4.0 out of 4 stars.
How does no one know about this case!?
Killers of the Flower Moon is a true life murder case. I have to keep repeating myself that this really happened in our history because I cannot believe this was the first I have ever read about it. The time period is the early 1900s in Osage, Oklahoma. A location that had some of the richest people in the United States that just happened to be all Native Americans (still referred to as Indians then). A group of people who were labeled “less than” to the white people who were encroaching on their territory. The desire? The Osage Indians’ oil that was hidden underneath their property lines. The white people were willing to pay big bucks to get a piece of that. The result is that the Osage were still looked at as nothing but they got to live in big houses, drive fancy cars, and never work. The Native American’s type of lifestyle was never fully “bought and paid for though” because they began to live in fear that their wealth was causing them to be threatened. Soon enough, a feeling was spreading through their area that a lot of deaths were happening that did not have a clear-cut reason. A Osage was perfectly healthy and then the next day dropping dead.
This particular story focuses on Mollie Burkhart a Osage woman who married a white man and starts to see every single family member die in freaky ways. She tries to seek help through the FBI but once they take on the case they also perish to their deaths. People began to shy away from raising their hand to help because they wanted to stay alive themselves. It seems the only man up for the job is appointed by J Edgar Hoover and his name is Tom White.
This book is absolutely jam-packed with information and pictures from that time period. It is fascinating that this all happened but also extremely disappointing that no one knows about it. We are talking at least 24 cases of murder in this small area that we know about in a span of 5-7 years. A reporter comes back to the story years later and actually uncovers that it could be more like 50 or so deaths!
If you like history, true crime, cultural studies, or simply just want a read that is unlike any other book out there, I would highly suggest “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Gann.
