Killers of the Flower Moon: The True Story Behind Martin Scorsese’s Film
After the preview with great fanfare at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it was received with unanimously positive acclaim, Killers of the Flower Moon, the new film by Martin Scorsese, distributed by 01Distribution will arrive in Italian cinemas from 20TH October and the ticket is already available can be purchased in advance. Surely, Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by one of the greatest directors of all time and with a stellar duo leading the cast (Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro), promises to be a frontrunner for the next awards season, but What seems even more interesting than the 26th film directed by Scorsese is that the bloody story it tells is based on David Grann’s bestseller, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, itself based on a story true.
The film tells of a series of murders of wealthy Osages (an Indian tribe that lived between Missouri and Arkansas) in the early 1920s after important oil deposits were discovered in their land. In the film, DiCaprio appears as Ernest Burkhart, the husband of a Native American woman named Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), whose family played a key role in Osage history. Robert De Niro plays the role of William Hale, a wealthy and influential rancher from the county and Burkhart’s uncle, while Jesse Plemons appears as Tom White, the newly created FBI agent sent to investigate the murders. Here are some elements of the true story that Killers of the Flower Moon tells that we discovered thanks to the report by EW’s Katie Rife.
Killers of the Flower Moon True Story: About The Osage Nation?
Originally located in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, the Osage (or Wahzhazhe, as they call themselves) nation suffered forced displacement of Native Americans by the U.S. government in the 19th century. Thus, the Osage settled in “Indian Territory,” in present-day Oklahoma. Their people legally purchased reservation land, which made it more difficult for the U.S. government to impose an “apportionment” system, under which Native land was parceled out and given to white settlers. In 1906, Osage chief James Bigheart, along with a mixed-blood lawyer named John Palmer, negotiated an agreement with the U.S. government granting each member of the Osage a right, or share, in the Osage’s mineral fund tribe.
Human rights could not be bought or sold, but only inherited. This became extremely important just a few years later when oil deposits were discovered beneath Osage land. Since much of the profits from subsequent drilling legally belonged to the tribe, by the early 1920s the members were the people with the highest level of per capita wealth in the world. This attracted dozens of swindlers and corrupt businessmen, who hoped to obtain a share of the Osage wealth legally, through the “guardianship” system that placed whites in charge of the Osage fortunes, or illegally, through murder and theft.
The 1920s of Killers of the Flower Moon
In 1921, two members of the Osage, Anna Brown, and Charles Whitehorn, were murdered within days of each other under very similar circumstances. Both had been killed and their bodies abandoned in isolated rural areas. Shortly thereafter, another Osage man, Henry Roan (Anna’s cousin), was discovered dead behind the wheel of his car. He had been shot in the back of the head. Twenty-four people were killed in what the tribe began calling the “Reign of Terror.” Some victims, such as Osage rodeo star William Stepson, were poisoned. Others simply vanished or were killed. All the victims were wealthy Native Americans, except two: a white oilman named Barney McBride, who was an Osage ally, and a lawyer named W. W. Vaughan. Shortly before his death, Vaughan called the Osage County Sheriff’s Office, saying he had important information that could help solve the murders and that he would be arriving from Oklahoma City on the next train. However, he never made it there.
The book Killers of the Flower Moon is about Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who lost her mother and three sisters under mysterious circumstances. One of her sisters, Minnie, and her mother, Lizzie, both mysteriously weakened and eventually died. The doctors spoke of “particular waste diseases” which were not better identified. Another sister, the aforementioned Anna Brown, was the victim of the murder that started the “Reign of Terror”. But it was the death of Mollie’s third sister, Rita Smith, Rita’s husband, Bill, and their housekeeper, Nettie Brookshire, in an explosion at their home in Fairfax, Oklahoma, that led the Osage Tribal Council to appeal to the Department of Justice. It was discovered only later that Mollie’s husband (a white man named Ernest Burkhart), her brother Bryan, and their uncle, William Hale, were implicated in the murders.
The FBI investigation
In the aftermath of her sister Anna’s death, Mollie Burkhart hired private investigators to find her killers. Four years later, little progress had been made. Then, in the summer of 1925, J. Edgar Hoover – head of a brand-new government agency then called the Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI) – called one of his agents to Washington, DC. The agent was Tom White, who was placed by Hoover in charge of the field office in Oklahoma City, a lawless region considered the last outpost of the Wild West. There White assembled a team that included John Burger, a seasoned detective well-known in Osage County, as well as several undercover agents.
Over the next few months, White and his team uncovered evidence that William Hale had not only approached several local criminals offering to pay them for the murder of Anna Brown but had also hired multiple people to build and detonate the bomb that had killed Rita and Bill Smith. Ernest Burkhart had helped organize the bombing against his sister-in-law and her husband, while his brother Bryan had witnessed Anna’s murder. Mollie was also supposed to be at Rita and Bill’s house the night they died, but at the last minute, she changed her mind, meaning her husband planned to kill her too.
The Trial in Killers of the Flower Moon!
On January 4, 1926, William Hale and Ernest Burkhart were arrested for the murders of Bill and Rita Smith and Nettie Brookshire. Burkhart confessed to his role in the plot and identified a man named John Ramsey as the “trigger” who shot Henry Roan.
On March 12, 1926, a preliminary hearing was held in Pawhuska, Okla. Fearing for his life, Ernest withdrew his statement and eventually testified against his uncle. Hale and Ramsey’s first trial for the murder of Henry Roan ended in a suspended judgment, but both men were found guilty of first-degree murder in a retrial.
Hale would later serve 18 years in Leavenworth, a federal prison in Kansas, whose warden was none other than Tom White himself. He was paroled in 1947, as was John Ramsey. Burkhart was released in 1937 but returned to prison after robbing a bank and spending his final years living in a trailer with his brother Bryan. Mollie divorced Ernest during the trial, remarried in 1928, and died in 1937 at the age of 50.
Unanswered Questions from Killers of the Flower Moon?
While writing Killers of the Flower Moon, journalist David Grann traveled to Oklahoma to meet with members of the Osage Nation, including Ernest and Mollie’s granddaughter, Margie Burkhart. While there, interviews and archives uncovered evidence of more mysterious deaths in Osage County that he had never investigated.
Grann’s research led him to conclude that the systematic killing of the Osage for their oil rights was “a vast criminal operation that was reaping millions and millions of dollars” through insurance fraud, embezzlement, and non-Osage people killing their own Osage spouses for money. William Hale and Ernest Burkhart had paid for their crimes, but “every element of society was complicit in this murderous system.” And most of the executioners had gotten away with it, escaping with millions of dollars in Osage wealth. The story is therefore complicated and not yet completely out in the open, and it is no surprise that Martin Scorsese’s eye was seduced by this story enough to want to tell it in the cinema!
Killers of the Flower Moon by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese, his cast, and crew spent considerable time with Osage historians and tribal leaders during the development of the film adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon. Scorsese and his co-writer Eric Roth reportedly rewrote the script after these meetings, changing the focus of the story from the formation of the FBI to the culture and experiences of the Osage people. In a press conference following the film’s world premiere, the current leader of the Osage nation, Chief Standing Bear, described Killers of the Flower Moon as a story about trust – between Mollie and her husband, as well as between the Osage and the world external – and the “profound betrayal” of that trust. “My people suffered greatly and to this day these effects are with us,” he said. “But I can say, on behalf of the Osage, that Martin Scorsese and his team have restored that wound, and we know that trust will not be betrayed”.
