The writers Dennis McAuliffe, Lawrence Hogan, Dee Cordry,
and the late Fred Grove had conducted their own research into the
Osage murders, and their work was enormously helpful. So was
Verdon R. Adams’s short biography Tom White: The Life of a
Lawman. Finally, in detailing the history of J. Edgar Hoover and
the formation of the FBI, I drew on several excellent books,
particularly Curt Gentry’s J. Edgar Hoover, Sanford Ungar’s FBI,
Richard Gid Powers’s Secrecy and Power, and Bryan Burrough’s
Public Enemies.
In the bibliography, I have delineated these and other important
sources. If I was especially indebted to one, I tried to cite it in the
notes as well. Anything that appears in the text between quotation
marks comes from a court transcript, diary, letter, or some other
account. These sources are cited in the notes, except in cases
where it is clear that a person is speaking directly to me.