The horrifying history behind Killers of the Flower Moon

We still don’t know the full, stomach-churning extent of the Osage murders. vox.com/culture CULTURE   Martin Scorsese’s new three-and-a-half-hour epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, is one of the few movies I’ll be seeing in theaters this year. It’s the acclaimed director’s sixth feature film starring Leo DiCaprio and his 10th with Robert De Niro, but the movie has been hotly anticipated due to its subject. Based on a nonfiction book by journalist David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon centers on a string of murders of Osage people in the early 20th century and the nascent FBI’s investigation of them. My colleague Aja Romano [explains the historical background of the murders](, made all the more gruesome because these crimes remained relatively unknown to the American public until recently. It’s not only a tale of violence, but of the exploitation, murder, and erasure of Indigenous people that’s so central to American history and yet is so often buried. Both the book and Scorsese’s much-discussed handling of the adaptation ask us to think about how a nation remembers murder and who gets to recount it. —[Whizy Kim](, senior reporter Editor's note: For ongoing coverage and analysis of the developing conflict between Israel and Hamas, [read our Vox colleagues' work here](. The horrifying, nearly forgotten history behind Killers of the Flower Moon [image of a herd of buffalo in a field in Osage County, Oklahom]( Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images The neighborhood dogs had all begun to die, and that was why Rita Smith’s husband was sure they’d be next. Rita was one of the few remaining members of the Osage Nation following nearly a century of brutal displacement. Throughout the 19th century, the government repeatedly forced the Osage to relocate from their current lands in Kansas to, finally, a much smaller, desolate reservation in northern Oklahoma. With the discovery of oil on Osage land in the late 1890s, however, the 2,229 tribe members who were left suddenly came into tremendous amounts of personal wealth, and prosperity finally seemed to be once more within the community’s grasp. But now, [a ring of unknown murderers had begun to target members of the tribe]( — including Rita’s family. Between 1921 and 1923, Rita’s sister Anna Brown, her cousin, and possibly even her mother, Lizzie Kyle, had all died suspiciously alongside a string of other deaths — at least 24 Osage Nation members and several of their allies. Some, like Anna, had been killed with a bullet to the back of the head; others, like Lizzie, had apparently died from strychnine or other more obscure poisons. There were even rumors that Rita’s white husband, Bill, had killed his first wife, Rita’s sister Minnie, a few years earlier. He had married Rita shortly after. Rita’s other sister, Mollie, had also married a white man, Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of a rich and influential rancher, William Hale. Under Hale’s patronage, the family had prospered — but now they were dying, one by one. Rita and Bill had become so spooked by the possibility that they were next on the list of vigilante killings that after hearing intruders on their property, they’d moved to a safer part of town. Not long after they settled in, however, the neighborhood’s ever-vigilant dogs began to die, and Bill grew increasingly paranoid. He saw their silencing as akin to disabling an alarm system — and a sign that despite their best efforts, the anonymous death-dealers were inching closer to them. He was right. In the early morning hours of March 10, 1923, Bill, Rita, and their housekeeper Nettie Brookshire all died when a bomb that had been planted beneath their house exploded — yet another tragedy of what became known as the Osage Reign of Terror. [All of these events, and the harrowing FBI investigation that followed, form the subject of Killers of the Flower Moon](, journalist David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book about the murders, as well as its highly anticipated upcoming film adaptation by Martin Scorsese. The film boasts many Indigenous actors, including breakout star Lily Gladstone, alongside an A-list ensemble including familiar Scorsese collaborators like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro — and a somewhat quizzical range of famous singer-songwriters. The formidable cast size reflects just how far-reaching and convoluted the real murders and the efforts to solve them were. [Read the full story »](  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Noah Kahan is bringing back “stomp clap hey” music. It’s better now. Young Vermonters are, for maybe the first time ever, at the precipice of culture. [Read the full story »]( The complicated relationship we have with Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s complicated relationship Jada Pinkett Smith is talking about her marriage, and Americans are hearing what they want to. [Read the full story »](   Support our work We aim to explain what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. Support our mission by making a gift today. [Give](   More good stuff to read today - [Professional raconteur Fran Lebowitz thinks art should be useless]( - [The third season of Starstruck isn’t a rom-com anymore]( - [4 questions to ask yourself when picking a health plan]( - [The wisest choice in Killers of the Flower Moon]( - [The ups and downs of life on strike]( - [Dental insurance isn’t a scam — but it’s also not insurance]( One last thing — Vox’s [first-ever crosswords books]( are available now! You can buy The Vox Mega Book of Mini Crosswords and The Vox Pop Culture Crosswords wherever books are sold.  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=culture). If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring [contribution](. View our [Privacy Policy]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved.