Killers of the Flower Moon

Grann describes going to Oklahoma to do research and talk with descendants of some of the victims of the Osage Reign of Terror. He first visited in 2012, after learning about the murders. At the Osage Nation Museum, he asked director Kathryn Red Corn about a section missing from a large panoramic photo showing Osage tribe members and white businessmen in 1924. Red Corn explained that the missing photo showed William Hale and was too painful for many community members to have on permanent display: “The Osage had removed his image, not to forget the murders, as most Americans had, but because they cannot forget” (243).

On another visit, Grann went to the town of Gray Horse to see the annual dances the Osage hold each June, and to meet Mollie’s granddaughter Margie Burkhart. From her, Grann learned more about her family after Hale and Ernest had been convicted. Mollie died in 1937, at age 50. Hale was paroled in 1947, after serving only 20 years in prison; he died in a nursing home in Arizona in 1962. Ernest was paroled the same year Mollie died, but returned to jail after committing another crime. When he was paroled a second time, in 1959, he was prohibited from returning to Oklahoma.