Editing Osage Indian murders (section)

==Investigation==
[[File:Osage-Indian-Murders-Cartoon.jpg|thumb|A political cartoon depicts [[Mollie Burkhart]] and [[William King Hale]] from the ''Enid Morning News'', Sunday edition on February 7, 1926.]]

The Osage Tribal Council suspected that Hale was responsible for many of the deaths. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior sent four agents to act as undercover investigators. Working for two years, the agents discovered a [[crime ring]] led by Hale, known in Osage County as the "King of Osage".{{sfn|Fixico|2012|p=41}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Osage Indian Murders |url=https://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041015105909/http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/osageind.htm |website=[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220528231648/https://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041015105909/http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/osageind.htm |archive-date=May 28, 2022}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Fixico|2012|p=41}} Hale's goal was to gain the [[Osage headright|headrights]] and wealth of several tribe members, including his nephew's Osage wife, [[Mollie Burkhart]], the last survivor of her family. The Osage murders began with Osage killings. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.{{sn|May 2025}}

To gain part of the wealth, Hale persuaded Ernest to marry Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded Osage.<ref name="Burns">{{cite book |first=Louis F. |last=Burns |title=A History of the Osage People |location=Tuscaloosa |publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]] |date=1989 |pages=439–442}}</ref>{{sfn|Fixico|2012|p=52}} Hale 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.<ref name="Burns"/>{{sfn|Fixico|2012|pp=52–53}}

As the BOI investigation of the conspiracy expanded, other witnesses and participants were murdered.{{sfn|Fixico|2012|pp=52–53}} Mollie and [[Ernest Burkhart]] inherited all of the headrights from her family. Investigators soon discovered that Mollie was already being poisoned.<ref name="OHS">{{cite web |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/O/OS005.html |title=Osage Murders |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729090945/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/O/OS005.html |archive-date=July 29, 2013 |website=Oklahoma Historical Society |access-date=December 2, 2011}}</ref>

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.<ref name="Howell"/>