Killers of the Flower Moon

In late July, Hale and Ramsey’s trial for the murder of Henry Roan began. White felt that the outcome hinged on “whether the witnesses and the jury became tainted” (214). However, a larger question hung over the proceedings as well: “Would a jury of twelve white men ever punish another white man for killing an American Indian?” (214-15). Ernest Burkhart testified for the prosecution, this time holding firm in pointing the finger at his uncle. When Hale was called to the stand, he denied everything. Toward the end of August, the jury began deliberations. After five days, a hung jury was declared, and the prosecution alleged that at least one jury member had been bribed. Later, Bryan Burkhart’s trial for killing Anna also ended in a hung jury. Justice for Osage people was hard to come by, even after all the evidence White had amassed. 

A new trial for Hale and Ramsey began in October 1926. This time, the Bureau guarded the jury members against potential tampering. The second trial was shorter than the first, and the jury took only one day to return a verdict of guilty, with the qualification that the sentence be life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

Back in Washington, Hoover used the news as part of his public relations campaign for the Bureau. He asked White to send him information about the case that he could feed to the press. However, though Hoover praised White’s team in private, he never mentioned them in public; the Cowboys did not fit the new image of a clean-cut, college-educated Bureau.

In an ironic twist of fate, shortly after the case ended, White became warden of the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas. In November, he greeted two new inmates: William Hale and John Ramsey.

This second section ends by wrapping up the loose ends in the aftermath of the trial. Mollie divorced Ernest Burkhart and later married a man who had white and Creek ancestry. In 1931, she was finally deemed legally competent, no longer requiring a guardian for her financial affairs.

The Bureau grew in importance as it was involved in many high-profile cases in the 1930s, including the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby and the hunting down of gangsters like John Dillinger. It was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and given expanded powers. Hoover’s profile also grew in the public imagination, as he remained the public face of the FBI through numerous presidential administrations, serving until he died in 1972.

Tom White continued as warden of Leavenworth into the early 1930s, and was known as a fair and compassionate overseer of the overcrowded prison. One gangster credited White with helping him turn his life around, saying that something White told him gave him a “ray of hope” (226). William Hale relied on his old frontier skills to tend to livestock on the prison farm, and White treated him equitably, even letting his wife visit more than the policy allowed.

At the end of 1931, several prisoners orchestrated a breakout, taking White hostage as they fled the grounds. They ended up at a farmhouse, where they took two more hostages: a teenage girl and her younger brother. White pleaded with his captors to let the children go unharmed. When White tried to wrestle away one of their guns, a prisoner shot him, leaving him bleeding and unconscious. White survived, though his arm was badly damaged; he was credited with saving the lives of the children. After he recovered, he took a less-demanding job at a prison in Texas, where he worked until his retirement in 1951. He died in 1971, at age 90.

The story doesn’t end there, however. Grann closes the chapter by writing that “there was something essential that wasn’t included in […] historical records, something that White himself had missed”: an “even more terrifying conspiracy” (238).