Lou Anna Red Corn Part 1 | The Role of the Commonwealth’s Attorney | April 4, 2024
Lou Anna Red Corn Part 2 | Killers of the Flower Moon | April 16, 2024
Join the conversation with Lou Anna Red Corn, whose esteemed career as the retired Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney unveils the solemn duty of upholding justice. Lou Anna takes us from the formidable beginnings of her first death penalty case to the impactful transition under the guidance of her predecessor, Ray Larson. Experience the rare insights from her heritage with the Osage Nation and its influence on her perspective in legal proceedings, both past and present. We navigate through the deep-seated responsibility that comes with prosecuting crimes, particularly the harrowing child sexual abuse cases, and the evolution of court security that has shaped the legal landscape we know today.
Lou Anna Red Corn’s reflections shed light on the Commonwealth Attorney’s office’s intricacies, highlighting the demanding yet vital task of supervising prosecutors and overseeing death penalty cases amidst a statewide execution hiatus. The episode celebrates the legacy of figures like Mike Malone, whose meticulous work ethic has left an indelible mark on the pursuit of justice. As Lou Anna reminisces on her career path and the ascension of women in Kentucky’s legal system, she illustrates the mentorship’s profound influence and the symbolic handover to Kimberly Henderson Baird.
In this episode, we also explore the pivotal advancements in law enforcement programs and victim advocacy initiatives. From the conception of a special victims unit to the transparent application of Giglio guidelines, Lou Anna speaks to the dedicated efforts ensuring the integrity of the justice system. As we look at the community engagement strides and the innovative approaches to Crime Victims’ Rights Week, you’ll gain an appreciation for the collaborative spirit essential in advocating for those who have endured the unimaginable. Lou Anna’s tenure, culminating in her retirement and the passing of the torch, rounds out our discussion, setting the foundation for a new era of justice in Fayette County.
Show Transcript : Part 1
Lou Anna Red CornGuest00:00
I can remember my first death penalty case, and it was with Ray Okay it was William Bennett. He was charged with murdering Judge Angelucci’s son, Joseph.
David LyonsHost00:11
Right.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest00:11
And Joseph was serving an involuntary hospitalization warrant on William Bennett and as Joseph was taking him into custody, Bennett got his gun and shot and killed him taking him into custody.
Wendy LyonsHost00:27
Bennett got his gun and shot and killed him. Warning the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. Luanna Redcorn, part 1, the Role of the Commonwealth’s Attorney. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. I am Wendy.
David LyonsHost01:06
And I’m David.
Wendy LyonsHost01:07
We have with us tonight a very special guest, Ms Luanna Redcorn, retired Fayette County Commonwealth Attorney. Thank you so much for coming to be with us this evening, Luanna.
David LyonsHost01:20
Wendy thank you so much for inviting me, and you too, David, no thanks for coming. This is like a reunion to some extent. You too, David, no thanks for coming. This is like a reunion to some extent of if we went down the road on the things that we did together back when.
01:27
I was doing your honeydew list as an assistant Commonwealth attorney. We’d be all night, but I’m excited to have you. I think, like I said, people will learn what a Commonwealth attorney does or a DA does in some detail, but I think the big thing we’re going to be able to talk about tonight is your heritage with the Osage Nation. Am I saying that correctly?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest01:46
Yes, you are Okay, good deal.
David LyonsHost01:48
And especially on the heels of the movie the Killers of the Flower Moon and the historical knowledge that you have on that. This is a true crime podcast and we can dive in and talk about some murders that were solved and unsolved, and maybe why, which is probably just as more important. So thank you.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest02:05
My pleasure.
Wendy LyonsHost02:07
Well, I guess let’s start. I would like for our listeners to hear, louina, how did you get involved in what you do or what you did, I should say and what brought you to that position? Had you always had an interest in being a Commonwealth attorney?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest02:27
an interest in being a Commonwealth attorney. Well, no, not always. But like any Commonwealth attorney, I’m an attorney, of course, to begin with, and I started practicing law in 1984. And I was a public defender for a couple years before I became an assistant Commonwealth attorney. But once I got a taste for criminal law and saw what it was like to be a public defender which is a fine profession, and I really enjoyed that, I did that in eastern Kentucky, but I had an opportunity to move to the other side to become a prosecutor, and so I applied for a job with Ray Larson in Fayette County and that would have been in 1987, and he hired me and the rest is sort of history for me.
Wendy LyonsHost03:09
Yeah, and we’ve had Ray on a few times early on. When we first got started and I just have to say it was always an evening of laughs. There was always after Ray would leave, we still were laughing about something he had said or done.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest03:21
Well, I don’t know that I’d call Ray funny all the time, but Ray was an exceptional person and certainly an exceptional Commonwealth’s attorney.
03:31
And you know, when he passed away, that was a really that was a very tough morning and I remember Luke and I sat down and composed Luke is my husband and we sat down and composed an announcement and announced on our office Facebook page that Ray had passed and just had an opportunity to in just, you know, in a few paragraphs, describe who he was. And he was a prosecutor’s prosecutor and in many ways defined for this state what a Commonwealth’s attorney is. And Ray did a lot of incredible things in Fayette County that I think most people have no idea, and I’ll just mention one of them. And I don’t know where your, if you know how many of your listeners are here in Fayette County, but there was a time when the only place you had to wear a seatbelt in the Commonwealth of Kentucky was Fayette County. Oh my, when you got to the county line, you had to wear a seatbelt in the Commonwealth of Kentucky was Fayette County.
David LyonsHost04:25
Oh my.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest04:26
When you got to the county line, you had to put your seatbelt on, you had to buckle up, and that was all the doing of Ray Larson.
David LyonsHost04:34
I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest04:36
I’m not either, and now the rest of the country has fallen in line. Yeah, thanks to Ray. Thanks to Ray. Yeah, no doubt. Thanks to Ray. Thanks to Ray, yeah, no doubt.
David LyonsHost04:42
And you’re right, he learned everything when he called himself Ray the DA, that’s right, it was Ray the DA, ray the DA. Yeah, for sure. Going back to the public defender thing I think I knew that, but maybe not when you did the and let’s get this straight too is that I never shoot them down. We tease with defense attorneys all the time, but I think people who have listened to this show understand that there’s actually a relationship there.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest05:04
That’s a lot of mutual respect Right. Well, we’re all part of the criminal justice system.
David LyonsHost05:08
That’s it, and seeking the truth Right. So who can knock that? That’s a big part of it too. When you did spend that time, do you think that prepared you to go to the other side, to the prosecution side, and what do you think motivated you to jump?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest05:19
Well, I think it definitely, it was helpful, I mean it could not have been helpful to to approach it in a different way, to see defendants, um, people that are accused, as people. I mean, they’re, they’re just people like everybody else and, uh, some of them have things that brought them to the point that caused them to commit a crime. So, yes, in that, in that regard, I think it was helpful. What caused me to to change what I was doing? Um, I prefer to do something that approached it from a different side, to work on behalf of victims, to work on behalf of public safety and on behalf of my community, which is different than the role of a public defender, because you’re representing just an individual.
David LyonsHost06:06
Sure, yeah, both of them are super valuable. I would never make fun of that too. So tell more about your career once you onboarded with the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office. You’ve already indicated that Ray might have been a little more difficult to work for. He wasn’t difficult to work for, but he was a taskmaster, for sure.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest06:25
I mean, he had high standards and he expected us to abide by those standards. In fact, my husband, luke Morgan, also worked for Ray as a prosecutor for a period of time, and so you know Ray had standards, but they were all good. They were All really really good. We had to be on time and he would be standing by the elevator when we got there and if we were late he would tap his watch.
Wendy LyonsHost06:51
Yeah, there we go. I would have never survived there. No, you wouldn’t. Yeah, in more ways than one, I know you’re right.
David LyonsHost06:59
In more ways than one. Yeah, it was funny, I remember and we’ll get off the Ray thing in a minute but people that listen to Love Ray too. But when I was up in the unit he really didn’t like plea bargains. I mean his thing was let the community decide.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest07:14
Yes, let’s go to trial on murder cases especially.
David LyonsHost07:16
I don’t know if you remember I don’t think it was ever with you but I will say this that, looking back, that I think there were two or three times where an assistant comrade would invite me over to meet with Ray, and that’s what the meeting was about. And I guess they thought if I was in the room maybe it would edge the bed a little bit or he wouldn’t say no. It was actually kind of cute and Ray would look over at me and look at them and say, yeah, we’re going to trial.
07:38
So it was those are the things you remember. Well, talk more about once you onboarded and you got there. What was that experience like and what kind of casework did you start with and end up doing?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest07:47
Well, you know, I was in the office for 35 years, so it changed a lot over the period of time Started in 1987 and did just, you know, kind of routine cases, lots of drug cases. There are always a lot of drug cases in the prosecutor’s office. Probably 30% of the cases that we have in the office are possessions or drug trafficking cases. And then when you throw in the cases that are tied to alcohol or drugs, like thefts and forgeries and things like that, it goes up a lot more. So doing those kind of cases and then over time with experience, started doing more serious cases, including sexual assaults and homicides and things like that.
08:34
One thing that while I was in the office Ray really pushed me to do was child sexual abuse cases and he just thought that those were really important cases and I guess I kind of think hopefully he thought I would be good for those kinds of cases and really encouraged me, took me. In fact, he and I and some others went to Huntsville, Alabama, to a place where they had just started a thing called the Children’s Advocacy Center. Oh, wow.
09:03
The district attorney down there, a guy named Bud Kramer started the Children’s Advocacy Center concept in like 1989. And Ray wanted to know more about it, and so we got in the car and drove down there and that was the beginning of our children’s advocacy center, the bluegrass yep, learned something there.
David LyonsHost09:21
I wasn’t aware that that was the history of that too. So a powerful thing and powerful work it I. I tell people all the time that that’s an ugly that we don’t hear about, and I’ve always said that. Uh, in my opinion, most people really don’t learn how much of what we have unless they’re seated on a grand jury. That’s true, and then you walk out with your eyes opened.
09:41
It’s really horrific, Really commendable work for sure. Way too much of it. Way too much of it, by the way too, just for the audience knows too, we’re talking about the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, which is in circuit court. Yes, so the crimes there are going to be of a higher level than what we in Kentucky would call district court.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest09:59
Yes.
David LyonsHost09:59
Which would handle the misdemeanors and things like that. Right yeah.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest10:02
We have two elected prosecutors in Kentucky in every county, every county, and I think there’s 120 counties, 120. 120 counties, there’s 120 counties, 120. 120 counties. Each one has an elected county attorney who does misdemeanors traffic, usually represents the fiscal court, juveniles, sometimes family court. So you have that person. And then there are 57 elected commonwealth attorneys and the commonwealth attorneys represent the people in circuit court and the Commonwealth’s attorneys represent the people in circuit court. And these circuits can be a single county, like we have here in Fayette County or Jefferson Warren, the bigger counties, and then out in the state some of these circuits are four counties.
10:45
So you’ve got a prosecutor, that’s got to travel to four different counties to work, and so that’s kind of the idea of the circuit. Remember that’s what circuit judges did they traveled the circuit.
David LyonsHost10:56
Sure.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest10:56
To go from one county to another to hold court.
David LyonsHost11:00
There we go Cool stuff, a little tidbit of history that people don’t have. Yeah, I knew that.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest11:06
So our Commonwealth’s attorneys prosecute felonies after the cases are held or waived to the grand jury. And in Kentucky everybody has a constitutional right to be indicted by the grand jury for a felony. It’s in the Constitution. But an individual can waive that right and the case can go straight to the grand jury without a hearing. That’s the hearing we have in district court, called the preliminary hearing or probable cause hearing.
David LyonsHost11:31
Right, Did several of those too. Speaking of the county attorney, we’ll give a shout out to Angela Evans. Yes, she’s our elected county attorney.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest11:37
She’s been there since 2018, I think, yeah, is that right? No 2020?.
David LyonsHost11:43
Yeah, 2020.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest11:44
22. Wow, time’s getting away from us. I don’t have a concept of time.
Wendy LyonsHost11:50
Wow, she’s been there yeah exactly.
David LyonsHost11:51
Well, when you’re married to Wendy, you lose a concept of time.
Wendy LyonsHost11:54
Anyway, it’s just all that love. It just embraces you. Every day is a holiday, like sweet honey.
David LyonsHost12:00
I had another four-letter word in mind, but we’ll leave that alone.
Wendy LyonsHost12:02
Yeah, we’ll leave that out.
David LyonsHost12:03
But I ran into her last week at the St Patrick’s Day Festival and so get together and get to lunch. I’m interested to hear how she’s doing with that. So the challenge is on the county attorney side of it too. So getting back to it again is we’re in the deep end of the pool with the casework and everything, and you talked about how you work your way into different case levels and sexual abuse. But since it’s a true crime podcast that focuses on murder, do you still remember your first murder trial or case? I should say case, maybe you should ask no I should have looked that up before I came.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest12:37
I can remember my first death penalty case, and it was with ray.
David LyonsHost12:41
Okay, it was william bennett um.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest12:43
He was charged with murdering uh judge angelusi’s son, joseph right and um joseph was serving a involuntary hospitalization warrant on William Bennett and as Joseph was taking him into custody, Bennett got his gun and shot and killed him, and so that was again, of course, a horrible, horrible circumstance, but that was my first death penalty case, and I tried that with Ray in the old circuit court, which is now Limestone Hall.
David LyonsHost13:15
Yes, exactly yeah, the old court building where the men’s and women’s restrooms were on separate floors.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:21
I remember.
David LyonsHost13:21
I was at a grand jury one time and I got done and I said, hey, if y’all want to do an investigation. They said what?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:25
And I said find out whose idea it was to not have the restrooms on the same floor, so I always leave them on my home. Yeah, that’s right. I never go to an event over there and I don’t think about some of the stuff that happened in that building.
David LyonsHost13:36
Oh, it’s packed full of history I mean really when you think about it, and sat in there many a time out there and those little, those little hallways with the marble floors and stuff like that, so well, I’m sure it was the people’s court, though wendy I mean I would.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:48
It would be nice to know that the judges used to sit out back of that courthouse and when you walked into courthouse you could talk to the judges. They were right there Judge Keller, judge Grant, judge Tackett, they were all out there. And now of course, I understand the reason for security, but now the judges are on the back side of the courthouse. They come in the back way through Sally port and we don’t get to see them in that way and I think you lose something when those things happen. Like I said, I understand it’s for their safety and protection, but yeah, it would have been a different time.
Wendy LyonsHost14:29
Yes, very different, I’m sure through all the years you know. David asked which was your. If you remember the first, I’m sure through doing so many of these, you probably have several that just still really stick with you, whether it was sexual assaults on children or adult victims. How do you manage to cope with that? I’m sure, like I said, it doesn’t go away, it just do you. I guess you’ve had so many and I’m not downplaying any one over the other, but I’m sure that’s really stuck with you. Some of those that you don’t forget, some of them.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest15:05
Yeah, you’d be surprised, david. You probably experienced this. I don’t drive through Lexington on any given day that I don’t drive by a place and think about someone died there.
David LyonsHost15:15
Absolutely or this happened there.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest15:20
So, yes, I mean it’s more of something that I don’t think about, but then when an opportunity happens, I remember this happened at this corner or this happened in this park.
David LyonsHost15:32
She’s been in a car for years now where. I can look up and say well, that was this, that was that. It just burns in your brain, that stuff doesn’t leave.
Wendy LyonsHost15:41
And we always say wonder who lives there now? Likely they have no idea if it’s been resold or re-rented, and I just think how crazy that would be to live in one of those places and not having known because we’ve covered some pretty gruesome cases on here and knowing the details it’s just like wow, these people have no idea what happened in that house.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest16:07
Yes, you’re absolutely right about that. You’re right about that.
David LyonsHost16:09
It’s probably better they don’t. Yes, it’s one reason we don’t do addresses and things on the show. We don’t go that specific, it’s just not necessary Good deal. So the first death penalty case which, by the way, in Kentucky has been on the freeze thing for a while, based on the method and everything. I don’t know if that’ll shake loose or not, but not either here nor there for today. Moving forward, tell us more about how much more time you spent before you got to be the Commonwealth attorney and to Ray the DA’s place.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest16:37
Well, we had a great prosecutor he’s still there part-time in our office named Mike Malone.
David LyonsHost16:42
Yes, mike, big shout-out to Mike.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest16:44
Yeah, big shout-out to Mike Malone. He was Ray’s first assistant for many years and then Mike retired, meaning he left full time in 2006. He later came back as our Commonwealth’s detective and now he’s an assistant again so he can go to court, because actually one of the death penalty cases that Mike tried back in the day Halverson and Willoughby is still working its way through the court system and so we put Mike back on as an assistant Commonwealth’s attorney so he could argue pleadings motions in that case two years ago. But anyway, when Mike retired in 2006, Ray appointed me as his first assistant and that just meant that my primary job was to supervise the attorney. So at any given time the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office in the last probably 15 years has had between 15 and 19, 14 and 19 assistant, full-time assistant Commonwealth attorneys, and so my job as first assistant was to supervise the prosecutors primarily.
David LyonsHost17:52
Okay, cool beans, neat stuff. And again Mike Malone that’s good that he’s back. That makes sense because I stay in contact with a victim’s son on the Leonard White case and I just took him a saddle a couple weeks ago and he said Mike was actually out there at the farm and they sat and talked for about an hour. That’s how this is.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest18:13
Yes, these go on for decades. They go on for decades and you’re right, he’s also done some post-conviction work regarding Goforth.
David LyonsHost18:19
Yeah, exactly yeah, so that one’s still working its way through.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest18:22
These cases don’t end until the defendant is no longer with us.
David LyonsHost18:27
That’s true? Yeah, exactly so fascinating stuff. Fascinating Especially, like I said, because her son really talks highly of Mike. So I mean he has a lot of respect for Mike, which I’m not surprised. We used to just give Mike a hard way to go because he had probably the nastiest office, well disorganized office.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest18:44
Wow, yes, I think messy, not nasty. No, not nasty. Gosh David, piles of stuff. How insulting.
David LyonsHost18:54
Well, nasty gosh, piles of stuff.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest18:55
Well, I’m not talking about hot dog, relish and mustard could have been in there, but yeah, it had his own way of organizing things.
David LyonsHost18:58
Let’s just put it that way very meticulous filing system so sounds like it yeah, those were good times, so good deal. So, as a as as the first assistant, then you’re supervising other people. Yes, are you actually? Do you have a role in hiring at that point?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest19:11
oh, yeah, I have an input Ray was always big on if somebody left, he wanted you to find their replacement. People would move on, and he wanted quality people in there, so I kept doing that until then he retired in 2016, which was a good day for me, but it was a sad day for the community, and I know it was kind of a sad day for Ray too, because he loved what he did.
David LyonsHost19:40
Oh yeah, I think that was—he dealt with it, but I think that’s probably the best way to put it he dealt with it but. I think it probably broke his heart a little bit having to walk away from it.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest19:58
Well, and he had the Tuesday night night I believe it was crime night which was before we even started podcasting. So it’s kind of like a live podcast at his office over there library, oh, later yeah, he started in his office, though, really yeah, he had an office over on broadway. Yeah, I remember that.
Wendy LyonsHost20:06
Yeah, I never went to one there, but I did go to the ones at the library and and you know he would same thing as do bring on the detective that worked it and it was just really so neat and you could see he was loving what he did. He was just beaming when he was up there talking.
David LyonsHost20:23
So you get made kind of like the mafia you get picked, she got made, you get made.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest20:27
I was appointed kindly appointed by Governor Bevin.
David LyonsHost20:31
Okay, gotcha.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest20:32
And of course Ray was very encouraging to Governor Bevin to appoint me. I have no doubt that probably is a good light word for that too, and so I was pleased to be appointed, and then I ran in 2018.
David LyonsHost20:48
Gotcha, let’s talk about this then. When you got appointed, let’s talk about women in that role in Kentucky. Was there anybody else at the time?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest20:56
There were Not many. Remember I told you there’s 57 circuits, so there’s 57 Commonwealth’s attorneys and I think when I got appointed, that made nine women.
David LyonsHost21:06
Oh, there we go.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest21:08
So eight or nine other women out in the state had been elected Commonwealth’s attorney before I was, but I was the first here in Fayette County.
David LyonsHost21:15
Gotcha, during this long career with being an attorney, did you see any changes in the system or the peers or anything with regard to women in the law industry? What was it like when you started?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest21:30
Well, you know, I’m an old now. It was 1984. It’s hard to believe it was 1984. It’s hard to believe it was 1984. There were a fair number of women in law school in 1984, actually. But not many women judges okay in 1984. So that was where I think many of us really felt it being in the courtroom, being mistaken for non-lawyers, sitting until the end of the dock, when the judge would finally look at you and go little lady, I didn’t realize you were a lawyer.
22:02
I’m sorry, we’ll call your case now. That wasn’t in Fayette County. That wasn’t in Fayette County, that was out in the state. So women judges is where we, I think, have made tremendous progress.
David LyonsHost22:16
I might be wrong, but here in Fayette County it’s kind of an overwhelming number?
Wendy LyonsHost22:20
Yeah, there’s quite a few of them.
David LyonsHost22:23
There’s been a coup d’etat. And I ask that when people because if you talk to women in the law enforcement industry even as early back as the 80s and 90s, you’d be surprised in places the real difficulty that they have and there still is some. I’m not going to say that it’s round at the corner, but there’s people I work with now that when they came on with certain agencies they were told the first day you understand, I didn’t want you here and the fight starts from there. So I think it’s improved, but still got some work to do. Still got some work to do, especially with women in roles of authority or what we perceive as authority for sure Leadership.
23:01
That’s it, that’s it for sure. Well, good deal. Where do we go from there? So you got the keys.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest23:06
So I got appointed and it was an adjustment obviously. I mean I really enjoyed it. But being second in command is not the same as being in command.
David LyonsHost23:18
True.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest23:19
And I wasn’t Ray Larson and so I felt that I should try to do it the way— I wanted to do it. It wasn’t better, it was just different, and so we made some changes. We never left the critical mission you know that everybody gets treated the same under the same circumstances and so the critical mission always stayed the same, but the way that we did it changed a little bit, and those are some of the things that I think I’m most proud of during the time that I was there.
David LyonsHost23:51
Yeah, true. What are some of the programs that stick out in your mind before you were appointed and through your appointment that the office completed?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest23:59
Well, when Ray was Commonwealth’s attorney, this is perfectly understandable. This is no criticism of him, because when we first started we had when I very first started in that office, I think we maybe had eight attorneys and so everybody had to do everything you had to do thefts and rapes and homicides, thefts and child sexual abuse and homicides and I can tell you that not every prosecutor is cut out to do sexual assault, domestic violence and child sexual abuse. They’re just not.
David LyonsHost24:33
Right.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:34
And those victims deserve a prosecutor. That’s cut out for the job, if one is available. I mean, in smaller offices you can’t do that, but we could do it. And so we started a special victims unit and we had—you volunteered for those positions and we had you volunteered for those positions. You weren’t told or, as my staff said, you weren’t voluntold to be on that team.
24:56
You volunteered for that and we had and some of them are still there but great people that wanted to do that job, whose heart was in representing domestic violence victims, sexual assault victims and children. And these are very difficult cases. They are emotional, they are very time-consuming and sometimes the results are not great. So you just really have to have the heart and the stomach for it, and so to me, that was one of the really important things that we did, because victims deserve that. They deserve that and had a great team. It ended up being sexual assault, domestic violence, child sexual abuse and elder abuse physical elder abuse not fraudulent elder abuse, but physical elder abuse.
David LyonsHost25:51
Yeah, we have a mutual friend in common, matt Brotherton.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest25:53
And.
David LyonsHost25:53
Matt when we used to work together when I was still on up in investigations, used to say that sometimes the conviction may not be as important as the conviction of the people working with the victim and of course I’ve got so much respect for Matt that it goes through the roof but the idea that we can’t always control that end result. But what we can control is how close we can get to those people and offer them support and maybe look at what it takes to move their life past that in the wake of all of that.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest26:21
What a great thing.
David LyonsHost26:22
Victim advocacy programs are the best thing since sliced bread.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest26:25
Yes, Well, Ray started our victims advocacy program. In fact, we hate to keep going back to Ray, but he did so many good things. He got called to the Rose Garden at the White House for his work in victim advocacy and vehicular homicides. That was his other huge thing vehicular homicides.
David LyonsHost26:44
That’s true. Yeah, I remember that too.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest26:46
But for me that was a change that I made. It was different than Ray had done, it just different.
David LyonsHost26:52
But it makes sense because I’d say that on the defense team too, the same thing would apply. Some defense attorneys would probably have a stronger lean on certain types of cases and get behind them. And it was the same thing in the police department. Is that different people? What they could do? I mean, for example, that people over in auto theft would run circles around me. Uh, it just because of the interest in it and the knowledge on it. So, and you’re right, I think the victims deserve the best that we can give them on that.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest27:19
So what a what a good thing and then let’s see, I like the other thing, a couple other things that I did that I thought were were really helpful was, um, so you know, we talk about the way that things have changed a lot during time, and so I got elected in 2018 and in 2020, george Floyd was murdered, okay, so part of my tenure was during COVID and and also just during a time when there was a lot of unrest here in Fayette County, even, I mean, and in Jefferson County and all over the country, but we felt it here and a lot of something that I had been working on I’d actually been working on it, but we actually pushed through on and that was matters regarding what we call Giglio.
28:15
Matters regarding what we call Giglio, which is a way of making sure that prosecutors tell defense attorneys about problems regarding particular officers. Okay, and I say the word problems, it’s really more about reports or complaints that have been filed against an officer regarding certain types of things that might be related to following policy, dishonesty, things like that. It’s not because they drove their car home or out of county or something, but significant things that should be disclosed. Let me just step back and say I have the greatest respect for law enforcement. I wouldn’t have done this work all these years if I didn’t. But just like prosecutors, the police are people too 100%.
28:59
And so when someone does something that calls their integrity into question and it might have a bearing on their testimony, we need to tell that that’s not my position. That’s the position of the United States Supreme Court and the Kentucky Supreme Court, and so we established a very clear guidelines about contacting the police department and making a written request for that information and turning it over when it when it came.
29:31
It was a heavy lift, um, but the police department was completely on board, um, they wanted that, they wanted to to show the good work that they do, sure, and wanted to. If there was a problem, they wanted to know where it was and uh, so that was. Um, I’m proud of that, I do, I feel that I’m I don’t like the fact that that exists. Yes, I would like for us to have meticulous prosecution and prosecutors and law enforcement, but, like I said, we’re people that’s.
David LyonsHost30:06
that’s an understatement. And in george floyd was probably the uh, the largest watershed movement in the history of American policing. We’re in the middle of a historic period right now. I call it a renaissance, and those are not always pretty. And one thing I’ve, because I travel a lot, and one thing I saw over the last few years too, is that more prosecutor’s offices did that, yes, where, instead of waiting, you had to initiate.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest30:31
We, we are on the right, we’re doing it, we are forward thinking, we are we’re doing the right, the work and in the end it makes the industry better.
David LyonsHost30:40
I’m a hundred percent, because it’s diamonds are made from pressure and then I’m a big believer that what’s going on right now is that we’re we’re exorcising some of the last demons out of the industry.
30:51
And I don’t mean demons, as in individuals although I met a couple that might be but what I’m getting at is that we’re pushing. I think when we start doing those things and they’re painful, I can tell you for police body-worn cameras, wearing them is painful because you have that first integrity thing and then you learn that it actually benefits you in your job. That’s the thing with body-worn cameras.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest31:12
That happened during my term too.
David LyonsHost31:14
Exactly, Body-worn cameras Once they get past that and they start getting the wins. They get that, but there’s that initial thing of like, well, I should just be believed. And then we’re back to reality.
Wendy LyonsHost31:24
Well, we can’t just be believed. Well, I think there’s that level of accountability as well 100%, and it helps because not only is it always geared towards the officer doing something wrong, but if you have a suspect that’s being arrested, who’s saying one thing that it’s nice to have that camera to justify the truth, I mean you can’t lie with the camera there’s no truth. So, regardless of whoever is at fault or not at fault, or being justified or not justified, it benefits both sides.
David LyonsHost31:52
That’s it it. Does we all win from that? Yes, so I think that that was a good thing. And I think that I’m the first one who will say the industry continues to need work, and that’s how we work on it. We don’t just say transparency, we make it transparent and big deal. I’d be very proud of that too.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest32:08
Thank you, very commendable Thank you Because.
David LyonsHost32:10
I love the industry enough that I want to see it get better.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest32:12
Yeah, we all do.
David LyonsHost32:13
I mean I’m passionately in love with it. What else you got?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest32:17
Well, those are just to me.
Wendy LyonsHost32:19
So there’s lots of other things, you know there’s lots more to it, of course.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest32:22
Those are the highlights for me. I will say that we really again different than Ray, not better, but really, you know broadened our crime victims collaboration with all of the agencies. Our office had always hosted a crime victims rights week and I brought in that to have everyone be able to highlight their program and recognize their victims, and that was the police department, sheriff department, county attorney’s office and the US attorney’s office, because these are all agencies that we work with and each of them have spectacular victims programs.
33:06
The sheriff has Amanda’s Center and has done a lot for domestic violence victims. The police have really stepped up their victims advocacy. They have bilingual advocates on board, which I think is super helpful in this community, and, of course, the US Attorney’s Office and the police a county attorney, so that was great because we got to include everybody in that. And, like I said, not better, just different.
David LyonsHost33:37
I love it. And again, less likely somebody will fall through the cracks.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest33:42
Exactly.
David LyonsHost33:43
And Sheriff Witt, she has done, she’s driven that train on the domestic violence really well for a long, long time.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest33:50
Right. And then one other thing I’m reminded of is just community involvement. So when I became Commonwealth’s attorney, one of the things I said is you have to be involved in something in the community. We feel like we do community work because that’s what our work is right. We show up every day and we represent the community and public safety. But it was more like I don’t care what it is, but it’s got to be something extra. So people did all kinds of things. Some people worked with Crimestoppers, some people did reading programs. One of my prosecutors did coach the girls on the run.
David LyonsHost34:28
Oh, wow.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest34:28
I mean, because that’s a I mean things that you can do to encourage youth discourages other bad behaviors.
David LyonsHost34:36
Yeah, we won’t grab a hope. Maybe another night we’ll come back. That’s a huge thing that I’m pretty passionate about too. But you nailed it I mean, you did summarize it that if we’re going to fix some of the violent problems we have right now, we got to go upstream.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest34:46
I mean, that’s a little, you know, I know that’s a thing. And so one of the things I did was, out of my own pocket and my husband’s pocket, we bought really nice superhero costumes. I mean, did you know that, Locke, you could spend $300 on a? The really expensive one was Thor.
David LyonsHost35:11
The.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest35:11
Thor costume was super expensive, but they looked so good and so I had my prosecutors all decked out Again. They had to kind of, it was a voluntold sort of deal. But we had Batman, we had Wonder Woman, we had a police officer that was the Black Panther. We had the Captain America woman, spider-man. They love Spider-Man and we would go to community, we, they, we and they would go to community events and children loved it. Now I know that Wonder Woman is not a prosecutor and neither is Spider-Man a prosecutor, but they are forces for good.
David LyonsHost35:55
Yes.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest35:56
And I just really felt that we all need forces for good in our lives, something that we can believe in and depend on.
David LyonsHost36:05
Right.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest36:06
And the prosecutors, I think, enjoyed it every bit as much as the children did. So that was goofy, I know, but something that I was really proud of, and I looked on Kimberly Henderson Baird’s website recently and I saw that they’re still doing it Good good yeah, because you can come off looking like a hammer too. You can and it takes. Let me tell you what. It takes a lot, because you know, spider-man is a shorter man, um, and he has to wear leotards.
David LyonsHost36:35
Yeah, there’s a comfort level I wouldn’t have.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest36:36
So I’m thinking of you, david, I think they’re wanting you to come on board because we could always use a backup spider-man. Yeah, and people people.
David LyonsHost36:45
People would need therapy. Probably if they, if it would be something they couldn’t unsee without medication and hypnosis. Probably too. So probably we’ll pass on.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest36:54
You know what the children would love it. They would love you, and they’re not looking at anything else but that mask. Yeah, too funny so those are just some of the things that I did as Commonwealth’s attorney that I was proud of, yeah.
Wendy LyonsHost37:13
And it’s nice, like you say, for them to see you all not in that role of always just prosecuting, or always. You know a lot of people, don’t? They think of that as a bad or a negative light. You’re being prosecuted, and so it’s nice to see that whole department coming out and doing something for children.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest37:26
This is our community too.
David LyonsHost37:28
I mean we don’t just work here, we live here.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest37:32
And we’re going into communities. Many of these communities are communities that are experiencing violence, and we want them to know that we’re with them. I mean, we want to help, we want them to live in a place where they feel safe too.
David LyonsHost37:47
That’s the whole name of the game, right, the whole name of the game, for sure. So how long total were you in that?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest37:54
I was the Commonwealth’s attorney for six years.
David LyonsHost37:57
Six years, good deal. And so when did you depart?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest38:00
I retired in 2022. And, just as Ray had done for me, I wrote a letter to our governor, andy Beshehear, and asked him to appoint my first assistant, who’s Kimberly Henderson Baird. And he did, and Kimberly became the second woman Commonwealth’s attorney and the first black woman Commonwealth’s attorney in the Commonwealth.
David LyonsHost38:21
Wonderful person too, by the way, wonderful person a great prosecutor.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest38:24
She also has a passion for child sexual abuse cases and I’m just really very proud of her and I’m glad for this community. She is running on a post.
David LyonsHost38:36
Yeah, I have no doubt about that and she has done great. I mean, I can’t see any burps or anything from now that I’m a consumer of police and justice services.
Wendy LyonsHost38:45
Right, that’s right.
David LyonsHost38:47
We start consuming them too.
Wendy LyonsHost38:49
Well, I have to ask, ask, what brought you to that point to decide to, to finally retire. What do you? Was it just kind of it was approaching that? Or did you wake up one day and say, you know, I just kind of want to relax now?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest39:01
but well, I’m not relaxing. Um, I want to do um well, two things. One, you know, um kimberly’s been in that office for my gosh over 27 years, going on 30. She’s to a point she could retire. What a tragedy that would have been for her to retire and not become a lost attorney right.
39:22
What a tragedy it would have been for our commonwealth. You know this is a discussion for even another time and not necessarily on this show, but there is a huge lack of people of color in district attorney’s offices as elected district attorneys and prosecutors, and to me that’s important.
David LyonsHost39:44
It is.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest39:45
It’s important and so it would have been a tragedy for me to hang on in that job and Kimberly to retire when she has all the skills and to be Commonwealth’s attorney. So that was one of my motivators, and then the other one is that there’s just some other things that I wanted to do. I’m from Oklahoma. That’s where I was born, that’s where my parents grew up, that’s where my heart born, that’s where my parents grew up, that’s where my heart is, and I’m a citizen of the Osage Nation. That’s where our nation is and I wanted to be there. I wanted to be more involved in tribal government and affairs and to be more involved with my family, my extended family, who’s all still there. So you can’t do that when you’re working full time as a prosecutor, going to crime scenes at night, going to court still and doing all the other things that are required of a Commonwealth’s attorney.
Wendy LyonsHost40:41
So those things went into my decision to hey, you know there’s more to this story, so go find the next episode and listen.
David LyonsHost41:12
You know there’s more to this story, so go find the next episode and listen can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us 5 stars and a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends lock it down Judy.
Show Transcript : Part 2
14813096-untitled-episodeDone
Lou Anna Red CornGuest00:01
and in our museum there was a big one of the walls. There was this. You know they used to. You’ve seen them, these panoramic pictures of all the Indians lined up. It’s like three cameras and they put it all together. So they’ve got this big panorama of Osages, probably in the 19, 1920, maybe late 19, 19-teens, and there was a piece missing out of it. He can see that a section is gone out of the panel and he says, well, this is nice, but what was there? And she says the devil was standing there.
Wendy LyonsHost00:37
Warning the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police
Lou Anna Red CornGuest01:16
And then the other one is that you know there’s just some other things that I wanted to do. I’m from Oklahoma, that’s where I was born, that’s where my parents grew up, that’s where my heart is, and I’m a citizen of the Osage Nation. That’s where our nation is and I wanted to be there. I wanted to be more involved in tribal government and affairs and to be more involved with my family, my extended family, who’s all still there. So you can’t do that when you’re working full time as a prosecutor, going to crime scenes at night, going to court still and doing all the other things that are required of a Commonwealth attorney. So those things went into my decision to retire and I’m still doing a bunch of stuff. I’m doing a lot of training still for prosecutors.
David LyonsHost02:09
I would hope so.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest02:10
I am, and I’ve spent a year volunteering for our Osage Attorney General, doing some projects for him. That’s over now, and I’m teaching co-teaching a capital punishment class at the University of Kentucky College of Law. So I am, as I heard Professor Allison Conley say, I’m not retired, I’ve refired myself and just doing some new things.
David LyonsHost02:34
How fun. Well, that’s one thing I wanted to talk about too is because we can roll into you celebrating your heritage a lot A couple of times on the show. We’ve talked about on my side, my dad’s side of the family, the Irish heritage, to the point where I actually years ago drug Wendy in to do Irish dance with me, I did oh boy. Yeah, exactly, she did good. She had her own unique choreography. It didn’t match the rest of the troupe, but it was pretty entertaining too.
Wendy LyonsHost03:00
Well, you know, I like to stand out. It’s like a team of one.
David LyonsHost03:02
Yeah, we just called it an impromptu solo, and so I did my own moves and my own solos.
Wendy LyonsHost03:06
And when he says we got to get back to it.
David LyonsHost03:08
So I’ve always been big on that too and whatnot, and I think that I’d communicate with you a little bit. I travel a lot and whenever I’m out, specifically in Oklahoma, in the West, especially if I have to drive to the gig I’m going to all I can think of is the frontier, and not just the people that settled it, but the people that were there when it was getting settled.
03:33
I’ve spent some time at some of the cultural museums in Oklahoma and stuff like that, and on the heels of a fantastic movie that just recently came out that had tons of award nominations. Unfortunately, I don’t think it brought any home.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest03:47
It didn’t get any. No gold man went home with anyone related to that movie. But the Osage singers, the men singers, the women singers, performed because Washaji, a song for my people, was nominated for an Oscar.
Wendy LyonsHost04:04
Oh, wow, and the Osage.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest04:07
many Osage people performed that live at the Oscars and that was a huge win for us. Big time Huge win.
David LyonsHost04:12
Yeah, and the movie being Killers of the Flower Moon.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest04:15
Yes.
David LyonsHost04:16
And watching that again I’m pretty sure I was in Oklahoma when I watched it is start with, uh, uh, your recognition of your heritage. Uh, maybe when you, when, that really grabbed you I don’t know how old you were when they came or what the influences were what you do now. And then, uh, let’s, let’s, if you don’t mind, because I know you give presentations on it if we could talk about the, uh, the, the whole thing with the solved and unsolved murders during that time period that the, the killers of the flower moon compressed in there so, okay, well, um, well, thank you for asking, because this is really important stuff to me.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest04:51
Uh, well, in terms of you know, my heritage, I mean, this is just what I was born into. So, um, you know, that’s it’s been a part of my life since I was born, um, even though when I was a child, we moved away from pwhuska. We always returned several times a year and that’s where all the family is and that’s where the, the nation is. So, you know, we were always a part of the culture. I’ve worked really hard my husband and I worked really hard to make sure that our children are part of the culture. Both of our boys dance during our inlonshka, which is our ceremonial dances. Let me just give you a like the you know Reader’s Digest version about the Osage Nation.
David LyonsHost05:32
Okay, Sure please.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest05:34
Okay, so we are sitting on ancestral lands of the Osage. They were in this land probably before 1300. Probably before 1300, kentucky, the Ohio Valley, mississippi, arkansas, all through that area, and then, probably around the 1300s, migrated to the Missouri area, which is where they were for a very long time and that’s where first contact came with Europeans.
06:03
During the time that we were in Missouri we entered into several I think seven treaties with the United States government and seceded millions of acres to finally end up on 150, I mean 1.5 million acres in Oklahoma, 1.5 million acres in Oklahoma.
06:28
When we went to Oklahoma we bought our reservation, which was something that if anybody watched the movie or read the book would realize was an important thing, because most reservations were trust lands given to Indian nations to live on. I mean, we all know the stories from history that the government removed many Indians from the southeast you know the five civilized tribes to Oklahoma and others. But Osage bought their reservation and owned it in fee, simple, which was important because when it came time to allot the land it made a big difference in how they could deal with the government on that. So we moved from Kansas our Kansas reservation to Oklahoma. We buy the reservation from the Cherokee Cherokee are already there because they’ve been removed and we fight allotment Now for people that don’t know what allotment is. When the government took native land and then put the Indians on reservations, they then divided up the reservations so that each person would own a piece of land. Remember, originally these reservations were owned communally Gotcha.
David LyonsHost07:45
Not a piece of land.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest07:45
So the originally these reservations were owned communally, not a piece of land. So the Osage fought allotment until 2006, right before Oklahoma statehood, and so in fighting allotment they were able to negotiate more land. So in the end every Osage that was on the Osage allotment roll ended up with about 650 acres of land, but the tribe continued to own what was underground. So we basically had an underground reservation and that’s where all the wealth came from and that’s kind of what the Okay 229, 2,229 Osages that were on the allotment roll and gave each of them something called a head right, and that head right entitled them to a part of the mineral estate, the oil and gas estate. That was underground and resulted in quarterly annuity payments to each individual. Whether you were a man, woman or child, anybody that was alive in 2006, 1906, when the role was created, got a piece. It was just really kind of interesting in a way, because women were on the same footing as men.
David LyonsHost09:19
I kind of grasped that in the movie.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest09:20
I mean women are on the same footing as men because they have the same amount of wealth that men had, and so did children, although children had guardians. So that’s kind of the basis of what that book is about. That book and then later the movie by Martin Scorsese, is about the murder of several Osages for their head rights, of several Osages for their head rights. And then you get some idea from the book in the movie about really the overall corruption that was going on, because after all the money came, congress decided that full bloods were incompetent.
10:02
So on the Osage allotment roll, the first I think it’s like 871 are full bloods and then the remaining people on the roll are mixed bloods or it’s not clear whether they had any degree of Osage blood in them but they got on the roll, so full bloods, were declared to be incompetent and had to have a guardian and there was probably good guardians, but there were many corrupt guardians who took their ward’s money or directed their wards where to spend their money or charge fees for doing things for their wards and just gave them a pittance.
David LyonsHost10:43
Yeah, imagine that A little bit of money floating around and we’d have a pittance. Yeah, imagine that A little bit of money floating around and we’d have corruption.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest10:47
It brings out the best in everybody.
David LyonsHost10:49
It does. It does for sure. Let’s talk about the murders to the degree that you can on that, because, again, I guess when you watch the movie it’s a long movie.
Wendy LyonsHost11:04
But when you get to it, you’re so captivated.
David LyonsHost11:06
Yeah, but when you’re watching it it’s compressed and probably a little bit of poetic license into it. It felt like it was prehistorically accurate, or at least they portrayed it that way. How many of those came back to Bad Guardians? And then what else was going on?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest11:21
Right? Well, let me just step them back. The movie is based on the book. The book is all historical fact. The book is fact.
11:30
The writer, david Grand, came to Osage gosh I can’t remember like 2011. He called my aunt, catherine, who was then the director of the Osage Tribal Museum. He had heard from someone else about this. He’d never I mean, he didn’t know anything about it but he’d heard about these murders. So she says, well, why don’t you just come down to Pawhuska? That’s where the nation is located and I can introduce you around and stuff.
11:54
So he comes down to the museum and in our museum there was a big one of the walls. There was this you know they used to. You’ve seen them these panoramic pictures of all the Indians lined up. It’s like three cameras and they put it all together. So they’ve got this big panorama of Osage. Is probably in the 19, 1920, maybe late 19-teens, and there was a piece missing out of it. He can see that a section has gone out of the panel and he says, well, this is nice, but what was there? And she says the devil was standing there. And he says, well, what do you mean? And she tells him that, then shares with him that this man who murdered all these people and was responsible for the death of a number of people was that in that panel of the picture, and so they she removed it out of the museum um, you know not the death he had no place.
12:56
No place there gotcha, so so that was what sparked grand to write the book. He spends gosh I don’t know five, six years researching it. I mean, he goes, he digs deep, writes the book, and the book is so compelling. Um, and so martin scorsese decided to make a movie out of it, and the rest is history for the Osage people.
David LyonsHost13:19
Yeah, well, for everybody.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:20
Yeah.
David LyonsHost13:21
Because I’ll have to get the book now too, for sure. But just from the opening part of it, most of that I never knew. Yes, I never knew about the oil boom, the influx of the economy out there and the wealth. I never knew that. Of course when we’re growing up, we get a different.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:37
History is written by the winners.
David LyonsHost13:39
Yes, exactly what a good way to put it. What a good way to put it. So back to the murders. Do you have information on the particular ones?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest13:48
unsolved, unsolved, oh well, you know, one other thing you don’t really get so much from the movie but you really get from the book is the involvement of the bureau of investigation, which was the agency that preceded the fbi. Okay, so this, the invest, uh, so for the people start dying, some suspicious, some appear to be poisoned, some are just outright murdered. I mean, we’re talking, you know, gunshot wounds. There’s no question, these are homicides. And you know local and state officials, whether they’re unable or won’t, nothing happens. I mean nothing happens for several years.
14:28
And so, in frustration, the tribe contacts, you know, through the channels, the federal contacts Washington and asks for someone to come and help us down here in the Osage. And that’s when the Bureau of Investigation stepped in. By the time the FBI got in there, the case was probably the early murders were years old. So they were going back and trying to recreate and look at. You’ve been there looking at cold cases, other people’s work, questions that weren’t asked, files that have gone missing. You know the things that make it really difficult to do investigations. Plus, we’re not, you know, we weren’t necessarily dealing with informants, but you know, some people just don’t want to talk because people are turning up dead.
David LyonsHost15:20
Yes, that’s a pretty good incentive to keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth closed. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest15:26
But the Bureau comes in and eventually three people were ultimately convicted. Now you all, I think probably about 24, 26 murders brought the Bureau in. At least 60 or more Osages died mysteriously, and maybe even more than that, Because we’re talking about an unreasonable percentage of Indians dying compared to the total population. So I think there’s, I know, strong belief that many more people were murdered than cases were ever prosecuted or ever investigated. I mean, this is the time of you know we didn’t have the coroner was whoever volunteered to be the coroner. Maybe it was a physician. This is before any of the modern things that we know today that happen in criminal investigations happen. You know, they pull together a coroner’s inquest and you pulled whoever happened to be standing there and they would be the ones to decide whether this was act of man or act of God.
David LyonsHost16:31
True. Take that and the lack of information highways that we have now. I mean, one of the things right now is that everything is digitally recorded and processed out. You’ve got nothing and we’re talking about big stretches of land where people just could disappear. I mean, just so there we go. And I agree with you that when you start looking at those numbers, just percentage-wise, the probability is not real high that most of those would be natural. And throw in the money. Yeah, there we go. The back to the money thing again too. So when they convicted those three, what kind of sentences did they get?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest17:10
Well, I think what helped in the convictions, david, was that several of the murders were all in one family. Okay, so remember I talked about head rights. That was where you got paid because of the murders were all in one family. So remember I talked about head rights. That was where you got paid because of the mineral estate. Well, those head rights could be passed on to your heirs. So if you died, your children or your spouse would get your head rights.
17:33
So the movie and the book focuses on one particular family. So the movie and the book focuses on one particular family, the family of Molly Burkhart, rita Smith, lizzie Q and Anna Brown. This is Lizzie Q is the mom, and the other three women are her daughters, and one of her daughters dies mysteriously in her early 20s. She’s married to a man named Bill Smith. Bill Smith then marries her sister, her sister’s home, along with Bill Smith, blows up, and then the other daughter, the third sister, a woman named Anna Brown, is shot in the head.
18:14
All of these head rights are all going to one woman, which is a woman named molly burkhart. That’s the fourth sister, and so the movie in the book focuses on on molly and her marriage to a man named ernest burkhart. In the end, ernest is one of the individuals that ends up getting convicted of his involvement in the murder. The other person that ends up getting convicted of his involvement in the murder, the other person that ends up getting convicted and it was probably the mastermind of the whole of that group of murders is the devil, the one that was in the panel Hale. He was the father or the uncle excuse me, the uncle of Ernest Burkhart and had a lot of control over his nephew and, I’m sure, had a role in his nephew marrying Molly.
19:05
And they portrayed that in the movie and they portrayed that in the movie, yeah, and so he was instrumental in getting a man by the name of John Ramsey to be involved in the other murder for which Hale got convicted, and that was a man named Henry Roanhorse or Henry Roan, who was also an Osage who was murdered. Hale had bought a life insurance policy on him so he would be able to gain from his death, and you know. So the three of them all got convicted. Ernest pled guilty, eventually, admitted his role in the murders and was sentenced to life, the other two. It’s an interesting story and it’s interesting to me at least as a lawyer, because it was a matter of jurisdiction.
20:01
Originally they prosecuted Hale and Ramsey in federal court because Henry Rohn had been killed on Osage land. It was allotted land that had never been sold and the judge dismissed it, saying there was no jurisdiction. You know there’s certain rules about where you have to have a trial and they have to have federal jurisdiction. It has to be on federal land or a federal crime, and so the judge dismissed it. So they tried to try them in state court. That never worked out and then eventually the United States Supreme Court said oh, said oh, no, there’s federal jurisdiction. So they went to trial. There was a hung jury. Turned out that jurors had been bribed. So no, no conviction no figure yeah, they went to trial.
20:48
it was a um conviction but it got reversed, so they went to trial again and ultimately both both Hale and Ramsey were convicted and I think I can’t remember 99 years. I think is what they ended up with. In the end everyone got paroled. Ernest ended up living the rest of his days in Oklahoma. I think Hale died in Arizona or somewhere and Molly, who was incompetent because she was a full-blood, ultimately became competent and lived out a few more years and remarried and had a good life. But the community was obviously permanently and forever impacted by those times because it was way more than just the ones that I’ve talked about today. I mean, there’s hardly any families that were not impacted by murder and, if not murder, by fraud and fear and everything else. So it’s a. I think the most Osages were pleased with the book and pleased with the movie, for mainly just because the story is told. I mean, you know that this is something that happened and people should know about it.
David LyonsHost22:07
No, I agree, it’s powerful stuff. What lessons would be for somebody that’s in a prosecutorial business? Are there any lessons taken forward from that that you’ve found in that?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest22:20
Well, I don’t know so much has changed since that time.
David LyonsHost22:24
Sure.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest22:25
I have used David Grand’s book to talk about ethics. I mean, if you went back and looked at the book and read further about it, you would see how far we have come as a government and legally in terms of making sure that people are treated fairly, etc. There are certainly lessons about how to treat victims in the movie, because I mean it’s clear that the Indians were considered less than human in the way that they were being treated.
23:01
So I mean it’s hard for me to draw some real clear lessons because so much has changed in the way that we investigate and prosecute things, I think the more fundamental lessons are probably just have to be are related to knowledge and awareness of our past. I know sometimes it’s not popular to want to know about the wrongs that this country was built on, built on, but I think you pointed out yourself that, with law enforcement, that we want to have the best law enforcement and criminal justice system that we can have, and we do that by correcting mistakes and by widening our points of view and by understanding the ways of other people.
David LyonsHost23:59
There we go.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:00
You know, it’s not all the way that we think it is because everybody’s looking at it through a different lens.
David LyonsHost24:06
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s that whole thing of memorializing in the current memory, not so much to commiserate or to anything like that, but to me that’s how you protect from having what we’d call the predictable surprise.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:19
Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely.
David LyonsHost24:22
If you don’t look at that and then you have to share it, you have to distribute it and it has to be learned from. I wouldn’t say you could still have somebody slide off the ethical wagon and have ridiculous.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:33
Stuff happen somewhere. We’re just people, that’s it. We’re just people, that’s it of stuff happens somewhere. We’re just people, that’s it, we’re just people.
David LyonsHost24:36
That’s it, yeah, people, yeah, what it is. You’ve got to take the best thing in the world and add people and you’ll screw it up, right, but yeah, I think that’s a powerful thing Inside the now present day. You spend a lot of time going out to Oklahoma.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:48
Yes, correct.
David LyonsHost24:50
What’s life out there like?
Lou Anna Red CornGuest24:51
now of your listeners to come out and experience the Osage. Of course, since the book and since the movie, there’s a lot of interest out there. This is non-Osage and it’s not related to murder. But we also have a woman named Reed Drummond who’s the pioneer woman on the Food Network, and so we have many people travel to Pawhuska to go to her restaurant there, and we just opened a casino to Pawhuska to go to her restaurant there. Okay, and we just opened a casino in Pawhuska. So there is lots of stuff to do in the Osage.
25:25
This is where our nation is. This is where our tribal museum is. We’re just reopening our welcome center. We just bought Ted Turner’s ranch. It’s kind of a take land back program, so we bought back his ranch a couple years ago. So the Osage Nation for people that you know just no reason. People should understand this. But federal recognized Indian tribes are nations, they’re sovereign.
25:54
I mean in and of themselves. They have a trust relationship with the federal government that was established at the time that that land was taken, and so we have our own government. I mean, we have an elected chief, we have a Congress, we have a criminal justice system, we have an attorney general, we have trial judges, we have social services, we have Indian health, we have social services, we have Indian health and you know, with things like the Ted Turner Ranch and the farm.
26:36
But because finally we have the ability to define our own future, I mean it wasn’t until 2006 that we became actually sovereign, that there wasn’t the government telling us who we were. We got to elect and vote for ourselves who we are.
David LyonsHost26:53
Yeah, I think I’ve told you. When I travel too, I’ve always been fascinated when I meet tribal police officers because of the nuances of how that’s all managed.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest27:00
It’s very complicated.
David LyonsHost27:01
Super, super. Yeah, I try to pick their brains for hours and I can’t walk away with a clear understanding. But that whole part of what that’s like to work and the rules of engagement and disengagement and things like that Right, whether you’re dealing with native, non-natives, where it happens, jurisdictional issues.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest27:22
It’s complicated, but it’s okay because this is what we’ve created and we need to do it as best we can.
David LyonsHost27:28
I think it works. I’ve never met anybody that said it’s not working, that it’s not there. Now, one thing I do see there’s a lot of social media advocacy out there on American Indians period is there’s a lot of talk and I don’t know if you can speak to it or not about domestic violence on indigenous women or missing indigenous women.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest27:51
Do you have any data on that or anything? I do not, I don’t. Fortunately, it hasn’t been a huge issue for Osage. Okay, and I mean this is just me kind of anecdotally saying this, but you know, some of these Indian reservations are huge. I mean like so they’re very spaced out and not a lot of people, not a lot of resource, not a lot of resource. We’re, osage, are pretty fortunate. We have some good resource, not so much from the oil, but we, you know, from the gaming, and so I think that a lot of that is in areas where there is lack of resource, lack of law enforcement Probably. But yes, women, yes, native women are disproportionately victims of domestic violence as to other non-Native women.
Wendy LyonsHost28:50
Well, Luanna, thank you so much for coming and sharing with us about being a Commonwealth attorney and your Osage Nation. It was so interesting to watch the movie and then to have somebody sitting right here with us.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest29:05
Well, thank you, I really appreciate that and thank you for watching the movie it was really good.
Wendy LyonsHost29:10
I do encourage our listeners. If you haven’t seen Killers of the Flower Moon, it is long, like David said, but it was so worth it. I, I was. I didn’t get up. Usually I get up a few times in a movie. I didn’t get up not one time.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest29:24
It was very captivating well it’s a story worth watching and, uh, and it’s a story that you should watch yeah, absolutely.
David LyonsHost29:31
And again, thanks for coming too and it’s like a reunion from from back in the day too and and for sharing that, that, uh, personal perspective on that piece of history. That, again, we don’t always get told.
Wendy LyonsHost29:42
And for your work as Commonwealth attorney.
Lou Anna Red CornGuest29:44
Thank you all, both very much.
David LyonsHost29:49
The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of murder police podcast swag. We are also on facebook, instagram and youtube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the murder police podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review. On Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts, make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends. Lock it down Judy!
