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“Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”
By David Grann
David Grann tells a harrowing story of murder and injustice in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Sequestered in an isolated corner of Oklahoma by the U.S. federal government, the Osage people nevertheless struck it rich when oil was discovered on their land at the dawn of the automobile age. By the 1920s, the tribe boasted millionaires living in mansions – much to the dismay of their white neighbors. Then, members of the Osage tribe began to be shot, blown up, poisoned — 24 murdered in all, though Grann thinks the number is much higher. Local white law enforcement made desultory attempts at investigating. The fledgling FBI was called in; the agency’s new, 29-year-old director J. Edgar Hoover assigned the case to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White, who is the hero of this sordid story.