LeRoy Smitherman

LeRoy Smitherman was the second husband of Hattie Whitehorn and a suspected participant in the murder of her first husband, Charles Whitehorn. Investigators came to believe that Smitherman and others had arranged Charles’s killing to obtain his headright and fortune, but the evidence presented here establishes suspicion, not a prosecution or a proven finding of guilt. His flight to Mexico, taking Hattie’s car and some of her money, left him beyond the immediate reach of investigators described in the account.

Marriage and Suspected Motive

After Charles Whitehorn’s death, Hattie married Smitherman, whom the private investigators characterized as an unscrupulous white man. Their reports suggested that the marriage had been arranged by Minnie Savage, who ran a boardinghouse in Pawhuska. Investigators suspected that Smitherman, Savage, and other conspirators had organized Charles’s murder to take his headright and fortune. The account does not establish what Smitherman personally did in the killing; his place in the case rests on the investigators’ developing theory and their suspicion of the group around Hattie.

Federal Investigation

When federal agents from the Bureau of Investigation began probing the case in 1923, they also concluded that Savage, Smitherman, and Hattie were responsible. One agent’s assessment was that Hattie had caused her first husband’s murder to gain control of his estate. Hattie denied involvement, while warning an agent that she had been cautioned about him and understood that speaking could expose her to prosecution. The reports therefore place Smitherman within a broader suspected conspiracy, while recording Hattie’s denial and the agents’ focus on her alleged motive.

Flight to Mexico

Smitherman eventually fled the country for Mexico. He took Hattie’s car and a portion of her money, leaving her behind as the investigation continued. The evidence here gives no account of his return, arrest, or eventual fate. His departure is the last concrete action attributed to him in this episode, and it compounds the uncertainty at the center of the case: investigators named him as responsible, but the material does not show that they secured enough evidence to bring him to trial.