18 THE STATE OF THE GAME

Out of the blue, White received a tip. In late October 1925, he

was meeting with the governor of Oklahoma, discreetly discussing
the case. Afterward, an aide to the governor told White, “We’ve
been getting information from a prisoner at McAlester”—the state
penitentiary—“who claims to know a great deal about the Osage
murders. His name is Burt Lawson. Might be a good idea to talk to
him.”

Desperate for a new lead, White and Agent Frank Smith rushed
over to McAlester. They didn’t know much about Lawson, other
than that he was from Osage County and that he had had several
brushes with the law. In 1922, he had been charged with
murdering a fisherman but was acquitted after claiming that the
fisherman had first come at him with a knife. Less than three
years later, Lawson was convicted of second-degree burglary and
sentenced to seven years.

White liked to interview a subject in a place that was unfamiliar
to the person in order to unsettle him, and so he had Lawson
taken to a room off the warden’s office. White studied the man
who appeared before him: short, portly, and middle-aged, with
ghostly white long hair. Lawson kept referring to White and Smith
as the “hot Feds.”

White said to him, “We understand from the governor’s office
you know something about the Osage murders.”

“I  do,”    Lawson  said,   adding, “I  want    to  make    a   clean   breast  of  it.”