17 The Quick-Draw Artist, the Yegg, and the Soup Man

In the fall of 1925, White was anx­ious to secure evi­dence against Hale and his accom­plices for their crimes against the Osage com­mu­ni­ty, which had been liv­ing in fear, man­i­fest­ing in a dias­po­ra. White’s strat­e­gy shift­ed towards lever­ag­ing the Out­law net­work in Osage Hills, hop­ing that their tes­ti­monies would unearth cru­cial infor­ma­tion about the mur­ders. Among these out­laws was Dick Gregg, a known crim­i­nal from the Al Spencer Gang, cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed. Despite his crim­i­nal back­ground, Gregg appeared to pos­sess a cer­tain hon­or, refus­ing to com­ply with Hale’s mur­der­ous requests.

White and Greg­g’s inter­ac­tion led to Gregg reveal­ing a meet­ing between Hale and the Al Spencer Gang, where Hale pro­posed a mur­der-for-hire scheme against an Osage cou­ple, which both Gregg and Spencer declined. This tes­ti­mo­ny was valu­able but legal­ly frag­ile due to Greg­g’s moti­va­tions and the lack of a liv­ing wit­ness to cor­rob­o­rate his sto­ry.

The search for cred­i­ble wit­ness­es con­tin­ued with Hen­ry Gram­mer, a well-known fig­ure with loose con­nec­tions to Hale but, like pre­vi­ous leads, was found dead under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances. Fur­ther attempts to uncov­er col­lab­o­ra­tors in Hale’s plot intro­duced Asa Kir­by, an explo­sives expert involved in the bomb­ing plot against the Osage, who also met a vio­lent end, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing White’s inves­ti­ga­tion.

These inter­twined tales of poten­tial tes­ti­monies cul­mi­nat­ing in untime­ly deaths paint­ed a clear pat­tern of Hale’s inter­fer­ing hand, either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, elim­i­nat­ing any threats to his expo­sure. This pat­tern under­scored the dan­ger­ous lengths to which Hale went to main­tain con­trol and sup­press any evi­dence of his crimes, cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of fear and mis­trust with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and among the crim­i­nal under­world. White’s inves­ti­ga­tion was fun­da­men­tal­ly chal­lenged by this orches­trat­ed elim­i­na­tion of wit­ness­es, leav­ing him grap­pling with the daunt­ing task of bring­ing Hale to jus­tice with­out liv­ing tes­ti­monies to under­score the accu­sa­tions.