Minor Characters
Ernest Burkhart
Mollie’s husband Ernest, who seems at first a loving and supportive partner, is eventually revealed to be working with his uncle, the villainous William K. Hale, in a plot to consolidate and overtake Mollie’s family’s oil fortune.
Bryan Burkhart
Ernest’s brother Bryan is the last person to see Anna Brown alive, and is eventually revealed to have played a role in her murder.
Lizzie
Mollie, Rita, Anna, and the late Minnie’s mother, who dies from a suspected long-term poisoning just months after Anna’s murder.
Oda Brown
Anna Brown’s former husband.
Charles Whitehorn
An Osage man who is found murdered by gunshot in the middle of May of 1921, just days before Anna Brown’s body is discovered. His murderer is never found, and his case is never closed.
Harve M. Freas
The sheriff of Osage County during the Reign of Terror.
John Burger
An agent who works with Tom White on the investigation of the Osage murders.
Frank Smith
An imposing, rugged Texan man and a federal agent whom Tom White enlists to aid in the investigation of the Osage murders.
John Wren
A federal agent, former spy, and “rarity” in the bureau of intelligence due to his American Indian heritage.
James Bigheart
An Osage chief who worked to secure fairer terms of allotment for his tribe in the early 1900s.
George Bigheart
A nephew of the “legendary” James Bigheart who becomes a victim of murder by poisoning as part of a conspiracy between William Hale and H.G. Burt to steal a large sum of money from his estate.
Rose Osage
An Osage woman who claims, falsely, to have murdered Anna Brown.
William Stepson
An Osage Indian who is poisoned to death in February of 1922.
Henry Roan
An Osage Indian who is found dead in his car in February of 1923. Hale had, through a series of complicated and suspect maneuvers, made himself the beneficiary of Roan’s generous life insurance policy after claiming that Roan owed him a large sum of money.
Barney McBride
A wealthy oilman who is stabbed, stripped, and left for dead while travelling to Washington D.C. to urge federal authorities to investigate the Osage murders.
W.W. Vaughan
A Pawhuska attorney and former prosecutor who was working to solve the Osage murder cases when he himself was killed in June of 1923—after he supposedly got too close to solving part of the killings.
Henry Grammer
An ex-rodeo star and current moonshine distributor and outlaw. Tom White and his agents long to question Grammer about William Hale but find that Grammer has died—under suspicious circumstances—by the time they track him down.
John Ramsey
An outlaw who is recruited by Hale to perform—and who is ultimately convicted alongside him in—the murder of Henry Roan.
Dick Gregg
A “dreaded” outlaw serving a ten-year sentence in a Kansas penitentiary. He meets with Tom White’s agents and reveals that in 1922, Hale attempted to hire Gregg and the other members of his gang to “bump off” Bill and Rita Smith. Gregg and his gang refused the job.
Burt Lawson
An outlaw who gives erroneous information about the killings of Bill and Rita Smith to Tom White in pursuit of securing leniency for his own sentence.
Pike
A corrupt private eye “hired” by Hale in 1921 to look into the Osage murders.
H.G. Burt
A corrupt banker suspected of murdering W.W. Vaughan, Burt was the “guardian” of several Osage, and may have murdered—hired someone else to murder—at least one of his wards.
Margie Burkhart
The granddaughter of Mollie Burkhart and the daughter of James “Cowboy” Burkhart, Margie is an Osage woman living in present-day Oklahoma who, when returning to visit the Osage reservation, must confront the pain, trauma, and loss which have come to define her family.
Kathryn Red Corn
The director of the Osage Nation Museum who shows Grann photographs and artifacts from the Reign of Terror and tells him stories passed down from the period that don’t exist in the historical records.
Mary Jo Webb
A retired teacher and Osage tribe member whom Grann meets with during his sojourn to Osage County.