WEBVTT - The Headright 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.400 Just a heads up before we get started. This episode 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:08.039 contains descriptions of abuse. It may be hard to listen to. 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.720 Last summer, I bought a book. I had to get 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:19.720 it from a rare books distributor. I paid one dollars 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:22.919 eighty six cents. I bought it because I thought it 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:25.799 might help answer my question about the Drummond's head rights, 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.120 those shares of the O Sage mineral estate that's held 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:38.159 in trust by the federal government. The book came in 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:40.400 the mail a week or two later. It's a couple 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:44.360 hundred pages, found in a hardback linen cover smelled like dust. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.680 The cover was blue and pattered. Three different photos of 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:54.280 one guy and one he's young twenties, maybe dressed in 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.680 a military uniform. Another he's a kid riding a horse 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.360 and a cowboy hat. The biggest photo is a portrait 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.200 of him older. He's staring into the camera, holding a 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:11.080 lit cigarette, a big ring on his finger. He's pale, round, 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:18.319 dressed in a three piece suit. The title ranching from 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:21.800 the front seat of a buick, The Life of Oklahoma's 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.600 a a Jack Drummond. It's this telling of the booms 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.880 and busts of early ranch days. In Osage County, a 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.000 biography of one of the three Drummond brothers who grew 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:36.200 up here in the early nineteen hundreds. Almost everyone I 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.080 talked to about head rights brought up the Drummonds. A 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.080 local newspaper had published a list of non os Age 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:44.759 names who had them, but not how many they had. 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.840 I thought maybe the book might give me a clue. 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:54.640 I was also curious what a white man like Jack 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.760 would have remembered about the reign of terror. A house 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:03.760 blowing up, the FBI in town, murder all around him. 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.280 But the details of this conspiracy are hardly mentioned at all, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:12.840 just one sentence on page sixty four, the line Bill Hale, 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.040 a local rancher had to sell his land because he 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.160 was going to prison for conspiring to murder most of 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.680 an O s Age Indian family, so their head rights 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:26.280 would devolve to his nephew. That was it. That's all 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.040 the book how to say about it. The casual mention 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.400 of another rancher in town, who, by the way, also 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.640 happened to mastermind the most notorious murders from the time. 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.440 There are pages dedicated to Jack Drummond going off to 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.960 war fighting a bunch of lawsuits over land, meeting his 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.520 first wife, being scammed out of more than ninety dollars 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.360 on a trip to Chicago, paying for some local kids 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.000 to go to college, loaning money to young ranchers who 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:57.240 are about to go under, driving around Oklahoma, and his 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:02.360 buick checking on cattle. But something at the very beginning 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.600 of the book jumped out to me and the author's no. 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.760 The author his name was Terry Hammonds. He mentions he 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.880 donated dozens of cassette tapes worth of interviews with Jack, 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.080 along with a bunch of financial records, to the State 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:21.560 Historical Society in Oklahoma City. It sounded like a gold mine. 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.840 Maybe these tapes, these records would tell me something about 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.000 the Drummond's head rights and how they got them. So 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.560 I reached out to the Historical Society an archivist I 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:36.360 spoke to, ran a search. Nothing came up, no luck. 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.520 But a few days later I got an email that 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.840 archivist said after her search came back blank, she decided 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:47.920 to keep looking. She spent hours, in her words, scrambling 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.960 to find these tapes. She scoured the Historical Society's inventory, 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:59.200 called around to other sites, and to my surprise, she 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.560 found the tapes and Jack's financial records somewhere I would 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.640 have never thought to look up the road in a 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:11.120 suburb called Edmund at the University of Central Oklahoma. I'll 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:17.000 tell you terry where money is involved. Honors seemed to 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:21.240 try out the windows or does sure does? And in 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:26.880 families and that at one hour. These recordings, they're all 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.719 the raw material that went into making that biography, Hours 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.599 and hours of two guys sitting in a room talking 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:39.720 about cattle, mortgages, land financing. In the Drummond family. The 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:46.039 secret of the success in the cattle is finance. You 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:52.240 have to know how to always pay those cattals, like 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:56.159 one of them financed all this land. I kept my 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.039 land in the terry and Jack started recording these in 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.120 they talked every few months for the next couple of years. 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.600 We hear dogs bark in the background, the clock ticking, 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:11.880 and occasionally the tape skips or stops sometimes when things 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:17.200 are just getting interesting. What you did was the government 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.000 tells you what they'd pay you for it, and you 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.560 just took it. That fit. You didn't bother any court 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.280 or anything like. No. John's took his money and then 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.000 he disappeared, right yeah, and you see him after that 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.640 he kept that off. And I'll tell you, and honestly, 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.359 at first I was worried there was nothing here. But 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.280 then I found this moment when Jack starts talking about 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:42.880 a legal fight he got into with a man named 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.200 George Smith and a bank he just calls the National. 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.720 So I had all this litigation with George Smith and 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:55.560 the Old Sage, and I fought to National when I've 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.640 showed him for this million dollars up there. So the 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.960 National just hated me like hell. Basically, this was a 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.640 fight between this rancher, George Smith and Jack Drummond over 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:10.279 Land in os Age County. The bank's got involved because 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.280 both men had taken out such big loans that whoever 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.520 lost the lawsuit would go bankrupt. Think of it as 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:20.800 a high stakes, highly leveraged her for and they called 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:26.600 Bill dam And on the telephone and told him and 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:28.480 I was a crooking son of a bitch and I 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:33.120 was Steely's cattle, and they told him everything bad about me. 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:35.800 I'm telling you all this because as he starts getting 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.280 into the details of this dispute, he mentions, but I 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:44.279 know Sam Borshen was a longer in in the Tulsa 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.880 and he knew how expensive litigation was, and he said 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.760 to me, how long can you keep up this litigation? 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.680 I said indefinitely. Well, he said, how can you do that? 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.080 And that? And I said, well, I lived with my mother, 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.680 so I have reboard and room and laundry. I've got 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.560 an O Sage half an old stage head ride and 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.120 that paid me enough money so that I can always 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.960 get new cars and make my car payments on make 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.680 my car installments. And I said that I've got to 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.280 and I said as a last resort. Like the tape 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.080 ends right there, right after he mentions he is half 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.760 an osage head rate. Half a head rate he's using 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.600 to make car payments, half a head rate that could 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.080 float him during all these core battles. I later found 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.480 out Jack had transferred most of his property into other 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.760 people's names during this lawsuit, but this half a head 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.560 rate he held on to Elsewhere in the tapes, he 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:52.640 kind of brags to Terry Hammonds about it. I've gotta 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.840 half O Sage head ride. That did you know? I 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.840 how to have O D and that pays me. See, 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.600 I gave that to Jim. That's what that try insurance. 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.880 Jim Drummond is Jack stunt. He's in his seventies, still 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.440 a practicing criminal defense attorney in Texas. I've spoken to 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.640 him before I get to that conversation, though, I want 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.920 to point out another moment in those tapes with Jack 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.440 when he says flat out how he got that head 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.600 right share and the number actually ends up being a 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:30.239 little more than a half. Can you see I half 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:34.480 a head four of Ryan i'bout the purchase of it 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:39.959 from old a Pole. So there it was, and I've 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.959 been able to confirm this. Jack Drummond bought one half 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:46.720 and one four of a head right from someone named 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.480 Movie Pope, and that half share Jack later gave to 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:55.760 his son. If anything, these tapes gave me more questions 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:59.240 than answers. Who was the V Pope, how did he 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:12.480 get head rights? And who has them today? This is 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:26.800 in trust. I'm Rachel Adams Hurt. I would like you 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.720 to tell me about that three weeks when you and 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:36.120 O V Pope drove around Oklahoma signing up cattleman for 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:40.520 the Obama Livestock Marketing so hard. That's extremely interesting, And 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:43.199 I just know I heard Jack mentioned OVI Pope's name 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:45.959 again in the middle of a story he tells about 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.840 trying to round up farmers and ranchers for a financial 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:53.800 co op. This is the Great Depression, the beginning of 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:57.400 the dust Bowl. Farmers and ranchers are facing yet another 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.800 year of crop prices so low that can't stay afloat. 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:05.400 They're overloaded with debt. Oklahoma families are starting to pack 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:09.559 up their trucks and head west to California. This cooperative 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.120 was supposed to help ranchers out, and Jack's job was 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.720 to get people on board. I would sleep at night 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.000 in the car and only both would would drive me. 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.160 And then when I get to these towns, I would 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.079 I would get me a one the cowman on the 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.720 leading cowman, and have him go with me to his friends. See. 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.479 Then I had to have the support and for each community, 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.320 and it was hard gone. It took me three weeks. 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.360 I never stook my clothes off for those three weeks. 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.000 Those were a gruesome three weeks. The way Terry describes 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:52.000 it in the book, It's August hot. For nearly a month, 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.320 Ovie Pope and Jack Drummond are living out of a car, 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.040 bumping along ranch roads, making a last ditch effort to 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:07.080 see the Oklahoma the cattle business. The thing is nowhere 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.840 in these capes does Jack say how OVI Pope would 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:12.160 have gotten a head right or why he sold part 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.560 of it to Jack. When I started looking around for 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.920 something anything about OV Pope, I kept running into dead ends. 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:24.080 Compared to the Drummonds, this was a relatively obscure guy. 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:26.679 No line in the local paper when he went out 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:32.120 of town on business, no university buildings named after him. 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.240 But even without any specifics on OV Pope, I could 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:39.280 get transfer records from the National Archives, all the paperwork 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:41.880 that got sent to what was then called the Office 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.440 of Indian Affairs, everything they were required before they would 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:47.280 sign off on the sale of the head right to 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:56.160 someone else. If the sale happened before, it's in the 0:11:56.200 --> 0:12:00.160 public record, held in a warehouse and for worth. It 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:02.240 was legal to transfer a head right to a nono 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:06.840 stage person or group up until so. There's a gap 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.280 in the public records. You can access on head rights 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:13.880 thirteen years that are essentially a black box. But even 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:18.400 though the records before are technically public, they aren't easy 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:20.880 to access. You have to know the names of the 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.400 individuals involved in order to ask one of the archive 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:26.400 specialists to email the documents. If you want to search 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:28.800 through them yourself. You have to get an appointment in 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:38.800 a special researcher card and travel to for worth. The 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:41.880 folders I got back were bigger than I expected. It 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.480 turns out there was a fair amount of bureaucracy involved 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.640 in selling a head right. Each one's about a dozen pages. 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.439 You had to write a formal application, get it notarized, 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:53.800 have an oil and gas inspector weigh in on the 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.520 purchase price. The whole thing had to be approved by 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:02.640 the Assistant Secretary of Interior. According to those transfer records, 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.640 Jack Drummond bought the one half head right from Ovi 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:11.920 Pope in for two fifty dollars, and three years later 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.520 he buys another one fourth of a head right for 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:28.440 eleven thousand, two d fifty dollars. What's also in that 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.960 paperwork is something missing in the tapes with Jack. How 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.680 Ovi Pope got his head rights. He inherited them from 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:40.280 his wife, an o stage woman named namt He She 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:45.320 died in I found something else on the Pope family too, 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:50.199 this time it was in Oklahoma's court records. I found 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:54.560 out that after Namata he died, Ovi Pope's brother married 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.319 her daughter, a daughter she had from a previous marriage 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.959 to an O stage man. Her name was Rhodo wheeler Ridge, 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.520 and she was trying to get a divorce. I brought 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.040 all this, the transfer paperwork and the introduction to the 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.920 divorce case to tear a dammeron at the White Hair 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.079 Memorial who told me about that list of non ocge 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:21.040 heap very holders. We started with the transfer paperwork. So 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:26.400 this is dated May nineteenth, ninety to a Mr. A 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:31.680 by Ludwick County Clerk Busk, Oklahoma says, Dear sir, there 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:37.000 isn't clothes for recording assignment from O V. Pope to 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.920 Alfred A. Drummond, which was approved by the Assistant Secretary 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:46.400 of the Interior on May tenth, together with Cashier's chick. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.160 I wanted to hear Tara's thoughts on this because she 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:52.320 spends all day immersed in these kinds of records. She 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.480 would know better what we were looking at. So OV 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.800 Pope was a white man who was married to an 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.760 stage lady. Um I'll meet say, and she had three 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:09.440 head rights at the time of her death in from suberculosis, 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:16.200 and he got one and a half. Okay, Yeah, it 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:20.200 looks like she was in her sixties and her husband 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:28.120 was in his thirties really and um he inherited half 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.480 of her estate. So Ovie Pope has one and a 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.960 half head rights. Her daughter, Rhoda wheeler Ridge has one 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:41.440 and a half head rights. Ovie Pope's brother marries the daughter. 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:49.600 And this is her divorce case. If you want to 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:54.320 read starting there is where it explains it this. This This 0:15:54.760 --> 0:16:02.120 is Pope v. Pope, Oklahoma nine six. The ground alleged 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:08.120 and the petition was extreme cruelty. On September eighteenth, nineteen four, 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:12.680 plaintive filed an amended petition in which she alleged. Over 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:16.760 pages and pages of testimony, Rhoda talks about the months 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.280 before namat Say He died, when Ovi Pope and his 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:24.080 brother Troy packed up her things and moved her to Colorado. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.080 They kept her and her children and house Troy Pope bought, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.360 even while her mother, who Over Pope was married to, 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:39.280 was dying back in Osage County. In January, nat Say 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.040 He died, and a little over four months later, as 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.040 Rhoda was set to inherit half of her mother's estate, 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.480 the two Pope brothers took her to the courthouse. Rhoda 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.600 was forced to marry Troy Pope. I want you to 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.920 hear some parts of Rhoda's testimony. And just to be clear, 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.800 this divorce case is over seven hundred pages long, so 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.480 this isn't all of it. But what it does show 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:09.639 is textbook abusive behavior. Rhoda describes a relationship where she 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.480 was isolated from her family and her finances, where she 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:19.000 was manipulated and coerced and physically and emotionally abused. It's 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.880 tough to listen to, but I think it's important to hear. 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:26.879 We've asked voice actors to read from the testimony. There's 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:30.320 one moment when the lawyer asked Rhoda about her first husband, 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.200 a man named King Ridge. They divorced just months before 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.120 her mother died. Did Ov Pope ever try to get 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:43.000 you to get a divorce? Yes? He helped me lots 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:47.000 of times, talk to me lots of times, and tried 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.479 to get me to do it. I had to go 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:53.480 ahead and do it. After that, the Pope brothers moved 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:58.760 Rhoda to Colorado. Did you want to go to Colorado? No? 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.399 He asked Rhoda if she wanted to marry Troy Pope. No, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:12.000 why did you do that? Well? I was afraid he 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:17.119 might hurt me? Did he threaten to hurt you? Rhoda 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:25.040 doesn't respond. What did he do? Again? No response? What 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:32.640 made you afraid of him? Because they had a gun? Later, 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:35.840 the lawyer tries to show the marriage as a sham. 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.159 He drills down on the moment Rhoda was forced to 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:43.639 say I do. What did the preacher ask you? The 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:47.920 preacher asked me to say I do. The preacher asked 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.760 you to say I do? And how many times did 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:55.600 he ask you that? He asked me three times? Did 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.679 you want to say I do? No, sir? Why did 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:06.800 you because I was afraid of them? Two boys? Roda 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.200 tells the lawyer Troy was cruel to her and her children, 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.320 that he whipped them. Did he ever slap you any 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:20.359 He'd done it four different times in Colorado? What caused that, Rhoda? 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:26.560 Do you know he gets mad because I don't give 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:33.240 him money because you don't do what because I don't 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:38.879 give him money? Did he ever twist your arm? He 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.840 twists my arm two three times like that? Did it 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:48.120 hurt you? Yes? Sir? What name did he call you? 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:55.080 He he just called me, call me names everything. What 0:19:55.200 --> 0:20:04.160 would he say? Do you remember Rhoda silent. At another point, 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.280 Rhoda says Troy wouldn't let her visit her mother when 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.080 she was dying. She says she wanted to see her 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:13.480 all the time, she never got to say goodbye. She 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.440 had to find out on me to say he died 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.080 from a telegram that arrived at three o'clock on a 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:23.680 Sunday morning. Within months, Ovi Pope was remarried. Rhoda says 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.680 she was also sick during this time, and Troy refused 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.920 to get her a doctor. Meanwhile, he's signing the back 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:34.040 of her text and cashing them for himself. Did you 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:37.440 get some money from Ovi Pope from your mother's estate? 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:43.320 Rhoda doesn't respond. Did you get three a month from 0:20:43.320 --> 0:21:12.800 your mother's money? Yes. In his testimony, Troy Pope denied 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:15.560 that he abused Rhoda or that he and his brothers 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.439 were taking her money for themselves. Ovi Pope testified that 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.960 Rhoda wanted to go to Colorado. The lawyers didn't spend 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.240 much time on his own marriage to Rhode's mom, or 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.560 the fact that less than five years after all meats 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:33.560 say he died, Ovi Pope had sold the one and 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.359 a half head rights he inherited from her for over 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:40.400 sixty five thousand dollars, the equivalent of more than one 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:46.040 million dollars today. In total, three fourth went to Jack Drummond, 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.560 one half went to another white man, and one fourth 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:54.359 went to an investment company. This divorce case goes beyond 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.240 detailing the alleged abuse by the Pope brothers. It also 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:01.040 paints the picture of an oh stage woman who went 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:04.960 to great lengths to protect her children. Rhoda enlisted the 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:07.760 hope of her uncle Jimmy to stand guard over her house. 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.520 She hired lawyers to get restraining orders against Troy Pope, 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:15.879 and in the end she was successful and got away 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.760 from the Pope brothers. She lived for another forty years. 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.960 She's buried in Hominy next to her first husband, King Ridge. 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.600 I've been in touch with Rhoda's descendants. They didn't know 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:30.640 about this case, about the Pope brothers where these head 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.000 right shares went, but over email they gave me a 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.399 sense of who Rhoda was outside of this case, because 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.600 it didn't define her. They said she grew old on 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:44.160 her allotment with King Ridge. She remarried him after her 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:48.320 divorce from Troy Pope. Her five children grew to live long, 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:53.000 full lives. They gave her grandchildren, whom she adored. She 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:56.400 loved playing cards and board games and hosting everyone over 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:01.200 the holidays. Rhoda was a humble of a person, they said, 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:29.400 but most importantly, she was strong. The Pope brothers never 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:33.360 got any scrutiny outside of this divorce case because despite 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:36.320 all the evidence, the suspicious timing of it in the 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:39.240 middle of the Reign of Terror, what the Pope brothers 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:42.840 did wasn't treated as anything criminal. As far as I 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:46.800 can tell, the FBI didn't investigate. I never found anything 0:23:46.840 --> 0:23:49.800 published in the local paper about me to say He's 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:55.040 death or Rhoda's arranged marriage. No books, no movie, another 0:23:55.160 --> 0:24:01.440 lost story of the reign of Terror calling Tara dammon again. 0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:08.119 So this is exactly the type of schemes crime THEFS. 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:12.040 There's so much of this type of stuff that was 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:17.000 just not looked into. Obviously, wrote his mother was what 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:19.919 in her sixties and Ovi Pope was half her age 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:24.399 and this is just awful, and it's just disgusting. You know, 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:27.639 we don't because you hear stories, right, and you hear rumors, 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:30.160 and it's like, well, you know, we're pretty sure that 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:32.679 so and so has got it. But then then you 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:35.080 see it in black and white, just like that list, 0:24:35.240 --> 0:24:40.280 and then it's then it's real. Then it's then it's okay. 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:44.000 I was right, We were right. I had also pulled 0:24:44.040 --> 0:24:46.960 the death certificate for Rhoda's mom, not me to say 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:51.280 he It said she died of chronic tuberculosis and heart failure. 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:54.560 OVI Pope was the one who provided all the family 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:58.239 information for the death certificate. He apparently didn't know very 0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:01.040 much about the woman he married. Next to the space 0:25:01.080 --> 0:25:04.040 for her mother and father's names, it just says unknown. 0:25:05.200 --> 0:25:09.600 So so, yeah, she was married to him, and then 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:19.120 she died in with a listed cause of death as tuberculosis. Yeah, 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:24.800 why do you make that sound? Well? So so so 0:25:24.920 --> 0:25:28.640 many oh stages have a suspicious cause of death, especially 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:33.679 during that time period, especially the twenties, the the teens. Um. 0:25:33.720 --> 0:25:36.440 So we don't know if that's true or not, you know. Um, 0:25:36.520 --> 0:25:39.280 so we can't really trust the death certificate just because 0:25:39.320 --> 0:25:42.480 of the murders and we know that they were cover 0:25:42.640 --> 0:25:46.159 ups and that you know, causes us of death weren't investigated, 0:25:46.640 --> 0:25:52.080 either poisoned whiskey or strychnine or doping or I mean 0:25:52.520 --> 0:25:55.840 just none of that was none of that was investigated, 0:25:56.080 --> 0:26:00.400 you know. So she may have died of tuberculosis because 0:26:00.440 --> 0:26:03.640 that you know, that was a disease, you know, prevalent 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:08.080 during that time. But I don't know. There was something 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:10.760 else I brought Tara that day. It was a list, 0:26:11.160 --> 0:26:15.119 a small one of non os Age head right holders. Tara, 0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:17.439 of course has seen a version of this list before, 0:26:18.040 --> 0:26:20.560 the one from that lawsuit that ended up in the newspaper. 0:26:21.400 --> 0:26:24.680 But the list I brought her it had numbers how 0:26:24.680 --> 0:26:27.920 many head rights or head right fractions some of these 0:26:27.920 --> 0:26:32.000 non oth age groups owned. When the Bureau of Indian 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:36.040 Affairs rejected my records request for this information, Bloomberg hired 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:38.960 a law firm to fight it. We argued that the 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:41.359 b i A didn't give a good reason for denying 0:26:41.440 --> 0:26:46.239 our request, that the exemptions they claimed didn't apply, and 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:50.600 we were successful kind of Eventually, after a bunch of 0:26:50.600 --> 0:26:54.879 back and forth, we got something some seventy names of 0:26:54.920 --> 0:26:58.000 non Osage head right holders and how many they owned. 0:26:58.680 --> 0:27:01.119 Not the full list. The b i A withhold the 0:27:01.200 --> 0:27:04.399 names of non people who had had rights, but the 0:27:04.520 --> 0:27:10.080 organization's family trust, churches, oale companies, some of that we 0:27:10.200 --> 0:27:20.080 got so I told you we were filing that COYA. Um. 0:27:20.119 --> 0:27:23.080 I told you when we were filing the request, and 0:27:23.200 --> 0:27:25.280 you politely told me that I was probably not going 0:27:25.359 --> 0:27:28.640 to have much luck, and you're right. So the Beer 0:27:28.640 --> 0:27:32.560 of Indian Affairs denied it, um, and then we appealed 0:27:33.400 --> 0:27:37.800 and they actually said that they were going to send 0:27:37.840 --> 0:27:41.560 a letter to every non O s age head right 0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:46.159 holder and give them the chance to object to you 0:27:46.200 --> 0:27:53.600 look surprised, Oh my god, wow, really keep going so um. 0:27:53.680 --> 0:27:56.720 They gave us a list of all the non O 0:27:56.880 --> 0:28:00.600 s age entities that did not object the release of 0:28:00.680 --> 0:28:17.120 this information. Really, so it's a start. Oh my gosh. 0:28:17.160 --> 0:28:20.800 On that list is Jack Drummond's trust and right there 0:28:21.440 --> 0:28:27.840 half a head right. It's worth noting the list we 0:28:27.880 --> 0:28:31.040 got back from this FOYA is not even close to comprehensive. 0:28:31.760 --> 0:28:33.600 The b i A says about a fourth of all 0:28:33.640 --> 0:28:37.080 head rights are held by outsiders, something like five hundred 0:28:37.200 --> 0:28:39.960 sixty head rights. What we got back was just a 0:28:40.000 --> 0:28:43.560 small number of those, a fraction of non oth age 0:28:43.600 --> 0:28:46.360 groups who didn't object when the b i A reached 0:28:46.360 --> 0:28:50.560 out because of our appeal. By my account, it's about 0:28:50.640 --> 0:28:55.320