How FBI caught real ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ — after mass murder plot to seize ultra-rich Indians’ oil
nypost.comKillers of the Flower Moon,” by David Grann, which details how the Osage fell victim to a string of murders.One was killed with poisoned whiskey (there may have been more), others got shot and Bill and Rita Smith, a white man married to an Osage woman had their home blown up.
The pure greed of it all was made evident when William King Hale (often referred to, simply, as King), a wealthy rancher who held considerable sway over Native Americans and whites alike, took out a $25,000 life insurance policy on an Osage man named Henry Roan.
A doctor who examined Roan for the policy asked Hale if he planned on killing Roan. “Hell, yes,” Hale responded. Few were surprised when, in February 1923, Roan was found riddled with bullets in an automobile.
It was the latest killing in a series of Osage people offed by Hale, which would become known as the Reign of Terror.Wanting to curb the carnage, in 1923, local oilman Barney McBride, sympathetic to the Osage, was dispatched to Washington DC. “He met with the head of Indian Affairs,” John Fox, an FBI historian, told The Post. “The head of Indian Affairs turned to the Department of Justice and said, ‘We need people to investigate.’”That led to the Bureau of Investigation, a rag-tag crime fighting organization that was only 15 years old at the time. “It was a small, weak, ineffectual arm of the Justice Department,” Tim Weiner, author of “Enemies: A History of the FBI,” told The Post.
Read more on nypost.com