11 THE THIRD MAN

Hoover immediately began pestering White for updates. Once,

when White was in the field and did not respond immediately,
Hoover chastised him, saying, “I do not understand why, at the
end of the day, you could not have wired me fully as to the
developments and general situation.” Hoover’s attention to the
case had waxed and waned over the years, but he had become so
agitated about the growing criticism he was receiving in Oklahoma
that prior to White’s arrival he had started to investigate matters
himself. Though he was not one to venture into the muck of the
field (he had a phobia of germs and had installed in his home a
special filtration system to purify the air), he would sit in his
office, poring over incoming reports from agents—his eyes and
ears on the menacing world.

As Hoover studied the reports on the Osage murders, he found
it an “interesting observation” that Anna Brown and Roan were
both killed with a bullet to the back of the head, and “after
carefully going over all of the angles,” he came to believe that a
white woman, Necia Kenny, who was married to an Osage man,
might hold the key to the case. Kenny had told agents that A. W.
Comstock, the attorney who served as a guardian for several
Osage, was likely part of the conspiracy. Hoover hadn’t forgotten
that Comstock had criticized the bureau and had threatened to
turn Senator Curtis against him—which made Comstock, in
Hoover’s eyes, a malicious rat. “I am convinced that Mrs. Kenny is
pretty well on the right track,” Hoover had told one of his agents.