transcript of an interview with an informant, the agent said,
“There are so many of these murder cases. There are hundreds and
hundreds.”
Even cases known to the bureau had hidden dimensions. During
one of my last visits to the reservation, in June 2015, I went to the
Osage Nation Court, where, in many criminal cases, the Osage
now mete out their own justice. An Osage lawyer had told me that
the Reign of Terror was “not the end of our history,” adding, “Our
families were victims of this conspiracy, but we’re not victims.”
In one of the courtrooms, I met Marvin Stepson. An Osage man
in his seventies with expressive gray eyebrows and a deliberate
manner, he served as the chief trial court judge. He was the
grandson of William Stepson, the steer-roping champion who had
died, of suspected poisoning, in 1922. Authorities never prosecuted
anyone for Stepson’s murder, but they came to believe that Kelsie
Morrison—the man who had killed Anna Brown—was responsible.
By 1922, Morrison had divorced his Osage wife, and after
Stepson’s death he married Stepson’s widow, Tillie, making
himself the guardian of her two children. One of Morrison’s
associates told the bureau that Morrison had admitted to him that
he had killed Stepson so that he could marry Tillie and get control
of her invaluable estate.
Stepson’s death was usually included in the official tally of
murders during the Reign of Terror. But as I sat with Marvin on
one of the wooden courtroom benches, he revealed that the
targeting of his family did not end with his grandfather. After
marrying Morrison, Tillie grew suspicious of him, especially after
Morrison was overheard talking about the effects of the poison
strychnine. Tillie confided to her lawyer that she wanted to
prevent Morrison from inheriting her estate and to rescind his