In “The Hid­den Face,” the chap­ter fol­lows the inves­ti­ga­tion of a fed­er­al oper­a­tive dis­guised as an insur­ance sales­man, a tac­tic that ulti­mate­ly unrav­els the lay­ers of William Hale’s fraud­u­lent schemes. As the oper­a­tive delves deep­er into Fairfax’s tan­gled web of cor­rup­tion, a local woman con­fides shock­ing details about Hale orches­trat­ing arson on his own land to fraud­u­lent­ly col­lect a $30,000 insur­ance pay­out. This rev­e­la­tion expos­es Hale’s pat­tern of deceit and manip­u­la­tion, rein­forc­ing the extent to which he was will­ing to com­mit crimes for finan­cial gain while main­tain­ing the facade of a respect­ed com­mu­ni­ty leader.

The chap­ter then shifts its focus to Hale’s involve­ment in the sus­pi­cious death of Hen­ry Roan, an Osage man mur­dered in 1923 under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances. Inves­ti­ga­tors uncov­er that Hale was the sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a $25,000 life insur­ance pol­i­cy on Roan, a sum that con­ve­nient­ly matched a fab­ri­cat­ed debt Roan sup­pos­ed­ly owed to him. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Roan’s death and Hale’s finan­cial gain from the pol­i­cy raise seri­ous doubts about the legit­i­ma­cy of the claim, as the inves­ti­ga­tion reveals Hale pres­sured insur­ance agents and local doc­tors to over­look Roan’s med­ical his­to­ry and lifestyle risks to secure the policy’s approval.

Hale’s insa­tiable greed and intri­cate decep­tion extend­ed beyond mere fraud, as he went to great lengths to fab­ri­cate legal doc­u­ments that would rein­force his finan­cial stake in Roan’s life. Inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­er forged cred­i­tor notes and altered legal paper­work, meant to jus­ti­fy Hale’s enti­tle­ment to Roan’s life insur­ance pay­out. This rev­e­la­tion is a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in the case, as it not only demon­strates Hale’s will­ing­ness to tam­per with offi­cial records but also sug­gests a pre­med­i­tat­ed effort to prof­it from Roan’s mur­der.

The inves­ti­ga­tion also high­lights the grow­ing use of foren­sic doc­u­ment analy­sis, an emerg­ing field at the time, to scru­ti­nize the valid­i­ty of Hale’s claims. Experts exam­ine the sup­posed cred­i­tor note Hale pre­sent­ed, reveal­ing clear signs of forgery and doc­u­ment tam­per­ing, fur­ther impli­cat­ing him in a wider pat­tern of finan­cial and legal manip­u­la­tion. These foren­sic advance­ments play a cru­cial role in dis­man­tling Hale’s care­ful­ly con­struct­ed ali­bi, as inves­ti­ga­tors build an irrefutable case against him, show­ing that his fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties were not iso­lat­ed inci­dents but part of a deeply entrenched crim­i­nal enter­prise.

As inves­ti­ga­tors con­nect the dots, Hale’s ulti­mate objec­tive becomes increas­ing­ly clear—the sys­tem­at­ic theft of Osage head­rights through orches­trat­ed mur­ders. His scheme was metic­u­lous­ly designed to fun­nel Osage oil wealth into his con­trol, pri­mar­i­ly by using his nephew, Ernest Burkhart, who was mar­ried to Osage woman Mol­lie Burkhart, as a legal con­duit for inher­i­tance claims. This elab­o­rate plot illus­trates how Hale manip­u­lat­ed inher­i­tance laws to ensure that, as Osage fam­i­ly mem­bers were killed, their wealth was legal­ly redi­rect­ed to him, show­cas­ing his method­i­cal approach to elim­i­nat­ing obsta­cles in his quest for pow­er.

The chap­ter paints a chill­ing por­trait of Hale’s ambi­tion, show­ing that his meth­ods were not sim­ply oppor­tunis­tic but delib­er­ate, sys­tem­at­ic, and deeply entrenched in finan­cial exploita­tion and racial vio­lence. His abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bankers, insur­ance agents, doc­tors, and even law enforce­ment reveals the sheer scale of cor­rup­tion that allowed his crimes to go unde­tect­ed for so long. More dis­turbing­ly, his influ­ence extend­ed into the per­son­al lives of his vic­tims, as seen in Mol­lie and Ernest Burkhart’s mar­riage, which Hale had orches­trat­ed as part of his mas­ter plan to con­sol­i­date Osage wealth under his con­trol.

As the chap­ter con­cludes, Hale’s crimes are no longer viewed as iso­lat­ed acts of greed but as part of a cal­cu­lat­ed, mul­ti-lay­ered con­spir­a­cy to exter­mi­nate the Osage for finan­cial gain. His cold and cal­cu­lat­ed effi­cien­cy ensured that wit­ness­es were silenced, doc­u­ments were forged, and vic­tims were cho­sen strate­gi­cal­ly to max­i­mize his finan­cial advan­tage. The dev­as­tat­ing impact on the Osage com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mol­lie Burkhart’s fam­i­ly, under­scores the true human cost of Hale’s ruth­less ambi­tion, leav­ing behind a trail of loss, betray­al, and sys­temic fail­ure that would take years to unrav­el.