Many of the authors have or will be appearing on book tv, you can watch them on the website, booktv. Org. Wow. Good evening everyone. And katie director of leisure services. Welcome to the kansas city public library. Thank you for the patients, flexibility and thank you rainy day books for setting land speed records for getting david here. These were circumstances out of everyones control. His plane was delayed you may insert your own airline show care. Tonight, he will talk about his book, killers of the flower mound. Strive unspeakable historical crime of greed, fear, anger and racial cleansing. It is part crime thriller part political history and a book that will generate conversation long after david catches his next plane. It is easy to read this book because david tells a story in a riveting, detail rich suspenseful way. It is hard to read this book because its true and devastating and maddening. But david is a magnificent storyteller. He has written for the New York Times magazine, atlantic, Washington Post, wall street journal, new republican hollywood. His previous word running book is a movie theaters right now if you cannot take their word or my then how about u. S. Supreme Court Justice stephen breyer. He cited one of davids pieces in one of his opinions so please welcome david. [applause] my first book i dont know if youre familiar with it was about an explorer who trekked to the amazon looking french and civilization. I do something foolish to try to find that ancient city. I can say after leaving nashville at 9 00 a. M. This morning to get to kansas, its easier to track through the jungle than to fly today. But i did come straight here with no pause until look out and see everyone is amazing. Thank you here to talk about my new book, killers with the flower moon. In the birth of the fbi. The project began more than five years ago when i made a visit out to the osage nation in northeast oklahoma when i was there i visited the Osage Nation Museum and saw a panic granite photograph, this is a fraction of it. It went all the way across the wall. You could see the portrait in the title page of the book. It looked innocent, it was taken in 1824. It shows them what their white settlers. Part of the photograph to the left have been cut off. It look like someone took a scissors to it. I asked the Museum Director what had happened to that missing portrait and she said it contained a figure so frightening that she decided to remove input. She pointed to the missing panel and she said the devil was standing right there in the book trying to understand who that figure was in the english and history it can body. It led me to it i come to realize is one of the most sinister crimes in American History. Tells a much larger story about this country, the crimes took place in the beginning of the 20th century to understand that the osage indians back there were millionaires because of deposits under northeast oklahoma. To extract the oil they had to pay the osage releases and royalty. Nineteen oh eight in 1910 there about 2000 osage and they would receive a check every four months for maybe 100. And then a few years later it grew to 1000 on then it accumulated into millions of dollars. In 19,232,000 osage receive collectively what would be with today more than 400 million. Reporter at the time said he went out to a sage territory and he said low and behold, the indians are starving to death enjoys a steady income that turns bankers green with envy. They had become the wealthiest people per capita in the world and the public, because of prejudice and megabyte became transfixed by the wealth which had these longstanding stereotypes that could be traced back to the First Contact with white, the original sin. Reporters would go out and tantalize the readers about stories about the quote unquote red millionaires with their terracotta mansions in their cars and servants, many of whom were white. It was set at the time as one american might own a car, each osage owned 11. This pictures revealing shows traditional osage mother with her daughter addressed in the 1920s as flappers. This is more remarkable which is a found recently over footage that was shot in the 1920s it was taken by an osage who had an early Motion Picture camera and it was found and restored. You just see a snippet of it but you could get a sense of what it actually look like in the 1920s. Now, the tangled history of how the osage had gotten a hold of this rich land goes back to the 17th century where they controlled much of the central part of the country, an area that stretched from what is now kansas and missouri all the way to the edge of the rockies. President Thomas Jefferson referred to the osage in 18 oh three is a great nation. The following year he met with a delegation of chiefs whom he describes as the finest men he had seen. He promised dennis sure that they would know the u. S. Government only as friends and benefactors. Within a few years he began to drive them off the land and within a few decades the osage were forced to give up 100 million acres of their ancestral land. They were eventually confined to a reservation in kansas. In the 1860s they were under siege by white settlers and among them was none other than the family of four angles wilder. Im later wrote little house on the prairie, a novel loosely based on her experience. In a scene she asked her mom, why dont you like indians. I just dont like them, dont lick your fingers laura. This is Indian Country is in it laura said. What do we come to this country for if you dont like them . One evening the horse father explains to her that the government will soon make the osage move away. Thats why we are here, what people are going to settle all this country we get the best land because we got here first and take your pick. Many squatters began to seize land by force. U. S. Government official said at the time the question will suggest itself which of these people are the savages in the 1870s the osage agreed to sell their land in kansas. They searched for homeland. It was then the chief stood up at a Tribal Council meeting at her record of his statements still exist today and he said we should move to this territory, was an indian territory and i said because that land was rocky and it was infertile you cannot farm on it and the white man would finally leave us alone. Even though the land was the size of delaware they deemed it worthless. He said this would be a place in which the osage would be at happy and at peace. They purchase this land for 70 cents per acre. They had a duty to their own land and migrated there. The force migrations took a tremendous toll on the tribe. There are only a few thousand left, about one third of what the population had been only 70 years earlier. Here you can see an early osage camp on the reservation. In 19 oh six before oklahoma was about to become a state the u. S. Government forced upon the osage the culmination of a very brutal assimilation campaign it was essentially a policy imposed by many nations at the time. It would divvy up reservations and parcels of land. Each member would receive an allotment and the rest would be opened up to white settlers. They had seen what happened to other territory open up near the reservation. This is actual photograph. The settlers would race to get the land. They got to the parcel first they put a stake into it and then link claim to that land. Many were trampled in the process and if you were shot the concept of allotment was essentially to end the communal way of life and to turn American Indians into private property on thes. Make it much easier to procure their land. But when the osage word negotiating their terms have more leverage than other indian nations. They had a deed to their land, they had recently purchased it. There is a race to make oklahoma state, the osage was the last tribe to be allotted and they were led by one of the greatest chiefs of the time, a man who spoke seven languages included latin, sunni and french. He and other leaders slipped into a treaty agreement, provision at the time seemed rather curious. What is said was that we shall maintain control of all the subsurface mineral rights to our land. Now, the osage had some sense that there is at least a little bit of what oil under the land, but nobody got there sitting upon a fortune. So they managed to hold on to this land, around that they cannot even see. Each member received what was called the head was essentially a sheer after allotment much of the surface territory disappeared but i had right cannot be bought or sold it could only be inherited so the osage maintain control over what had become the worlds first underground reservation and before long the oil boom had begun. There is such demand procedure oil especially by 1912 and 13 as more deposits are found. Some of the largest deposits were found right under there is. They would hold auctions and leases and so many of the oil bands that youve heard of gideon his family they first found oil and made their wealth in the osage territory. They would attend the actions and harry sinclair, they would arrive on railroad cars. Theyre arriving on a private training known as the millionaire special. Good whether the actions were held outside under a large stately tree, it leases for a hundred 60 acres could sell for as much as 200 million. The tree became known as the milliondollar home. As the wealth increase Many Americans began to express because of prejudice, along in the osage began to be scapegoated for their money. Here was the 1920s, a period of the great gatsby. But somehow the wealth became the concern. Members of the u. S. Congress would literally sit in mahogany paneled rooms and debate what are we going to do about all of this osage money. How can i have all this money. They went so far as to pass legislation requiring many osage to have white guardians. This was racist in every way in fact it was based on the quantum of osage blood. So fewer fullblooded osage are suddenly deemed incompetent and given a guardian to oversee her finances. You could be an osage chief leading a great nation and have millions of dollars in your trust and you could have some local prominent white citizen telling you which card to buy and whether you could get the toothpaste at the corner store. It also created one of the largest state criminal enterprises. As many guardians with direct purchases for friends where they would get a kickback. They skimmed money and embezzled millions and millions of dollars. This osage chief testified at a hearing before congress and i want to read to what he said its very striking. He said, were down in the ruckus part of the country think it will drive the indians down to where theres a big pile of rock and put them in the corner. Turned out to be worth millions of dollars, everybody wants to get in here and get some of that money. Then the osage began to die of mysterious circumstances and nobody was more profoundly affected than the family of this woman, molly burkart. She is really a remarkable woman she was born in the 1880s, she grew up on like go with glam and that picture speaking only osage and practicing osage traditions. At the tender age of seven she was worse by the u. S. Government to be uprooted from her home and placed in a boarding school to learn the white mans ways. She had to remove her blanket, she had to speak only english. Within a few decades, because of the osage oilman she was living in a mansion and married a white settler from texas. In many ways she straddled two centuries and two civilizations. In may 1921 molly had a sister named anna brown. That day she came over to mollys house and she like to entertain. She was having a party with relatives and friends and her older sister anna left the house and she was not seen again. She vanished. Molly looked everywhere for her she had the family looked everywhere for her and a week later molly was found in a ravine. The pitch of those later taken by an investigator. She was shot in the back of the head of mr. It was the first tent that mollys family as well as the tribe have become a prime target of the criminal conspiracy. Not long after mollys mother lizzie began to grow mysteriously sick. You can see a picture of her mother in the middle, anna is off to the left, and the mollies to the right. Mollys mother seems to grow insubstantially still like she was withering away. Within two months she stopped breathing evidence would later suggest that she had been poisoned. Within a span of two months molly had lost her sister and her mother. Now, she had another sister and she was so frightened by the deaths that she lived on the countryside with a white husband she decided to move closer to ten to be closer to molly. She purchased this house and they moved in their thinking they would be safe. Then one night, early in the morning, 3 00 a. M. Molly heard a loud explosion. Frame she got up and went to the window and looked in the direction of her sisters house. All she could see was an orange ball rising into the sky. It looked as if the sun had burst violently into the night. There is no longer house there. Someone had planted a bomb underneath it, kelly molly sister, her sisters husband, and the 18yearold made who left behind to young children. Molly and many osage campaign for justice, to pursue the killers. Because of prejudice the white authorities often neglected the crimes because the victims were native americans. What is more, one of the things that shocks me is how crops much of the Justice System was and how lawless the country was in the 1920s. Especially in this remnant of the frontier. Many lawmen had very little training. It was often easy if you are powerful to buy off a lawman. Molly and other osage turn to private investigators. They had a much larger prominent role in society back then. They often had to fill this void. The problem is they often had criminal backgrounds and were available to the highest bidder. The boundaries between a good man a bad mat were porous. Many of the private investigators seem to be concealing evidence rather than on earth unit. While this is going on wasnt only mollys family being systematically targeted, others were dying too. Theres a champion steer roper to get a call one day he left his house and when he came back he dropped dead frothing at the mouth. Evidence indicated that he to have been poisoned, most likely strychnine. For those familiar with Agatha Christie novels you know that it is an awful poison. Causes a whole body to convulse as if it was like electricity any slowly suffocate while your conscious until you mercifully died. One of the reason poisoning was so common is because even scientists knew how to detect poison, the local lawmen would not perform toxicologys. So you could go to the local drugstore or grocery store, pick up some form of poison get some money or spike liquor and it was an easy way to kill some and be undetected. By 1923, other people were trying to catch the killers were also being killed. One man, a lawyer started together evidence and one day he received a call from an osage was dina poisoning in Oklahoma City. He took a train and told his wife before he left he had ten children, that i have evidence in this hiding spot. If anything happens to me make sure you get it and give it to the authorities. Which Oklahoma City met with the osage gathered evidence. After osage had dina poisoning he called local authorities and said i have enough evidence and im coming back to osage county. When the train arrived he wasnt there. He did not get off and they sent out the bloodhounds looking for him. There were local boy scout troops who took up the search. He was found his body line by the railroad tracks. Someone had thrown him from the train. When his wife went to the hiding spot someone had gotten there and cleaned out all the evidence. As well as the money he had left for her in the ten children who are left destitute. Many of the children were raised by osage families. Another oilman was a friend of the osage, he went to washington, d. C. To get federal authorities to investigate the cases. Especially given the local corruption. He got to the boardinghouse in the capital, he checked in and received a telegram from an associate that said, be careful. The oilmen carried with him a bible and pistol. That evening he left the boardinghouse, he was abducted and at some point they wrap a burlap sack around his head. His found the next morning a culvert. He been beaten to death and stabs within 20 times. The Washington Post said that the what the osage it long already knew, a conspiracy to kill rich indians. In 1923, after official death toll for more than 24 osage, the osage Tribal Council issued a resolution demanding federal authorities untainted by corruption to intervene. It was then the case was taken up by a rather obscure branch of the justice department. One that will not seem obscure. It was known as the bureau of investigation. Would later be renamed the fbi. It is somewhat fitting to talk about the bureau because i think it is that on a lot of peoples minds. The bureau back then was a ragtag operation. It had only a smattering of agents. They were not authorized to carry guns. If they wanted to arrest somebody they had to get a local lawmen to get the arrest. They had very little jurisdiction. But they had jurisdiction over American Indian reservation. Thats why the murders became one of the fbis first major homicide pieces. In 1925, the new and J Edgar Hoover summoned tom white to washington. He said he needed to see him right away. Tom white is also a remarkable man and in many ways like molly. He reflects and embodies the transformation of the country. He was born in a cabin. He was from a tribe of lawmen. His father was a sheriff. He grew up and saw people being hung. He became a texas ranger as did many of his brothers he practiced law riding on a horse with a pearl handled gun at a time when justice was often weeded out with the smoking barrel of a gun. By the 1920s women who were suddenly summoned sims to washington he has to were the suit. He has to adapt techniques like fingerprinting, handwriting analysis would be, important. Has to file paperwork which she cant stand. When he gets to the beer he doesnt know why hoover has summoned him. But at the time hoover was replacing many of the frontier lawmen in these college boys types faster than they shot. The oldtimers would mock them. They have very little criminal experience. Hoover kept on the role of a few frontend lawmen and they were known as the cowboys. This is a picture of who were taken a few months before white saw him. This is what hoover look like. He was only 29 years old when he became director. He was not yet an autocratic or had autocratic power, he was new to his job and he was still insecure about his power. The funny thing was that he hated color agents. Taller agents. They hated to be summoned because he thought if they were tall he might fire them. He also took a behind a desk so he could stand on and seem taller. White stood 6foot 4 inches. Even though he had on his new suit he was wearing a cowboy hat which violated protocol. He was looming over hoover and hoover begins to tell him about the osage murder cases. At that time the bureau was working on the case for two years of the results were disastrous. That only had agents failed to make arrests, they had gotten an outlaw out of prison. They assured state authorities not to worry about it we will use him as an informant. After he got out of prison he robbed a bank and killed the police officer. He would later lead his own unfortunate fate, but hoover, get hard to believe was insecure about his power and he feared a scandal could end his dreams of building a bureaucratic empire. The bureau had been entangled in a scandal which was another Oil Corruption scandal involving kickbacks, bribes and coverups. He feared if there is another scandal he might be ousted. When whites get there he realizes he had not been summoned to be fired, hoover summoned him to save his own tail. He needs one of the experience cowboys to help try to take over the osage case. White realizes that given the danger the only way to try to crack the case is to put together an undercover scene. He recruited several veal frontier lawmen from the boys. Most interestingly, he recruited an american engine indian agent. To my knowledge there is no statistics but i think you it was fair to say he was the only agent in hoovers borough at the time and they go undercover and infiltrated the region. They post as cattlemen. According to the record they sold insurance policies. Ive no idea what happened to them. They have to learn techniques like fingerprinting and handwriting analysis. The case marks and tracks the evolution of lawenforcement. And the professionalism of lawenforcement. The cases many twists and turns. Resembled bus a criminal investigation than espionage. There are double agents, it was impossible to know who to trust and power and who is conspiring the agents were followed entailed. The reports were leaked, they carry guns even though they are not authorized to. I wont reveal all of the ins and outs of the investigation it is more powerful to read about it in context because it is multilayer the many ways. Ultimately what the agents do is follow the money. The money lisa, they try to track and see who is profiting from the crimes. In particular who is profiting from the murders of molly family members. It leads them to a prominent white settler. Whats more, the settler turns out to be somebody who molly trusted and who many of the osage trusted. One of the things that made these crimes so sinister is that to steal the Osage Oil Money and involved the plea calculated plots that unfolded over years. And of all people pretending to love you. Pretending to be intimate with you. While the time plotting, scheming and conspiring to kill you and your family members. My own ways i cannot find the words to quite capture the level of this deception. There is a quote from shakespeare from Julius Caesar which comes closest to this level of betrayal. He writes, never find a cavern dark enough, cigna conspiracy, hide it and smile. After i visited the osage nation and saw the picture on the wall the Museum Director went into the basement and retrieved an image of the missing panel. She brought it up to show me. And there. Up was one of the masterminds, the prominent settler who the bureau had arrested. He was the socalled devil. It occurred to me that the osage had remove that photograph, not to forget is so Many Americans had of what happened, but because they cannot forget. I want to say a word about the way a structured the story. Its a way i have never structured one in the past. Is told in three chronicles largely from the point of view of a different individual. The first chronicle is told from the perspective of molly burkhart. Heres a picture before she died. She was a remarkable woman. Even though i dont say so explicitly in the book, one of the things that struck me was her courage. She quietly crusaded for justice when people would ignore her. All of the water is putting a bullseye on her back. Over the years i went through many archives trying to learn what her life was like. His so many counts she was just a name or sentence. Shed no agency her perspective had been obliterated. One of the documents i found revealing was shortly before she died about a document that she appealed her incompetency. If my memory serves me correct it was from 1934. The government and the legal system had finally deemed her competent. Here is a woman, two years before she died in 1934 being granted the fullfledged rights of a citizen. To be able to control her own fortune to control her own destiny. The second chronicle is told from the point of view of tom white. You can see his transformation, the cowboy once riding on the horse now dressed with the suit and here you can see hoover with his childs beginning to grow. The final perspective is told in the presents from my Vantage Point from a reporter or historian. I did this so i could fill in gaps in the narrative and show what happened to the osage money today. Many of the old boom towns or ghost towns. This was a picture i saw the bar boarded up in the town where anna brown was last seen before she disappeared. During the research i tracked down descendents about the murders and the victims. One of the most powerful experiences was speaking to these people. One of those descendents was margie burkhart, she was the granddaughter of molly, a lovely woman and she provided me details of her family history. She told me what it was like to grow without anson uncles, what it was like for her father who grew up as a child amid the conspiracy. Who lived in houses with secrets, to not know if the perpetrators were loved ones are not. I speaking to margie that drove home to me how living this history is and how it reverberates to this day. She took me to the cemetery where molly grew up in so many murdered osage including so many of mollys siblings and relatives are whats amazing is when you walk through the graveyard and osage territory and look at the dates you notice so many deaths during this time. You look at the ages and see how young they are and you realize that this was a genocide crime. One of the reasons i told the story is to try to show the elusiveness of history, especially when documenting a conspiracy when people are covering up the crime. Soft and only over time with more perspective and evidence that we get a portrait of what happens. One thing i try to show based on interviews with descendents is that there was a much deeper and darker conspiracy than the bureau ever expose. Id be happy to answer questions if you still have energy. [applause] we will have the book signing on the stage. Because were running late we have time for about five questions at most. In the 1950s there is a movie called the fbi story with james stern, in their there is a segment dealing with mr. Stewart assigned to a situation in oklahoma dealing with the Oil Situation was his character based on time why . Have you seen the movie and how accurate is it . There is a segment in the fbi story that deals with this case. No space on tom white kind hoovers a version of it generic sheet in some ways. Hoover never gave public credit to timeline for the undercover operatives who worked on the case. Hes them to look at his own role in the version told and that is very fictionalized. One of the ironies is that the only people i can find that publicly thank tom white was the osage it try. They shoot a triba resolution tg them by name. I have not read the book yet, im wondering if you go into details about how many of those had rights even after the conspiracy was discovered, how those were never returned in the family . When i began the story i thought of it very much, for lack of a better word eight, who did it and i thought of it very much as a typical traditional crime story. Over time as i did more research i began to see this is a story of who didnt to it. Theres so many people were getting rich, so many people complicit in these crimes. Doctors who were administering poison, morticians who are covering up the reporters who do not report was happening, lawmen who are being bought off, politicians were profiting from the crimes. This really is a story about a culture of killing. It is a much more frightening concept to think that the darkness might lurk not just in one persons heart but in so many seemingly ordinary people. Against your question which is that many rights were stolen, and never recovered. Many of the perpetrators were able to escape justice. Thank you for a wonderful presentation. I have one question that may be a bit off base. In 1921 there is the distraction of black wall street a side of tulsa. What was going on in oklahoma during this time . The question was about another underreported story by the tulsa race riots. They took place in 1921. Some of the worst race riots in this country. The ku klux klan had a large presence and in other states as well. The frontier had a lawless quality but when you read the documents the prejudice was not unique to oklahoma. When you read the congressional hearings debating what to do to get a sense of how widespread the prejudice was. Theyre very fragile legal institutions at that time. I dont want to politicize the book but one of the things i realize is that the country was incredibly lawless. We spent many decades trying to build up and create them. Theres a central thing i took away was how important it is that we are country of loss. Whether an impartial judicial system. When you read what happened back then whether it was race riots are with the osage murders, it drives at home and not to be taken for granted. Im a member of the osage tribe. I wonder if we can have a show of hands of hominy and here are osage. It is wonderful that at every event ive been to. [applause] that there is a great turnout. It has really been amazing the fact that ive spent many days recently with so many presenting the book ever me a rewarding experience that help me along the way. I gave an event in tulsa i margie came to the event. The defendant of the devil stood up express remorse and actually gave margie a hug. You just get a sense again, how the history is still reverberating and why its something we need to reckon with whats amazing is in these towns you have defendants where the murder and the victim are living sidebyside with their state intertwined. That is very much the story of america. I hope you dont want to give too much away but the man who is the central of the story i know he was paroled from prison too soon, what was the rest of his life like. Also these killings, was there another organizing figure . A person orchestrating this . Once your central villain was neutralized to the killing stop . Was there another person behind it . The first question is what happened to the devil. One of the stories is not just capturing, even bigger challenge was bringing them to justice because it gets to the early question prejudice was so widespread. There is question about whether 12 might white male jurors would kill a white man for killing a native american. Whats more, you can by jurors, you could corrupt the Justice System. That became a real challenge. He eventually served two decades. He was paroled early. He should have died in prison, at least the osage belief he was able to call and molest political favor. The conspiracy in many ways was that while this person was responsible for many deaths there are killings going on in separate families often it would be one person and where the complicity came in is that nobody did anything to stop it. And people knew about it. Too many people were getting wealthy. So this really was a story where there is a great deal of complicity. I think it is often easier to think of a central figure who is pulling all the strings, what happened in this case is that many ordinary people were perpetrating the crimes and they perpetrated another crime and collectively what you got was a mass killing. And he was when to come back to osage county. Thank also much. Thank you all for waiting. [applause] the senior director of publicity, what you have coming out in the fall of 2017 . We have a big book, 800 pages is called a sample. By british historian and its a look at the city is a hub of commerce and a hub of culture. In the many incarnations the city has had, Amazing Research they went to his sample and have multiple trips. We think it will tell people about a country very much in the news today. But tell them in a way that is political. We have a book called island of by stephen bowen. Hes a comedian author its about when peter the great decided to send two ships to sts known as alaska. He did it to study the national world. To do photography work by chaos ensued, there is shipwrecked on a Deserted Island and they all got scurvy. So peter the great, and scurvy. Is based in boston, why do you come to new york every year for book expo . Its a great way to see booksellers and find out which authors would like to do events. Its wonderful chance to meet with the media. I just saw fox news producer who we deal with a lot. We show them our fall list and given that are catalog. Give me another title youre excited about. The ghost of brooklyn. About a ship harbored in brooklyn during the revolution it was a prison ship, terrible conditions but he made a career of researching ships that played a role in war. If you like maritime stories but also like American History or world history, Robert Watson is your guy. Thank you for your time. Up next on afterwards, the president ceo, annemarie examines the intersection of technology and Foreign Affairs in her book, the chessboard in the web. She is interviewed by dennis mcdonough, a visiting senior fellow with carnegie Key Technology in International Affairs program. Host hello everybody, im dennis and albert host today. Were joined by annemaries letter to