Who was Mollie Burkhart?
Mollie Kyle was a single woman from a wealthy Osage family, which made her a target. In 1917, Ernest Burkhart, the handsome 20-something nephew of William Hale, married her at the urging of his uncle, who had designs on her and her family’s headrights.
A few years after they were married, members of Mollie’s family began dying in suspicious ways. First, in 1918, a sister, Minnie Smith, died of what doctors called a “peculiar wasting illness” (probably poisoning). Then, in 1921, another sister, Anna Brown, was shot in the back of the head and dumped in a ravine, a brutal contract killing orchestrated by Hale that kicked off the Reign of Terror. Over the next two years, Mollie’s mother, Lizzie Q, and her final surviving sister, Rita Smith, also died in a probable poisoning and a home explosion, respectively. With each death, Mollie — and therefore Ernest — inherited additional headrights.
There was another reason Mollie Burkhart was a perfect candidate for Hale’s scheme: She was diabetic, so a premature death would be easy to attribute to her illness at a time when insulin was not widely available. Corrupt doctors in Hale’s control began injecting her with poison under the guise of administering an experimental new treatment. (She recovered after moving away and getting treatment at a hospital.)
Why did it take so long for the federal government to intervene?
The Osage Tribal Council suspected Hale early on, but it couldn’t get anyone to testify against him: Hale had bribed or threatened many witnesses into silence. Local authorities declined to investigate or, in the case of the coroner, falsified documents. Hale also covered his tracks, participating in the murder investigations and even offering rewards for leads.
But in 1923, after the death toll had risen to more than two dozen, the council issued a resolution asking the federal government to look into the matter. That April, J. Edgar Hoover assigned agents from the Bureau of Investigation to the case. (It would later be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.)
Posing as a cattle buyer, an insurance salesman, a medicine man and an oil prospector — a subplot that didn’t make it into the film — four undercover agents from the bureau, led by Tom White (played by Jesse Plemons), lived among the Osage for two years and gained their trust. Eventually, people began speaking out against Hale.
