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Welcome back to Week Four discussing the final part of Killers of the Flower Moon; Chronicle Three, The Reporter.

Chronicle Three opens with the author David Grann traveling to Pawhuska in 2012 and follows his various visits to the Osage Nation through 2015. When visiting a museum, Grann sees a large wall-sized photograph of prominent local leaders and the tribe in 1924, with one person’s face missing. He’s shown an original copy of the photograph with the missing man’s face – William Hale. The museum Director Kathryn Red Corn explains to Grann, “the devil was standing right there,” and that they didn’t remove him to forget, but because they can’t forget.  

Do you think there’s power in making a choice like the one the museum staff made to remove Hale? Is there a right or wrong way to process the actions of a “problematic” historical figure, for lack of a better term?

Grann met Mollie’s granddaughter Margie Burkhart, the daughter of Ernest and Mollie’s son “Cowboy”. We learn a new disturbing part of her family’s story: Mollie and Cowboy were supposed to spend the night at the Smith’s house the night it was bombed, but Cowboy had an earache and they stayed home.

Mollie died aged 50 in 1937, only several years after winning the right to overseeing her own money and no longer be a ward of the state. Later that year Ernest got out on parole after only serving a little more than a decade of a life sentence. He robbed an Osage home and went back to prison. In 1966 he applied for a pardon to be able to return to Oklahoma, citing his confession and cooperation being the main reason Tom White was able to solve the case, and it was granted. Ernest died in 1986 with a wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the Osage Hills. Margie said, “Finally, one night my dad got real mad and took the box and just chucked it over a bridge.”

Could you imagine living with the knowledge that your father was willing to murder you, along with your mother, in order to inherit a fortune?

William Hale was released after twenty years due to his age of 72 and record as a good prisoner. He was forbidden to go back to Oklahoma.

The rest of Grann’s research went in to as much detail as possible with the limited resources he had about additional deaths and murders in the tribe. After Hale’s arrest, there were more potential murders by poisoning. Some of the people who were murdered, like Mary Lewis, were killed before the official timeline of the Reign of Terror (1921-1926). There are so many questionable deaths that weren’t investigated as homicides, and so many families who don’t have resolution; only suspicions of what happened and who did it. He ends the book with the quote, “This land is saturated with blood… the blood cries out from the ground.”

How are you feeling now that we’ve come to the end of the book? There is no “happily ever after” for anyone involved. As we just discussed, many of the families still have no closure. There were so many details I left out while discussing the chapters in order for brevity in these posts, and I imagine that an in-person book club could talk about this one for hours.

David Grann’s line “history is a merciless judge” hit me hard as I read it. On a smaller scale, it makes me think about my ancestors and what my future family down the line will think of me when I’m gone. On a larger scale, I wonder what future generations will think of the 2025 world, what parts of history get to be remembered for the decades to come, and if the Osage’s Reign of Terror will be more than a footnote in history books.

Has this book inspired you to read more indigenous stories? November is National Native American Heritage Month and I’ve made a list of fiction and nonfiction books available to check out here.

Watch author David Grann’s interesting discussion about his book being turned into a film below!

Welcome back to week three discussing Chronicle Two: The Evidence Man in Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. This section focuses greatly on Tom White, a former Texas Ranger who joined the Bureau in 1917. He and his younger brother J.C. “Doc” White were known as “the Cowboys” and didn’t exactly live up to Hoover’s idealized image of what his team should look and act like.

When Tom takes on the case he’s aware that many of the former agents involved were fired or killed while investigating. Honestly, why do you think Tom accepted the case? Did he have a choice? If you were in Tom’s shoes would you have investigated the murders or would you have quit?

I enjoyed Grann’s descriptions of Tom’s character. We learn that he’s no-nonsense and that he doesn’t stand for the mistreatment of others, including prisoners. While technology is improving in their field he also relies on the most basic methods of gathering evidence. “As White strove to be a modern evidence man, he had to learn many new techniques, but the most useful one was timeless: coldly, methodically separating hearsay from facts that he could prove.” He definitely had his work cut out for him in separating hearsay from facts.

By the time Tom and his team are involved there’s very little physical evidence remaining from the crime scenes, and not much paperwork to go off of. In Anna’s case, the undertaker secretly kept her skull because he felt uneasy about the investigation and crime scene. Tom’s team starts with many members of the team going undercover in the town posing as ranchers, business owners, and John Wren, the only American Indian on the team, as a traveling medicine man.

In order to gather more information, Tom recruits an informant named Kelsie Morrison. Kelsie ends up playing an important role throughout the rest of the story. Do you think you’d ever be able to trust someone like Morrison? What if your life depended on it? Soon after Morrison gets involved, Tom learns that Rose Osage lied in her original statements. She admits that a white man came to her house with a statement and forced her to sign it. This makes the team realize “the conspirators were not only erasing evidence, they were manufacturing it.”

After a lot of work, Tom and his team learn that the private investigator William Hale had hired wasn’t supposed to solve Anna’s murder, he was supposed to come up with an alibi for Bryan Burkhardt, and that when he would meet with Hale and Bryan there was almost always one other man there: Ernest Burkhardt. We eventually find out that Hale received headrights to other local men like Henry Roan, had forced his employees to set fire to his own fields to get insurance money, and was a known enemy to Bill and Rita before their deaths.

It was so frustrating reading how little concrete evidence there was to tie Hale to the Osage murders, along with his influence he had over politicians. Even when he and Ernest are both arrested and the trials start it was nearly impossible to get a jury, attorney, and judge who would not be bribed or influenced by Hale. After numerous trials and juries Ernest, Bryan, and Hale are given life sentences. Do you think it’s ever truly possible to get a fair trial in a small town?

My heart broke for Mollie over and over again. Grann describes how she was essentially an outcast from both the Osage and white communities, sitting alone during the trials. It took a long time for her to believe her husband Ernest had knowingly been involved in any of the murders, or had taken part in making her ill. One of her daughters died at four years old and Mollie returned to the courthouse after the burial. When Ernest was on the stand at Hale’s trial he admits that Mollie’s only living relatives are the children they share together. It was a relief to read that within a few years she fell in love again and remarried a man named John Cobb and that they fought to end the corrupt guardianship system that played a large part in the murders. As of 1931, Mollie was no longer a ward of the state and could spend her money as she wished.

Years after the case ended, Tom accepted a position as warden of Leavenworth prison in Texas. Soon after, Hale and his coconspirator Ramsey ended up at the same prison. In December 1931, seven of the prisoners took Tom hostage and tried to escape town. Tom was shot and left to die while trying to protect children they came across in the escape. In the end, none of the convicts escaped town, were sent back to prison, and Tom survived.

When all was said and done, Hoover never publicly thanked or honored his team for closing the case of the Osage murders, but he used the case to showcase his methodical and successful organization. The Osage Tribal Council thanked each member of Tom’s team with a resolution citing each person’s name.

Now that we’ve reached the end of Chronicle Two and finished the primary part of the story, what do you think of Mollie and Ernest’s relationship? Do you believe their connection was a natural one, or do you think William Hale planned this series of murders with Ernest from the very beginning?

If this was a fictional story, would you have criticisms that the amount of drama is unbelievable or over-the-top?

Come back next week to discuss the final part of the book, Chronicle Three: The Reporter.