Mollie Kyle Cobb

Osage
Big Hill Band

Biography

• Married Henry Menthorne Roan, aka - "Roan Horse" and "E-stah-mo-sah". He was murdered during the Osage Reign of Terror by John Ramsey, on orders from William King Hale.
• Married Ernest George Burkhart on February 14, 1917 in Pawnee, Oklahoma
• Their children: James, Elizabeth and Anna (Bigheart) Burkhart
• Married John William Cobb on June 5, 1928 in Garfield, Oklahoma
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89242924/mollie-cobb
• Mollie's mother, Lizzie, and her sisters, Anna, Minnie, and Reta, were all victims of the oil murders, as well as her first husband, Henry Roan. Mollie was married to Ernest Burkhart, who would be convicted with his uncle, William K. Hale. He was later pardoned.

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LDTH-MY6
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kyle-1213

Facts of Life and Death

"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 the Osage Hills". Hale and his nephews, Ernest and Bryan 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 his nephew's Osage wife, the last survivor of her family.

To gain part of the wealth, Hale persuaded Ernest to marry Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded Osage.[21] 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.[21] Other witnesses and participants were murdered as investigation of the conspiracy expanded. Mollie and Ernest Burkhart inherited all of the headrights from her family. Investigators soon discovered that Mollie was already being poisoned.[13]

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 FBI agents. Mollie recovered from the poison she had already consumed and after the trials divorced Ernest. Mollie Burkhart Cobb died of unrelated causes on June 16, 1937. Her children inherited all of her estate.[12]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Indian_murders

The Osage Nation and the oil boom

The Osage (Ni-u-kon-ska) Nation, pushed west by white settlement, negotiated a treaty in 1865 to purchase their own reservation land in what became northern Oklahoma. In the 1890s oil deposits were discovered on the reservation, which is now coterminous with Osage County. When the U.S. Congress passed the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, a tribal lawyer wisely reserved subsurface mineral rights for the Osage people. As it turned out, the reservation contained some of the largest oil deposits in the country, setting off the Oklahoma oil boom.

Although proceeds from the mineral rights were held in trust by the U.S. government, mineral lease royalties were paid to the tribe. Royalties were allotted equally to each tribal member in shares called headrights, which were passed along to a person’s legal heirs when the person died. At the height of the oil boom, headrights were worth several million dollars each. Osage tribal members became the wealthiest people per capita in the world, buying mansions, cars, and luxury goods and, in some cases, even hiring white servants. However, in March 1921, Congress created a system under which guardians—generally, prominent white citizens—were appointed by a court to manage the funds of Osage persons who were found to be “incompetent,” a designation that in practice usually meant that the individual in question was a full-blooded Osage as opposed to a “competent” mixed-race member of the tribe.

It was not long before local whites began targeting the Osage and their wealth. Dishonorable lawyers, bankers, and businessmen serving as guardians skimmed money from their wards’ oil royalties or sought to otherwise bilk them. William K. Hale, a prominent cattle rancher, businessman, and self-styled “King of the Osage Hills,” masterminded one of the deadliest schemes. Because the 1906 act allowed non-Osage people to inherit headrights, Hale urged his nephew Ernest Burkhart to marry Mollie Kyle, a full-blooded allottee. The two men, along with John Ramsey, Kelsey (sometimes spelled Kelsie) Morrison, and other accomplices, then began systematically murdering her family.

In 1921 Mollie Kyle’s mother, Lizzie Q. Kyle, who had inherited three additional headrights, died of suspected poisoning. Only months before her death, another of her daughters, Anna Brown, had been killed, and within two years Mollie Kyle’s cousin Henry Roan and her aunt and uncle Rita and William Smith were murdered. Their headrights now belonged to Kyle. If she died, Hale’s nephew stood to inherit them all, each one worth several million dollars." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Osage-murders

Sources

• Grann, D., (2017) "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI." Doubleday, New York.
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/osage-murders-photos-killers-...
• https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS005
• https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/the-forgotten-murders-of-the-osag...
• https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/osage-murders-case
• https://archive.org/details/osagestheirnames00thom/ , pages 7 and 285
• United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QP73-C341 : Wed Oct 04 14:16:12 UTC 2023), Entry for Wah-Kon-Tah-He-Um-Pah.

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Osage Oil Murders/Murderers List of Individuals with FamilySearch ID Numbers

First thought to have died of a mysterious wasting illness, later believed to have been poisoned. Wife of William Smith who then married her sister Reta. They were both murdered by explosives destroying their home. Her sister Annie was killed, as well as her mother.

Kyle Ne-Kah-E-Se-Y, Mollie 1886 to 1937 Osage
LDTH-MY6
Mollie's mother, Lizzie, and her sisters, Anna, Minnie, and Reta, were all victims of the oil murders, as well as her first husband, Henry Roan. Mollie was married to Ernest Burkhart, who would be convicted with his uncle, William K. Hale. He was later pardoned.

Kyle Ne-Kah-E-Se-Y Smith, Reta 1891-10 March 1923 Osage
G97C-5Z5​​
Reta was married to John Miles then William "Bill" Smith. She, Bill, and servant Nettie Cole Brookshire died as a result of their destruction of their home by an explosion. Reta and Nettie died that night; Bill died several days later. Reta's sisters, Minnie and Annie, were also victims, as well as her mother.

McBride, Barney 1863 - 11 August 1922
GXYH-K93
Oil man whose deceased wife had been Nancy Taylor Deer. "Butchered" while in Washington D.C. Famous Trials dot com states that while he was in Washington D.C. urging a federal investigation into the Osage murders, he was stabbed to death.

Morrison, Kelsie 1898 to 1937
LHT4-ZYR
Confessed to the murder of Anna Kyle Brown. Convicted, he was later pardoned and ultimately died in a shoot-out with law officers. Tillie Powell, who he married in 1922, had previously been married to William Stepson. She died in 1923. William K. Hale hired a gunman to kill Katherine Cole, Kelsie Morrison's former wife, because she knew too much about the murders, but the gunman doesn't go through with it and tells authorities.

Moss, Jim 1885-1976
LTVT-CWM
The F.B.I. files for the investigation into the Osage oil murders reveal Anna/Annie Kyle, one of those murdered, was pregnant at the time by Jim Moss and that they were planning on being married. The census shows that in 1920 Jim Moss was a lodger at the William K. Hale household, the mastermind of the murders. Jim Moss was not a suspect.

Osage, Rose 1899-1935 Osage
GXPF-9WF
Rose Osage had nothing to do with the murders but she was initially investigated as a suspect, and her name comes up repeatedly in the F.B.I. files because of this. It was proposed she was upset because her father, Amos Osage, may have become intimate with Anna Kyle. Rose's mother was Elizabeth Buffalo, wife of victim George Bigheart. At the time Rose was involved with Joe Allen (alias Jimmie Hicks) whose name also comes up in documents. They married some time before 1924.

Peace, Paul 1885 to 23 February 1927 Osage
LKFX-3NM
Brother-in-law of Eves Tallchief, also a victim. His second marriage was to Elda Whitehorn whose brother Charles Whitehorn was a victim. Eves Tallchief's brother, Henry, married Ethel Mashburn in 1923. Her mother's sister, Sytha Hale (no relation to William K. Hale), was the mother of Therza Grimes who married Paul Peace about 1923.
Paul was "one of those victims who didn't show up in the FBI files and whose killers didn't go to prison," according to granddaughter Mary Jo Webb, as described in the book by David Gann, "Killers of the Flower Moon." Paul suspected that his wife , who was white, was poisoning him and that "everyone knew that's [the doctor brothers, Shoun] where people could get the dope to poison the Osage." But on February 23, 1927, weeks after Paul Peace vowed to disinherit and divorce the wife he suspected of poisoning him, he was injured in a hit-and-run and left to bleed out on the road." [Gann- Killers of the Flower Moon, page 291]

Ramsey, John
Confessed to killing Henry Roan. Received a life sentence. Paroled in November of 1947.

Roan, Henry 1881-1923 Osage
G97H-YKV
Mollie Kyle, who had been previously married to Henry, marries Ernest Burkhart in 1917. 8 Feb 1923, Henry is found in his car, on the Sol Smith farm, shot from behind. Dead several days, William Hale is his insurance beneficiary. John Ramsey was later convicted, but tried to cast suspicion on Roy Bunch, who Henry Roan's wife, Mary Josephine Hunter, married after his death. Catherine Cole, a wife of Kelsie Morrison, was the daughter of Mamie Fletcher (married name), an Osage woman who was a cousin of Henry's. She had been joyriding with a friend when they came across his body but, terrified, didn't initially involve themselves. Alfred McKinley is also a cousin (wife Amanda), and Mary Watson who also married Walter Lasley, a son of John Lasley who married Rose Scott.

Rogers, Kenneth 1879 - 21 Feb 1923 Osage/Cherokee
GXPZ-VV2
Shot through the window while reading. His obit says he died suddenly of appoplectic stroke.
"...Other deaths included that of Kenneth Rogers, Winona, Okla...and that of Barney McBride, Muskogee, oil man, said to have been on his way to Washington to confer with authorities relative to the wholesale murders; found horribly butchered in a culvert near Meadows, Maryland, August 1922..."
Chickashaw Daily, 5 Jan 1926

Sanford, Anna 1879-1922 Osage
GX5V-6GQ
Suspected of having died by poison. Her husband, Silas, died the year before her. I've not read of him being suspected as a victim.

Scott, Rose 1891 - 1935 Osage
LYZ4-4CB
Married Byron/Bryan Burkhart in 1923 after divorcing John Lasley. Individuals had feared for her life attempted to keep her from marrying Burkhart. She divorced Burkhart while he was in prison and he fought to keep custody of their daughter. John Lasley, Pottawatomie, was a brother-in-law of Sallie Dorian, a wife of Chief James Whitecloud of the Kansas/Nebraska Ioways. Her sisters were Helen Kastl, Mollie Mercer, and Mary Blackbird Newalla, names that come up in the FBI files as individuals with information who were reluctant to speak.

Smith, William E. "Bill" 1870-March 1923
G97Z-T4S
Married to Evelyn Plunkett, Minnie Kyle and Reta Kyle. He and Reta and their servant Nettie Cole-Brookshire died when their home was destroyed by an explosion. Reta and Nettie died in the explosion, Bill dying days later.

Spencer, Al 1887 - 15 September 1923
LJGL-QTT
Hale attempted to hire outlaw Spencer to kill William Smith and Reta Kyle Spencer but he declined to murder helpless individuals.

Stepson, William, 1892 - 28 Feb 1922 Osage
G9WM-D3Q
Murdered by poison. His wife, Tilley Powell, after his death married Kelsie Morrison in 1922. Kelsie confessed to the murder of Anna/Annie Kyle. William Stepson's sister, Rose, was married to Charles Fletcher, son of William and Mamie Cole Pitts Fletcher. Catherine Cole, Kelsie Morrison's first wife, was a daughter of Mamie's.

Tallchief, Eves 1876-1926 Osage
LCVJ-5HM
His death was attributed to alcohol but witnesses said he didn't drink and had been poisoned. Brother-in-law of Paul Peace, also believed to be a victim. Paul Peace was also married to Elda Whitehorn, whose brother Charles Whitehorn was a victim. Eves Tallchief's brother, Henry, married Ethel Mashburn in 1923. Her mother's sister, Sytha Hale (no relation to William K. Hale), was the mother of Therza Grimes who married Paul Peace about 1923.

Thompson, Irvin Newton "Blackie" 1893 – 6 December 1934
LVGP-HNQ
Criminal informant.

Vaughn, William Watkins 1869-29 June 1923
GD31-WKP
A victim of the Osage Oil Murders Reign of Terror, after a meeting with George Bigheart [FS M9PK-7RQ], who had been poisoned and was dying, nephew of Chief James Bigheart, Lawyer W. W. Vaugn was killed and thrown off a train

Whitehorn, Charles 1896-May 1921 Osage
GZC4-LCB
Found shot to death, and was suspected to be a victim of the Osage oil murders, but not by Hale and Burkhart. At the time of his death he was married to Hattie Clark who became a suspect. His sister, Elda, was married to Paul Peace, also believed to have been a victim. Eaves Tallchief, another victim, was a brother-in-law of Paul Peace by marriage to Clara Tallchief.

A friend of Roan’s named Bennett was aware of the many other mysterious deaths that had occurred in the dead man’s family. Allegedly, Bennet told Hale that he was going to Oklahoma City to inform the Governor about the shenanigans in Osage County. Bennet was later found shot and killed just two blocks from the State Capitol. His murder was never solved.

Before arriving in Oklahoma City, Bennet had connected the dots in the murders for his friend, Hugh Gibson. After Bennet’s murder, Gibson traveled to Oklahoma City to complete his friend’s mission. Gibson was found murdered in an Oklahoma City alley.

It seemed that those responsible for the murders in Osage County wanted it known what happens to those who seek justice. By this point, those responsible for the reign of terror no longer felt a need to remain low-key. Kenneth Rogers was shot and killed by an unknown assailant, while he was sitting by a window in his home reading a book.

https://edmondlifeandleisure.com/a-look-at-the-osage-indian-murders...