early investigation, had been released from prison as an
informant, only to murder a police officer. Since being caught, he’d
been locked up at the state penitentiary, a blight on the bureau
best unseen.
Yet, from the bureau’s early reports on the case, White
suspected that Blackie might have key information about the
murders, and without consulting Hoover, White had him
transported to Guthrie. If anything went wrong, if Blackie escaped
or hurt a soul, White’s career would be over. And White made sure
that Luther Bishop—a state lawman who had gunned down Al
Spencer—was in charge of transferring Blackie. When Blackie
arrived at the federal building, he was in chains and flanked by a
small army. On a nearby rooftop, White had placed a rifleman,
who kept Blackie in his scope through a window.
Blackie was still hostile, sullen, mean, but when White asked
him about Hale and Burkhart’s role in the murders of the Osage,
his mood seemed to change. A man filled with venom and bigotry,
he’d once complained that Hale and Ernest Burkhart were “too
much Jew—they want everything for nothing.”
Agents told Blackie that they couldn’t cut a deal with him to
reduce his sentence, and he spoke grudgingly at first about the
murders, but gradually he divulged more and more. He said that
Burkhart and Hale had once approached him and his old buddy
Curley Johnson to kill Bill and Rita Smith. As part of the payment,
they had proposed that Blackie steal Burkhart’s car, and one night,
while Burkhart was at home in bed with Mollie, Blackie had taken
it from their garage. Blackie had later been picked up by the law
for car theft and never went through with any of the killings.