In 1968, a peaceful civil rights protest turned deadly in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Known as the Orangeburg Massacre, it became known as one of the most violent events of the civil rights movement, but details aren't widely known. Host Nat Cardona is again joined by subject matter expert Dr. William Heine to discuss how peaceful protestors were met with violence, what happened to the victims, and who was- or wasn't- held responsible for the bloodshed. The two also discuss how the victims are remembered today.

Listen to Episode 1 of the Orangeburg Massacre

Read more here and here and here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. I'm your host Nat Cardona. In the last episode, we discuss the climate leading into the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre in Orangeburg, South Carolina. If you haven't listened to that episode, please go back and listen. There's a link in the show notes to help make it easier for you to find. In this week's episode, I'm again joined by Dr. William Heine. He's a former history professor at South Carolina State University. We discuss in detail how the peaceful protest by students was met with violence from law enforcement. We also go into who was or wasn't held responsible for the deaths of three students and the wounding of more than 20 others. And with that, let's get to it.

So you have this pressure cooker of tensions for the handful of years nights before the actual event happens. What's the tipping point? What's the the other shoe that drops to turn from. You know, a lot of tension to violence. What were the what was the thing that happened that night? That's that's that's it. There was nothing. I mean, they were they're they're fronted each other and went back and forth or time. As I mentioned, there was a bonfire that was was put out.

People continued to throw things at one point and officer of the highway patrol, a man named Shelly, got it. Looked like he'd been shot almost literally between the eyes. He went down at least semi-conscious for a period of time, bleeding profusely, and it appeared as if he had been been shot from the direction of the students. As it turned out, he had not been shot.

He'd been hit with a heavy piece of timber. It had opened a wound on his forehead. They took him off after the hospital and at least another 10 minutes or more elapsed after Shelly was hit with the with the timber. A lot of people were at the time and sense under the mistaken impression, well surely got hit and then the highway patrolman opened fire.

It didn't happen. It did not happen that way. They opened fire with no announcement that they were going to fire. Nobody said lock and load or know you have one minute or and 80 seconds to retreat or we're going to open fire. It wasn't announced. They just simply started shooting. Not all the highway patrolman shot. There were 66 of them aligned along the embankment and kind of curled around at right angles toward an unoccupied house next next door to the campus there.

Some opened fire, some did not. Most of the students were hit in the back as they turned to run from the shotgun blast and more than 30 were were hit and three were killed and at least 28 were injured, some superficially, some very seriously. Note that there was no ready, aim, fire. It was just a spontaneous opening of a fire.

The later it was, it was determined that apparently one of the highway patrol officers had fired a warning shot into the air with his sidearm and others not realizing that opened fire. You're hearing a a weapon go off. That's been about the best determination of how the highway patrolman came to open fire that night, roughly 10:30, 10:45 on February eight.

Okay. So you have a bunch of these young people wounded. Three young men ultimately are massacred or killed. Can you talk a little bit about those three young men, if you don't mind? Well, two of them were college students. One was a high school student and they were there as much out of curiosity as a determination that they're going to be involved in protests.

Henry Smith was probably the most active of the students. He wanted to be there. He did consider himself an activist. He was upset with conditions in the community and on the campus. And there's no question of his involvement, his determination to be a part of this. And the other college student was a freshman football player named Samuel Hammond from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

It was there are of interest and curiosity. He was there with several other football players and athletes as well. He was shot and died shortly after that. Then there was Delano Middleton, who was the high school student. His mother worked on the campus and he kind of came up to see what was happening on the front of the campus.

And he was ahead and fatally injured as well that night. He was he was local. He was from the Orangeburg area and Smith was from Marion, now probably 100 miles. He came from a poor family over there. And as I mentioned, Samuel Hammond was an athlete from Fort Lauderdale, although his parents, his father was from are down the road from Orangeburg and Bamberg, South Carolina.

And so but they had connections and roots to the local area as well. Okay. Unfortunately, they're killed and other people are wounded. And then what? Like what is the what does that rest of the night like what happens pretty much immediately after? Well, it was chaos initially on the campus. I mean, there was fear, one, that this was just a prelude to an invasion by law enforcement that were going to head head on and through the campus and maybe continue shooting or occupy the campus.

No one knew what was going on. There was a absence of communication of any time. They were taking wounded students out the back side of the campus and going to the to the hospital by a back route. The college infirmary was filled with bleeding students of was great fear, anger, trepidation about what? What, what, what's next. I hear and it took a number of hours for this to settle down in the meantime, that the accounts that were out through the media were, well, incomplete and false as it turned out as well.

Associated Press tape sent out an account that there had been an exchange of gunfire on the campus with students shooting at highway patrolman and patrolman shooting back. And that was absolutely incorrect. And it was it was never a corrected by AP either. So the headlines, such as they were that appeared the next day, was that there had been an exchange of gunfire and the governor and the local authorities were pretty well convinced that they'd saved Orangeburg from some kind of massive black nationalist uprising.

And as regrettable as it was that students got shot, that this was necessary to protect the community, protect the lives and property of people in Orangeburg. And the governor maintained that and continued to maintain that as the days and weeks and then months and even years went by. After that, he was convinced that he'd acted properly and that he had helped to preserve the security and preserve what threatened to become a much worse situation from exploding into that.

And that is, to a large extent our the conventional story that was heard in the aftermath of the massacre, except for the black press that did cover the black newspapers at the time, the Baltimore Afro-American, the Pittsburgh Courier and our Defender, Jet magazine. I mean, they covered it, But as far as most people in the black community were concerned, that was just cold blooded murder by armed highway patrolman, all white who shot into a crowd of black young men protesting on their own campus unarmed at the time.

So there are two versions that prevailed for many days, weeks and months, even years to the present day about what actually happened that night in 1968. Sure. We needed to take a quick break, so don't go too far. Just so listeners understand, there were out of the 70 or so patrolmen, nine were charged with shooting at protesters, but ultimately none were convicted of anything, totally just wiped clean.

No one held accountable for the murders or the shootings. Anything, correct?

That is correct. The U.S. Department of Justice tried to indict the nine highway patrolman who did admit shooting into the crowd of students. A federal grand jury in Columbia in the fall of 1968 refused to indict them on felony charges and the Department of Justice and ended them on misdemeanor charges, criminal information.

And they went on trial the following spring of 1969 in federal court in Florence, South Carolina. And a jury of ten white people and two black people found them not guilty and that they felt their lives were in danger and therefore they were justified in shooting into this crowd of students, even if the students weren't armed with weapons.

And so the nine Howard patrolmen were indeed acquitted. And then a year after that, Cleveland Sellers was brought to the bar of justice in Orangeburg, and he was charged with an assortment of charges, including inciting a riot. There. As it turned out, most of the charges were abandoned and he was finally convicted, not for what happened on the night of February, but on the night of February six at the bowling alley of inciting the crowd down there.

And he was sentenced to a year in state prison in the Bradford River Federal Byrd River State Correctional Institution. He served nine months. He was released early on our good behavior. So he's the only one who was penalized for the events surrounding the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968. And I should point out that he was one of the people shot and wounded that night as while he was hit in the upper arm by a shotgun pellets there.

So he had to face the indignity of going to jail and being shot as well. I'm really, really hoping to still hear back from him, to hear just his retelling of everything that happened. But thanks for laying out all out. So, yeah, ultimately, he's the only one who's punished for anything that had happened that night. And at the end of the day, no justice was served for the three young men that were killed.

And, you know, here we are today. It's going on. What if we're 55, 56 years later? Like, how did we get here to where this major event that actually was so integral to the civil rights movement and so violence on top of it? How did we get to the point where this is just a blip on the radar in history, especially in terms with this?

Do you have any input on that? Well, the circumstances under which it happened in in 1968 was not well covered at that time. And 1968 was a very tumultuous year in American history. At the time of the year of the massacre in early February, the Tet Offensive was breaking out in Vietnam. The Vietnam War absorbed the attention of many, many Americans and the media shortly before that, and in January, an American naval vessel, the Pueblo, had been captured by North Korea and its crew taken hostage.

And then only weeks after the massacre, the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, announced that he would not be running for reelection in 1968. And days after that, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was shot in Memphis, Tennessee. And then a couple of months after that, Robert Kennedy was shot after the Democratic primary in California, shot in Los Angeles, and he died a day or so later.

And the the the massacre got lost in this series of events. And to that, it happens in a small rural town in South Carolina. And then most importantly, there was a group of black students and it simply did not draw the attention or the coverage of most people, especially most white people. It did, as I mentioned, draw the coverage of the black press and black students at other HBCU, other historically black colleges, universities, North Carolina, and to Morehouse, Howard in Washington DC.

But it was largely overlooked and there was no story in Time magazine. There was a short story in Newsweek at the time, the media, in terms of television, I gave that very, very little attention. And what little attention it did give, it disappeared a very quickly. So most people never even heard of it. It didn't get into most of the history books.

And two years later, when the shootings occurred in at Kent State, it just exploded across the front pages of newspapers and on all of the major networks, CBS and NBC and ABC at that time. And so virtually everyone in the aftermath of Kent State knew about the shootings of the four students at Kent who were all white and hardly anyone had heard of the students who had been shot at South Carolina State who were black, which and thank you for bringing that up, because with your affiliation with the College, for my understanding, student organizations have done a pretty good job of remembering what had happened there.

I understand that there are their statues of the three young men on campus, or is that just sort now that's on campus. There's a memorial plaza there the year after the massacre in 1969, a small granite marker was placed there with the names of the three young men. And then 30 plus years after that, and there were bronze tablets established around that granite marker with the names of the 28 young men who were wounded there.

And then three years ago or so, a a brick monument was created, built there, and then two years ago, there were busts of the three young men placed within that brick and lighted monument, the bust and Smith and Delano Middleton and Samuel Hammond are there. So there is a monument on campus that has expanded over the years.

Okay. That's good to know. Thank you for clarifying all that. One of the last things here is, you know, we can't we can't change the past in how it was covered and portrayed and how no justice was done and all of that. But what would your, you know, the take away? You would hope for our listeners to get out of this or for people to learn from this?

Do you have anything that you'd like to kind of part with? Well, you would hope that people would learn that you don't have law enforcement shoot into a crowd of unarmed people. But the fact of the matter is they did it and do it again and then shot into a crowd of protesting, protesting students at Kent State in May of 1970.

And unfortunately, too often our law enforcement officers have taken it upon themselves to not only enforce the law, but apparently act as a jury and convict and punish those who they see protesting, demonstrating, are breaking the law in front of them. So that's one lesson that has regrettably not been learned very much, if at all, in the years and decades since then.

The other regret as far as I'm concerned, and many other people were involved with the massacre and those who survived it, I there was never any formal investigation of what happened and why it happened. There was a presidential commission formed after they can say, killings on campus violence. Richard Nixon appointed the former governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton, and they did a thorough investigation of what happened at Kent State, what happened at Jackson State that pretty much ignored Orangeburg to try to get at the problems that led to the shootings at Jackson State and Kent State in May of 1970.

There's been other state investigations of of racially involved incidents everywhere from Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1923 to Rosewood, Florida, in 1922. More recent developments, but there was never a state or federal investigation of what happened in Orangeburg. And our effort to try to get into the underlying factors that contributed to this to try to bring some increased clarity. I don't know that would bring closure to this.

It might it might help it might assist in that. But it has never happened. And I in terms of the foreseeable future, it doesn't look like it's going to happen, but it does.

But in theory, it could still happen. That would be the. certainly. Okay. It's never too late. No, I mean, they investigated Tulsa almost 100 years after it happened. And Rosewood right, as well. Tulsa was 1921 and Rosewood was 1923. And state of Florida and state of Oklahoma did investigate those appointed people. They set aside relatively small amounts of money on this and then tried to undertake a thorough examination of the events that had occurred many decades before.

Now we're more than a half century since Orangeburg. There's still no investigation, and there seems to be little inclination on the part of the political leaders to undertake such an investigation, even though it would be of of modest cost. The attitude seems to be, well, we don't need to bring that up again. I don't don't let us put the scab on that wound again.

Let's just let it let it go. We can move on. And I will live in a better, happier future without digging into the past and stirring up the animosity and hard feelings once again. So we don't need no, we don't need an investigation like that and quit harping on it and quit suggesting that we do. And in fact, it's about time you stopped having those ceremonies in February 8th to commemorate this.

That only inflames people in the community and people get upset with this and would rather not. It happened, I should say that I helping with that has been the local newspaper, the The Times and Democrat. They have done a lot in recent years to try to bring about some some healing and some effort to recognize what happened in the community as a serious, serious tragedy and loss of life and the injuries that occurred.

And they've tried to bring people together in terms of healing with efforts to try to bring community leaders together, to agree, at least not to be so emotionally invested in this, that they that they have a hard time even speaking with each other. So The Times and Democratic Kathy Hughes and Lee Harder have have helped a lot there.

Is there anything that you would like to add before we parted ways? You know, I would I would repeat the what I've almost repeated over the years ad nauseum now about the need for an investigation. We're losing people. In the past year, two of the young men who were wounded in 1968 have have died since the fall of 1922.

And that's regrettable. But as the cliche goes, better late than never. So I would I repeat, a call for an investigation won't answer all the questions. It won't satisfy everyone. But I think it will help bring about an understanding of one of the most traumatic events that occurred in South Carolina in the 20th century. So on that note, I would would close and that's a great note to close on.

I really appreciate your time this was honestly a way more information than I actually expected. So huge. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And that's where we'll end the show for today. If you're interested in more details of how the victims of the massacre are being memorialized, please check out the articles linked in our show notes.

And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next on Crime Chronicles. Thanks for listening.

In 1968, a peaceful civil rights protest turned deadly in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Known as the Orangeburg Massacre, it became known as one of the most violent events of the civil rights movement, but details aren't widely known. Host Nat Cardona is joined by subject matter expert Dr. William Heine to discuss the social, political and racial environment leading up to the February of 1968 racial massacre. 

Read more here and here and here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to the Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm Nat Cardona. On this podcast, you'll hear true crime stories as told by journalists from regional newspapers across the country. Our next set of episodes are about the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968, and my guess you probably never heard of what happened there back in 1968, Orangeburg was home to two Black colleges and it had a large Black population.

However, the majority of the economic and political power was still held by the minority White population. It's February 8th, 1968. Roughly 300 protesters from South Carolina State College and Claflin University staged a nonviolent demonstration after a Black Vietnam War vet was denied access to a local bowling alley, one of the few segregated facilities left in town. The violence began with police officers beating two female students, and it ended with 28 students injured and three murdered.

We'll start with setting up social, political and economic climate at that time. Joining me on this episode is Dr. William Heine, a former professor of history at South Carolina State University for more than 40 years. He's also a published author and one of the authorities of the 1968 massacre. First things first is tell me a little bit about yourself and who you are.

Well, as you know, my name is William Heine. I taught history at South Carolina State for many years, beginning the year of the Orangeburg Massacre and retired a few years ago. In the meantime, what had been South Carolina State College became South Carolina State University in the early 1990. So there's sometimes a little bit of confusion about the label or the correct name of the institution.

But I did teach history there, and and wrote a history of the institution as well that came out a couple of years ago. I grew up in Ohio and then in 1967 came to South Carolina on what I thought would be a temporary teaching assignment for someone who was on leave that year. And I would teach there a year and then move on.

But that person did not come back after that year. So I stayed a second year and then I decided that and as much as I didn't have a page at the time that I either ought to get a degree in history or move on to something else. So I went back to graduate school at Kent State in Ohio and stayed there for three years working on a doctorate and then, with no other positions available, returned to South Carolina State in the fall of 1972 and stayed there for the remainder of my academic career.

And involved, as you might expect, on a variety of projects, some enterprises dealing with history and other subjects and our campus organizations and and the usual litany of things that college faculty members get engaged in.

Sure, sure. And the main thing we're talking about today is obviously the Orangeburg Massacre. South Carolina State has done a remarkable job. Whether it be, like you said, faculty or students in commemorating the event every single year. But, you know, the reason we reached out to you is because Lee Enterprises owns Orangeburg as a Democrat. Right. So the idea here is that you'd be able to provide context that is not available through the small amount of articles that were written throughout the years about it and, you know, hopefully provide more context than what a Google search can provide, because you Google this and it is actually pretty disheartening at how few links there are to

information about what had happened and who was killed and everything that the fallout, all of that. So ideally, I'd like you to bring me back to you know, you said you you were you were you were there in 1967. This happened in the beginning of February of 1968. Can you describe what Orangeburg was like at that time? What's going on in the community, what the demographics are, that kind of thing?

Orangeburg is the the county seat of the county that has the same name, Orangeburg County, in terms of size as the second largest Korean in South Carolina, stretching across the Midlands in terms of its history since the early 19th century. Orangeburg just consisted of a population of a Black majority are going back to the expansion of slavery in the early 19th century, and the county still has a Black majority to the present day.

In 1967. Orangeburg, with its Black majority, had not a single Black officeholder in local or state government. The State General Assembly was entirely white in 1967 68. The County Council, the City Council, the sheriff, the Chief of police. Virtually every public officeholder elected or appointed was white at that time, and most of the businesses that were white owned in town employed only white people except for their janitorial crew.

There weren't any Black retail clerks at Penney's or at the smaller stores around town. Nevertheless, it has had and continues to have two Black colleges. Claflin, a methodist Center tution founded during Reconstruction in 1869 and then South Carolina State, founded as the only Black public higher education institution in South Carolina, a four year institution founded as a land grant as a kind of counter to Clemson, which was the white land grant institution that had been founded.

And just a few years prior to that in the early 1890s. So you had this community made up of largely a Black population, but it was a white power structure in terms of politics as well as the economy.

Okay. And fair to say that there would be a lot of young Black youth as well because of the schools, correct?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And there was a fairly substantial with with the presence of two institutions, a substantial number of middle class Black people who worked in administration or faculty, as well as the public schools that were at the Times. For all intents and purposes, they were still segregated. There were still two high schools when I arrived in and Orangeburg, the Black High School, Wilkinson High School and the White High School, Orangeburg High School.

They they did merge a couple of years later into one one high school. But that was the situation all through the 1960s.

Yeah, and that's the perfect segue way there, because in 1964 we officially have the desegregation in the South. But, you know, coming up to 1968, the beginning of February, there's this bowling alley, all star lanes, right? And it is yeah, it is owned by Mr. Floyd, who says no Blacks allowed. This is my white only policy, yada, yada.

Can you explain the context behind that? Like how that could still be because some people might not understand, even though officially 1964 is a few years before desegregation. But here we are, it's still not that much different, right, in 1968. So please go into that, if you wouldn't mind.

Well, Orangeburg still lagged behind despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And the prime example became the bowling alley. And the proprietor, Harry Floyd, who had literally built the bowling alley earlier in the sixties, operated as a white only facility. And it was his contention that he could exclude Black people, that the bowling alley was not covered under the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it didn't engage in interstate commerce.

And that was a matter of legal controversy at the time. But that was his position. In the meantime, there were several other facilities in town that remained white only. There were some local laundromats that were white. Only the two drive in movie theaters that existed on the fringe of town. I would not admit Black people to those drive in facilities.

Most of the medical doctors who were white still maintained a separate waiting rooms for white and Black patients. The local hospital had not yet accepted Medicare that had been enacted in 1965. So there were a number of issues, most of them revolving around race as well as class that still divided the community. Four years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act that was supposedly brought in desegregation of public facilities.

Sure, that was quite the lag time. As you mentioned, we needed. Take a quick break, so don't go too far. So speaking of February 5th, 1968, we have the small group of students who go into the bowling alley and things ensue there. Can you talk a little bit about that? That was kind of the precursor to what happened on February 8th, ultimately.

Well, there actually it goes back before that fact. You could easily go back several years. That part of the hidden history of Orangeburg and civil rights happened back in 1960. And then in through the early 1960s, there were massive civil rights demonstrate in Orangeburg by students of the two to college. I mean, hundreds of people were marching in the spring of 19 60, and large numbers of them were arrested.

And then as the weeks and months passed, re-arrested in many cases. And on March 15, 1960, 400 students out of a thousand, roughly, who marched that day were arrested. And in Carson raided. And the fire department hose them down that chilly March day in 1968 years before the massacre. And there's a whole history of that. And I might might point out, incidentally, that one of those who was arrested, that that March day was James Clyburn, now a prominent congressman and spokesman for the Democratic Party and in Washington.

And so he's very familiar with not only those demonstrations, but up through the the massacre. So you had this history of engagement, student participation, student nonviolent protest in Orangeburg. So when you get to 1967 and 68, you've got this bowling alley just down the street from the campuses and people at least some people wanted a bowl and certainly most students were really weren't interested in bowling.

They came from rural South Carolina. There were no bowling alleys and most of the small towns in and South Carolina. But some were interested, like John Stroman, who was from Savannah. He genuinely liked to bowl and wanted to bowling and couldn't get in the bowling alley. And then there was another student, James Davis, who had been in the Air Force for a number of years and came back and started college in Orange Bowl games in his mid or late twenties.

He wanted a bowl and then was infuriated that he'd served in the Air Force, went down to the bowling alley and they wouldn't let him in to bowl. And that was a wish. Weeks prior to January and February. And there was an initial effort to to bowl. And Harry Floyd, the owner, was adamant he was not going to admit Black people.

So they they followed kind of switched trigger on Floyd. One afternoon in January, they got one of the few white students at South Carolina State, a fellow named John Blocker, and they persuaded him to go down by himself and bowl. And he went in and and got away and told Harry Floyd that several of his friends were coming along any minute.

And not long after that they showed up, but they were Black friends and Floyd threw them all out at that at that point. And that set the stage then for February 1st, when they come down again, there's a confrontation there. The students are removed from the bowling alley. They show up again the next night, Tuesday, February 6th. There's an even larger number of students and a larger employment of Black excuse me, of law enforcement officers there.

And a couple of students are arrested after a big plate glass window was shattered on that Tuesday night. And also a law enforcement officer had some sort of caustic liquid thrown in his in his eyes that caused some eye damage. And that leads to the arrest. Several dozen students are in the parking lot outside a bowling alley. And then the police wait in and began to push students around.

A fire truck shows up and some of the students, the older students from that community knew about the fire hoses from earlier and the demonstrations. And the situation escalated. It was tense, but it wasn't until the point of any physical contact, aside from the the arrests that had occurred and the city authorities meeting with a couple of college officials, Pete Butler among them, were able to get the arrested students released with the understanding that everyone would go home.

Well, at some point, the local police began to hit students as they retreated and word got back to the campuses that students were being beaten, especially young women. And at that point, then more students rushed downtown and the situation nationwide threatened to get out of hand. If not, there was some property damage to stores and businesses between the campus and the bowling alley.

But there were an aside from the students who were beaten, especially the young ladies, and there was no damage, there was no looting and nothing was taken. But there were several hundred, if not several thousand dollars worth of damage done to grass windows and to some automobiles that are new are locked down there. But it seems to me anyway, that what really set the students off as much as anything was having their their fellow students, especially the younger women beaten that night and that that galvanized the two campuses and solidified the protests and the anger directed toward law enforcement, as well as the political leaders in the in the community.

Sure. So that brings us to February 8th of 1968. We have that on campus protest of, you know, a couple of hundred students. Would you be able to paint the picture of what the protest was intended to be? Would you be able to speak on that.

Whether there were two nights, the event, the night of the confrontation down at the bowling alley with the fire trucks and the students being beaten? That was that Tuesday night. Then Wednesday night, there was an effort to keep the students on the campus and the college president, Michelle Nance, urged students don't leave the campus. Furthermore, by that time, National Guardsmen and a large contingent of state highway patrolman had arrived in Orangeburg and they weren't going to let them off the campus anyway, fearing that if students were to go back downtown, that they would emulate people who had protested at in Watts and in Newark and in Cleveland and in Detroit, the urban riots that occurred

in 1965, 66, 67. Now it looked like Orangeburg might be incinerated by these Black power advocates. These Black nationalists are led by this young man who had been involved in ethnic named Cleveland sellers, who'd been in town for several months by then. So they were confined to the basically confined to the campus that Wednesday, February 7th. And there were a series of incidents throwing things out on the highway as the campus, some two young white men drove onto the campus in spite of the fact there was supposed to be a curfew and that caused a sensation of some sort there.

But that was a relatively calm night that set the stage for Thursday, February 8th, 1968, where, again, students assembled in front of the campus and protested and threw things at the the highway patrolman that were lined up along the edge of the campus there with National Guardsmen well behind them, across the street, across the railroad tracks. On the other side of the two campuses there was it was dark, it was chilly.

I was not a well-lit area by any means. It's hard to know how many students were out there. They kind of came and went over a period of time, eight, nine, 10:00 that evening. There were some women students out there. They came and went. A bonfire was started on the little street in front of the campus there. The fire department was called to put out the fire.

It was a mixture of sort of above festival, along with anger and bitterness directed toward the highway patrol, which at the time was all white. They were just in the process of hiring their first two Black highway patrol officers in early 1968. So you had a contingent of all white law enforcement officers, well armed and Black students by ten, 1030 that night, all male, but they were unarmed except for sticks, stones and some pretty vile language directed at the even at the highway patrolman.

And that set the stage for the shooting.

Just a quick side note before we get into that. How did the National Guard get involved? Just clarification purposes here.

Well, the governor, Robert, there, I was convinced that he had a seriously dangerous situation in Orangeburg because he was convinced that this young man, Cleveland Sellers, had incited these students, especially that to resign, he'd been in town, as I mentioned, for several, several months and got to know a lot of students. There was an organization on the South Carolina state campus known as Backbeat Ask the Black Awareness Coordinating Committee.

He worked with them. There were probably 30 or 40 students out of 2000 who belong to Black. But Governor McNair was convinced that that these campuses, and especially South Carolina State with Cleveland sellers in town was a hotbed of Black nationalism, radicalism, and that they were eager to virtually incinerate Orangeburg if they weren't controlled. So he dispatched additional highway patrolman from around the state and the local National Guard was called up and they were available as well.

But they were not on the campus or near the campus. Probably the closest National Guardsmen was 200 or more yards away. And I might point out that the National Guard had weapons, but they weren't loaded on the island. People had weapons, mostly shotguns, and they were load.

And that's where we'll wrap up things this week. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss the next episode where Dr. Hine details what happened that February night in 1968. Thanks for listening to Late Edition Crime Me Chronicles. I'll see you soon.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marvin Gaye. Jimi Hendrix. The Beatles. John Denver. The Monkees. All successful musical acts… with FBI files. In this week’s episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, the Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbil joins show producer/editor Ambre Moton to take a look at how the city of Tulsa was central to The Monkees hitting the FBI’s radar as persons of interest.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Boy bands are pretty popular nowadays, and most people probably credit the Beatles for the creation of the phenomenon. But some people remember the Monkees, a group often referred to as the Pre-Fab Four, a U.S. pop band that was created in 1968 for a television show of the same name that originally aired for two seasons and then went on to become a legitimate pop band in its own right.

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises Podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the show's producer and editor. Back with another story that you may not think of as a traditional true crime case.

Okay. The band, it consisted of Micky Dolanz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork. The show played well to both fans and critics and performed well in its original run and through syndication and Saturday morning repeats.

The show is a scripted comedy, all about the four bandmates struggling to make it in the music business. And of course, the hijinks that ensued while a manufactured band. The music really did catch on, and they eventually toured to sold out crowds on a cool OC. But how did the creators of Daydream Believer and I'm a Believer, a song brought back into the lexicon by the band Smash Mouth for the Shrek soundtrack, Lend themselves the subject of a true crime podcast?

Well, would you be surprised to learn that the Monkees were the subject of an FBI investigation? The group's final surviving member, Micky Dolenz, sued the FBI in 2022 to obtain any files on him. The band and his bandmates, after submitting a Freedom of Information Act request in June of that year and failing to receive anything more than an automated response within the 20 days that federal agencies are obligated to respond.

Randy Krehbiel, you may remember from the series of episodes we did with the Tulsa World about the Osages during the Reign of Terror, joins me in this episode to explain how the pop band came to the attention of the FBI. And of course, the tie to Tulsa.

Randy, it is great to have you back on the podcast, so thank you so much for doing this.

It's with you!

You wrote an article about The Monkees, the band, and a tie to the FBI. But let's kind of start a little bit with who the Monkees were. I remember them... when I was little, I think around when I was four, MTV was airing reruns of their TV show, which was a sitcom, if I remember correctly, and I absolutely adored it. Can you just kind of talk about the history of The Monkees?

Sure. So I was kind of the Monkees target audience when they came out. But in the 1960s, when they you know, we had the British invasion then and sort of pop music and rock music was really exploding onto the scene. Some TV producers got the idea of creating a band and making a television series about the band.

And initially the band was not going to be performing their own music. I think the idea was they actually would do the singing but not play the instruments. And the show turned out to be like a lot of music in that era that the band became rapidly popular and almost as rapidly faded from the scene. But at any rate, they they became proficient enough, I guess you would say.

Basically, they just insisted that they were going to be the band, that they didn't need all these other people. So they went out on tour. They had at least a couple of them and well, actually they had more than that, I think. But they went out on tour and they were quite successful. Like I found that they they sold something like 75 million records in about a two or three year span.

So like they were pretty much a big deal. They because it was put together by these TV producers, they hired some some of the big, big name songwriters in the Brill Building in New York, which was, you know, the place where a lot of the fifties and sixties and on into the seventies. Big hits were written in the Brill Building in New York.

And so so they had and they had some very big hits. And so they and they and then you mentioned MTV. They had kind of a second life when MTV came out because they started playing those shows in reruns and they became popular again. And at least some of them started touring again. And then I guess it was in the eighties and even there's one of them still alive, Micky Dolenz And he still does some shows at 78.

Where didn't the show actually win an Emmy, I think. Yeah, I think one year the show won an Emmy for best comedy series. It beat out like Andy Griffith and some shows like that. So, I mean, it was legitimately entertaining, it sounds like, and critically acclaimed. So it was different because they as I recall, they they would come out and there were sort of plots, but it was almost kind of an absurdist comedy in that they were kind of goofy and they were just a lot of little series of scenes.

And some people have drawn a line from that show to music videos in the you know, in the MTV area, because the you know, it was set up to kind of sell this and sell the music. And and it all revolved around the music. I mean, the the plot such as they were were pretty simple and silly and really silly, I should say.

Right, Right. Okay. So let's set up the crime in air quotes here. So the Monkees were in Tulsa. You said they were touring. They were in Tulsa in 1967 to play a concert. Can you kind of set the scene with that? Yeah, they came. It was actually on January the second, 1967. They played at what was then called the Convention Center Arena.

It was a downtown venue that had not been open very long at that time. It would hold about 8500 people for a concert like this, and they sold out. It was mainly like young teens. I think you know, probably 11 or 12 to 16, 17, something like that. And their parents said mom would get roped into, bring in, you know, five or six kids from the neighborhood or whatever.

And, you know, we know there was no big controversy, I don't think, at the time, except this entertainment writer editor from the Tulsa Tribune, which was an afternoon paper here at the time. And he just he didn't like it. And and one of the criticisms in general of the Monkees was that it was a it was a back then.

Some people call them the pre-fab four because they they you know, they were created specifically for television. It wasn't a group of guys who just kind of came together and started making music together. They were they were created and some people didn't like that. And and and their music was not intended to be, for the most part, real, you know, deep and social meaning or anything like that.

And so anyway, he didn't like it. He and he wrote a letter to the FBI. Well, it's not clear to me in the in the report is not clear whether he wrote directly to the FBI. You know, apparently he maybe sent this to the television production or the television studio complaining that they were projecting subliminal messages onto a screen behind them during one of the songs, which is one of the things if you weren't around in the sixties, there was all kinds of stuff like that in the sixties and early seventies.

You know, if you play Beatles records backwards, they had some kind of acid or, you know, there was that big set, a lot of a lot of radio stations and so forth would be played. Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen, because no one could understand the lyrics, but they were pretty sure they were bad, so they didn't understand. It was just a very poor recording.

But so he anyway, he complained to the FBI. I don't know that the FBI really took it that seriously because as I wrote in the story, they had the guy, the guy who complained his name was Bill Donaldson. So they had his name wrong in their report. They had his newspaper wrong and their report and they had the date of the concert wrong and their report.

But what happened was they said someone. A few months later, I compiled all of that into a bigger report is like 80 pages long on the influence of communism and subversive groups on Hollywood. And so that that was included in there. And, you know, I don't think anything came out of it. But if I could, I mean, I this is all kind of fun.

But on the other hand, it does make people kind of stop and think it should make people kind of stop and think about, well, what does it take to get, you know, to have an FBI file? Apparently not very much writing. What was the political climate like back then? Yeah, it was it was very it was very is a lot of turmoil.

And so what? And in this particular case, what they had done, they had a song that did try and it was called I Want to Be Free. We did try and have a little bit of a social message and they were showing that there is nothing subliminal about this. They were showing images of riots and the war in Vietnam and peace marches.

And I think they had something on the maybe Well, I think there were scenes from the Selma, Alabama, march which would have actually taken place, you know, several years earlier. But at any rate, was still very much in the news. And so so it was it really subliminal? It was stuff they'd see on on the news every day.

But but the bigger picture was that, yes, there was a lot of turmoil. There's a lot of opposition to the war in Vietnam. There was you know, it was the sixties. It was approaching a protest era. There were quite a few violent demonstrations and there was a lot of concern about the communists taking over. So a lot of a lot of this file was there was a radio station in Los Angeles that would from time to time have members of the American Communist Party on the job and they would mention that so-and-so so-and-so, who is now a very well known personality or producer at dinner with so-and-so, and back in 1938, they attended a dinner and known communists, you know, things like that. And for some reason that this it mentioned Robert Vaughn quite a bit. And people may not remember Robert Vaughn, but he was a popular actor in the sixties. He was in he was one of the Magnificent Seven in the movie The Magnificent Seven. And then later he starred in a TV show called The Man from Uncle, which kind of had a cold following.

And, you know, he was always popping up at some kind of demonstration or something like that. So it was a very tumultuous time. Also, the FBI was run by J. Edgar Hoover, who liked to get as much dirt as he could on as many people as he could. So that may have had something to do with it. I don't know.

And we have to take a quick break, so don't go too far. You said that Donaldson had accused the band of a deliberate manipulation or a preconditioned, immature audience for propaganda dissemination. And you mentioned that it wasn't in any way subliminal like the message they were getting across in their one potentially political song was was pretty obvious. But do you think he was just reading into things because he didn't like the music or…

Well, so Bill Donaldson and I didn't know him. He well, he was still at that. So the Tribune closed in 1992 and I started a year before that. And I, I was at the World when he was at the Tribune, but I don't think our paths ever crossed. He was an older he was part of that older generation.

He was a World War Two veteran. You know, patriotism was very big. He also he had an English literature degree from Swarthmore. He just you know, he yeah, I think I think first of all, I don't think he cared that he didn't like the music that much. But second of all, he didn't like the idea of this sort of manufactured he called it manufactured hysteria or manufactured emotion.

He didn't like that. So I felt I think he he felt like, you know, these young people were being manipulated and, you know, probably to a certain extent they were. I'm not. But nobody after the concert was over, went out and started trying to burn the city down or anything like that. It was it was mostly just fun.

And so I think to a large extent it was I can remember my own dad when I was a kid and that show was on. We we were not supposed to watch it. It just because it didn't it wasn't that he was it made him mad or anything. He just it's a stupid show within the category of television program.

It's just a stupid show. And so we were we didn't watch it. And I think, you know, so there's that there's that category category. I wonder what Donaldson would think about, you know, like the Swifties and, you know, of course, the boy band fans, you know, like in I think maybe he'd be appalled. He had a background in the theater.

He had performed in the theater here in Run a theater in Tulsa for a while. And, you know, I mean, I just think there would be something, although, you know, I mean, he would have gone through the period when he would have gone through the Elvis Presley period, he would have gone through the Frank Sinatra period when, you know, for even someone my age, Frank Sinatra was always kind of the older guy.

But there was a period in the fifties and sixties when, you know, girls would swoon over Frank Sinatra. So anyway, you know, he he knew a little bit about that, and that got it. But he just thought this was too too fake, too phony, that these guys had. No they had done nothing to deserve the adoration and attention they were getting and that whoever had, you know, whoever had created this group was using this group to to warp the minds of Americans.

You bear enough may not be entirely wrong, but I think it was probably more to sell albums and TV shows and tickets as a party. It was. It was to make money. That's all I care about, you know. And and I have to say that, you know, there maybe was a little bit of anti anti-Semitism involved. The Monkees weren't the Jewish, but the producer.

So the one of the producers was the son of the head of one of the studios in in Los Angeles. And they and they seem to have been Jewish. And so, you know, I don't know. But there could have been some anti-Semitism involved in that, too. I mean, you saw that these guys were all all white, but, you know, with some of the black performers of the time, it was it was really evident, you know, and so, yeah, I mean, this is getting a little far afield, but some people think that President Nixon pushed for the criminalization of marijuana because he believed he associated it with black performers and music genres that he didn't understand or didn't approve of. And so he you know, he he wanted to put those guys in jail. Okay. So you said you didn't think that the FBI really gave it much attention. You mentioned like the misspellings and inaccuracies in the report. Did it give you any indication that they actually followed up and looked into it? Well, so I didn't see this report.

But the lawyer, Mr. Zaid, is a lawyer for Mickey Bones, said that there was another report where an FBI agent went to one of the concerts, and it's not clear whether he went because of this report or he went because he had a 12 year old daughter. But anyway, she he went in and said more or less the same thing that Bill Donaldson and I fully admit I really wanted to do this because any time I can talk about Daydream Believer, it makes me happy.

My mom said I would run around screaming the lyrics to that song when I was little. So that was always fun. But I mean, is the general consensus does not seem to be that the Monkees were some sort of big, subversive group, is that right? Correct. But but I will say and I, you know, I that again, it shows you how, you know, it's easy to get on some on someone's not on the FBI or whoever's list you know you think about we have these terrorism watch lists now where if your name is close enough to somebody else, you can be in trouble.

I mean, so the attorney is also representing the actor from Two and a Half Men, John McCain, I think compared with John. Yeah. Yeah. So he he man him and John Pryor and and Jon Cryer said, well, I don't think I've got anything. But my uncle was an anti-war activist and we kind of like to know if he has anything.

So the lawyer put in a request for, you know, this man's file. Well, it turned out it was like 3000 pages long. Holy cow. And I don't know that he was a particularly prominent. I mean, it's not like he was Abbie Hoffman or something, but. Right. Yeah. They've got 3000 pages on it. So and it can be kind of a long, protracted thing to get these because according to the lawyer, they will only process 500 pages a month on any one request.

Yeah, right. And so and then and then when you get it, it may be all redacted and you've got to go to court to have the redactions removed. So, I mean, I don't want people in a panic or anything like that, but I think they ought to be aware that, you know, there there is a lot of information out there.

And, you know, some people don't like that. Yeah, I don't have good answers. But obviously in this you know, in this case, it's it's difficult. It really is. And, you know, this didn't help the average person, but if they are interested in some of these, better known FBI files, they are they are available online. You can go look up.

I mentioned Abbie Hoffman. You can go read every file online if you want. That's pretty much everything I had. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you really want to make sure we get in there? You know, this is kind of one of those deals where we got the email from the lawyer and when we first looked at it was, you know, what the heck is this?

And then the more we thought about it and the more we got into it, it was, you know, it's one of those things it's that's fun and people seem to be interested in it. But at the same time, it does sort of illustrate a bigger issue. Mm hmm. You could be on a list and you don't know it's or, you know, like, how easy is it to just suggest something and have it make it on to some FBI agents desk and then and now, with the digitization of everything, once you're in there, there's no telling where it's over.

Maybe it's it's not quite as bad as Twitter, but yeah, you know, I completely agree. Well, thank you. That's. That's all I've got. I was just talking to you. It should be noted that there were multiple musical artists in that era who were known to be tracked by the FBI artists that the group interacted with, including the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

So the Monkees are far from the only musical act to catch the attention of the federal government. But this was still a pretty interesting story. That'll do it for this week's episode of Crime Beat Chronicles. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what we have coming up next. Thanks for listening.

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Welcome back to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast with host Nat Cardona. On this podcast, you’ll hear true crime stories as told by journalists from regional newspapers across the country.

This week's episode is an update on a cold case that was featured in May, the murder of Susan Negersmith in Wildwood, New Jersey Memorial Day weekend in 1990.

Get caught up on those episodes here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Read more about the case

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In November of 1996, Cloverleaf Mall in Richmond, Virginia was the site of the still-unsolved double murder of Cheryl Edwards and Charlita Singleton, two mall employees found stabbed to death in the back office of the dollar store where they worked. In 2004, investigators briefly thought they'd uncovered new leads... that don't appear to have resulted in progress on the case. In the latest episode of Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, host Nat Cardona speaks with Scott Bass of the Richmond Times-Dispatch who extensively covered the mall's fallout from the double homicide and the impact it had on the surrounding community.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Hello and welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. I'm your host, Nat Cardona, and I'm happy to be back after a little bit of a hiatus. The last time you listened, I introduced you to the unsolved case of the Cloverleaf Mall stabbings in Richmond, Virginia. This week, I'm talking with Richmond Times Dispatch opinion editor Scott Bass, who extensively covered the mall's fallout from the double homicide and the impact it had on the surrounding community.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your career now and when you first laid your hands on this topic and coverage and what you were doing then, because I know it's like 15 plus years ago, right? As far as what you were.

It was a long time. Right. I'm the Opinion Page editor at the Times Dispatch in Richmond. I've only been here for about a year. In essence, I've been a journalist in the Richmond area for almost 30 years now. Almost 30 years. So I've just kind of jumped around from place to place. I worked in magazine journalism for probably the bulk of my career.

Richmond Magazine There was a publication here as an alternative weekly called Style Weekly, where I worked for about ten years. Prior to that, I worked at the Small Daily out in Petersburg, Virginia, the Progress-Index, for about two years. And then, oddly enough, I started my career as a business reporter for a monthly that a weekly business journal called Inside Business.

And when the homicides took place in 96, I was I had just kind of started my career as a business journalist. Wasn't very good. Still learning. So most of my focus was kind of on the development side of things. In this particular mall was Richmond's first. The Richmond area's first sort of regional shopping destination was a reasonable shot.

We didn't have anything like it, and it kind of replaced in the Richmond area, you know, in most a lot of cities where, you know, the main shopping district was downtown in Richmond, it was Broad Street. And Broad Street had the military roads. It had a big, tall Hammer's big, beautiful department stores. It's where everyone kind of collected during the holidays.

It was the primary sort of retail shopping district. And then somewhere around, starting in the mid fifties, early sixties, shopping malls started to replace downtown retail districts as whites that not white flight, but as sort of the great suburban explosion took place after World War Two. Everyone moved out of urban areas into suburban the suburbs, and the retail sort of followed back.

And this was Cloverleaf Mall was our first sort of big regional shopping destination that was outside of East Broad Street, downtown.

And sort of a big deal.

Yeah, we were a little late. Like Richmond was always kind of wait things. So, you know, this opened and the first mall Cloverleaf opened in 1972. But right about this time, within three or four years, several malls had been kind of built, were built right after Regency or excuse me, right after Cloverleaf Mall was built in 72, the Regency Mall, which was a bigger, much nicer facility.

It was two stories that was built in 74 five. And then, oddly enough, Cloverleaf, which is located south of Richmond and Chesterfield County, which is sort of the biggest jurisdiction in our metro region, opened a second mall much further down the road, about three miles down the road from Cloverleaf, where there was nothing. It was a real tiny shopping strip with one anchor, and it did no business for several years.

They used to call it the Chesterfield morgue. But it's interesting because just as an aside, you mall development really took off in the fifties after Congress kind of passed this as a law, basically making it, allowing developers to depreciate real estate development really, really quickly. And that was in 54. And that just jumpstarted mall development. And all of a sudden there was an explosion.

Malls were built literally all over the country because it was very easy for developers to build a mall and get their money back paid off within a few years independent of how the mall actually was doing. From a retail perspective. So it just led to a proliferation of malls. And that's kind of what happened at Cloverleaf Club, which was the first.

But there were several others that had built up not far away. And slowly but surely it was eagerness. It started E Cloverleaf to launch. This cloverleaf was sort of on the edge of Richmond or just across the border, and that's in Chesterfield from Richmond. And there's an interesting racial history, too, obviously, in Virginia we have independent cities, which means that our cities are actually they have separate governments from the counties next to them.

Whereas if you go and everywhere else in the country, cities are tended to be centers of commerce that are part of another jurisdiction. In Virginia, we have independent cities, which means they have no connection whatsoever to the municipalities around them, which meant that in order for the city to grow, it had to annex the surrounding jurisdictions and its property residents.

And this had been going on in Virginia. And, you know, the first part of the 20th century, the last one of the last big annexations and I think it might have been the last one was the city of Richmond, annexing about 23 square miles of Chesterfield County in 1970. Chesterfield County is just south of the city, sort of south and east.

And they basically absorbed 23 square miles in about 40,000, 47,000 or so residents understanding that there was a racial backdrop here because this came a few years after desegregation and Richmond was sort of ground zero in massive resistance to segregation of integration in schools. And once that happened in the sixties, there was a white flight, a lot of white flight out of Richmond.

People just white folks just left and they moved into Chesterfield and Henrico and some of the surrounding jurisdictions. The sort of last gasp for Richmond to sort of maintain some of its tax base occur in 1970 with the annexation. But it was also an attempt to sort of bolster the white political structure because most of the residents that they absorb were white.

They were beginning to lose their political power. And that was a primary motivator for the annexation. The mall was built by Chesterfield Camp in Chesterfield County is kind of a big F-you to the city of Richmond. Like, okay, you can you took our land, you took our residents and we're going to build this big fancy mall and we're going to suck all the retail dollars out of the city into Chesterfield County.

That's the way a lot of people read that. So it's just she has an interesting history there. The location was just across the city border, the border with Richmond and Chesterfield. They wouldn't even allow busses to venture into Chesterfield County because the idea was to allow busses to come into the county. We're going to be allowing black folks to come here and no one wanted that because there was a lot of there was this perception that once black residents moved in to Chesterfield County, then, you know, everything was lost.

This was a difficult time for the Richmond region from a racial perspective, was not a healthy, healthy time or a place. So the mall had always had sort of this slight stigma attached to it in that regard. But in the very beginning, Cloverleaf Mall was really the center of fashion for a couple of years in Richmond. Everyone coalesced there.

You know, the local department stores, which had they had stores all up and down the East Coast, Tom Heimer and Miller Roads that were founded here for hire was there. Railroads came a little bit later and Richmond really was for a period of time, kind of a center of retail innovation. This was in the seventies, sixties and seventies.

A lot of the big, big format, big box stores kind of came out of Richmond and Circuit City best products. Back in those days. They were the kind of first to actually do big, big box retail. So it was an interesting time and an interesting place for Richmond because we had this history of sort of retail innovation in New York on the East Coast and in the south.

And the mall came along. It was a brand new concept and everyone's letter to the mall that lasted for a few years until the other malls started showing up and duplicating those efforts. And it just kind of splintered the market. The homicides came, I guess it was 96. So several years later, the mall was in decline, had been for several years as a sort of suburban development, really took off in Chesterfield further out where around that other mall that built in that direction.

So the mall completely mall was in decline, had been struggling. They had struggled to keep their department stores. They would leave, they would have new ones come in. It was difficult, but during the early nineties, things really started to take a turn.

Richmond at that time was becoming known as one of the murder capitals of the U.S. during the crack cocaine epidemic, and a lot of people in the surrounding jurisdictions kind of looked at Richmond as this dangerous place to be and it was drug infested. You didn't want to go into the city. And Cloverleaf kind of was right on the edge.

People kind of associated Richmond with Cloverleaf on some level. So it was in decline. People began to view Cloverleaf as a dangerous place or potentially a dangerous place. And then when the double homicides took place in 96, that was kind of the end of it. But a lot of the tenants at the mall decided not to renew their leases.

The decline just accelerated and that was, I think, most people who are here in Richmond, you can recall this time period, would agree that that double homicide was kind of the nail in the coffin for Clover Moore, for lack of a better word.

Sure. They only. We need to take a quick break, so don't go too far. See you all soon during your you know, your coverage of that and the decline and talking in the nineties, Do you have any recollection of what else was going on there? I mean, goofy things happen when there's like vacant stores and that kind of thing.

I mean, there had but like, like what didn't what was going on inside a, I mean, murderous aside, like as far as trouble, whatever you want to label it as.

There have been some, you know, some reports of, you know, teenagers walking around the mall intimidating, you know, shoppers, that kind of thing. The mall had changed in terms of the retail mix. So as as it became less of a destination and other malls had kind of cornered the market in more populous areas, the demographics around Cloverleaf were lower income.

You know, there was a higher black population, higher Latino population, and you started to see a change in retail mix. So you didn't have some of the higher end retailers or the big chains had already kind of breaking. So the gaps, you know, the limited and those kinds of stores had kind of long had and left the place.

So you ended up with smaller stores that didn't quite fill the spaces that had been originally, you know, it was designed for a larger footprint and it created more vacancies. And it became a place where, you know, people kind of viewed all that's at the mall is the low income, you know, mall for for people who don't have as much money.

And the clientele kind of matched that. And that's the way a lot of people used. CLOVERLEAF But the vacancies were there. I mean, I don't know that it was anything I don't recall any any other major episodes. There had been, I think, another where every now and then there would be a report of someone who had been fired or a gun or a shooting or something like that.

But it wasn't.

But thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, I just didn't know if there was like other stuff going on there. It's more just like we don't go there because it's more.

That's what made this case so bizarre, is because it was a state. It was a you know, I think they were both staffed at least ten times, from what I recall. And, you know, they they couldn't quite figure out sort of, well, who was this someone who was just passing through? Because it was kind of an it was right off of Chippenham Parkway, was close to the interstate.

Could this been someone who was just passing through where they're looking around? Who knows? But the fact that they were stabbed multiple times kind of raised the question of it seemed personal. There was nothing I mean, not I mean, they scoured I mean, the police really did put everything into this, as far as I recall. And they just kept coming up empty.

They couldn't that they had every lead that they had. There was a U-Haul at one point in the parking lot that it had been left unlocked with the lights on. I think that turned out to not be connected. They just they just got run into dead ends. And yeah, it's just bizarre. I have no one really ever I don't think that.

I suspect today they are not any closer than they were.

We know whatever happened in 2004 as a possible break in the case or we did, you know, obviously fizzled out. And it's been there almost 20 years since. So, yeah, it's definitely really.

30 years here.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, from 24 for there to be like this possible break. But that was like the last that we've seen.

Right. That's the most completely They gone now. They tore down that wall.

Right. So, so 1990. So November 1996, these murders happened. I was your one style Weekly article that I first came across was, you know, eight years later in 2004. So when you were covering that, where where was the mall at at that time? Was it about like literally on its last legs or.

Yes, it was. It was literally on this last legs. I mean, in terms of the other day, gosh, I can't recall who was actually if one of the department stores was still there.

wow.

Sears might have still been there in 2004. Okay. But I believe they were the last anchor. But yeah, at that point in time, I mean, you know, a lot of it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Chesterfield County had pegged it for redevelopment a few years earlier. And, you know, if you spend enough time talking about the mom and dad to your constituents and the news and with plans of what we're going to do to fix it, it kind of seals the enamel.

Yeah. And by 2004, it was done.

Okay.

It was just a matter of who was going to pay for the redevelopment. Sure.

And then on as an aside to that on the fringe, it really could never shake that. This is the place where two women were murdered and they still don't know what happened. True.

Yeah. No, absolutely true. There was a real estate agent. Real estate agent or a commercial real estate broker. We followed all of this with me, and the story that I wrote made the comment that, you know, that was got death written all over it. And that was really true. Like no one wanted to touch them all. You couldn't get content to resign.

It just had this perception of being in a bad area. There's some racial undertones to it, of course, but by that point it was so far gone that I don't think anyone reasonably thought it could be resurrected as a retail destination.

Sure. And then do you have any idea how long that all in $1 store where they were murdered out? Like how long did that survive?

Any clue after they were murdered? Yeah, I don't imagine a real oak. That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to every you know. Have you talked have you tried to talk to Jay Latham?

I know that the feelers have been out with that. I he he would probably have more insight on that. Right.

He's a great interview. Yeah. And he actually had he did two stints there. So he was I thought he was the original loan manager, but he came in I think 75 or six, 76 somewhere. There came a couple of years after they left and then came back and he was the manager at the mall where the homicides took place.

And it was like a really crazy time period, really. He just returned five weeks before or something.

He hadn't been there long, and they were in the process of trying to revive it. So he worked for a Think Simon Property group, which is either just purchased the mall or believe it and have to go back and check. But yeah he was with a group that had was they had taken it over and they were had hopes of sort of reviving and then that happened and yeah, changed his plans.

So. Right, so what, what's there now.

They had this sort of mixed use thing. It's, there's a big Kroger, one of the biggest doesn't have me, there's nothing exciting there. They basically replace it with a mix of retail and residential and Chester County had gotten involved in issuing health issue bonds to kind of pay for some of the infrastructure and got Kroger to build. I think at the time it might still be one of the biggest Kroger's in Virginia and it's just massive Kroger marketplace.

And that was the big anchor. Well, interestingly, there is one little remnant of the mall still left, which is a tire shop that was part of the mall and it still has the old sixties and early seventies sort of architecture that refused to sell. And it's still there. And it's right in the middle of this sort of new development because they put him on kind of sticking out like a sore thumb.

So you can appreciate.

The entire place. Yeah, and it's exciting, but they're in the process of redeveloping the whole area now. You know, there's some stuff going to put it in a couple of ice skating rinks across the street and there's a big sort of office park that have been there for years. They're trying to interconnect their office park with some shopping district slash entertainment complex right next to it that's close to the mall.

You know.

This is like any to pop that in any city kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. What's different?

Right. Well, what's the what's the demographics in the area now?

It's still primarily it's not a high income. You know, the area of of just, you know, just was big is about 400 square miles. So it's a big, big footprint. The sort of the as the suburban development kind of shifted further out, you know, that there was sort of inner edge parts of both counties is just kind of, you know.

The one last thing that pops in my mind here is, I mean, I know you weren't a crime reporter and you are not one currently, but just for more context, because we're I'm not there and I know that Richmond was at one time, you know, the murder capital, like you say. Are there more cases like this? Like I just I guess it's interesting to me that there's so little coverage of an unsolved murder of two women at a mall, something so public.

And you know, seemingly random. And it's just like, is this? And I was just kind of one of those earmarked cases in the area that people like. Definitely. No, definitely remember like or other like tons of these. I just I just don't get it.

I think at the time I mean the be just what I remember of this time period, you know, Richmond was I think two years early. We had 160 murder incidents in a city of less than 200,000 people. It was a problem. We had a higher murder rate. So it wasn't it didn't happen often in Chesterfield, the jurisdictions around the city.

I mean, they always had it and we've always had issues, but not not 160 murders year. So when the Cleveland murders happened, I think it just kind of got lost a little bit. I was like, okay, it's there's a racial element to it. You know, if it were two white women, then there would be way more attention focused on it.

That's just tends to be the case. And because these were minority women who were found stabbed to death and all that, people had stopped caring about at least those with political power and stopped caring about allowing it to sort of just kind of drift. That's quite a bit of that here. No, it's almost.

Yeah. Is there anything else you just want to add about your realm of things in connection with cool relief?

Yeah, I'm so, I mean, you know, I hope it's I hope it's enough for you to sink your teeth into. And I guess I'm not having a lot of information about the actual case itself. I know Chesterfield was very close to the vest about what they were, what they would release the police department was. So I recall just kind of during when I was reporting on this, just kind of being in my head against the wall because they wanted this to be out there.

But they were very it was very difficult to get them to talk about some of the leads that they had and didn't have them. All that good stuff. You know, I think for me, just going back and looking at the the case itself, I was always fascinated with it. I mean, I'm I'm a local, you know, journalist, you know, So outside of Richmond, maybe you wouldn't care about such things.

But, you know, there are there are so many different layers to it from understanding like the connection between annexation and sort of the racial history. There was always like another layer to it that maybe I didn't think about or didn't realize until I went back and looked at everything again.

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The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is centered on the unsolved 1996 stabbing murders of Cheryl Edwards and Charlita Singleton at the Cloverleaf Mall in Richmond, Virginia. In this episode, host Nat Cardona gives an overview of the crimes and the location where they took place.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

If a case isn't solved within the first 72 hours, the chances of solving that crime becomes exponentially lower. The case we're going to start on today is a cold case that's remained unsolved for 27 years. I'm Nat Cardona and welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. In this episode, we take a look at the Cloverleaf Mall murders from November of 1996.

And November 7th, 1996, 25 year old Cheryl Edwards and 36 year old Charlita Singleton were working at the all for one store at Cloverleaf Mark's out of Richmond, Virginia. Early the next day, Charlita's family called the police to report her missing after she failed to return home from work. The two women were found stabbed to death, their bodies discovered in the office at the rear of the store.

Now some background on the mall. Cloverleaf was like so many other malls in that golden age of malls in America. It opened in August of 1972 and was the largest in Richmond, Virginia. 42 stores in over 750,000 square feet of retail space. And again, like so many other malls, and it was anchored by retailers like JCPenney and Sears.

The mall was designed by local architects and featured a center court with a 20 foot pool, crystal trees and falling water. It was named Cloverleaf because of its proximity to the Cloverleaf intersection at Chippenham Parkway and Midlothian Turnpike. Cloverleaf Mall was the place to be. Teens hanging out in common areas on weekends. Movie fans taking in a show at the Multiplex theater and families having lunch.

Any good suburbanites version of downtown. 

Back to November of 1996. By the time the two women were working at the mall, many of Cloverleaf Best customers women with disposable income to spend at the malls. More than 20 women's clothing stores were choosing other malls for their shopping. The then mall manager, Jay LaFleur, said at the time that people were starting to see kids with huge baggy pants and jeans hanging off their belts and people were intimidated.

Details about the double murder are scarce, not surprising for a decades old unsolved murder case. What we do know is that the Singleton family called the police early on November 8th to report that Charlita was missing, and both families met the first patrol officer in the mall parking lot around 5:15 a.m.. Lieutenant Robert Skowron of the Chesterfield County Police, used a key from story management to enter the back door of the All for $1 store.

That door opened from the parking lot into the store's office. When reflecting about the incident, the lieutenant said he felt uneasy as he approached that locked door scar and recalled with both of their vehicles out front. He strongly suspected that foul play was involved. He opened the door and he found Cheryl Edwards and Charlita Singleton's body stabbed multiple times in the safe open, presumably with money missing.

The lieutenant returned to the parking lot to tell the families in the mall was closed for the day so that law enforcement could scour the crime scene in the surrounding areas for evidence. Family members of both women were quickly cleared of suspicion. They only. We need to take a quick break, so don't go too far with you on on.

Investigators believe that the killer or killers seemingly entered through the back door of the store's mall was closing or already close at the time that they approximate the murder to have happened. However, the police were never able to determine a motive. So typical victimology work the understanding that victims tend to know their murderers resulted in zero leads. Investigators dug into both women's backgrounds and weren't able to find any enemies or persons who would want to harm them- no angry spouses or partners, jealous girlfriend or any type of the usual suspects. 

Now back to that empty safe was the motive robbery? If so, why viciously stabbed Singleton and Edwards to death? Could it have been a mall worker or someone who knew their schedules around $20,000 in reward money failed to yield any productive leads, although there were some promising clues at one point in time, a stolen U-Haul from Chattanooga, Tennessee, causing people to hypothesize that maybe it was an out of town robbery, though unlikely for a dollar store type of robbery.

There was that in a man seen running outside of the mall around the presumed time of the murders. Police believe it was soon after the store closed around 9 p.m., but that turned out to be a dead end. So in 1997, a year after the murders, police said that they had no leads. At the time, Singleton and Edwards were killed.

They left behind small kids who were forced to grow up without their mothers. Eight years after the murders and 24 lieutenants score and said the case was getting a fresh look but shared few details. The fallout from the murders is believed to have hastened the closing of the Cloverleaf Mall. Jay LaFleur said at the time that after the tragedy, the national tenants just couldn't get help.

Parents wouldn't want their kids to work there. It was catastrophic. Cloverleaf Mall became the murder mall. And that's where I leave you today. Make sure you hit the subscribe and so you don't miss my interview with Scott Bass of the Times Dispatch. And don't forget to listen to our past episodes of Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast.

See you later.

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The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the feature film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this bonus episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by two writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel and Tim Stanley to dig a little deeper into some of the crimes committed during the Reign of Terror.

More coverage

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona who is taking some well-deserved time off with the help of the reporters from the Tulsa World Crime Beat Chronicles spent the month of October telling the story of the Osage's and the reign of terror in the 1920s.

Here's a bonus episode with the paper's Tim Stanley and Randy Krehbiel going into a little more detail about some of the crimes that took place.

You know, one particular case that it's not mentioned in our story, but that I'm aware of and it was certainly mentioned in David Grann's book, was the the Case of William Stepson, a tribal member who died under mysterious circumstances and whose who's grandson is still alive in Osage County is a former Osage tribal court chief justice named Marvin Steps and William steps in.

Apparently from from what we know. I mean, he'd gone out with some friends, came in later that night and laid down in his bed and and died. And he'd been out. I think he'd probably been drinking. This is you know, this is another way that, you know, this could have happened is, again, considering the historical context and the era of prohibition.

Unregulated alcohol, bootleg whiskey, moonshine. I mean, everybody consumed this stuff. It was unregulated. Was not uncommon for someone to get, you know, a bad batch of alcohol, of moonshine and die from it. This was another way that you could potentially kill someone if you wanted to is just spike their whiskey. That may be what happened to William stepson is that he he got some bad whiskey.

And, you know, his his grandson, Marvin, who who believes based on what he knows, he believes that it was strychnine, which was a poison that was very common and easy to come by and very, very effective. But it just it made no sense. Still makes no sense to Marvin that, you know, this perfectly otherwise healthy young man. His you know, his grandfather, William, just went out for a night.

Everything was fine, comes home and does in bed in his sleep. Yeah. In a lot of the lists that you see, of the 24 victims, you will see William Stepson's name. I think it's been pretty commonly accepted among the people who've looked into this that we know enough in the case of William Steps and to to to declare him a victim, although again, like in other similar deaths, his was never investigated as a homicide that you know, that's you know, there's just so many so many opportunities to kill someone discretely.

I don't know if it's the right word, but you don't have to shoot somebody. Fact, if you're going to shoot him, maybe, you know, it's hard to say why. You know, Henry Roane and some of the others were were killed as violently as they were, which would draw attention. You know, the fact is something was amiss that the killer was afoot unless it was to inspire terror.

But so many of these other ones that were not are not necessarily connected to the two William Hale and his conspirators, maybe a marvin stepson, you know, or others. It's just hard to say. It could have been could always, always be a family member. And that's that's just one of the sad facts of this story, is is how quickly or how greed could could lead someone to kill a loved one, you know, to to get access to their to their wealth.

I mean, that could be what we're talking about here with stepson and any number of others who died under suspicious circumstances like that. David Grann's book and the movie, they they each pull out the figure or the character of Mollie Burkhart and make her kind of the central figure in the story, you know. But Molly ultimately survives an attempt on her life.

But that but her family was hit as hard as any. As far as we know. You know, in this in this story, she lost her wife. I'm sorry. Molly lost her a sister, potentially two sisters, and then her mother as well.

And then and then did survive an attempt on her life. But one of her sisters, Anna Brown, is also sort of pivotal in the story because she is considered really to be the first victim. Now, again, it depends on where you start counting. Anna Brown was a she was clearly a homicide. Again, like Henry Rollins, she was shot in the head and found in the countryside outside of town.

But she yes, she she's generally recognized as the first victim of what you know, what would become known as the reign of terror. And she was a sister to Mollie Burkhart. And they also had a sister named Rita Smith. Rita would also be killed. She was killed later, that one family. I mean, so many of the graves in in the tribal cemetery there in Gray Horse, which is where it's located in in Osage County.

So many of the graves there are of family members of Molly's. And Molly's is there, too. She would die years later, not of suspicious circumstances, although undoubtedly the stress from this ordeal and she was already in poor health. Undoubtedly. I mean, you know, she it affected her and she she didn't live too much longer, too many more years after this.

But, yeah, Molly's family, just a traditional Osage family. Her mother, you know, still believed very much in the old ways. Molly and her sisters were more, I guess, assimilated, so to speak. You know, they they had taken up and I. Anna Brown. Yes. She was found fatally shot May 1921. She disappeared days earlier. So she's considered really the first, although, you know, again, we could go back and probably find some suspicious deaths.

With the Osage as they all when they started, they all had equal share. So any Osage was worth, you know, some some sort of money from their head. Right. Whereas with the Muskogee and the Cherokees, their mineral rights were tied to their individual allotment. So if you were if you were a member of one of those tribes that had a particularly valuable allotment, you could be targeted.

And and so in some cases, you know, 19 six, 19, 1908, there were people who were disappearing. Some of them turned up alive somewhere else. Some of them were never found. There's a story about a creek boy, for instance, who went missing and they all thought he had been killed. Well, it turned out when one of his some businessmen had sent him to England to get him out of the way, they got him to sign, signed a lease on his allotment, and they sent him to England to get him out of the way.

But he was still. Anyway, as far as the Osage, it really began to intensify. It seems like, you know, 19, probably around 1920. And that coincides with when the the the the height of the ban.

Now, your article mentions an Osage, a young woman being kidnaped, I believe. Is that the woman you were referencing when you were talking about how she held what, eight had rights or something?

Yeah, that's who I was thinking of. Yeah, this was and this was I think it was in the late twenties, but people would find a way to in this, especially white people would find a way to get power over, you know, get control of somebody. A lot had rights. In her case, there was some kind of a marriage or something set up with a with the local guy who apparently was just a front for some bigger group.

And he took her off to Colorado Springs and and kept her there. And in this case, you know, lots of times the Guardians are are portrayed in an unfavorable eye. But in this case, he may have had self-interest. I don't know. But in this case, The Guardian went and found her and and got her back. Got her back to Oklahoma.

And in the end, the ring was broken up. I think there were probably a lot of, you know, white people to who were not comfortable and in some cases were absolutely opposed to what was going on. But I didn't want to I don't want to make it sound like it's an equal thing. But the white people sometimes were affected by the reign of terror, too, because there were a couple of white guys tried to stand up for the hostages and they were murdered.

And so it was it really was a reign of terror. It was pretty much on everybody who lived there in one way or another. And again, I want to stress, I'm not equating everybody the same, but it trickled down to a lot of different people.

And as always, thanks for listening to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's ahead.

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The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the feature film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by two writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel and Jimmie Tramel to discuss the film Killers of the Flower Moon as well as the film and the Reign of Terror's places in pop culture.

More coverage

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises Podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona who's taking some well-deserved time off. 

If you haven't listened to the first three episodes and our latest series about the Osage reign of terror, please go back and listen to those before starting this one.

So far, we've talked about the history of the Osage tribe and how they ended up in what became the state of Oklahoma, their oil rich land, and how those rights to that land led to the horrible series of suspicious deaths. Kidnapings and the general environment of fear that made up the reign of terror. We've talked about the blue eyes, investigation and eventual conviction of those who are found guilty of the crimes.

In this episode, we talk about the place in history and in pop culture that the reign of terror holds. This episode was recorded prior to the release of the film The Killers of the Flower Moon. Those age reign of terror may not have a prominent spot in the United States history curriculum, but it has established its place in popular culture with multiple books, plays, radio shows, films and more created about the events that went on during the 1920s.

Most recently, the film Killers of the Flower Moon, based on a book by David Grann, was released on October 20th, 2023. Martin Scorsese directed and Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone star in the film. The Tulsa World's pop culture reporter Jimmy Trammell and I talked about the place the reign of terror holds in pop culture, and a little more about the film.

Why should people go see the movie, especially our true crime fans?

I can't think of a reason that they should not go to see the movie. It's one of the. From a true crime standpoint, it's one of the biggest crimes in our nation's history that really has not been expounded on. It's crazy. This happened 100 years ago. And as far as us knowing about it, as far as the story being fleshed out, that it never really came to light nationally at all until David Grann's fantastic book became a bestseller.

And then and then Scorsese's movie is going to take it to the next level. And I should tell you that initially the movie was going to be, here comes the FBI to solve these murders. And then Scorsese. DiCaprio I think that huddled and decided to pivot. And now this movie is not going to be strictly about FBI coming in.

It's going to be. It's going to be wrapped around the marriage of DiCaprio's character and Lily Gladstone's character. It's going to focus on this very personal story. And by the way, we're going to wrap it in to the Osage reign of terror, which I think is a fantastic way of going about it in a personal story is always going to resonate more than a story of another kind.

Completely agree that everyone is giving Martin Scorsese, the director, props 100% because he didn't just come in and say, I have adopted this book. We're going to make a movie at every step along the way. He has incorporated and involved and consulted the Osage people were I mean, it's their story. They were impacted. They should have a say in this.

And so their language, their costumes, everything about their way of life is portrayed authentically in this film. It's not an outsider coming in and saying, to heck with that. We'll do it my way. You're going to see it portrayed legitimately.

You did profile Julie O'Keefe, who was a wardrobe consultant on the film. Can you tell us a little bit about her, her background and why she was important to the portrayal of the Osage as in the movie?

Julie O'Keefe, who has had some costume shops, but her resumé is far more extensive than having a costume shop. She was enlisted to be a costume designer, an Osage costume consultant on the film. And so they used pictures from back in the day. Other reference to really make sure the people you see in the film dressed in the way they were, you know, in the 1920s, 100 years ago.

And that's another example of Martin Scorsese and his team just taking every measure possible to make sure the Osage, what you see on the screen, is authentic. I mean, he Martin Scorsese, he even said, well, I'm sorry. I was standing there with the Osage who said at the premiere in France that some of the actors on the screen are speaking Osage as well as some of the Osage Nation members.

I love that we've come so far from having Italian actors playing natives to respecting the history, the people and the living history that's going on.

And yeah, Chief Strongbow, the Native American wrestler, was an Italian word. So what you're talking about. Exactly. I mean, I can turn on any Western on TV in the next room and see Mr. Spock playing a Native American. I love Leonard Nimoy, but he's not a Native American. So we we love. Yes. That people of a certain ethnicity are playing those people in pop culture.

No better example of this than Reservation Dogs, the television series that wrapped up a three year run and was shot in Oklahoma as well. I grew up in small town Oklahoma and primarily a Cherokee community, and the people I see, the people I saw in reservation dogs. I look at them and think, I grew up exactly with these people.

Especially with everything else going on in the world. It's just great to see the respect to culture being given.

Well, typically, how the Native Americans have been portrayed and in movie and TV is John Wayne is shooting at them and that's it. I mean, I I've had I have many native friends, but I had one native friend tell me like, hey, when I was young, I would watch Cowboy and Indian movies and root for the Cowboys. How crazy is that?

And he's native because, you know, that's the story being told and and you buy in. But I mean, it's so important now that we can see the Native American not as a stereotype, but just as as a human being, as someone who you don't have to tell a native story per se. You can tell a human being story.

And by the way, they happen to be native.

I know you talked about it a little bit, but what kind of reactions have you heard or seen from Julie and the other Osages.

They had an Osage Nation premiere in Tulsa for only the Osage and people who took part in the film And kind of a takeaway was very powerful, very emotional. Glad to see this story being brought to light. But also it's a lot to wrap your head around because if you were in the movie and that premiere in Tulsa, you're probably sitting with people whose grandmother grandfather died as a result of these murders.

So it's a lot to process, a lot to wrap your head around.

Did anybody express any discomfort about participating in the movie? I mean, you mentioned that some of the people who were there, they might have had grandparents who were, you know, their lives were taken because of all of this. Were there people who might have been reticent at first to participate?

Well, because of history, you couldn't blame anyone for being a little tread cautiously. But I think Martin Scorsese, he got rid of all that wariness early on because he met with the Osage. Is right away before they started filming and made it clear that the Osage people would be treated respectfully. I think this movie is going to create a lot of opportunity for the Osage, and as other films go out forward, we've seen, you know, Native Representation and the Great Prey Predator movie last year.

Many of the people who were extras or worked on Killers of the Flower Moon now have an opportunity to go on and work on some other things. Oklahoma has a pretty rich film history, you know, you wouldn't think. But they do. Like The Outsiders was filmed here in 82 that launched the careers of Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe.

Tom Cruise, he told me, Tell Ralph, Marty, Mojo, all those guys. And in fact, the exact county where killers of the Flower Moon was filmed was where August Osage County was filmed ten years ago. But by far, this figures to be the biggest blockbuster film ever shot on Oklahoma soil. And I think everyone is just happy that instead of going to California and on some down soundstage, Martin Scorsese brought those actors to where everything occurred.

So it could be as true to life as possible.

We have to take a quick break, so don't go too far. And of course, I caught up with Randy Krehbiel about the film, why people should see it, and how the reign of terror had something in common with another major criminal event that took place in the same area and at the same time period, as I understand it, Martin Scorsese, he shot the film in Osage County.

I think the majority of it was shot there. A little bit of it was shot here in Tulsa. In fact, catty corner from our office at the federal courthouse. And I think they shot some in Guthrie, which is a town over north of Oklahoma City and maybe a few other places. But most of it was shot there. And from everything we've heard from the Osage, is he really made an effort?

Leonardo DiCaprio made an effort to be very authentic with it in terms of the the people, the language. My understanding is, is that the actors, the main actors all learned some Osage so they could deliver lines in Osage. So my understanding is, is that, you know, it's about betrayal. The movie the movie is about betrayal. And I think betrayal is asked is almost always support a crime.

You're betraying someone in some way. And and it's about how, you know, it focuses I think a lot on this one couple and and in in the birchard he's played by Leonardo DiCaprio his struggle with you know apparently he really did care for his wife but he was also he also was kind of under the influence of this uncle who only cared about money and had been taught, you know, to think only about money.

And also that, you know, Indian people were not really they didn't really count. Right. Right. And that and I think, you know, and that also often plays into crime. But I think there's a lot psychologically that people who are interested in crime would would find insightful.

I think it's a good way for us to start exploring the history that we aren't all taught. Sure, it might be Leo's face up there, but I know there are tons of times where I've gone to see movies that are based on true stories. And then I start Googling and I start reading. And, you know, you kind of fall down that rabbit hole.

Well, you hope so. And, you know, it's. I mean, history is almost always more complicated than you can sit. And this is is a very long movie. Apparently, it's I'm told it's three and a half hours long that.

Scorsese.

But even in with that, you know, yeah, there are things that are left out but but hope that hopefully it takes people's attention interest and as you mentioned there is just an awful lot of history that gets.

Swept under the rug neglected over. Yeah well, you know, I've told this a lot. I've said this a lot of times, but I think it's true is that you know, history, the teaching of history serves to almost oppositional purposes. One is one is to try and create this sort of legend about the place we live and who we are. And it's all, you know, we're all the good guys and they're all the bad guys.

And that sort of thing. And it's all positive. It's more about image and building community and and patriotism and all that stuff. And then there's sort of and then there's the grittier history that requires some critical thinking and and shows you that, you know, what the the rules tend to favor the people who make the rules.

And you mentioned that you had done a lot of writing about the Tulsa race massacre, which was, what, 1921, I believe?

Yep. Yep.

Was there overlap? I mean, obviously timing. Yes.

But I a little bit. And one of the stories that talks about that a little bit so and Brian was found about I think it was ten days before the Tulsa race massacre. so so, you know, so that was very close in time. And there are some people who show up in both stories. One of them is a guy named John Gustafson, who was the police chief of Tulsa and was removed from office.

He was basically impeached and removed from office after the massacre for dereliction of duty. Well, he was also a private detective. And so at the same time, he was the chief of police and being removed from office in Tulsa. He'd been hired by Inner Brown's family to find out who killed her. And so he spent a lot of time traipsing around Osage County and according to the FBI and that what they concluded was that he was trying to play both sides.

He'd come up with information and then he'd try and chop it and see who he could get the most money for. So from. And so there is that. And then there's another guy that is semi important, a a couple more. One is a guy named John Goldsberry who at the time of the race massacre was the assistant county attorney in Tulsa.

And he was the guy who was in who was part of the prosecution of John Gustafson and was also kind of involved in telling the people who I don't know how much of the Tulsa story, you know, but there was this group of people that were trying to take over the Greenwood area and they and they failed. And he was kind of in the group that was telling them, you can't do that.

That's a bad idea. So then eight years later, in 1929, he was the U.S. attorney in Tulsa and he was involved in the final prosecution. Bill Hale and in John Ramsey. And then finally, I'd mentioned, well, I guess there's a team or so also there is an attorney again named Prince Freeling. And Prince Freeling was the attorney general at the time of the Tulsa race massacre.

And he came in and blow in and go in and he ran the grand jury and all that stuff. By the time that the Ramsey and Hale were on trial, he was out of office and he was part of their defense team. And then and so then I know these guys are all lawyers. It's amazing how many lawyers there are involved in this.

But anyway, there's a lawyer named TJ Leahy who is from Pawhuska, and he was guest Gaston's attorney in the in his impeachment trial. But then he was hired by the Osage people to look out for their interests in these prosecutions. And he was involved in the prosecution of every one of these people who went to trial, whether it was in state trial or state court or federal court.

He was there as part of the prosecution and and was the guy that Burkhart went to during a state trial in Pawhuska and said, I'm tired of lying. I just want to tell the truth. And he turned on his turned on his uncle. So there are people that I've never seen like a direct, you know, like the people who burned down and were stealing money from people.

And I haven't seen that. But there are there are some familiar names. Gotcha. I would say there is this connection, which is that in both cases you see where the lives of, you know, minorities, of people of color and especially women just didn't matter very much. You know, in Tulsa when they decided they were going to do something different with, with the Greenwood area, They didn't ask the black people who lived there.

They just tried to do it. Yeah. All right. Well, if you owned the property.

By the way, for the most.

Part, so they formed this community. Well, so in, you know, in in the Osage, it was like, in fact, there's a quote in one of the FBI reports from there was a notorious outlaw, who was approached about killing a bill and ready to smear who's there, the folks who were blown up in the movie. And he said he wouldn't do it, that he had never he had never stoop so low that he would kill a woman even if she was an Indian.

That's something that, you know, that that says it right. These these folks, they just you know, it it wasn't so much in my observation, it wasn't so much that they hated them. It was that they just didn't care anyway.

Yeah.

They were. They weren't worth anything. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so that is the connection.

Very. I hate to say it's interesting because it's such a horrific things happened, but it's impossible to teach comprehensive history, you know, especially at junior high, high school, you know, elementary level. I just wish that it was a little more comprehensive, I guess I should say.

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the hard things about teaching school, whatever it is, is deciding what's important in what you know, what's what are the priorities as far as teach. Well, So you do have to learn the fundamentals of history. But somewhere in there, you know, I think there's also room to learn about, you know, not everything was done, you know, virtuously.

And it and you do have to question, motivations and things like why do people do the things they do? I think that's just a useful life. You know, I think one of the things that's really hard when you're writing about things like this, whether it's Tulsa or or we're talking about it or the Osage deal is how you talk about a singular event that's particularly horrific and then put it in a larger context without appearing to or actually diminishing that one event.

And so, you know, the only thing I'd say is that what happened in Osage County was a singular, ah, event and particularly distressing. But things like that happened all over the and Oklahoma had some of the during the during the oil booms of the early 20th century, some pretty, pretty bad places. And they say something about, you know, human greed and and just sort of the human condition that we should be aware of and like what we were talking about earlier, where we had a I hope we've passed it.

But, you know, I'm not always convinced we are that, you know, people who are different than us just don't matter. Are people who are in the in our way don't matter. You know, as a reporter, always trying to look at what is singular about this event, but also how does it fit into sort of the universe of things and how do you tell that story without how do you balance it, you know, and how do how do you not diminish, you know, this one group or one individual's story and yet presented in the full context.

And that's where we're wrapping things up with the reign of terror. For more details about the crimes life in the area in the 1920s, the film Killers of the Flower Moon and the Hostages, please visit the Tulsa World's website. There are links in the show notes to all of the content. The reporters and editors at the paper created.

Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming up next. And you can go back in and check out any of our past episodes that you may have missed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the feature film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by three writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel, Jimmie Tramel and Tim Stanley, to discuss how the Bureau of Investigation came to investigate the killings, the handling of the case, the people held responsible for the killings and why the federal government had jurisdiction. 

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Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises Podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona who's taking some well-deserved time off. 

If you haven't listened to the first two episodes of our series about the Osage reign of terror, please go back and listen to those before starting this one. So far, we've talked about the history of the Osage tribe and how they ended up in what became the state of Oklahoma.

Their oil rich land. And how those rights were divided. And the horrible series of murders or suspicious deaths. Kidnappings and the environment of fear that made up what historians and journalists call the reign of terror. This week we're talking about the investigations into the crimes, what they found and more. Randy Krehbiel of The Tulsa World reminds us about how difficult it was to get proper investigations into the deaths of the Osage community.

Who hired a private detectives to find the cause for the suspicious deaths? The Osage Tribal Council finally petitioned the federal government to send investigators, and in April of 1923, the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the FBI, assigned agents to the case. Here's what Randy had to say about the investigation.

Well, it was called the reign of terror, because people just lived in terror. They were afraid to to talk. And when the FBI came in there in 1923 to try and sort things out in their in their letters and reports and so forth from that time, you know, they talk about how people are just terrified to talk and and they would not talk to outsiders at all.

And, in fact, this is just been talked about a lot with with this book and movie. They wound up putting some some men undercover to try and insinuate themselves into the community so they could get information because people were afraid if they if they told what they knew or what they thought and they were honest about it, they they'd be killed.

And and this and this was true of a lot of a lot of people. And, you know, I think Mollie Burkhart, at one time, she told her priest that she was afraid. People just, you know, people people who were not part of the and even some of them who were part of the these these organizations that were that were doing these things were afraid to talk about it.

And sometimes they were afraid to talk about it because they were involved, too. You know, but but they often they were afraid to talk about it because of repercussions against themselves.

Tulsa World's Jimmy Trammel commented about the investigation's primary target. Who were the the FBI, you know, kind of focusing on or suspecting of all these crimes?

Well, Jesse Plemons plays the FBI character, I think, in the in the film. And as far as the actual suspects, you had some other people had kind of amateurish early tried to be the detective or figured this out or, you know, paid to find things out. What ended up happening was the gentleman who was ultimately the suspect and the primary culprit and was put on trial, many people was like, oh, my, he couldn't it couldn't be that guy.

He couldn't do it because he's friendly. He was probably the most soldiers. But I mean, you just never know. I mean, it was some kind of wolf in sheep's clothing kind of deal.

I asked Tulsa World's Tim Stanley about how well the boy investigated and who they held responsible for the 24 murders that they determined were on an official record.

Federal investigators did a good job in so far as it went. I mean, they did they did investigate it. They did bring charges. And they did get convictions. I think the problem is, is that they were more or less content to kind of tie a bow on the whole thing at that point and then move on, which I mean, that's we see that even today in cases of mass killings or where you have serial killers or who are suspected of being connected to any number of deaths, once they get the conviction on on one or two deaths and they get that person off the street, often that's the end of it.

You know, for them that, you know, the value in the case to them has, you know, they've they've achieved. But that's yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of what you had here is it was investigated and the federal agency which you know, as we may have discussed previously, the one that it would become the FBI, they did they did a solid job and bringing at least some justice in this case.

But they were they didn't really want to dig any further than than just the initial investigation. I mean, J. Edgar Hoover, you know, who was the boss at the time? You know, he got he was well-known for enjoying publicity. And he saw that as valuable to the agency. And he's right. I mean, public relations matter. So, you know, coming in and getting this getting some convictions here, getting a lot of good press out of it, I think satisfied him.

And he had no reason to to investigate it or direct that it be investigated further. So, yeah, unfortunate. But you know what that leads us here. You know, 100 years later and tribal members over the decades leaves us all asking a lot of questions that unfortunately can never be answered.

How many people were eventually held responsible or convicted, at least of some of these crimes?

There were three principal convictions. And the one that's, you know, most significant is the trial and conviction of William Hale and two of the others who were convicted along with him were associates of his. He he has always been considered the mastermind behind many in the slayings, although, again, I think, as we just discussed, the investigators were pretty happy to hang the whole thing on him that made it, you know, a cleaner case and then they could move on in all likelihood.

You know, there were many other perpetrators acting independently of Mr. Hale, just opportunists, again, close family members who saw an opportunity to inherit. He was the primary conviction. He was. And he was important, very significant. Even if even if the feds didn't, you know, go any further than this. I mean, it's just, you know, without a doubt, he was behind several of them.

And, you know, he ended up I think everyone, the three Hale and his associates were given life sentences, but they were all eventually paroled after just a handful of years, which, you know, is kind of a sad, you know, footnote to this is that while they did face justice, well, they were convicted. You know, they they did end up not serving all of that long.

And so while the people obviously it's often this way with justice, but obviously the people that they killed, you know, that that was it for them that these guys did eventually get to get out. But yeah, so three primary, there may have been some others and some tangentially related cases, but three primary convictions. And with William Hale being the chief one.

We have to take a quick break. So don't go too far. And Randy added more details about those held responsible and a little about those who weren't. How many people were held responsible for the reign of terror?

Almost no one. Almost no one. So in the case of the murders that are highlighted in killers of the flower moon, the two main defendants, as it turned out, were Bill Hale, who was accused of being that kind of the mastermind, and a guy named John Ramsey, who was kind of a ne'er do well cowboy, who basically just, you know, did whatever Hale told him to do.

And so each of them was tried three times in federal court for the same murder. And and they were of the first time was a hung jury. They were convicted. This is they were convicted in the next two. And and after the first conviction, there was an appeal. And so they had to be tried again. So those two guys went to prison.

Molly Burkhart has been also went to prison. A guy named Kelsey Mawson who killed Anna Brown, who was who was Molly Burkhart sister, he went to prison. Byron Burkhart, who was a Molly Burkhart brother in law, even though he had confessed to killing Hannah Brown, never went to prison. He he testified against Kelsey Morse and in his trial ended in a hung jury.

He was never retried. And I'm getting a little bit off your your question here, but I think you'll find this interesting. In the sixties, there was an Osage woman die and she left behind a letter that said, if something happens to me, look at Byron. Well, she was living with Byron Burkhart, who had been involved in these things 40 years before and in and again, he nothing ever happened to him.

So I think there were some others that were prosecuted, but but they were very few. And one of the things you realize, especially in going through these FBI papers and reading the trial stories, is how hard it was to get convictions in these things. And and emails case. He had a lot of money and he just pretty blatantly went out and bought tried to buy alibis.

I mean the the federal officials and some of the state officials that they were working with were just furious at what they considered to be dishonest and unethical behavior, behavior by his lawyers and some of these lawyers were pretty well known. One of them was a former attorney general in the state of Oklahoma, the the his defense lawyers.

So the answer to your question is not many and not only not many, you know, go to prison over this. They really didn't stay very long. They'll have all got out in 16 years. But Burkhart got out before that but then got in trouble again. He violated parole. And so they put him back in in prison. Kelsey Morrison got out in a few years and was killed in a shootout in Texas.

So, you know, most of these guys, they didn't serve very long in it. I remember, you know, I was reading some of this stuff and at the same time, we had the the Jones case going on here. And and, you know, whether you think he's guilty or whatever. But I just I couldn't help thinking about the difference in the way, you know, we think about that, at least in Oklahoma.

It's pretty routine for people to get life without parole, if not the death penalty. And these guys were out in 16 years. So, you know, I'm sure somebody who is a lot smarter than I am to try and figure out what all of the different racial biases and so forth were in the criminal justice system or in the criminal justice system.

I will say just in general, at that time, they didn't they tended not to keep people in prison any longer than they had to. They were you know, they were.

It wasn't for profit back then?

It wasn't. Well, no, it was it was a cost. And a lot of the states didn't have a lot of money to to they'd rather turn the guys loose and than keep housing and feeding them.

Right. Yeah, exactly.

How did the government kind of impact this? The FBI came in to investigate. Was the federal government making sure allocations and money were going to the right places and right people? Was it state or was it tribal responsibility?

So in theory and this is one of the things that we're still fighting about in Oklahoma, but in theory, the the Osage reservation was dissolved, that statehood. And that's pretty much held up even with some recent Supreme Court decisions that have decided that some of the other reservations weren't dissolved, that statehood. So it was dissolved, that statehood. However, you still had the Osage is owned a lot of the land there because it had been allotted to them.

So again, this gets a little complicated, but the state officials did not think they could get a conviction in this case, in state court and in Pawhuska. They wanted the federal government to come in. They wanted. And so the federal government has jurisdiction over Indian land. And and so and there was a lot of discussion at the time to our guys even have any kind of authority here.

The the FBI was not even the FBI at that time. It was just the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice. And it had very, very limited authority. And so the key sort of the key thing in bringing this case down, or one of the key things was that one of the men who who was killed, Henry Roan, was killed on an allotment that was still owned by the original L.A. The federal judge in Oklahoma originally ruled that the federal government didn't have authority over that allotment, and it went up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court said no and allotment is Indian land. And that means the federal the federal government has the authority to to to do this. And so almost all of the real police work, if you will, on this was done by the by the Bureau of Investigation. And they were helped by somewhat by state and local officials.

But in their letters, they talk about they just didn't feel like there were many of those people they could trust because of their interest in, first of all, what was going on in Osage County. But then more broadly, you know, they did not want anybody looking too closely into the what was going on with these Indian allotments and in the mineral rights.

So. So the involvement of the federal government was key. It's really unlikely that that anything could have been done in the Osage Nation, had actually gone to Congress and asked them to intervene. The Osage is pay a big part and maybe all of the federal government's expenses in prosecuting this case. They paid the federal government to investigate these, or at least they paid the expenses of the federal government to do that.

I think another important person in this does not get a lot of attention was Charles Curtis. Charles Curtis was a U.S. senator from Kansas, his whose mother was a college Indian, who was born in in that in what is now Oklahoma. And he was later the vice president of the United States. And he got involved in it and and pushed the Department of Justice to do something.

And that, folks, is where we're leaving it for this episode. Thanks for listening to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. Don't forget to hit that. Subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming up next. A look at where the head write stand currently with the Osages and how the Reign of Terror has its own place in pop culture.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by two writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel and Tim Stanley, to discuss the motives for the murders and detail some of the crimes and the environment of fear that the Reign of Terror caused in the Osage community.

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Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises Podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona who's taking some well-deserved time off. If you haven't listened to the last episode introducing our latest topic, The Osage Reign of Terror. Go check it out before listening to this one. 

Today, we're continuing our look at the series of suspicious deaths in the 1920s of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the early 1900s.

Oil was found on the land that the Osage is had purchased, but the Tulsa World's Randy Krehbiel explains more.

The story is that for a long, long time, Indians had known that there were these oil seeps. You know, we're seeing oil would seep out of the ground and it'd be in springs and things like that. But through most of the 1800s, there wasn't really a lot of use for that. Well, they they actually they would use it for like rim remedies and things like that.

It was considered medicinal. And so, of course, it wasn't until the invention of things like kerosene lamps and the internal combustion engine that that oil became more valuable. And so the first the first commercial oil well in Oklahoma or what became Oklahoma, this was completed in 1897, just outside the Osage Reservation, just on the eastern edge of it.

And a couple of years later, the first well then was drilled in Oklahoma and about that time. And so this was around, you know, around 1900. And that was about the time we were starting to see motor vehicles and and again, kerosene was already pretty popular. People tend to forget that the first use of oil as as we think of it today, was actually kerosene and to use in lamps and things like that.

So anyway, that was in the early 1900s, around 1900. And by O 1905 or 1906, they knew they had, you know, quite a bit right around the time of World War One is when it really picked up from like about, you know, about the mid 19 teens through around 1929 was kind of the height of the oil boom.

And the Osage nation, the Osage is actually had relative little control over their own affairs. Almost all of that was handled by what now is the Bureau of Indian Affairs or or by the guardians that were appointed. You know, a lot of a lot of them had somebody who was appointed to handle their business affairs because they were not thought to be competent to handle their business affairs.

So a lot of that was out of their hands. And also, I think a lot of them, especially the older ones, probably didn't even really completely understand what was going on. But when they first moved there, they probably mainly wanted to just be left alone and and it pretty became pretty soon became apparent that they were not going to be able to do that.

When did the Osage reign of terror really begin?

There's not really a definite date. So the killers of the Flower Moon, basically the book follow the is a period from about 1921 to about 1929. But there were probably people dying as early as 1912, 1910 or something like that. And interestingly enough, I mean, similar type things were going on in the adjoining Muskogee Creek Nation. The Cherokees had some of that going on.

It was a different situation because with the Osage, as they all when they started, they all had equal share. So any Osage was worth, you know, some some sort of money from their head. Right. Whereas with the Muskogee and the Cherokees, their mineral rights were tied to their individual allotment. So if you were if you were a member, one of those tribes that had a particularly valuable allotment, you could be targeted.

And and so in some cases, you know, 19 six, 1907, 1908, there were people who were disappearing. Some of them turned up alive somewhere else. Some of them were never found. As far as the Osage, it really began to intensify. It seems like, you know, 19, probably around 1920. And that coincides with when the the the the the height of the boom.

So, you know, the boom was really taking off in the late teens, early twenties. By the late twenties, I'm sorry, the late teens, early twenties, it was pretty well subsiding by the late twenties.

A very quick reminder about the Osage as mineral rights, the original allotments of the mineral rights were divided into over 2200 shares, which were called head rates as people died, had babies, got married, etc. those rights began moving around and you had some people with multiple rights and some with fractional rights. Making things even more complicated was the ability to pass had rights to non-tribal areas.

I spoke with Randi's colleague, Tim Stanley about the series of crimes that earned the name the Osage reign of terror.

I am Tim Stanley, reporter here for the Tulsa World have been with the world for a little over 20 years, the reign of terror. I think that was a term that was probably coined maybe by a journalist. I'm not real sure of the origins of it, but I know it did appear in some of the newspapers of the time, but it was a reference to a series of murders that took place among Osage Nation tribal members in the early 1900s.

Specifically, I think they date them or officially to like 1921 to 26, that a five year span. Of course, as we as David Grant in his book has pointed out, and as we also did in our series, the the exact years that this took place and the true number of victims probably were probably talking about a much larger span than just that five years.

But the murders were, you know, committed by I mean, there was a conspiracy involved. But at the same time, there were a lot of people just individually taking the opportunity they saw to to cheat and exploit and white people taking the opportunity to cheat and exploit their Osage neighbors there in Osage County. But yeah, I just I mean, I think specifically the reign of terror and the word terror there refers to, you know, just how this atmosphere of dread and terror that that really materialized in Osage County.

Among the tribal citizens. Thereafter, I think the first three or four killings, I mean, when it kind of became obvious that that these were connected and that potentially anyone who was a member of the tribe could be next. So, yeah, it was I mean, as reported in the newspapers at the time and as David Grann and others have chronicled, it was a time of heightened fear.

You had many this was I mean, the electric light bulb in that at that time was still a relatively new innovation. But for a lot of the people, Osage tribal members living outside of the town of Pawhuska or some of the other towns, they lived in the countryside. And Grant describes this in his book that they began to put up electric lights on their properties at night in such a way that they just really are shown for miles around.

And they were doing that really out of fear, out of what might be out there in the darkness. Of course, as as we would come to find out, it was less the danger that was out there in the darkness. For many of these folks. It was less what was out there as opposed to what was was inside and close to them.

Many of the murders, as it turns out, were committed very sadly by people They trusted, people they knew, family members, close family members, spouses, people who who would then have access to their oil wealth, which was really the motive behind it all.

How many victims were there officially?

Officially, this is this is where it's interesting, the number that has been tossed around, you know, for years, even before the grand book was was 24. And where that.

Which is a lot in a nutshell.

That's definitely I mean, it should be eye opening, just as it is today. People know where that comes from. It's interesting, You know, the federal investigators at the time who investigated this case and ultimately, you know, brought charges that that number was one that they put out there. And I think their exact words were they believed that there were at least 24 victims.

So they were even, you know, in their language, I think, leaving it open for more. But the 24, you know, that's that's the number that has sort of been, you know, considered official. But, you know, the problem with it, as you know, as we as would as we found out and in our own reporting and as has been reported, you know, my grand you know, the T4, you know, is probably well shy, well short of what the true number was.

You know, the problem with the 24 is that and and it's given rise to so much speculation is in saying that there were at least 24 you know, federal investigators didn't give you give or provide a list of those 24. So all we've been able to do, you know, in retrospect, and that includes, you know, the tribal members who've looked into this, is sort of speculate at the top for themselves.

Now, some of them are obvious. Three homicides that ended up, you know, charges being brought in that were investigated as homicides. But then you had many others that were just the circumstances were probably suspicious, but they were never investigated as homicides. It's just it's really in other words, it's really hard to come up with a definitive list of the 24 that, you know, federal investigators, you know, thought were were victims here.

You know, you'll find lists out there where people speculate on who they might have been. And between those lists, some names or certainly they have in common. But yeah, they didn't they didn't do us any favors when they put that number out there all those years ago and then didn't bother to elaborate on on who that might be.

All of them outside of the ones in their specific cases. I think the best thing you can say about it is it's more of a starting point. I mean, it's it's a number that was put out there by the people who investigated it. So it's worth considering. But the problem is we don't even know who the 424 were.

And and we now have reason to believe that there were many more in addition to that, that was never made the list. So. So that's that's where the number comes from. And just a little background on it.

I guess, unofficially, members of the Osage tribe, do they have another estimate for victims?

And when we had a chance to sit down with some of the tribal officials and we talked to the chief Standing bear. Chief for Standing Bear, the principal chief. He said, you know, once there was a time many, many years ago, several decades, when when they were sort of informally talking about this just amongst themselves. And again, very informal, he said.

But the number they came up with was I would have put it at well over a hundred killed for their oil wealth during that time span and that it would have been roughly 5% of the tribe's then population, which is pretty eye opening. And he said, you know, even then there were other some of the older members of the tribe who maybe had, you know, who were around even back at the time, who thought that estimate was too low.

So, you know, so the tribe unofficially, based on that very informal internal investigation, you know, suggested or proposed well over 100, I mean, 100 compared to 24. So we're talking a death toll, you know, really far exceeding that original estimate. But as you know, Chief Standing Bear pointed out to us, there's just nothing there's no way to do anything with that.

There's no way to to, you know, make it any more official than just that. It's pure speculation because that's all you can do, really. A hundred years removed from the events when the when the when the deaths were not necessarily investigated as homicides and when when all you've got or family stories or family suspicions. I mean, that's all you can do is speculate.

I mean, it's nothing wrong with that. Speculation can be a good thing. And in this case, I think it is a good thing. But as he would say and remember, it is speculation. It's just it's something we can never know, unfortunately.

The way people were killed, it wasn't the same. It wasn't everyone was shot or whatever.

No, that would have that sure to have made it a lot easier. Right. From a from an investigative standpoint. But no, you could probably put them into categories. And that's, you know, the ones that were obviously violent and there were many shootings. There was a you know, as it's going to be vividly, I think, portrayed in the movie, there was a house that was dynamited and blown up.

Three people killed in it. So those I mean, obviously, you know, those didn't take Sherlock Holmes to to know that you were dealing with homicides. But there were a lot of others, you know, that were just very quiet and just where the, you know, the homicide, if, in fact, that's what it was, just just wasn't obvious and would have taken some serious investigation and in most cases was not done.

And in the article that you wrote about how the total number of victims, you know, we may or we will never know the total number of victims compared to what's officially on record. You talked about a few specific or wrote about a few specific stories. Is there anything about those that you'd want to share on the podcast?

You know, it's difficult, you know, a hundred years removed to find people who can talk about it or family members that still remember. I you know, we I guess, you know, centrally or especially important to our story was, you know, an interview we did with former Osage principal chief Jim Gray, who is the great grandson of one of the one of the pivotal, pivotal figures, you know, in the whole story.

And that was Henry Roan, who was one of the victims and who was a victim who ultimately it was his his slaying that that Hale and the others held accountable were charged for Henry, you know, ended up being a pivotal figure in the story. He was he was murdered, found, you know, shot in the head. He was one of the early murders.

He was a he wasn't the first, but it was his that I think, as we mentioned, really, really sort of triggered the terror as we called it at that point, that people could really connect the dots and see that that somebody was out to get these tribal members. But yeah, I think the interview with with former Chief Gray about his his great grandfather was was critical to our story because, number one, I mean, Henry is is so important to the overall story but also just the insights that that Jim Gray could give a contextual understanding of the other forces at work in Henry's life and in helping or making him who he was at that point in his life. But yeah, I mean, he never you know, Jim Gray never had a chance to know his great grandfather. He just knew him through things that his mother would tell him about Henry, who was her grandfather. You know, we went to one of the interviews we did was with the former executive director of the Osage History Museum in Pawhuska, which is a sort of a repository there of a lot of tribal history and artifacts.

So a wonderful place if you ever get a chance to go. But the former executive director of that is the lady still lives in that era area named Katherine Red Corn. She talked to us. She she was interviewed by David Grann for his book Killers of the Flower Moon and in it as as in our interview, you know, she talks about an exhibit that they did and there that really sort of, I think from David Grann's own recollections, really sort of launched him on this mission to write this book.

And that was an exhibit of of photos from tribal members from the early 1900s, many of whom would have been caught up in this in the reign of terror when they first put this exhibit together. I think Grann came in later and he saw it and was moved by it. But the reason I mean, we want to talk to Katherine about that, because that was pivotal.

But she has a family story that I think illustrates what a what a lot of a large number of families have been left to live with as far as questions about a relative's demise and not being able to know for sure whether it was connected. She she told us about, you know, her grandfather, a man named Raymond Red Corn, who died.

And this is important. He died in 1931 of suspicious circumstances. And the reason that's important is that if he died in 1931 and his his death is connected to the reign of terror, well, that's you know, the official span was 1921 to 1926 that these killings took place. So if if his death was connected, it shows that they spanned not only farther than that, but end of the next decade.

And, you know, we want to be careful with this because, as she said, you know, we really don't know anything for sure. But there there there's always been suspicions surrounding her grandfather's death and that he apparently, based on what things that he said at the time that were that have been passed on, he believed that his his wife at the time, in 1931, I believe, would have been his second wife was actually poisoning him.

And he from what Catherine and others told us, you know, if you went over to his house during that time period, he would advise you, don't eat anything while you're here. Don't drink anything. You know, he clearly believes something was going on. And then and then what do you know? One day he dies and now he had had a protracted illness.

He had been growing weaker. Well, the only thing we can say, you know, and it really is circumstantial, you know, case. But, you know, the the evidence does seem to fit the patterns of of other what we might call other poisonings. And one thing that makes this so difficult is, is some of these killings were were it was very obvious that they were homicides that you because they were violent.

I mean, like with Henry who was shot in the head, I mean, there was no denying it. But with many, many others that that people in retrospect now, we believe, were suspicious. I mean, the cause was just not so obvious. And this was an era when when poisonings were very common, a lot of murders by poison. And depending on, you know, what the substance was and how it was administered, it could be very hard to detect.

Now, they could, you know, if they did an autopsy and they did a what we now call a toxic toxicological do talks on it, they could determine that poison was present. They did have that. They did have that capacity. Then, however, you know, if if there was no obvious reason to do it and and you also were dealing with potentially corrupt authorities who were not inclined to look too closely, a lot of these a lot of these deaths were never investigated.

We have to take a quick break. So don't go too far.

The reign of terror did just that, created an atmosphere of fear in the Osage community. Fear of violence and fear that authorities weren't going to help, even if someone were to speak up. Randy explained how this fear impacted the investigations.

The earliest? Well, it was called the Reign of Terror because people just lived in terror. They were afraid to to talk. And when the FBI came in there in 1923 to try and sort things out in their in their letters and reports and so forth, from that time, you know, they talk about how people are just terrified to talk and and they would not talk to outsiders at all.

And in fact, is as is been talked about a lot with with this book and movie. They wound up putting some some men undercover to try and insinuate themselves into the community so they could get information. And because people were afraid if they if they told what they knew or what they thought and they were honest about it, they they'd be killed.

And and this and this was true of a lot of other people in And, you know, I think Molly Burkhart, at one time, she told her priest that she was afraid. People just, you know, people, people who were not part of the and even some of them who were part of the these these organizations that were that were doing these things were afraid to talk about it.

And sometimes they were afraid to talk about it because they were involved, too. You know, but but they often they were afraid to talk about it because of repercussions against themselves. And, you know, so again, you'd have people just go missing their bodies, you know, that that would turn out you know, they'd find them out in the in the oil field or or in a ravine or or you'd have one thing that happened a lot was was unexplained deaths.

People would, you know, quote, get sick and die. And that happened with Molly Burkhart mother. And and at least and in one of her, at least one of her sisters, where they, uh, they called it like mysterious wasting disease and things like they didn't really have a name for it. And the FBI suspected the local doctor was in on it, that he that he knew what was going on.

And he was, you know, making it worse or at least reporting it.

Maybe taking kickbacks from the perpetrators.

Well, yes, exactly.

Some people some of these folks suffered from diabetes and they weren't being. Now, treating diabetes, I think in those days was probably a lot more difficult anyway. But they were not like, we're not helping it anyway. Mm hmm. And it you know, it was just.

It... Was it was a time when you just had to, you know, be careful about every little thing you did and said.

And this is where we wrap things up today. Thanks for listening to Late Edition, Crime Beat Chronicles. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss. Our next episode will pick up with the investigation and who was held responsible- or not- for the murders during the Osage reign of terror.

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