BOOKS ‘ Killers of the Flower Moon’
How oil riches led to murder In Grann’s skilled hands, a true crime story reads more like a mystery out of Hollywood
If you’re familiar with The New Yorker writer David Grann’s brand of investigative journalism, as seen in his outstanding 2009 best seller The Lost City of Z, you already know he is relentless and crazy- thorough in his quests to get to the bottom of little- known yet captivating historical mysteries.
You also know that not only does Grann skillfully uncover new breakthroughs, he tactfully — and sometimes dangerously — becomes part of the story.
Grann has applied that high- upside approach in his new book, Killers of the Flower Moon ( Doubleday, 338 pp., eeeg out of four), a shocking whodunit that probes a sinister conspiracy that resulted in the murders of more than two dozen Osage Indians in Oklahoma in the early 1920s.
At that time, the Osage went from being one of America’s poorest communities to being among the richest people per capita on the planet.
How? In 1870, when the feds relocated the tribe to destitute prairie land in northern Oklahoma, nobody knew what lay beneath the ground. But a smart young Osage lawyer cut a deal giving the Osage head-rights to the property’s oil, gas, coal and minerals. Fifty years later, oil was discovered. The tribe was sitting on a fortune. Oil barons lined up to pay unthinkable prices to drill for oil, and Osage tribal members received their share. Instant millionaires!
Figuring Osage Indians were unable to handle their own affairs, the federal government instituted a guardian system that unintentionally invited corruption. Court- appointed guardians looted Osage bank accounts. Some became beneficiaries to Osage fortunes, then cashed out by committing murders. From 1921 to 1923, at least two dozen Osage Indians died in suspicious ways, including questionable car crashes, faked suicides, explosions, poisonings and shootings. T-he Osage call those years the “Reign of Terror.”
In 1925, J. Edgar Hoover decided this would be a perfect showcase for his new national police agency, the Bureau of Investigation. Crime investigation then was evolving into what Hoover called “scientific policing,” using fingerprinting, laboratory analysis, even psychology. The book becomes a fascinating procedural drama as Hoover’s top agent, Tom White, a former Texas Ranger and true hero, uncovers, as he put it, “an orgy of graft and exploitation.”
This straightforward book’s title, by the way, is metaphorical: Killers of the
Flower Moon is a twist on what the Osage call the prairie’s gigantic “flowerkilling moon” in May, when taller, aggressive plants snuff out tinier blooming flowers. Otherwise, Grann’s no- frills narrative allows the facts to do the talking and the peril and body count that escalate to create the suspense.
Grann knows how to make distant times and crimes feel present and personal. It’s a trait that translates to Hollywood: movie rights to Killers of the
Flower Moon sold last year, and the film adaptation of Grann’s The Lost City of Z is now in theaters.
In the end, Grann’s own follow- themoney detective work reveals the scale of the Osage murder conspiracy and a death toll that significantly exceeds what federal investigators found. What more could fans of true- crime thrillers ask?