15 The Hidden Face

In “The Hid­den Face,” the chap­ter dives into the inves­ti­ga­tion led by an under­cov­er oper­a­tive mas­querad­ing as an insur­ance sales­man, which uncov­ers dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions in Fair­fax about William Hale’s manip­u­la­tions and schemes. The oper­a­tive learns from a local woman how Hale com­mand­ed his work­ers to set his own land on fire to claim $30,000 in insur­ance mon­ey. The nar­ra­tive then shifts to Hale’s dubi­ous involve­ment in the life insur­ance pol­i­cy of Hen­ry Roan, who was mys­te­ri­ous­ly mur­dered in 1923, reveal­ing Hale’s appar­ent motive linked to a $25,000 life-insur­ance pol­i­cy where he was named the ben­e­fi­cia­ry.

As the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds, the chap­ter details the process Hale went through to ensure he could claim the life insur­ance, exploit­ing loop­holes and pres­sur­ing var­i­ous indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing an insur­ance sales­man and local doc­tors, to facil­i­tate his plan despite Roan’s known health and lifestyle risks. Fur­ther­more, it expos­es Hale’s attempt to mas­quer­ade the indebt­ed­ness of Roan to sub­stan­ti­ate his stake in Roan’s life insur­ance, employ­ing forgery and manip­u­la­tion to secure the pol­i­cy worth $25,000, a sum sus­pi­cious­ly iden­ti­cal to the alleged debt.

The chap­ter also explores the bur­geon­ing field of foren­sic doc­u­ment analy­sis, high­light­ing its appli­ca­tion in scru­ti­niz­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the cred­i­tor’s note pre­sent­ed by Hale, which was instru­men­tal in procur­ing the life insur­ance on Roan. This scruti­ny reveals tam­per­ing with the doc­u­ment, fur­ther impli­cat­ing Hale in fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties.

The nar­ra­tive con­nects Hale’s unscrupu­lous actions to a larg­er, sin­is­ter objec­tive: the acqui­si­tion of valu­able Osage head­rights through a series of orches­trat­ed mur­ders, ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ing from the inher­i­tance laws that direct­ed wealth towards Hale’s con­trol via his nephew, Ernest Burkhart, mar­ried to Mol­lie Burkhart, an Osage woman. This manip­u­la­tive scheme lays bare not only the extent of Hale’s ambi­tion and ruth­less­ness but also the intri­cate plan­ning involved in exploit­ing and mur­der­ing mem­bers of the Osage com­mu­ni­ty to gain access to their oil-rich lands.

The chap­ter con­cludes by paint­ing a grim and com­plex pic­ture of Hale’s machi­na­tions, involv­ing deceit, finan­cial manip­u­la­tion, and mur­der, high­light­ing the lengths to which he would go to aug­ment his wealth and pow­er at the expense of the Osage peo­ple. It under­scores the chill­ing effi­cien­cy of Hale’s plots and the dev­as­tat­ing impact on the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the lens of Mol­lie and Ernest’s mar­riage, which was entan­gled in these malev­o­lent schemes.