In Chap­ter 17, set in the autumn of 1925, Tom White inten­si­fied his efforts to build a sol­id case against William K. Hale and his accom­plices, whose reign of ter­ror had left the Osage Nation liv­ing in fear. The relent­less series of mur­ders had forced many Osage peo­ple into dis­place­ment, as they strug­gled to escape the invis­i­ble yet ever-present threat of being the next tar­get. White, under­stand­ing the urgency of secur­ing strong tes­ti­mo­ny, turned his atten­tion to the out­law net­work of Osage Hills, hop­ing that crim­i­nals on the fringes of soci­ety might reveal damn­ing evi­dence about Hale’s orches­trat­ed killings.

One of White’s key infor­mants was Dick Gregg, a noto­ri­ous fig­ure linked to the Al Spencer Gang, who was serv­ing time in prison. Despite his crim­i­nal back­ground, Gregg demon­strat­ed an unusu­al sense of moral­i­ty, reveal­ing that Hale had approached his gang to car­ry out con­tract killings against an Osage cou­ple. How­ev­er, both Gregg and Al Spencer had refused the job, an unex­pect­ed twist in the inves­ti­ga­tion that high­light­ed the dis­turb­ing real­i­ty that some crim­i­nals pos­sessed more integri­ty than the so-called “respectable” mem­bers of soci­ety who con­spired against the Osage.

Gregg’s rev­e­la­tion pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal insight into Hale’s method­i­cal and far-reach­ing mur­der-for-hire oper­a­tions, but from a legal stand­point, it was insuf­fi­cient as hard evi­dence. Since there were no sur­viv­ing wit­ness­es to cor­rob­o­rate his claims, White need­ed more sub­stan­tial tes­ti­mo­ny to build an irrefutable case against Hale. As he sought oth­er infor­mants, he turned his atten­tion to Hen­ry Gram­mer, a well-known boot­leg­ger with indi­rect ties to Hale, hop­ing to extract more details about the crim­i­nal net­work facil­i­tat­ing these mur­ders.

Just as Gram­mer emerged as a poten­tial wit­ness, he was found dead under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances, rein­forc­ing the grow­ing belief that Hale was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly elim­i­nat­ing any­one who could tes­ti­fy against him. The pat­tern of sud­den, mys­te­ri­ous deaths of poten­tial infor­mants con­tin­ued when White attempt­ed to track down Asa Kir­by, an explo­sives expert who had been linked to the bomb­ing of Bill and Rita Smith’s home. Before Kir­by could be brought in for ques­tion­ing, he too met a vio­lent and untime­ly demise, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion.

These strate­gic assas­si­na­tions under­scored Hale’s ruth­less deter­mi­na­tion to silence any loose ends, ensur­ing that the most damn­ing evi­dence against him nev­er made it into a court­room. By either orches­trat­ing or facil­i­tat­ing the elim­i­na­tion of key wit­ness­es, Hale cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where fear and dis­trust ran ram­pant, pre­vent­ing those with knowl­edge of his crimes from step­ping for­ward. This lethal web of cor­rup­tion and intim­i­da­tion meant that White’s inves­ti­ga­tion faced con­stant set­backs, forc­ing him to seek alter­na­tive ways to secure con­vic­tions against Hale and his net­work of con­spir­a­tors.

Despite these obsta­cles, White remained unde­terred, rec­og­niz­ing that the Osage mur­ders had evolved beyond a local crim­i­nal case and into a nation­al scan­dal. The scale of the conspiracy—where wit­ness­es dis­ap­peared before they could testify—exposed the deep-root­ed cor­rup­tion with­in Oklahoma’s legal sys­tem, where jus­tice could be bought and lives could be erased with impuni­ty. As White pressed for­ward, he knew that bring­ing Hale to jus­tice would require not only per­se­ver­ance but also fed­er­al inter­ven­tion, as local author­i­ties remained com­pro­mised by the very forces he sought to dis­man­tle.

The chap­ter paints a chill­ing pic­ture of how unchecked pow­er and greed led to a cal­cu­lat­ed exter­mi­na­tion cam­paign, where even out­laws refused to par­tic­i­pate in the heinous crimes Hale had con­ceived. The Osage, still mourn­ing their mur­dered loved ones, watched as the web of secre­cy around Hale tight­ened, mak­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of true jus­tice seem more dis­tant. Yet, amid the intim­i­da­tion and cov­er-ups, White’s resolve only grew stronger, as he sought to out­ma­neu­ver a crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind whose reach extend­ed far beyond what any inves­ti­ga­tor had pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered.