Welcome back to Part Four of my interview with legendary lawman George Wayman and his stories from Osage County. Jonathan Kwitny, the author of The Mullendore Murder, had just joined The Wall Street Journal when he and Sheriff Wayman first met. Kwitny was a front page reporter and Wayman was Sheriff of the largest county in Oklahoma.
The Dixie Mafia murders along with regular killings on the Osage Reservation and then the murder of the heir to a true ranching empire must have made New York look tame to the visiting reporter. Kwitney was the son of a doctor who received his B.A. in Journalism in 1962 from the University of Missouri. After completing a Master’s Degree he began his career as a reporter, building a reputation as an investigator into organized crime.
Well you might ask where I am going with all this Kwitny stuff so here’s the story. Other than Sheriff Wayman and a couple of other lawman I have not found anyone else who was personally interviewed by Mr. Kwitney while he was writing his book about E.C. Mullendore’s murder. Not Dale Kurtz- who was the first on the scene or any of the other cowboys on the Cross Bell Ranch at the time. None of the bankers or local businessmen who did business with E.C. Not the ranch staff or the ambulance driver who took the young rancher to the hospital that night. None of E.C.’s friends or family or Chub Anderson. With so little true investigation you tell me how he could have written an accurate report of what happened or was this just a guy from New York filling in the blanks of an Oklahoma tragedy to create a sensational book?
This week’s article will be short so that there will be space for these rarely seen photos of the sliding glass doors that Chub Anderson shot through the night that E.C. was murdered. Look closely all you armchair detectives and till next week I’ll see ya down the road…
looking at the picture of the crime seen i see footprints and the sliding glass door is opened but i also see headlights of a vehicle through the window of the crime scene.