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

About the book

During the 1920s, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma became the wealthiest people per capita in the world after oil was discovered beneath their reservation. This wealth triggered a systematic campaign of local corruption and serial murder known as the Reign of Terror. David Grann documents the targeted killings of Mollie Burkhart’s family and dozens of other Osage individuals whose headrights were coveted by white conspirators. The narrative follows the young J. Edgar Hoover and former Texas Ranger Tom White as they utilize undercover operations and forensic evidence to investigate these crimes, signaling the institutional professionalization of the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Readers interested in the intersection of American frontier history and forensic procedural work will find a reconstruction of a largely suppressed racial conspiracy. This book serves those who study how legal guardianship laws and systemic administrative fraud permitted the state-sanctioned exploitation of Indigenous populations. Instead of a standard detective story, the reader gains a technical understanding of how early federal law enforcement evolved to handle multijurisdictional crimes. The text leaves the reader with a documented account of how institutional racism shaped the development of American criminal justice.

Details

Published

2017

Publisher

Vintage

ISBN

9780385534253

Language

EN