#kotfm

Did you see the owl? No. If you do, it is a sign that we are dying.

And though Mollie’s three sisters had wed white men, she felt a responsibility to have an arranged Osage marriage, the way her parents had. Still, Mollie, whose family practiced a mixture of Osage and Catholic beliefs, couldn’t understand why God would let her find love, only to then take it away from her. So, in 1917, she and Ernest exchanged rings, vowing to love each other till eternity.

Mollie relied on Ernest for support. A lawyer who knew them both noted that his “devotion to his Indian wife and his children is unusual…and striking.”

A Justice Department official had noted that her “illness is very suspicious, to say the least.” It was urgent, the official went on, to “get this patient to some reputable hospital for diagnosis and treatment free from the interference of her husband.”

Burkhart never admitted having any knowledge that Mollie was being poisoned. Perhaps this was the one sin that he couldn’t bear to admit. Or perhaps Hale had not trusted him to kill his own wife.

An attorney assisting the prosecution asked whether she’d feel better if agents brought her to see Ernest. “That is all I wanted,” she said.

The death of his daughter, the haunting face of his wife each day at the trial, the realization that the evidence against him was piling up—it was too much to withstand. “I’m absolutely helpless,” Burkhart said.

By the time Morrison was convicted of Anna’s murder, Mollie could no longer look at Ernest. She soon divorced him, and whenever her husband’s name was mentioned, she recoiled in horror.