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

Jan 15, 2018 Book Concierge rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: concierge, library, audio, true-crime, history, oklahoma, native-american

Book on CD narrated by Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee and Danny Campbell.

From the book jacket: In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they 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 Her relatives were shot and poisone Book on CD narrated by Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee and Danny Campbell.

From the book jacket: In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they 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 Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under suspicious circumstances.

My reactions
Wow. I am ashamed to say that I knew nothing of this shameful episode of American history. Grann did a marvelous job researching and reporting his findings. He brings these people to life and makes the reader care about each and every one of them. He did more than simply report what the FBI managed to uncover, and that only emphasizes how institutionalized the racist attitudes were.

He begins with the disappearance of one woman, and slowly uncovers the evidence of a vast conspiracy to eliminate the Osage and steal their riches. It is nothing short of appalling. Local officials were, at best, ill equipped to investigate. They lacked the forensic training of modern-day police forces, and more importantly, they lacked the will to really DO anything about “a bunch of Indians.” As the FBI began investigating, they were faced with uncooperative local leaders, and conflicting stories. Key witnesses were killed, or otherwise “convinced” to change their stories. Evidence went missing. That they were able to bring anyone to trial was a testament to their tenacity and insistence on pursuing the perpetrators.

And yet …. As the last section of the book shows, even the FBI failed to fully comprehend the extent of the problem. I found this section the most distressing.

The audio book is very well done, using three narrators: Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee and Danny Campbell. They are talented voice artists and they keep the pace moving.
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Dec 03, 2017 Fishface rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, family-secret, local-history, history, expose

This was a gripping read, but ultimately unsatisfying. The book implies that the author came away knowing something about possibly hundreds of wrongful deaths and says no more than "Well, there's even more to this than I've told you." So tell me already!!! The cases he did go into were thoughtfully and resourcefully researched and the facts were laid out well. Very much worth your time if you are interested in genocide. ...more

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Feb 24, 2018 Joanne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I am surprised that I had never heard of this catastrophic event before. What seemed to be a lucky windfall resulting from a bad situation turned out to be the worst possible thing that could have happened to these poor people. The federal government pushed the Osage tribe onto what was considered a rocky, barren, useless piece of Oklahoma land as their reservation. Little did they know that they were situated on top of oil rich lands. The Osage became extremely wealthy from the discovery of the ...more

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