

28:47

offers Hale. Hello,

28:49

Bill, says Warden Tom

28:51

White. He shakes William

28:53

Hale's hand and watches

28:56

as Hale is marched off to his

28:58

cell. But

29:03

I can't end the story there. When

29:06

Tom White and the Bureau of Investigation

29:09

and convicted Hale and his immediate

29:11

conspirators, they declared

29:13

victory and got out of town,

29:16

but the killings didn't stop.

29:19

Then you can.

29:20

Still drown in the devil's excrement,

29:23

even if the devil himself has

29:26

gone to jail. Cautionary

29:30

tales will return after

29:32

the break. This

29:43

cautionary tale relies on David

29:45

Grand's magisterial book

29:48

Killers of the Flower Moon. When

29:51

I told David I was hoping to base an episode

29:53

on it, he told me, take

29:56

a look at the final section of the book.

29:59

That's the part of the history that often

30:02

gets left out. The

30:04

final section begins in twenty twelve,

30:07

almost ninety year years after

30:09

our comic book hero Tom White

30:12

Strode into town. Another

30:14

investigator followed in his footsteps.

30:17

He wasn't a former Texas Ranger,

30:20

standing tall, packing heat

30:22

and wearing a cowboy hat. He

30:24

was a bespectacled writer from New York,

30:27

David Gran himself. Gran

30:30

had questions in his mind about

30:32

the murders, and he wanted to

30:34

see Osage County to meet

30:37

some of the twenty first century O

30:39

Sage people. The

30:41

oil boom ended in the nineteen

30:43

thirties. The boomtowns

30:45

of the area are depopulated.

30:48

Now. Wiz Bang is long

30:50

gone.

30:51

The clues that it ever existed

30:53

covered by grass. There's

30:55

still a little oil and still a

30:57

little money for the people with head rights, but

31:00

not enough to change a life

31:03

or to end it. Under

31:09

the head right system, some of that money

31:12

remains in a trust, and

31:14

some things don't change. It

31:16

isn't managed by the O Sage Nation, but

31:19

by the US government, mismanaged

31:22

the Osage say, and their legal

31:24

struggle over the money continues.

31:29

The O Sage Nation is twenty thousand

31:32

strong, of whom four thousand

31:35

still live in Osage County, in

31:37

and around their capital, Poor Huskar.

31:41

The O Sage have an elected government

31:43

and ratified a new constitution in

31:45

two thousand and six. In

31:48

some ways the Osage chief's prophecy

31:51

has come true. Someday

31:55

this oil will go.

31:58

And there will be.

31:58

No more fact checks every few

32:01

months from the Great White Father. Then

32:04

I know my people will

32:07

be happier. The terror

32:09

of the nineteen twenties is

32:12

a low bar for happiness. One

32:15

O Sage historian, Lewis

32:18

F. Burns wrote, to

32:20

believe that the Osages survived

32:22

intact from their ordeal is

32:25

a delusion of the mind. What

32:29

has been possible to salvage has

32:31

been saved, and is dearer

32:34

to our hearts because it

32:36

survived.

32:38

But much of what the O.

32:39

Sage nation had now

32:41

exists only in memory.

32:53

David Grant visited the region several

32:55

times to meet people and hear

32:57

their stories. He attended

33:00

a ceremonial dance, watching

33:02

the drummers and the singers, the

33:05

dancers in headdresses stepping

33:07

together counterclockwise. Intensity

33:10

building at

33:12

the dance, a woman came up to David

33:15

gran and introduced herself. She

33:18

was in her fifties wearing a blue dress

33:20

with long black hair in a ponytail.

33:24

She seemed familiar somehow,

33:27

Hi, she said, I'm

33:30

Margie Burkhart. She

33:32

was the granddaughter of Ernest

33:34

and Molly Burkhart, Mollie

33:37

who'd watched her sisters and mother die

33:40

one by one, Ernest

33:44

who'd conspired in their murder.

33:48

Margie talked about her father, Cowboy

33:51

Burkhart, how much he had

33:53

doted on his mother, Molly, and

33:55

how haunted he had been by the crimes

33:58

of his father. She

34:00

drove David Graham to the site of the

34:02

bombed house, and as

34:04

they sat outside in the car, she

34:07

told him that little Cowboy and

34:09

his sister had been due to visit

34:11

their aunt Rita the night her

34:13

house blew up, but

34:16

Cowboy had earache,

34:18

so it didn't go. Ernest

34:21

would have known very well what would

34:24

happen to the house that night, as

34:26

Margie explained to gran my

34:29

dad had to live knowing that

34:31

his father had tried to kill

34:33

him.

34:39

The more often David Graham visited

34:41

Osage County and the more

34:43

stories he heard, the more

34:46

he came to realize that reality

34:48

didn't quite squeeze into the neat

34:50

story of William Hale's murderous

34:53

plot and Tom White's brilliant

34:55

investigation. Hale was

34:57

guilty of organizing the murder

35:00

of Molly Burkhardt's family to be sure,

35:03

and the Oceage haven't

35:05

forgotten. In the

35:07

Oceage Nation Museum in poor

35:09

Huskar, there's an expansive

35:11

group photograph from nineteen twenty

35:14

four depicting many members

35:16

of the tribe alongside the most influential

35:19

and admired White locals.

35:22

A section of the picture has been cut

35:24

away, the section depicting

35:27

William Hale. The museum

35:29

director, Catherine Redcorn explained

35:32

to David gran that it was too

35:34

painful to show the devil

35:37

was standing right there. But

35:42

there's no evidence connecting Hale with

35:44

the murder of Barney McBride,

35:47

an oil man who'd set off for Washington,

35:49

d c. Determined to appeal to

35:51

the federal authorities for help in solving

35:54

the Osage murders. His

35:56

naked body was found the

35:58

next morning, a sack tied

36:00

over his head, his skull smashed

36:03

in had been stabbed

36:05

two dozen times. Nor

36:09

was Hale apparently connected with the murder

36:11

of Charlie Whitehorn, who

36:14

disappeared around the same time as Anna.

36:16

He was found under a bush,

36:19

A bloated, fly blown corpse,

36:22

identified only by a letter in his

36:24

pocket. Between his

36:26

eyes gaped two bullet

36:29

holes. His widow,

36:31

Hattie, then seemed sure to die

36:34

of a mysterious illness until

36:36

her sisters moved her away from the area,

36:39

where she staged a full and

36:41

surprising recovery.

36:45

Hale didn't seem to be behind the death

36:48

of George Bigheart, who

36:50

died in an Oklahoma City hospital

36:52

in nineteen twenty three after

36:55

being poisoned.

36:58

Or W. W.

36:59

Vaughan, big Heart's lawyer, who

37:01

rushed to his deathbed to hear his testimony

37:04

and collect some vital incriminating

37:06

documents, then

37:09

phoned the Osage County sheriff

37:12

to tell him that he knew who

37:14

killed big Heart, and a lot more

37:16

than that. Vaughan boarded

37:19

a train home but.

37:21

Never made it.

37:22

His body was found by the tracks

37:24

north of Oklahoma City, neck

37:28

broken, incriminating documents

37:31

gone. In

37:34

his conversations with O Sage people,

37:37

Gran kept hearing similar

37:39

stories O Sage grandparents

37:42

who died young in the nineteen twenties

37:44

or nineteen thirties, With the family

37:47

convinced of foul play and

37:49

the authorities showing no

37:51

interest. Digging into

37:53

the archives, he sometimes found

37:56

clues. In Killers

37:58

of the Flower Moon, Gran's detective

38:00

work reveals the identity of

38:02

the influential man who

38:05

killed W. W. Vaughan, But

38:08

some of them murders will never be solved.

38:11

Too much evidence was deliberately destroyed

38:14

by corrupt officials. And

38:17

then there are other heartbreaking cases

38:20

of White Guardians with three,

38:22

four or more O Sage wards

38:25

who all died young for

38:28

no apparent reason, deaths

38:31

that at the time were never

38:33

even recognized as murder at all.

38:40

The resource curse is seen

38:43

as a subtle economic problem.

38:46

There's a lively academic debate

38:48

on why some nations seem to

38:50

suffer more than others and what

38:52

policies they should adopt, But

38:56

the basic truth of the resource curse

38:58

isn't subtle at all. It's

39:01

that money brings trouble,

39:05

civil wars, nasty geopolitics,

39:08

brutal dictatorships, or

39:12

if you're the last remaining two thousand,

39:15

two hundred and twenty nine members of

39:17

the O Sage nation suddenly

39:20

rich and hemmed on all

39:22

sides by a society with no

39:24

respect for you at all, it

39:27

brings murder. The

39:29

Ocea Age was surrounded by murderers.

39:33

Those murderers weren't all orchestrated

39:35

by William Hale. They didn't

39:37

need to be They had

39:39

their own reference and their own motives,

39:43

and they were protected by a

39:45

white society that

39:47

didn't much care about dead

39:50

rich Indians. Sometimes

39:54

a conspiracy is so big you

39:57

simply can't call.

39:58

It a conspiracy.

40:33

This cautionary tale is based, with permission,

40:35

on David Grand's book Killers of

40:38

the Flower Moon. The

40:40

film of the same title is now in theaters,

40:43

directed by Martin Scorsese and starring

40:45

Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro, and

40:47

Lillie Gladstone.

40:50

This episode was produced in association

40:52

with Apple Original Films. Next

40:56

week, I'll be back discussing this story

40:59

with Jim Roan Gray, a former

41:01

principal chief of the Osage Nation. Cautionary

41:10

Tales is written by me Tim Harford

41:13

with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice

41:15

Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.

41:18

The sound design and original music is

41:20

the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah

41:22

Nix edited the scripts. It

41:25

features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie

41:27

Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jamma

41:29

Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The

41:32

show also wouldn't have been possible

41:34

without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan

41:36

Dilly, Greta Cohne, Diteal

41:39

Millard, John Schnaz, Eric's

41:41

handler, Carrie Brody and Christina

41:43

Sullivan. Cautionary Tales

41:45

is a production of Pushkin Industries.

41:48

It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in

41:50

London by Tom Berry. If

41:53

you like the show, please remember

41:55

to share, rate and review,

41:58

tell your friends and if you want to hear

42:00

the show ad free, sign up for

42:02

Pushkin Plus on the show page

42:04

in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin

42:07

dot Fm, slash yes