Killers of the Flower Moon

In 1920s Oklahoma, oil royalties made members of the Osage Nation extraordinarily wealthy while federal guardianship rules and entrenched racism left many vulnerable to fraud and coercion. When Mollie Kyle’s sisters Anna Brown and Rita Smith, her mother Lizzie Q and other Osage people died violently or under suspicious circumstances, the losses revealed a campaign to obtain valuable headrights through inheritance. Cattleman William Hale used his local influence and his nephew Ernest Burkhart’s marriage to Mollie as part of a conspiracy built on intimidation, poisoning, shootings and bombing.

The Bureau of Investigation eventually placed former Texas Ranger Tom White in charge of an undercover team that worked with Osage witnesses to build cases against Hale and his accomplices. Adapted for younger readers, Grann’s account explains both the criminal investigation and the wider system that allowed the murders to continue, stressing that the prosecuted conspiracy represented only part of the violence experienced by the Osage during the Reign of Terror.