Title: Killers of the Flower Moon

Category: Literature

Synopsis: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a 2017 nonfiction book by American journalist David Grann about the Osage murders.

The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s after extensive oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. After the Osage are awarded headrights in court to the profits from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare to receive the wealth to which they are legally entitled from sales of their oil deposits.

The Osage are viewed as the "middle man" and a complex plot is hatched to eliminate the Osage inheritors one by one, by any means possible. Officially, the count of the wealthy Osage victims reaches at least 20, but Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil. The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, and the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William King Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.