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 cowb