The Osage Indian murders was a serial killing event that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, United States, during the 1910s–1930s. Newspapers described the increasing number of unsolved murders and deaths among young adults of the Osage Nation as the "Reign of Terror". Most took place between 1921 and 1926. At least 60 wealthy, full-blood Osage persons were reported killed from 1918 to 1931.

The tribe had retained mineral rights to its reservation. Each tribal member had what were known as headrights to the mineral rights on communal land. When valuable oil was found on their land and leases were sold for oil production, each member with headrights was paid a share of the lucrative annual royalties for leases by oil companies. In 1906 and subsequent years, US Congress passed a series of laws, ostensibly intended to help the Osage retain wealth, that created a system of guardianship for "minors and incompetents", as determined by and under the jurisdiction of Oklahoma's local county probate courts. The Oklahoma courts routinely found Native Americans to be incompetent without considering mental capacity. For example, a guardian was appointed for one Indian woman on the basis that her savings suggested a lack of spending which was evidence that she did not understand the value of money. Many guardians used their appointment to gain control over the ward's wealth for their own personal benefit. During this period, numerous white men married Osage women to become guardians of their estate.

Some of the murders were committed to enable whites to take over the headrights of Osage members when inheriting property after deaths. The Osage found minimal assistance from local law enforcement to investigate the deaths, as it was dominated by powerful whites working in their own interests. Later investigation, including that of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI, the precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation), revealed extensive corruption among local officials involved in the Osage guardian program, including lawyers and judges. Most of the murders were never prosecuted. Nevertheless, several perpetrators were convicted of murder, including William Hale, a powerful rancher who ordered the murders of his nephew's wife and other members of her family to gain control of their headrights and oil wealth. Two other perpetrators implicated with Hale, Henry Grammer and Asa Kirby, died under suspicious circumstances during the BOI investigation. Several others involved were convicted of lesser charges, such as perjury, witness tampering, and contempt of court, for attempting to impede the investigation.

In 1925, the US Congress changed the law to prohibit non-Osage from inheriting headrights from Osage with half or more Native American ancestry, in an effort to protect the Osage. The US government continued to manage the leases and royalties from oil-producing lands. Over decades, the tribe became increasingly concerned about these assets. In 2000, the Osage Nation filed a suit against the US Department of the Interior, alleging that it had not adequately managed the assets and paid people the royalties they were due. The suit was settled in 2011 for $380 million and commitments to improve program management. People across the U.S. read about the Osage, called "the richest nation, clan, or social group of any race on earth, including the whites, man for man". Under the system, even minors who had less than half-Osage blood were required guardians, regardless of living parents. The courts appointed the guardians from local white lawyers or businessmen. The incentives for criminality were overwhelming. Such guardians often maneuvered legally to steal Osage land, their headrights, or royalties. Others were suspected of murdering their charges to gain the headrights.

Murders in Osage County

thumb|[[Henry Roan, Rita Smith, and William Vaughan]]

In the early 1920s, eighteen Osage and three non-Osage people in Osage County were reported murdered within a short period of time. Colorado newspapers reported the murders as the "Reign of Terror" on the Osage reservation. Some murders seemed associated with several members of one family.

On May 27, 1921, local hunters discovered the decomposing body of 36-year-old Anna Brown in a remote ravine of Osage County. Unable to find the killer, local authorities ruled her death as accidental because of alcohol poisoning and put the case aside. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was not alcohol, but a bullet fired into the back of her head. Brown was divorced, so probate awarded her estate to her mother, Lizzie Q. Kyle. Morrison, 38, was killed in a shootout with police on May 25, 1937. By that time, Lizzie had headrights for herself and had inherited the headrights from her late Osage husband and two daughters. Her heirs became fabulously wealthy.

In 1922, the Osage approached white oilman Barney A. McBride for help. McBride traveled to Washington, D.C. to enlist the aid of the federal government in investigating the murders. On the night of his arrival at a boarding house in the capital, he received a telegram that told him to be careful. After playing billiards and exiting from a club that same evening, an assailant tied a burlap sack around McBride's head and stabbed him over twenty times. The following morning, McBride's naked body was found in a Maryland culvert. McBride's murder later made the headline of The Washington Times newspaper on August 12, 1922.

On February 6, 1923, Henry Roan, another cousin of Brown's, also known as Henry Roan Horse, was found in his car on the Osage Reservation, dead from a shot in the head. On March 10, 1923, a bomb destroyed the Fairfax residence of Anna's sister Rita Smith, killing Rita and her servant, Nettie Brookshire. Rita's husband, Bill Smith, sustained massive injuries from the blast and died four days later. Shortly before his death, Bill gave a statement implicating his suspected murderers and appointed his wife's estate. Later investigations revealed that the bomb contained of nitroglycerin. Hale was Bigheart's neighbor and friend, and had recently been designated by the court as Bigheart's guardian. The hospital doctors suspected that Bigheart had ingested poisoned whiskey. Bigheart called white attorney William Watkins "W.W." Vaughan, asking him to come to the hospital as soon as possible for an urgent meeting. Vaughan complied, and the two men met that night. Bigheart had said he had suspicions about who was behind the murders and had access to incriminating documents that would prove his claims.

Vaughan boarded a train that night to return to Pawhuska. In the morning, he was missing when the Pullman porter went to wake him. His berth on the train had not been used. Vaughan's naked body was later found with his skull crushed, beside the railroad tracks near Pershing, about south of Pawhuska. The Bureau of Investigation (BOI), which preceded the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), sent investigators to the reservation and found a low-level market in contract killers to kill the Osage for their wealth. Hale and his nephews, Ernest and Byron Burkhart, had migrated from Texas to Osage County to find jobs in the oil fields. Once there, they discovered the immense wealth of members of the Osage Nation from royalties being paid from leases on oil-producing lands. Hale's goal was to gain the headrights and wealth of several tribe members, including those of Mollie Kyle and her family.

To gain part of the wealth, Hale persuaded Ernest to marry Mollie, a full-blooded Osage. Hale then arranged for the murders of Mollie's sisters, her brother-in-law, her mother, and her cousin, Henry Roan, to cash in on the insurance policies and headrights of each family member.

Ernest Burkhart's attempt to kill his wife failed. Mollie, a devout Catholic, had told her priest that she feared she was being poisoned at home. The priest told her not to touch liquor under any circumstances. He also alerted one of the BOI agents. Mollie recovered from the poison she had already consumed and divorced Ernest after the trials. She later married again. Mollie Burkhart Cobb died of unrelated causes on June 16, 1937. Her children inherited all of her estate. In 1928, Reverend P. C. Hesser, a member of the grand jury which indicted Hale and Ramsey, was convicted of perjury for lying that Ramsey's confession had not been signed. He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined . In 1929, Irving Claude Hale, a half-brother of Hale, was sentenced to 60 days in prison for contempt of court. Theodore Cavalier, a local farmer, said Irving Hale had approached him and offered him money to sit on the jury and vote for an acquittal.

Various residents of Pawhuska petitioned Oklahoma Governor Jack C. Walton to conduct a full investigation of the deaths of George Bigheart and his attorney, William Vaughan. Walton assigned Herman Fox Davis to the investigation. Shortly after the assignment, Davis was convicted of bribery. Although Walton later pardoned Davis, the investigation of Bigheart and Vaughan was never completed.

In the case of the Smith murders, Ernest suddenly changed his plea to guilty, saying he wanted to tell the truth. He was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor. He turned state's evidence, naming his uncle as responsible for the murder conspiracy. Ernest said that he had used a person named Henry Grammer as a go-between to hire a professional criminal named Asa "Ace" Kirby to perform the killings.

Both Grammer and Kirby were killed before they could testify. Grammer, 39, died in a car crash on June 14, 1923. Kirby, 23, was killed while robbing a store on June 23, 1923. The shopkeeper had been tipped off in advance, and had been waiting for Kirby. It was later discovered that the man who had tipped off the shopkeeper about the upcoming robbery was Hale. After his parole, Hale's relatives said he once remarked, "If that damn Ernest had kept his mouth shut we'd be rich today." In 1941, Ernest and Clara were both found guilty of federal burglary charges. Clara was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Ernest was sentenced to 7 years in prison and had his parole revoked. US District Judge Franklin Elmore Kennamer granted Ernest's request not to be sent to the USP Leavenworth, where Hale and Ramsey were serving their life sentences.

After completing his federal sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Burkhart was returned to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary to resume his life sentence. Ernest was paroled again in October 1959. During his parole hearing, he downplayed his own involvement in the murders, referring to himself as an "unwitting tool" of his uncle: "All I did was deliver a message. Other than that I'm as innocent as you. I delivered a message from my uncle to John Ramsey and that's all I did."

In 1966, Ernest applied for a pardon. Citing his cooperation with the investigation (White had credited his confession as vital for the convictions of Hale and Ramsey), the Oklahoma Parole Board voted 3–2 in favor of a pardon, which was granted by Governor Henry Bellmon.

Trust management lawsuit

The Department of Interior continued to manage the trust lands and pay fees to Osage with headrights. In 2000, the tribe filed a lawsuit against the department, alleging that federal government management of the trust assets had resulted in historical losses to its trust funds and interest income. dollars. The settlement also strengthened management of the tribe's trust assets and improved communications between the Department of Interior and the tribe.

Claims of genocide

The events have been characterized as a genocide due to the intentions of its perpetrators to destroy the Osage nation. While some label the murders themselves as an instance of genocide, others include the murders in a longer process of genocide against the Osage nation. Estimates vary widely as to the percentage of the Osage nation killed in the murders, with the lowest estimate being 10% of 591 full-blood Osage being killed.

  • James Young Deer produced a silent film in 1926 called Tragedies of the Osage Hills that mentions the murders, considered a lost film.
  • John Joseph Mathews (Osage), set his novel Sundown (1934) in the period of the murders.
  • "The Osage Indian Murders", a dramatization of the case first broadcast on August 3, 1935, was the third episode of the radio series G-Men, created and produced by Phillips Lord with cooperation of the FBI.
  • Western novelist Fred Grove, part Osage on his mother's side, was 10 years old when he was an "ear" witness to the bombing murders of Bill and Rita Smith and Nettie Brookshire. This incident haunted him. Several of his novels were based on aspects of the case: his first novel, Flame of the Osage (1958), two written in roughly the middle of his career: Warrior Road (1974) and Drums Without Warriors (1976), and one of his last, The Years of Fear (2002).
  • Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit (1990) explores a fictional version of the murders.
  • Dennis McAuliffe Jr.'s book The Deaths of Sybil Bolton (1994) was the first book to utilize the FBI files on the case for background research. It is an investigation into the death of the author's Osage grandmother who died during the murders. It was republished in 1999 with the title Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation. The third edition, The Deaths of Sybil Bolton: Oil, Greed, and Murder on the Osage Reservation contains a foreword by David Grann.
  • American playwright David Blakely adapted Dennis McAuliffe's The Deaths of Sybil Bolton (1994) into the 2018 one-act Four Ways to Die and later the full-length play The Deaths of Sybil Bolton (2019).