their mother, Lizzie—were blood related. Surprisingly, agents
hadn’t spoken to Lizzie’s surviving daughter, Mollie Burkhart.
Investigators were taught to see the world through the eyes of
others. But how could White fathom what this woman had seen—
from being born in a lodge on the wild prairie to being catapulted
into a fortune to being terrorized as her family and other Osage
were picked off one by one? The files offered few insights about
Mollie’s life, mentioning only that she was ill with diabetes and
had secluded herself in her house.
A few details in the files seemed telling. Repeat killers tend to
rigidly adhere to a routine, yet the Osage murders were carried out
in a bewildering array of methods. There was no signature. This,
along with the fact that bodies turned up in different parts of the
state and country, suggested that this was not the work of a single
killer. Instead, whoever was behind the crimes must have
employed henchmen. The nature of the murders also gave some
insight into the mastermind: the person was not an impulsive
killer but a connoisseur of plots who was intelligent enough to
understand toxic substances and calculating enough to carry out
his diabolical vision over years.
As White scrutinized the data in reports, one plausible story line
after another seemed to cohere. But upon close inspection, the
information invariably traced back to the same dubious sources:
private eyes and local lawmen, whose opinions were based on little
more than hearsay. Given that corruption seemed to permeate
every institution in Osage County, these sources might be
intentionally spreading disinformation in order to conceal the real
plot. White realized that the greatest problem with the earlier
investigations was not that agents had failed to uncover any leads;
it was that there were too many. Agents would develop one, then
simply drop it, or fail to corroborate it or to conclusively disprove
it. Even when agents seemed to be moving on the right track, they