Al Spencer's Gang

Al Spencer's Gang enters the account of the Osage murders not as a proven band of killers, but as an outlaw network whose members might know what respectable local witnesses would not say. Its importance rests on a pasture-side meeting described by former member Dick Gregg: William K. Hale allegedly offered the gang money to kill William Smith and Rita Smith, and Gregg later carried that account to T. B. White. The proposed murder was not carried out by the gang, according to Gregg; the episode instead gave investigators a revealing, though legally vulnerable, lead into Hale’s methods and connections.

Outlaws as Investigative Sources

By the fall of 1925, T. B. White had concluded that the most promising witnesses might be found outside the respectable circles that protected Hale. Agents and informants had pointed toward outlaws in the Osage Hills, some of whom had knowledge of the murders. White could not assume these men were free of racial prejudice, but arrests and convictions gave investigators a measure of leverage that they lacked with influential local citizens. In this search, Al Spencer's Gang mattered as a route to information about Hale’s dealings with criminals.

Gregg, twenty-three, had been a member of the gang and a stickup man. By the time White sought him out, he was serving a ten-year sentence for robbery in a Kansas penitentiary. He had previously told Agent Burger that he knew something about the murders, but held back because he said he could not betray a confidence. Burger’s report described him as “100 percent criminal” and frustratedly observed that he would say as little as possible. Gregg’s criminal record made his account suspect, but his knowledge of the gang’s past dealings also made him difficult to replace.

Comstock helped open a way to Gregg through a personal connection: he knew Gregg’s father and provided legal counsel to the family. Although Hoover distrusted Comstock, that relationship helped persuade Gregg to cooperate with the bureau. Gregg agreed in the hope of reducing his robbery sentence, and he remained afraid of Hale. As Gregg put it, if word of his cooperation got out, “my life would not be worth a damn.” His account therefore arose from a bargain under pressure, not from a witness speaking without personal stakes.

Hale’s Proposal in the Pasture

Gregg recalled that the meeting had taken place sometime in the summer of 1922. Al Spencer told him that Hale wanted to meet with the gang, so Spencer, Gregg, and several associates went to one of Hale’s pastures near Fairfax. Hale arrived on horseback, and the group gathered beside a creek and shared whiskey. Hale then took Spencer aside for a private conversation. When the men returned and the meeting broke up, Spencer told the others what Hale had proposed.

According to Gregg, Hale offered the gang at least $2,000 to “bump off a couple”—“an old man and his blanket,” meaning an Indian woman. When Spencer asked for the intended victims’ names, Hale identified William Smith and his wife, Rita Smith. Spencer refused to kill a woman for money, saying, “That’s not my style.” Gregg said he agreed with Spencer. Hale had hoped Gregg would accept the job, but Gregg likewise did not take it on.

The account presents the gang as an intended instrument of violence, not as the perpetrators of this particular attack. Its members’ refusal is consequential: the proposal suggests that Hale sought help from men accustomed to robbery and violence, while Gregg’s testimony does not establish that the gang carried out the Smiths’ murders. The distinction matters to the reach of the evidence. What Gregg described was an alleged order and a refusal, not proof that the gang completed Hale’s plan.

Testimony and Its Limits

White thought Gregg was “on the level,” and regarded the refusal to kill for hire as evidence of “an outlaw with some honor.” That judgment did not remove the central weakness of the testimony. Gregg was a convicted criminal seeking a shorter sentence, and the account of Hale’s offer depended on his recollection of what Spencer had told him after their private conversation. Spencer, who might have corroborated the story directly, had since been killed by a posse of lawmen. His death left Gregg’s account without the confirmation White most needed.

Even so, White considered Gregg’s statement the clearest indication yet that Hale had ordered murders. The gang’s importance in the investigation thus came from its position between Hale and the proposed violence: it could be approached as a criminal association, but its surviving witness had mixed motives and its most direct corroborating voice was gone. The testimony advanced the case without closing it, a pattern that marked White’s broader effort to build evidence against a man shielded by local influence.

A Name Reappearing in a Larger Bureau History

The gang’s name appears again in the account of federal law enforcement’s later expansion. In the 1930s, Frank “Jelly” Nash, identified as a member of Al Spencer's Gang, was being transported by lawmen when the Kansas City Massacre occurred. The shootout killed several officers; White’s former colleague Agent Frank Smith was among the convoy and survived. This reference places a gang member in the orbit of a later notorious federal case, but it does not establish that the gang as an organization took part in the massacre.

The contrast between Gregg’s 1922 recollection and the later reference to Nash gives the gang two distinct functions in the narrative. In the Osage investigation, it is a possible channel to testimony about Hale’s alleged murder plans. In the later history of the bureau, its former membership connects it to the criminal world around a violent episode that helped intensify public demands for federal power. Neither role makes the gang a proven participant in every crime around it. Its significance lies instead in how its members’ knowledge, refusals, and later criminal associations expose the difficult boundary between a lead, a witness, and proof.