W. W. Vaughan

W. W. Vaughan was an attorney and an investigator of the Osage murders whose death became one of the book’s most persistent open questions. He had collected evidence that could, according to an informant, put William K. Hale in the electric chair; shortly afterward, Vaughan disappeared from a train and was found dead. The record leaves the mechanics of his killing uncertain, but the people and money surrounding his final journey give the case a troubling shape.

Legal Work and the Murder Investigation

Vaughan practiced law in Pawhuska and had served as one of H. G. Burt’s attorneys, as well as representing George Bigheart. His work for Bigheart included helping him apply for a certificate of competency, which would remove his status as a government ward and allow him to spend his headright payments as he wished. Bigheart planned to pay Vaughan as much as $10,000 for this and other legal services. Before Bigheart died in an Oklahoma City hospital of suspected poisoning, he disclosed critical information about the murders to Vaughan.

Vaughan was also pursuing evidence against Hale. An informant close to Hale later told the Bureau of Investigation that Vaughan had said he possessed sufficient evidence to put Hale in the electric chair. Vaughan reportedly told his wife, Rosa, that he had hidden evidence about the murders, along with money for his family. The account never establishes precisely what the evidence contained or where he placed it; its existence is part of the mystery, not a recovered answer.

The wider prosecution was shaped by uncertainty over which government could try crimes on allotted land. Officials concluded that the murder of Anna Brown, on surface land no longer controlled by the Osage, belonged in state court. They selected the murder of Henry Roan for federal prosecution because he had been killed on an unsold Osage allotment and the Osage owner was under federal guardianship. The United States Supreme Court later confirmed that the site was Indian land, returning the Roan case to federal district court. That jurisdictional opening helped the authorities pursue Hale, but it did not establish who killed Vaughan or connect Hale to every murder.

The Train and the Unresolved Killing

Vaughan’s death was never clarified by a reliable account of what happened aboard the train. His body was found after he had been thrown from a speeding train, but the cause of death was recorded as unknown. The family questioned whether he had been killed before he was thrown or whether the impact had killed him. They also wondered how anyone could have discovered the hiding place he had described: the killer might have forced its location from him, or might have been someone he trusted enough to tell.

Vaughan was physically large and strong, according to his grandson Melville Vaughan, leading the family to reason that the assailant must have been powerful or assisted by accomplices. The surviving evidence did not resolve that question. Nor did it establish the precise motive. Members of the family believed Hale wanted Vaughan silenced, but they suspected that another person might have played a direct role.

A newspaper account of Vaughan’s funeral supplied a consequential detail: H. G. Burt had boarded the train with Vaughan in Oklahoma City and was traveling with him when Vaughan disappeared from his berth. Another account said Burt reported the disappearance. A Bureau of Investigation informant who had provided important evidence against Hale later said he thought Burt had carried out the killing. These details make Burt a central suspect in the later reconstruction, but the book presents the case against him as circumstantial rather than settled fact.

Bigheart’s Money and Rosa Vaughan’s Suit

After Vaughan’s death, Rosa sued Burt in 1923, claiming he owed her deceased husband $10,000. The dispute first appeared to be a private debt between two men who had been close friends and professional associates. Further examination connected the money to Bigheart: although Bigheart had intended to pay Vaughan as much as $10,000, Burt had somehow collected it. Bigheart and Vaughan were both dead within days of one another.

The legal outcome initially compounded the family’s loss. Rosa’s suit was dismissed in state court, and the family believed the jury had been rigged. On appeal, the Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed the decision and ordered Burt to pay Rosa $5,000, plus interest. Burt was represented by one of the same law firms that had represented Hale in the murder trials. The ruling recovered part of the disputed sum, but it did not answer how Burt had obtained Bigheart’s money or whether that transaction was connected to either death.

The financial trail gave the Vaughan and Bigheart cases a shared point of contact. Bigheart’s fortune passed to his wife and young daughter, rather than to Hale or another white man, but his daughter’s guardian controlled her money. That guardian was Burt. Records also showed that Burt had served as guardian for several other Osage people, including one who died. A local lawman recorded that Burt and Hale had visited Bigheart shortly before his death. Together with the diverted payment intended for Vaughan, these facts deepened suspicion of Burt without proving that he killed either man.

Family, Community, and Fear

Rosa was left with ten children and no income. The family moved from its two-story house into a storage garage and struggled to afford food. Members of the Osage community helped feed them, and some of Vaughan’s children, including Martha Vaughan’s father, went to live with Osage families. They grew up speaking Osage and learning traditional dances; Martha recalled that her father felt safe among the Osage.

The family preserved its own investigation in two thick binders that Melville brought to a meeting with Martha at the Skirvin Hotel. They contained faded newspaper clippings, Vaughan’s death certificate, and an informant’s statement about the evidence he had reportedly gathered against Hale. Their accumulated records kept alive questions that the official inquest had left unanswered, including how Vaughan had died and what had happened to his hidden evidence and money.

The effort to find answers carried a cost. After Hale went to jail, a relative tried to continue investigating, but received an anonymous threat warning that the family would end up like Vaughan if they pursued the matter. The family stopped digging. Years later, an uncle still warned Martha and her sister not to reopen the subject; he remained frightened. The threat did not identify Vaughan’s killer, but it shows how intimidation continued to govern what the family felt safe asking.

An Unclosed Case

Authorities treated the life sentences imposed on Hale and his conspirators as proof that they had found the guilty parties. After Tom White left for a job at Leavenworth, the cases were declared closed, even though the Bureau of Investigation had not connected Hale to all twenty-four murders. Vaughan’s killing remained among the cases for which no complete account emerged. The book also asks who abducted Barney McBride in Washington, D.C., and who threw W. W. Vaughan from the train; it notes that Hale’s usual associates had not been shown to follow McBride to the capital or to be with Vaughan on the journey.

Vaughan’s story therefore marks the distance between a prosecution’s apparent conclusion and the full recovery of what happened. His professional ties to Burt, his work for Bigheart, the money that passed through Burt’s hands, and the informant’s suspicion form a chain of clues, but not a definitive solution. His family’s lost income, displacement, and fear endured after the official cases closed. The hidden evidence was never produced, and the question of who killed Vaughan remained open.