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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, “one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NOW A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE

“A shocking whodunit…What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?”—USA Today

“A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery.” —The Boston Globe

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!

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For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression.
Highlighted by 10,158 Kindle readers
Only in the mid-nineteenth century, after the growth of industrial cities and a rash of urban riots—after dread of the so-called dangerous classes surpassed dread of the state—did police departments emerge in the United States.
Highlighted by 9,155 Kindle readers
This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.
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Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas.
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President Theodore Roosevelt had created the bureau in 1908, hoping to fill the void in federal law enforcement.
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine,NPR, Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub, and Slate

“Disturbing and riveting. . . . Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true. . . . It will sear your soul.”
—Dave Eggers, New York Times BookReview

“A marvel of detective-like research and narrative verve.”
—Financial Times

“A shocking whodunit. . . . What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?”
—USA Today

“A master of the detective form. . . . Killers is something rather deep and not easily forgotten.”
—Wall St. Journal

“The best book of the year so far.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon is unsurprisingly extraordinary."
—Time

“A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery. . . . Contained within Grann's mesmerizing storytelling lies something more than a brisk, satisfying read. Killers of the Flower Moon offers up the Osage killings as emblematic of America's relationship with its indigenous peoples and the 'culture of killing' that has forever marred that tie.”
—The Boston Globe

“[C]lose to impeccable. It's confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet. . . . The crime story it tells is appalling, and stocked with authentic heroes and villains. It will make you cringe at man's inhumanity to man.”
—The New York Times

About the Author

DAVID GRANN is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON was a finalist for The National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of THE WHITE DARKNESS and the collection THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. Grann’s storytelling has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Vanishing

In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the “gods had left confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

On May 24, 1921, Mollie Burkhart, a resident of the Osage settlement town of Gray Horse, Oklahoma, began to fear that something had happened to one of her three sisters, Anna Brown. Thirty-four, and less than a year older than Mollie, Anna had disappeared three days earlier. She had often gone on “sprees,” as her family disparagingly called them: dancing and drinking with friends until dawn. But this time one night had passed, and then another, and Anna had not shown up on Mollie’s front stoop as she usually did, with her long black hair slightly frayed and her dark eyes shining like glass. When Anna came inside, she liked to slip off her shoes, and Mollie missed the comforting sound of her moving, unhurried, through the house. Instead, there was a silence as still as the plains.

Mollie had already lost her sister Minnie nearly three years earlier. Her death had come with shocking speed, and though doctors had attributed it to a “peculiar wasting illness,” Mollie harbored doubts: Minnie had been only twenty-seven and had always been in perfect health.

Like their parents, Mollie and her sisters had their names inscribed on the Osage Roll, which meant that they were among the registered members of the tribe. It also meant that they possessed a fortune. In the early 1870s, the Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, only to discover, decades later, that this land was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States. To obtain that oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. In the early twentieth century, each person on the tribal roll began receiving a quarterly check. The amount was initially for only a few dollars, but over time, as more oil was tapped, the dividends grew into the hundreds, then the thousands. And virtually every year the payments increased, like the prairie creeks that joined to form the wide, muddy Cimarron, until the tribe members had collectively accumulated millions and millions of dollars. (In 1923 alone, the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.) The Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world. “Lo and behold!” the New York weekly Outlook exclaimed. “The Indian, instead of starving to death . . . enjoys a steady income that turns bankers green with envy.”

The public had become transfixed by the tribe’s prosperity, which belied the images of American Indians that could be traced back to the brutal first contact with whites—the original sin from which the country was born. Reporters tantalized their readers with stories about the “plutocratic Osage” and the “red millionaires,” with their brick-and-terra-cotta mansions and chandeliers, with their diamond rings and fur coats and chauffeured cars. One writer marveled at Osage girls who attended the best boarding schools and wore sumptuous French clothing, as if “une très jolie demoiselle of the Paris boulevards had inadvertently strayed into this little reservation town.”

At the same time, reporters seized upon any signs of the traditional Osage way of life, which seemed to stir in the public’s mind visions of “wild” Indians. One article noted a “circle of expensive automobiles surrounding an open campfire, where the bronzed and brightly blanketed owners are cooking meat in the primitive style.” Another documented a party of Osage arriving at a ceremony for their dances in a private airplane—a scene that “outrivals the ability of the fictionist to portray.” Summing up the public’s attitude toward the Osage, the Washington Star said, “That lament, ‘Lo the poor Indian,’ might appropriately be revised to, ‘Ho, the rich redskin.’ ”

Gray Horse was one of the reservation’s older settlements. These outposts—including Fairfax, a larger, neighboring town of nearly fifteen hundred people, and Pawhuska, the Osage capital, with a population of more than six thousand—seemed like fevered visions. The streets clamored with cowboys, fortune seekers, bootleggers, soothsayers, medicine men, outlaws, U.S. marshals, New York financiers, and oil magnates. Automobiles sped along paved horse trails, the smell of fuel overwhelming the scent of the prairies. Juries of crows peered down from telephone wires. There were restaurants, advertised as cafés, and opera houses and polo grounds.

Although Mollie didn’t spend as lavishly as some of her neighbors did, she had built a beautiful, rambling wooden house in Gray Horse near her family’s old lodge of lashed poles, woven mats, and bark. She owned several cars and had a staff of servants—the Indians’ pot-lickers, as many settlers derided these migrant workers. The servants were often black or Mexican, and in the early 1920s a visitor to the reservation expressed contempt at the sight of “even whites” performing “all the menial tasks about the house to which no Osage will stoop.”

Mollie was one of the last people to see Anna before she vanished. That day, May 21, Mollie had risen close to dawn, a habit ingrained from when her father used to pray every morning to the sun. She was accustomed to the chorus of meadowlarks and sandpipers and prairie chickens, now overlaid with the pock-pocking of drills pounding the earth. Unlike many of her friends, who shunned Osage clothing, Mollie wrapped an Indian blanket around her shoulders. She also didn’t style her hair in a flapper bob, and instead let her long, black hair flow over her back, revealing her striking face, with its high cheekbones and big brown eyes.

Her husband, Ernest Burkhart, rose with her. A twenty-eight-year-old white man, he had the stock handsomeness of an extra in a Western picture show: short brown hair, slate-blue eyes, square chin. Only his nose disturbed the portrait; it looked as if it had taken a barroom punch or two. Growing up in Texas, the son of a poor cotton farmer, he’d been enchanted by tales of the Osage Hills—that vestige of the American frontier where cowboys and Indians were said to still roam. In 1912, at nineteen, he’d packed a bag, like Huck Finn lighting out for the Territory, and gone to live with his uncle, a domineering cattleman named William K. Hale, in Fairfax. “He was not the kind of a man to ask you to do something—he told you,” Ernest once said of Hale, who became his surrogate father. Though Ernest mostly ran errands for Hale, he sometimes worked as a livery driver, which is how he met Mollie, chauffeuring her around town.

Ernest had a tendency to drink moonshine and play Indian stud poker with men of ill repute, but beneath his roughness there seemed to be a tenderness and a trace of insecurity, and Mollie fell in love with him. Born a speaker of Osage, Mollie had learned some English in school; nevertheless, Ernest studied her native language until he could talk with her in it. She suffered from diabetes, and he cared for her when her joints ached and her stomach burned with hunger. After he heard that another man had affections for her, he muttered that he couldn’t live without her.

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

By 1921, they had a daughter, Elizabeth, who was two years old, and a son, James, who was eight months old and nicknamed Cowboy. Mollie also tended to her aging mother, Lizzie, who had moved in to the house after Mollie’s father passed away. Because of Mollie’s diabetes, Lizzie once feared that she would die young, and beseeched her other children to take care of her. In truth, Mollie was the one who looked after all of them.

May 21 was supposed to be a delightful day for Mollie. She liked to entertain guests and was hosting a small luncheon. After getting dressed, she fed the children. Cowboy often had terrible earaches, and she’d blow in his ears until he stopped crying. Mollie kept her home in meticulous order, and she issued instructions to her servants as the house stirred, everyone bustling about—except Lizzie, who’d fallen ill and stayed in bed. Mollie asked Ernest to ring Anna and see if, for a change, she’d come over to help tend to Lizzie. Anna, as the oldest child in the family, held a special status in their mother’s eyes, and even though Mollie took care of Lizzie, Anna, in spite of her tempestuousness, was the one her mother spoiled.

When Ernest told Anna that her mama needed her, she promised to take a taxi straight there, and she arrived shortly afterward, dressed in bright red shoes, a skirt, and a matching Indian blanket; in her hand was an alligator purse. Before entering, she’d hastily combed her windblown hair and powdered her face. Mollie noticed, however, that her gait was unsteady, her words slurred. Anna was drunk.

Mollie couldn’t hide her displeasure. Some of the guests had already arrived. Among them were two of Ernest’s brothers, Bryan and Horace Burkhart, who, lured by black gold, had moved to Osage County, often assisting Hale on his ranch. One of Ernest’s aunts, who spewed racist notions about Indians, was also visiting, and the last thing Mollie needed was for Anna to stir up the old goat.

Anna slipped off her shoes and began to make a scene. She took a flask from her bag and opened it, releasing the pungent smell of bootleg whiskey. Insisting that she needed to drain the flask before the authorities caught her—it was a year into nationwide Prohibition—she offered the guests a swig of what she called the best white mule.

Mollie knew that Anna had been very troubled of late. She’d recently divorced her husband, a settler named Oda Brown, who owned a livery business. Since then, she’d spent more and more time in the reservation’s tumultuous boomtowns, which had sprung up to house and entertain oil workers—towns like Whizbang, where, it was said, people whizzed all day and banged all night. “All the forces of dissipation and evil are here found,” a U.S. government official reported. “Gambling, drinking, adultery, lying, thieving, murdering.” Anna had become entranced by the places at the dark ends of the streets: the establishments that seemed proper on the exterior but contained hidden rooms filled with glittering bottles of moonshine. One of Anna’s servants later told the authorities that Anna was someone who drank a lot of whiskey and had “very loose morals with white men.”

At Mollie’s house, Anna began to flirt with Ernest’s younger brother, Bryan, whom she’d sometimes dated. He was more brooding than Ernest and had inscrutable yellow-flecked eyes and thinning hair that he wore slicked back. A lawman who knew him described him as a little roustabout. When Bryan asked one of the servants at the luncheon if she’d go to a dance with him that night, Anna said that if he fooled around with another woman, she’d kill him.

Meanwhile, Ernest’s aunt was muttering, loud enough for all to hear, about how mortified she was that her nephew had married a redskin. It was easy for Mollie to subtly strike back because as one of the servants attending to the aunt was white—a blunt reminder of the town’s social order.

Anna continued raising Cain. She fought with the guests, fought with her mother, fought with Mollie. “She was drinking and quarreling,” a servant later told authorities. “I couldn’t understand her language, but they were quarreling.” The servant added, “They had an awful time with Anna, and I was afraid.”

That evening, Mollie planned to look after her mother, while Ernest took the guests into Fairfax, five miles to the northwest, to meet Hale and see Bringing Up Father, a touring musical about a poor Irish immigrant who wins a million-dollar sweepstakes and struggles to assimilate into high society. Bryan, who’d put on a cowboy hat, his catlike eyes peering out from under the brim, offered to drop Anna off at her house.

Before they left, Mollie washed Anna’s clothes, gave her some food to eat, and made sure that she’d sobered up enough that Mollie could glimpse her sister as her usual self, bright and charming. They lingered together, sharing a moment of calm and reconciliation. Then Anna said good-bye, a gold filling flashing through her smile.

With each passing night, Mollie grew more anxious. Bryan insisted that he’d taken Anna straight home and dropped her off before heading to the show. After the third night, Mollie, in her quiet but forceful way, pressed everyone into action. She dispatched Ernest to check on Anna’s house. Ernest jiggled the knob to her front door—it was locked. From the window, the rooms inside appeared dark and deserted.

Ernest stood there alone in the heat. A few days earlier, a cool rain shower had dusted the earth, but afterward the sun’s rays beat down mercilessly through the blackjack trees. This time of year, heat blurred the prairies and made the tall grass creak underfoot. In the distance, through the shimmering light, one could see the skeletal frames of derricks.

Anna’s head servant, who lived next door, came out, and Ernest asked her, “Do you know where Anna is?”

Before the shower, the servant said, she’d stopped by Anna’s house to close any open windows. “I thought the rain would blow in,” she explained. But the door was locked, and there was no sign of Anna. She was gone.

News of her absence coursed through the boomtowns, traveling from porch to porch, from store to store. Fueling the unease were reports that another Osage, Charles Whitehorn, had vanished a week before Anna had. Genial and witty, the thirty-year-old Whitehorn was married to a woman who was part white, part Cheyenne. A local newspaper noted that he was “popular among both the whites and the members of his own tribe.” On May 14, he’d left his home, in the southwestern part of the reservation, for Pawhuska. He never returned.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (April 3, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307742482
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307742483
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1090L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.91 x 7.97 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Native American History (Books)
- #6 in Murder & Mayhem True Accounts
- #10 in United States History (Books)

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DAVID GRANN is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books "The Wager," "The Lost City of Z," and "Killers of the Flower Moon," which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of "The White Darkness" and the collection "The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession." His book "Killers of the Flower Moon" was recently adapted into a film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro. Several of his other stories, including "The Lost City of Z" and "Old Man and the Gun," have also been adapted into major motion pictures. His investigative reporting and storytelling have garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award and an Edgar Allan Poe Award.

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Killers of the Flower Moon: A Gripping Tale of Injustice and Betrayal

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2023

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David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon" is an enthralling masterpiece that masterfully combines true crime and history to uncover a chilling and deeply disturbing chapter of American history. This impeccably researched and gripping narrative shines a light on a forgotten era and exposes a shocking conspiracy that will leave readers spellbound.

Set in the early 20th century, the book revolves around the Osage Indian Nation, a prosperous tribe whose lands were discovered to be rich in oil. This sudden wealth attracted greed and ultimately led to a series of brutal murders targeting the Osage people. As the body count rises, the fledgling FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, is called in to investigate the mysterious and heinous crimes.

Grann's meticulous attention to detail is evident throughout the book. He weaves together a tapestry of historical records, personal testimonies, and investigative journalism, seamlessly merging past and present to reconstruct the events of that dark period. His prose is both eloquent and accessible, making even the most complex aspects of the story easily digestible.

One of the book's greatest strengths lies in its exploration of the characters involved. Grann presents a cast of individuals whose lives are intricately connected, showcasing the stark contrast between the oppressed Osage and the ruthless killers driven by greed and power. The author skillfully captures the fear and paranoia that consumed the Osage community as they grappled with an unknown enemy within their midst.

The narrative unfolds like a meticulously constructed puzzle, with each revelation more shocking than the last. Grann's ability to maintain a sense of suspense and tension throughout the book is truly commendable. From the chilling accounts of the crimes to the intricate web of corruption and cover-ups, every page brims with intrigue and a sense of urgency.

Moreover, "Killers of the Flower Moon" serves as a poignant commentary on the systemic racism and prejudice that plagued America during this time. The author deftly exposes the deep-rooted injustices and the devaluation of Native American lives that allowed the perpetrators to act with impunity. It serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggles faced by marginalized communities and the importance of seeking justice, no matter how long ago the crimes were committed.

In conclusion, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a tour de force that seamlessly combines true crime, historical investigation, and social commentary. David Grann's vivid storytelling and impeccable research make this book an absolute must-read for fans of true crime, history enthusiasts, and anyone interested in exploring the darker corners of America's past. Prepare to be captivated, outraged, and ultimately enlightened by this chilling and poignant tale of injustice and betrayal.

78 people found this helpful

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ReadingOnTheBrink

"You can't obliterate history." - David Grann, Vanity Fair Oct '23

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024

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David Grann has brought THE spotlight (and my attention) to one of the blackest periods in US History - The Reign of Terror and The Osage Murders in Killers of the Flower Moon, and garnered a worthy 5✨️star rating in the process. His non-fiction exposé reads more like a general fiction or mystery novel, as Grann writes with sincere emotion, both haunting and heartbreaking, creating a complete page-turner. While most U.S. History textbooks gloss over the darker periods in America's past, providing more statistics than personal accounts, Grann's thorough research and "obligation... to factually record our past," begs us to start the hard conversations about our country's negative history in order to hopefully learn from it.

Originally 4.5🌟 Stars rounded to 5, as I did find it hard to follow each and every name. But then I realized that THAT was one of the major points we ALL tend to gloss over... just HOW MANY LIVES were truly affected by the racism, greed, and unscrupulous surrounding the Osage, especially during the 1920's and 30's. I also wanted to credit Grann with seamlessly integrating the "birth" of the FBI into his narrative, creating yet another layer of intricacy and information in the novel.

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Gary Carden

What is most disquieting about the crimes in Killers of the Flower Moon is the awesome extent of corruption that is revealed in

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2017

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Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
New York: Doubleday
$28.95 - 339 pages

“The whites have bunched us up down here in the backwoods,
the roughest part of the United States, thinking ‘we will drive these
Indians down to where there is a big pile of rock and put them there
in that corner.’” Now that pile of rock has turned out to be worth millions
of dollars; now everybody wants to get in here and get some of the money.”
--Osage Chief Bacon Rind.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon is the fact that despite the author’s painstaking research, and his marvelous use of period photographs and documents, this factual account of historic events attending “The Osage Murders” contains the atmospheric suspense and tension that is normally associated with a classic murder mystery. In fact, Grann has written a murder mystery - One that asks who methodically killed hundreds of Osage Indians during a four-year reign of terror (1920-24). Osage history reveals the tragic details of how and why.

Forced to move from Kansas to Oklahoma, the Osage tribe seemed to be destined to lives of abject poverty when they suddenly found itself catapulted into a world of excessive wealth. Oil is discovered on tribal land. Suddenly, every member of the tribe is potentially wealthy. In an attempt to control the chaos that ensued, the federal government created a document called a “headright” which gave each Osage household legal rights to the oil on their land. After a period of uncontrolled spending in which members of the Osage tribe acquired mansions and fleets of automobiles, the government attempted to control the excessive spending by establishing a “guardian system” which assigned a “legal guardian” to each Osage family.

This “guardian” (usually a white banker, businessmen or “civic-minded citizen” was given the power to approve or deny all expenditures for the Osage tribal member (who had been judged to be “incompetent”) by the government. The system was badly flawed, and many of the guardians used their position to embezzle huge sums of money. In time, the guardian documents became bargaining chips in investing in business ventures. Hundreds of guardians used their position as a means of acting as a “middle-man” who would purchase items on behalf of Osage tribal members. The guardian would then sell the item to the Osage for an inflated price. For example, guardians could purchase automobiles on behalf of the Osage tribal member for $250 and then sell them to the Osage member that they represented for $2,500.

As the wealth of the Osage grew, so did the schemes for exploiting the tribe. Hundreds of criminals were drawn to the region with schemes designed to acquire a portion of Osage wealth. Many of these new arrivals openly stated that they had come to Oklahoma “to marry an Osage squaw.”
It was a method that frequently succeeded.

However, some of these opportunists sought a more direct method: murder. Author Grann’s research discovers one individual, William Hale who had arranged for the murder of 24 members of the Osage tribe. By soliciting the help of associates, Hale became one of the wealthiest men in Oklahoma. The astonishing catalogue of slaughter is carried out by men willing to resort to any means to accomplish Hale’s goal. Dozens of victims were poisoned with tainted moonshine and corrupt medical personnel performed autopsies that listed “acute alcoholism” as the cause of death. Others were dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head or between the eyes and the victim’s body was found in his new car on a remote road. One family was killed by a dynamite blast that demolished their home. Often, Hale simply paid an assassin to kill a designated victim. Then, Hale would frequently hire a second assassin to kill the first. In those instances in which murderers were apprehended, Hale bribed juries and law officials and if all else failed, he simply paid another killer.

Time and time again, government agents are assigned to investigate and in some instances, just as they uncover significant evidence, they are murdered and the evidence destroyed. One dedicated investigator called the FBI headquarters to report that he was on his way back with conclusive evidence against Hale. The next day his mutilated body is found near a railroad track. He had been murdered and thrown from the train. Another investigator’s body was found in another state, hundreds of miles away. What is most disquieting about the crimes in Killers of the Flower Moon is the awesome extent of corruption that is revealed in the book. State and government officials, medical personnel and lawyers - all are contaminated with the vice of greed. The corruption is so pervasive, the few moral and courageous individuals seem helplessly outnumbered.

However, there are two remarkable people in this gruesome tale. One is Molly Burkhart, and Osage who survived the systematic murder of her family...murders in which her husband was implicated. Molly was diagnosed as a diabetic by two doctors who poisoned her insulin injections, in an attempt to slowly kill her. Molly survived and divorced her husband. The second remarkable character is Tom White, the FBI agent that pursued Hale until he brought him to justice. Much of the credit of for this amazing piece of investigative work went to the Director of the newly-created FBI agency, Hubert Hoover who turned out to be a man dedicated to his own self-interest. Through much of the investigation conducted by Tom White, Hoover managed to take credit for White’s courageous work. Jealous of any publicity directed toward agents other than himself, Hoover invariably succeeded in manipulating the factual data to his advantage.

This is a remarkable work. Most noteworthy is Grann’s comprehensive account of the primitive nature of investigations in a time before forensics emerged. As a consequence, much of Tom White’s heroic pursuit of a villain who seemed to have the protection of most of Oklahoma’s judges, lawyers and public officials. However, Grann’s greatest achievement is the fact that he uncovers evidence that the total number of victims in the Osage murders exceeded the original 24 and possibly exceeded over 200.

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Todd Sterling

Detailed & Horrific

Reviewed in Canada on January 17, 2024

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When a friend recommended this book, I thought it was a true story but written as historical fiction. I was wrong, and I'm glad I was. I have never read anything by David Grann, but I plan to seek out more of his work. The story is well-laid out and researched, Grann's look behind the curtain is exhaustive. The horror perpetrated against the Osage people is a huge stain on the American government and history. Governments the world over are full of corruption today, but to see how evil and corrupt the American government (and many men) were 100 years ago is stunning. I would definitely recommend this book. I'm curious to watch the movie to see how much Hollywood watered down the horror and the truth.

4 people found this helpful

Danny Angulo

Muy buen libro de crimen real!

Reviewed in Mexico on September 11, 2023

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Me encantó el libro, si eres una persona que quiere leer en ingles este libre esta perfecto, sencillo e intrigante! Jamás habia visto oído de estos casos y leer este libro valió completamente la pena!

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aMazel

Aminzing story

Reviewed in France on May 6, 2024

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I was not aware of this machination... terrible....

almut kluxen

What a book!

Reviewed in Germany on May 4, 2024

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On a long flight I watched the film, but wanted to know more about this story. What a fascinating, well written book! Highly recommended!

eztigrrrr

Truth is stranger than fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2024

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What an incredible yet tragic account of the suffering of an entire people at the hands of murderous and unscrupulous "friends". It is such an important read in the context of American history, and the treatment of its Native American people.
I had read David Grann's book "The Wager" which was equally appalling and harrowing (but also excellent in its research and storytelling) and decided to read Killer of the Flower Moon as I'd seen adverts for the new film. I'm so glad I read this first and will now be interested to see how the story has been handled on screen.
I look forward to reading David Grann's next book, he really does have an incredible ability to bring history to life!

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