Killers of the Flower Moon (Adapted for Young Readers): The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Young Readers: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is an adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI that author David Grann wrote specifically for a younger audience. The original book, published in 2017, was named to dozens of “best book” lists that year, a New York Times best seller and a National Book Award finalist, and the winner of an Edgar Award. In 2021, David Grann, author, journalist, and staff writer for the New Yorker, revisited his work and published the adaptation for young readers. It is a nonfiction book that investigates and details the mass murder of the Osage people during the early 1900s. Due to the oil discovered on the Osage reservation, at this time, the Osage people were the richest per capita in the world, yet they were dying at a rate of one and a half that of the white population in America. The original book was adapted into a movie titled Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 2023. It received 10 Academy Award nominations.

This guide uses the 2023 Simon & Schuster Children's UK Kindle Edition.

Content Warning: This book explores systemic racism, specifically anti-Indigenous rhetoric and exploitation. It also portrays murder and self-harm.

Summary

Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Young Readers: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is told in three parts. The book opens with Part 1: “The Marked Woman.” In it, the reader meets Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman. Mollie is one of four daughters to Lizzie and Ne-kah-e-se-y. Ne-kah-e-se-y, also known as Jimmy, died in 1913 (cause not explained), and Mollie’s youngest sister, Minnie, died suddenly in 1918. She had been perfectly healthy, and no doctor was able to identify a cause of death. Based on the fact that the rest of her family was murdered, Grann deduces that she was probably poisoned. When the book opens on May 24, 1921, Mollie fears something has happened to her other sister, Anna Brown, who disappeared three days earlier. Soon after, Anna’s body is found with a gunshot wound to her head. A pair of local doctors, the Shoun brothers, examine her body.

Grann notes that the Shoun brothers were likely involved in the coverup of her murder. The bullet that killed her was never found, and Grann believes they hid it. Mollie’s family views the Shoun brothers as close family friends, and Mollie trusts them to treat her diabetes. About two months after Anna dies, Mollie’s mother, Lizzie, dies of the same mysterious “wasting illness” as Minnie.

Like every member of the Osage tribe, Mollie has a large fortune resulting from Osage oil headrights. Mollie uses her wealth to investigate her sister’s death. However, to curb the Osage people’s wealth and influence, the US government deemed most Osage “incompetent” and required that they have a white “guardian” to approve all their purchases. Mollie’s guardian was her husband, a white man named Ernest Burkhart. Ernest’s brother Bryan, who had been romantically involved with Anna, was the last person seen with her before her death. Ernest and Bryan’s uncle William Hale, colloquially known as the King of Osage Hills, arrived in Osage territory with nothing but quickly amassed wealth and power. The locals look to him for financial and social support, and his nickname, “King,” perfectly reflects his dominion and power in the area. Hale and Ernest promise Mollie to do everything in their power to find Anna’s killer. They hire private investigators to begin their informal investigation. Ernest and Bryan serve as jurors in the formal investigation.

As Mollie and her family search for answers, more Osage people are murdered, and anyone who tries to find answers about the murders also becomes a target. A prominent oilman who goes to Washington, DC, to lobby Congress for a special investigation is murdered before he can make his case. A lawyer is thrown from a train while on his way to Osage territory with substantial evidence. These events create an atmosphere of fear, and the Osage hang string lights to create a sense of safety in their community. Two years after Anna is murdered, Rita, another of Mollie’s sisters, is murdered: After someone plants a bomb beneath their house, Rita and her husband, Bill, are killed. Mollie is now the only surviving Osage member of her family. Fearing for her and her family’s life, she sends Anna, the youngest of her three children, away to be raised in safety. She stops appearing in public. Two years after Rita’s death, she reaches out to her priest in secret, saying that she fears she is being poisoned.

In Part 2: “The Evidence Man,” the author introduces Tom White. White was raised by his prison-warden father, came of age as a lawman on the frontier in Texas, and eventually joined the Bureau of Investigation, which would later become the FBI. In summer 1925, the new attorney general appoints J. Edgar Hoover as director of the bureau to shape it into an anti-corruption, crime-fighting machine. Hoover has a shady past, but determined to maintain power, he transitions the bureau agents away from the “cowboy” types (such as White) toward college-educated, suit-wearing agents with accounting or forensics training. Hoover knows he needs to prove the bureau’s necessity to the American people and government, so he appoints White to solve the previously unsolved Osage murders.

White moves his family to Oklahoma, recruits the only Indigenous man who works for the bureau, and assembles a team of men with frontier/lawman experience (pulled from a group of tough bureau lawmen called the Cowboys). Together, they infiltrate the Osage territory and begin to piece together the series of murders known as the “Reign of Terror” against the Osage people. White’s team recruits criminals as informants and shortens their prison sentences so they can reintegrate into Osage society and seek information about the murders.

Through a combination of older lawmen-style deduction and newer forensic technology, White and his team discover the sinister truth: William Hale, with the help of Ernest and Bryan Burkhart, is responsible for many of the Osage murders, including the murders of Anna, Rita, and Bill. White uses confessions from the henchmen who carry out the murders to flip Ernest against his uncle. Ernest enters witness protection after he confesses his and Hale’s involvement. Hale, however, seems unfazed. He believes that with his status and sway, he can bribe, threaten, and talk his way out of the charges. Based on the first day of Hale’s trial, he may be correct. Hale’s lawyer pulls Ernest into the judge’s chambers and flips him back to Hale’s side.

White is concerned that he will not be able to convict Hale without Ernest, so he switches tactics and decides to prosecute Ernest first to use Ernest’s conviction against Hale. White ensures that Mollie goes to a hospital, where she recovers quickly after they treat her for poison. During the trial, Mollie is adamant that Ernest would never have willingly hurt her or her family. After the natural death of their third child, Ernest is overcome with guilt and confesses to his part in the murders. He pleads guilty and agrees to help White go after Hale. Ernest receives a life sentence for his part in the murders. After Ernest confesses, White puts Hale away for life for his part in the murders of Anna, Rita, and Bill. Hoover is ecstatic that the Osage murders have been solved. He takes full credit for the success of the case and declares it solved before White manages to tie Hale to all 24 Osage murders between 1921 and 1925. The only group to publicly thank White and his team for their help is the Osage Tribal Council.

After his success, White becomes warden at the prison where Hale and Ernest will serve their life sentences. While serving as warden, White is held hostage in an attempted prison break. He jumps in front of a bullet meant for another hostage and survives but loses the use of his left arm. He moves to a lower-security prison, where he works as warden until he retires. As he reaches the end of his life, he works with an author to attempt to capture all of the details from the Osage case.

In Part 3: “The Reporter,” David Grann tells his own story, and the narrative follows his journey investigating these crimes. In 2012, he goes into Osage territory for the first time and meets Mollie’s granddaughter. She shows him around the now mostly abandoned boomtowns and takes him to the site where Anna's body was found, her family’s graves, and the ruins of Rita and Bill’s home. Mollie’s granddaughter reveals that her father and aunt were supposed to be at Rita and Bill’s house the night it was bombed and that Ernest would have let his children die, but they stayed home because they were sick.

Grann visits the Osage Nation Museum and speaks with the museum curator. She shares that her Osage grandfather was murdered by his white wife in 1931. He also finds a manuscript in the public library detailing another Osage murder from 1918. He researches the murders that were never successfully linked to Hale and discovers that the Reign of Terror had resulted in many more murders beyond the 24 that occurred between 1921 and 1925; Hale and his men were not the only guilty parties. Grann notes that because of coverups and corruption, much of the truth about the Reign of Terror is forever lost to history.