In 1921, as The Devil’s Dis­ci­ples con­tin­ued their reign of ter­ror with the Osage mur­ders, Mol­lie Burkhart’s des­per­a­tion inten­si­fied, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the sus­pi­cious death of her sis­ter Lizzie, which many believed to be caused by poi­son­ing. Despite the ris­ing body count and clear finan­cial motives behind the killings, local law enforce­ment dis­played lit­tle inter­est in solv­ing the crimes, forc­ing Mollie’s fam­i­ly to offer a $2,000 reward in hopes of incen­tiviz­ing some­one to come for­ward with infor­ma­tion. William Hale, a promi­nent ranch­er and self-pro­claimed advo­cate for jus­tice, pub­licly sup­port­ed the effort by adding his own reward, posi­tion­ing him­self as a defend­er of law and order even as his name remained whis­pered in con­nec­tion to the very crimes he con­demned.

Frus­tra­tion with Oklahoma’s fail­ing legal sys­tem led Hale to hire a pri­vate detec­tive, a com­mon prac­tice in an era where pub­lic law enforce­ment was often viewed as cor­rupt, incom­pe­tent, or eas­i­ly influ­enced. The detec­tive, Pike, was tasked with uncov­er­ing the truth behind the mur­ders, but his involve­ment under­scored the moral ambi­gu­i­ty of the pro­fes­sion, as many pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors of the time were moti­vat­ed more by prof­it than jus­tice. Though detec­tives were often roman­ti­cized in lit­er­a­ture, in real­i­ty, their meth­ods were ques­tion­able, their alle­giances flu­id, and their abil­i­ty to tru­ly solve crimes lim­it­ed by the same pow­er­ful forces that ham­pered offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tions.

Pike took a method­i­cal, secre­tive approach, scru­ti­niz­ing the deaths of Anna Brown, Lizzie Burkhart, and oth­ers, attempt­ing to detect pat­terns in the grow­ing wave of Osage mur­ders. The killings, rather than being ran­dom acts of vio­lence, appeared to be high­ly coor­di­nat­ed, fol­low­ing a chill­ing­ly sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern that tar­get­ed wealthy Osage individuals—many of whom had been placed under guardian­ship by court order, grant­i­ng white guardians con­trol over their finan­cial assets. This gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed sys­tem, osten­si­bly designed to pro­tect the Osage from finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, instead pro­vid­ed a legal cov­er for exploita­tion and mur­der, as guardians often con­trolled vast sums of oil wealth and stood to inher­it from the very peo­ple they were entrust­ed to pro­tect.

As the inves­ti­ga­tion widened, var­i­ous infor­mants and hired detec­tives pur­sued mul­ti­ple the­o­ries, includ­ing the sus­pi­cion that Rose Osage, a woman known for her jeal­ous and volatile nature, may have killed Anna Brown over a roman­tic dis­pute. Yet, despite the tan­ta­liz­ing leads and whis­pered accu­sa­tions, inves­ti­ga­tors found them­selves repeat­ed­ly run­ning into dead ends, as false tes­ti­monies, miss­ing evi­dence, and out­right cov­er-ups stalled progress. The deep­er they dug, the clear­er it became that these mur­ders were not iso­lat­ed inci­dents, but part of an elab­o­rate con­spir­a­cy, shield­ed by those in pow­er.

The chap­ter also intro­duces Bill Smith, the hus­band of Mollie’s sis­ter Rita, a man with a check­ered past and vio­lent ten­den­cies, who found him­self both a sus­pect and a poten­tial vic­tim in the murky world of Osage Coun­ty intrigue. Smith, aware of the dan­gers lurk­ing around him, attempt­ed to piece togeth­er the truth about the killings, but his dis­cov­er­ies would place him in grave dan­ger. Inves­ti­ga­tors fol­lowed Anna Brown’s last known where­abouts, uncov­er­ing dis­turb­ing con­nec­tions between key fig­ures, sug­gest­ing that the web of decep­tion extend­ed far beyond sim­ple greed—it was deeply per­son­al, root­ed in betray­als and hid­den ani­mosi­ties.

As more Osage died under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, includ­ing sus­pi­cious poi­son­ings, the des­per­a­tion with­in the com­mu­ni­ty grew, lead­ing to a piv­otal moment when Bar­ney McBride, a wealthy oil­man sym­pa­thet­ic to the Osage, trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to plead for fed­er­al inter­ven­tion. How­ev­er, McBride’s mis­sion was abrupt­ly cut short when he was found bru­tal­ly mur­dered, tor­tured before being dumped in a ditch—his death send­ing an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to any­one dar­ing to expose the con­spir­a­cy. His grue­some fate sig­naled that the Osage mur­ders were not just local crimes, but part of a larg­er, more sin­is­ter plot, one that reached far beyond Fair­fax and into the very insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to pro­tect the vic­tims.

This chap­ter cap­tures the cli­mate of fear and uncer­tain­ty that engulfed the Osage Nation, as they found them­selves hunt­ed by a hid­den ene­my will­ing to kill for wealth and pow­er. It also reflects the grim real­i­ty of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry law enforce­ment, where jus­tice was often reserved for the priv­i­leged, and the very peo­ple hired to solve crimes—whether pri­vate detec­tives or gov­ern­ment officials—were either pow­er­less, cor­rupt, or com­plic­it. The Osage, left to fend for them­selves in a world where greed had become a death sen­tence, could only hope that some­one, some­where, would final­ly uncov­er the truth before it was too late.