20 SO HELP YOU GOD!

In the last week of July 1926, as the summer heat reached

infernal temperatures, the trial of Hale and Ramsey for the
murder of Henry Roan began at the redbrick courthouse in
Guthrie. “The stage is set: the curtain rises slowly on the great
tragedy of the Osage—the long-awaited federal trial of two old-
time cowboys,” the Tulsa Tribune reported. “The trial of Ernest
Burkhart, although it ended in a melodramatic flourish with his
confession to the Smith murder conspiracy implicating Hale, was
merely a prologue to the life and death tragedy that goes on the
boards today.”

White stationed extra guards at the jail after attempts to break
out the outlaws who were going to testify against Hale. Later,
when Hale was being held on a separate tier from the cell housing
Blackie Thompson, he passed him a note through a hole where a
radiator pipe went through the ceiling. Blackie admitted to agents
that Hale had asked him what he required to “not testify against
him.” Blackie added, “I wrote one note that I would not testify
against him if he would get me out.” Hale wrote back promising to
arrange his escape in return for one more thing—that Blackie then
kidnap Ernest Burkhart and make him disappear before he could
testify. “He wanted me to take Ernest Burkhart to Old Mexico,”
Blackie said, adding that Hale didn’t “want Burkhart killed in this
country where he would be found.”

Given the abundance of evidence against Hale and Ramsey,
White believed that the verdict would depend, in large part, on