time to blow up the Smith house. “I feel in my heart that I did it
because I was requested to do it by Hale, who is my uncle,” he
said. “The truth of what I did I have told to many men, and as I see
it the honest and honorable thing for me to do was to stop the trial
and acknowledge the truth.”
The judge said that before he accepted the plea, he needed to ask
a question: Had federal agents forced Burkhart to sign a
confession at gunpoint or under threat of electrocution? Burkhart
said that other than keeping him up late, the men from the bureau
had treated him just fine. (Later, Burkhart said that some of Hale’s
attorneys had prodded him to lie on the stand.)
The judge said, “Then your plea of guilty will be accepted.”
The courtroom erupted. The New York Times reported on the
front page, BURKHART ADMITS OKLAHOMA KILLING: CONFESSES HE HIRED
MAN TO DYNAMITE SMITH HOME...SAYS UNCLE HEADED PLOT.
White sent a message to Hoover. Burkhart, he reported, “was
very much disturbed and, with tears in his eyes, told me that he
had lied and that he was now going to tell the truth...and would
testify to any Court in the United States to that effect.”
After Burkhart’s admission, the campaign to fire White and his
men ended. Oklahoma’s attorney general said, “Too much credit
cannot be given these gentlemen.”
Yet only a fraction of the case had been completed. White and
the authorities still had to convict the other henchmen, including
Bryan Burkhart and Ramsey. And, most treacherous of all, they
still had to bring down Hale. White, after witnessing the
shenanigans in Ernest’s trial, was less certain that Hale could be
convicted, but he received at least one encouraging bit of news: the
U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the place where Roan had been
murdered was indeed on Indian lands. “That put us back in federal
district courts,” White noted.