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

by David Grann

The Osage had removed his image, not to forget the murders, as most Americans had, but because they cannot forget.

History is a merciless judge.

While researching the murders, I often felt that I was chasing history even as it was slipping away, and not long after we spoke, I learned that Martha had died from heart failure. She was only sixty-five. A heartbroken Melville told me, “We lost another link to the past.”

Webb walked me outside, onto the front porch. It was dusk, and the fringes of the sky had darkened. The town and the street were empty, and beyond them the prairie, too. “This land is saturated with blood,” Webb said. For a moment, she fell silent, and we could hear the leaves of the blackjacks rattling restlessly in the wind. Then she repeated what God told Cain after he killed Abel: “The blood cries out from the ground.”