David Grann speaks on Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

good evening everybody glad you made it tonight my name is Hugh Foley I'm a professor of Fine Arts at Rogers State University in Claremore I've taught Native American history there for a little more than 20 years I'm also an OSU grad I'm also a Stillwater resident I'm extremely honored to be asked yeah Stillwater all right glad y'all made it in I'm extremely honored to be asked to moderate this event tonight and I'd like to introduce our guests so please hold your applause till everybody's been introduced margie Burkhart he is the granddaughter of Molly and Ernest Burkhart she's here with her husband Andrew Lowe and her children Lauren and Tracy and their spouses Jacob and Simone Marvin steps in jr. is the grandson of the late William stepson who was profiled in David Gran's killers of the flower moon and Kathryn Redcorn served as director of the Osage tribal museum for 17 years where she accomplished many important historic projects and she's currently an elected member of the Osage minerals Council so our stage party tonight we also have some VIPs in the crowd tonight you may be able to see them with our lights up here we it's just a big blank view out there Osage principal chief Jan during Jeffrey Standing Bear is here with us tonight and I don't know where a principal chief is but somewhere here tonight also a descendent of people profiled in the book Mary Jo Webb is here as well and I see there's a lot of people here in the audience tonight and I know there's a bunch osage's here so for those of you in the audience who are Osage would you stand for us and let other people in the audience to see how many of you are here tonight [Applause] all right a lot of them here tonight so we're glad you're here David gran is the author of killers at flower moon the Osage murders in the birth of the FBI spent 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists was named Amazon coms best book of 2017 and was a National Book Award finalist this past Saturday the book was named a nonfiction winner of the 2018 Oklahoma book award he's known for his relentless research powerful investigative style grants pieces have appeared in the New York Times Magazine the Atlantic Washington Post Boston Globe The Wall Street Journal he's a former executive editor of the hill senior editor of The New Republic and is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker where he's been since 2003 grin who Newsweek called master of nonfiction has become Hollywood's go-to for go-to for memorable nonfiction film material with a recent movie based on his 2009 book the lost city of Z a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon three stories and development from 2011 s true crime book the devil in Sherlock Holmes tales of murder madness and obsession and he's also been involved in the huge bidding war which has finally been settled I guess for the film that will come from this book killers of the flower moon so we get started with our questions and we want to encourage our Osage guests to jump in at any time I'll start out asking David a few questions to give us all some groundwork for the rest of the conversation and then invite them to say whatever they want to say as the interview goes on so with that David let's find out how much you knew about American Indian history Oklahoma history or even the Osage before you started this process shockingly little embarrassingly little I you know grew up in New York or outside New York my textbooks had the kind of pro forma history that one read which would usually kind of relegate what happened when Native Americans during the early contact to a few paragraphs and then move on and Oklahoma as well and it really wasn't until I found out about this story and I made this trip out to Osage County and I met Kathryn Redcorn and kind of began this journey that lasted many years all right in interviews that many of us have seen in preparation for hearing you talk tonight you often talk about a historian first told you about the Osage murders so would you tell us about that initial encounter and and what was said that made you to take on this story yeah um there was a story's often develop without much planning or purpose when you don't know about them and I'm always looking for different stories parts of our history to tell and I was speaking to a person into a lot about FBI history and the most of the conversation was that actually about : tell Pro which was the FBI's illegal surveillance of leftist groups including Native American activists during the 70s and at the very Andrew one point he'd mentioned just almost in passing Lee about the Osage murders and that kind of just planted something and that's where I began to look into it and that's what prompted me to make that trip out to Osage County mm-hmm when did you realize this was a story you had to write well I tell the story a lot and I know some people here I've heard it too but it is it's very rare that a story has its origin an origin story like this but or is almost a metaphor for the project itself which is when I came out to Osage County I really at that point had no intention of necessary even writing about this I was I really came out to possibly learn more and I made this trip to the Osage Nation Museum where Katherine I was meeting for the first time I think Charles your brother had introduced us and I met Katherine and I saw that great photograph which is still on the wall there and you could see it on the title page of the book that was taken in 1924 and that showed members of the Osage Nation along with white settlers and there was a one all across the wall it looked very innocent but a portion of the photograph was missing and I asked Katherine what had happened to that portion and she kind of looked at me a little funny who is this person but she said you know that that portion I contained a figure who was incredibly and frightening and so I removed it and she then pointed to that missing panel and she said the devil was standing right there and she she went down into the basement and they had this image of the missing panel and they were peering out very creepily was William Hale one of the killers of the Osage and of Margie's ancestors and for me that was really a kind of a galvanizing moment because it goes back to your first question which was Katharine obviously the Osage knew about this history that's why they had removed the photograph because it was so painful and yet people like me knew nothing and it was just this missing gap that we had excised and had not learned and so a lot of the project began almost a journey to address my own ignorance mm-hmm let's say I hear from descendants what were your initial reactions when you found out this book is going to be written what did you hope was going to come out of this work why did you agree to talk to mr. grant Katherine well I thought it was a story that needed to be told I had heard all of my life both of my parents being Osage and you know and I knew all about I'm new about it and when David first contacted me and and we started talking about it and I didn't have any problems with sharing the information I had with him and anyway I was glad it happened glad it happened and I should just say I could not have told this story without the people on the stage with many of those sage the Vaughan's people in this audience I was skeptical when David called and he left a message and I was like oh hmm and so I believe he called again and I still didn't call him back and I think he called again and he said Katherine and I thought okay he's okay to talk to him he's okay guy and then I thought well this really is something that needed to be told and I think and I just after all that I wish my dad was here was alive so he could have experienced it and Cena may be a different side of what was presented you know because he grew up he grew up is a small child and you know he didn't have it easy because of what happened you know his dad tried to murder him you know murdered his relatives and but then David presented Molly as this loving human being a person and I think he just kind of brought it all together and I think my dad really would have been proud Marvin I don't know how long ago that we met but it's been two or three years ago yeah and I don't remember where or when but we've been together several times since then and visited and talking drove around the stuff but at first very first I was pretty skeptical because I've had this before and other people have written other books that weren't resided receive them very well that and I my two I think it's probably a story that needs to be told because not very many people are familiar with a story at all and some of the people and they found out what I would do and said well that's our story and maybe we ought to tell it but we've had all these years nearly a hundred years we haven't told it yet and I think his version is the best version so far and I don't think anybody could tell it any better it's just I found that a lot of stuff that I didn't know I mean telling everything that I do I only answer these questions but he did an excellent job you know you have an example of something that you didn't know that you found out as a result of his research well it's not I think one of the shocking things about the book as a whole is the way in which you reveal the systemic corruption at all levels of society law enforcement medical elements the court system coroner everybody it would like would you talk a little bit about that yeah so when I began the project I always believed in when you do research on stories to be open minded I often write about investigators you can get tunnel vision you can get locked in or you could conceive of a story in which you then try to report it out to fit the conception so when I began researching this story I thought of it in the kind of traditional way that the FBI had told the story early on and in the early newspaper accounts which was about William Hale this kind of singular evil figure who had some henchmen his nephew and had committed about more than to more than two dozen murders and as I did more research beginning when I spoke to Kathryn and Kathryn told me about a suspicious death in her family that wasn't part of the established story and I began to look into that and I would speak to other Osage and I would hear other accounts Maryjo web who is here who spent years investigating a suspicious death in her family I began to realize that this was much broader and I made a trip out to the I spent a lot of time out in the archives in Fort Worth Texas which looks a little like this but even bigger and it always reminded me saying Raiders of Lost Ark where they store the the the records in a vault and I had pulled these records on the guardianship which is a story into itself and I wanted just to check whether a certain Osage had had a guardian I was just trying to confirm it so I pulled these records and I had pulled this book that was almost it looked like a ledger had a fabric cover and it basically just listed the Guardians and they refer to them as Ward's the Osage wards who were whose finances they had managed during just a few years and I looked at one of the guardians I looked at they this person had managed 500 sages fortunes the only other thing written in this book was if an Osage had died somebody had just scribbled the word dead next to it some anonymous bureaucrat and I looked at this one guardian and there were five Osage underneath his name and beside each name said that were dead I said that's kind of crazy like it's just a few years the Osage had wealth they had health they you know they they weren't hungry this was not and it justified in natural decorating then I began to look at other guardians and I saw one I think had about a dozen and there was a 50% mortality rate and on and on it went and then I began to try to look into some of those cases and I began to realize this was really not a story about who did it it was much more a story about who did into it and it was about a culture of killing I think Danny McAuliffe is here and he's documented a story in his family again not part of the FBI narrative all these accounts demolished my original conception of the book and to some extent really took my breath away because that's that ledger really contained the hints of a system murder campaign mm-hmm now for our Osage guests is a very difficult story you know and it's very hard story to tell and so for someone coming from the outside and writing the story it's very factual but for you all it's a very personal story and so would you talk a little bit about as you can or will about the impact this period in history has had on either your family or the Osage as a whole okay I'll start it's had a tremendous impact and I can't say as the Osage as a whole but as in our community our gray horse community is that a big impact because that's where most of it took place that's where people lived and died and and people had to have lived in fear because they didn't know who was going to be next they didn't know why it was happening and now now we put all this stuff together we know why through the efforts of law enforcement and that's worth hanging I talked to FBI supervisors last month and I said what gave them the tools to do this to do this research until the investigation began heads Genesis in the 1880s with a major crimes act and then the definitions of Indian country throughout the years and when Henry Brown was killed unrestricted Indian allotment that's Indian country that gave the FBI the wherewithal the reason the ability to investigate that death and so there are lots of little players in there and some of these people I don't even know I know their name but I don't know them and if you cross bill Hale do you're liable to get eliminated and there have been some fictional accounts and I thought well this couldn't be true because no this man didn't die that way you know somebody else you know so but that was a fictional account and so I heard about this when I was a little kid my mom's older sister to give me a little snip so I don't know why or how they how they came about but that was the story and they lived in that time they were young young people at that time so they knew all about it and I knew people who were live at that at that time you know they told me about my granddad what a great steer Roper was what a fine man he was and he just didn't have any kind of care any at all you know and then he died and the legend was he came home one evening laid down on the couch and died but we find out that it was a lot worse than that something that my mother said to me one time we just kind of out of the clear blue she said don't ever put hedges around your house and I said oh well okay and I I didn't quite get it and I didn't know why she told me that but then in hindsight when I thought about it I thought you know she she had to hide herself as a child she was just a young girl when all this was going on and then I got to thinking about her home out in the country and it didn't have any hedges at all and so I asked her later I said well mom did what did you think about that what were you thinking about she said well people can hide in those you know and I said yeah they can and but you know it didn't make any sense at first but but then you know when you get to thinking about you think oh my gosh you know she was just a child and then she was sent off to boarding school she and her sisters and it was a hard time for those kids and then also for my dad you know because his father was poisoned they think but of course there was never an autopsy done to make sure that that's what happened to him Margie you know when I was a young child my parents talked about this and I can remember sometimes you know we'd get in the car and we drive around and you know mom would say you know this happened here or this is where they blew the house up and this is where Lily Burkhart built a fence with a Constantino wire so nobody could you know do and harm her and I just remember that there was still some residual fear it felt like even when I was a small and then personally affecting me now I was kind of Inc I mean I was angry because bill and Ernest took away my Osage family and and have a family I mean I had my mother's side but I didn't have those aunts and uncles and cousins you know and yeah I was really angry about that say one thing so um when you do history it can often feel distant or removed you spent a lot of time and documents but for me the most powerful part of doing the research was talking to the people on the stage and other osage because you realize this wasn't that long ago we're talking less than a century and you realize how this history still reverberates to this day I remember when Margie took me out to the to the graveyard in in gray horse and you just start looking at the tombs and you begin to look at the dates and the ages especially the deaths during this period and the youth of so many people you begin to get a real sense of how this history still reverberates today now this book has traveled far and wide now a lot of people have been reading it outside of Oklahoma or people outside of the state surprised to find out about the story or how has the reception of it been out in the rest of the world yeah so I think most people even and when I'm in Oklahoma I'm always are like me they didn't know about this outside of Osage County there's certainly others who maybe had heard some bits of it but the the breadth of ignorance about this how much this was missing from our school books I think that's the common I hear most often is why were we not taught this in history why did we not learn about this but I will say I have been surprised you know when I worked on this book I worked on it because I believed in it and I believed it was an important story but I I was kind of under the assumption that people might not read this kind of story because it points to a part of our history that people don't always want to read mm-hmm and that is one of the important parts of reading history that's difficult is hopefully learning lessons that we don't repeat the US has a very long history of mistreatment mismanagement of native people yet this story really is resonating with the American public and why do you think this story is resonating as opposed to a lot of the other things that have happened over the years just because they don't know it I don't know if I know the answer I mean um I think hopefully our society is more ready for this story or more open to it more willing to engage with it I think there are more voices out there now more perspectives being told upon parts of our history that were once neglected and not told often and in other places at least that's my mile and and and but I don't know exactly I mean I would be interested in what everyone else thinks about that I think the fact that that they were the wealthiest people in the world that that got a lot of attention to the reader right off because people you know they're always kind of romanticize the American Indian anyway and then to talk about about about the wealth that was involved here and how how this could happen to a whole group of people and nobody not even know it in the United States I mean that's that's kind of unbelievable really mm-hmm and I think the story encapsulates so many other stories I mean it really encapsulates for lack of a better word the original from which the country was born and that original contact and the other part about is it was happening very recently never able to figure out how one guy a cowhand from Texas come up here and do all this one guy and get all influenced all these other people from Kansas City to Oklahoma City how does that happen well Marvin would you address why Osage people needed guardians in the first place for our audience you might not know that so we're very interesting questions that I can't answer because we were deemed to be this didn't happen anybody else we were deemed not to have the ability to cake take care of our own affairs even when we had guardians that couldn't take care of her own affair they got it they got it and so you might have people who had they were guardians over several people you know and they scraped the top of all the money that came off they got the top of it mmm-hmm any other responses to that what did you find out David a surprise to you just with regards to these guardians being necessary it's totally outrageous I mean I think I mean I would say the there were many discoveries along the way that shocked me because I didn't know about this history anybody here and you should do it it's worth it you should pull congressional testimony from the 1920s where there was an obsession about scapegoating the Osage for their money I mean it was the 1920s the era of the Great Gatsby you had people like II W Marlon blowing his fortune making it blowing it and yet members of Congress would sit around often with self-righteousness saying what are we going to do with these Osage you can't have all this money and you know you could have an Osage chief who led a great nation and here you had a local white citizen ton and whether they could buy this car this to face down at the corner store and it wasn't just an abstract Lyrae system that was a as Marvin said I mean it was a literally race his system was based on the quantum of Osage blood so if you were a full-blooded Osage you were Dean quote/unquote incompetent and give him one of these Guardians and the system wasn't just racist it also assured him one of the largest state and federally sanctioned criminal enterprises as these guardians swindle millions of millions of millions of dollars I think it's hard for us in contemporary times to realize just how much money was involved would the three of you tell any story that you choose to about the way in which life changed for Osage people once this oil wealth came in well well started they started doing oil leases in 1890s and then it got we helped fuel the fires of wool one with Osage the oil than the Burbank field and and there was a necessity for it and a need for it and so we had that we had to in the the Osage we got our reservation in 1872 we had the allotment act in 1906 and we observed in LA and the allotment act they reserved all of the surface area but maintain the mineral state by the tribe and the 2229 members of the Osage tribe they got it one two thousand one two thousand two hundred twenty-nine for share well that was a pretty big share where you've got all that money coming in that goes to one person and so a lot of folks that had a lot of money and I used to hear these stories they have these great big cars when the ashtray said get full they'd either get around a gas they would leave it side the road and go buy another one nonsense my mom says we had a big car but there were a lot of kids it's a pierce-arrow so I want a car show last year and I said wow nice car you know and but yeah about how they built houses or lived in the tents in the back not true not true but they said that about other people too you know so maybe they do all these things maybe they don't know how to spend their money you know how to take care of their money so we need you somebody give somebody some mmm-hmm they will protect their interest Foreman what did they do Marvin would you or Margie or or Kathryn one thing that's really interesting about the way in which the Osage maintained their mineral rights was in their original treaty making process would you explain that to the people here here that's we say we're kind of unique and we are in a way but a lot of other tribes they have that as well but usually when they when they're when they're when their land was allotted and that was given to the individual Indian though the title to the property was held in the United States for the benefit of the individual native but they got to keep the mineral rights the individual but where the land is held in common the tribe held and I don't were that up in Utah but for us the lands are held in common the end it was divided in the allotment process but they reserved the mineral rights out of the allotment process and kept it for the tribe then that's why we've got all the money mm-hmm anyone else want to say I just like to back up just a little bit on guardianship and when David first contacted me about about this and we had a meeting on it and of course he was with the New Yorker and so he was just talking about an article for The New Yorker and so I thought oh this story there's so much to be told here but I thought well maybe he could do this and you know do it in a series and start out with the murders and then get into the Guardians because that's what I really wanted to talk about was for him to get into that mm-hmm because somewhat it still goes on I mean they're still guardians there and I know that my father told me that in Pawhuska when he was growing up in the 20s that there were 75 attorneys in Pawhuska you know we're talking about a town of 5,000 people and 75 attorneys there and you know and you still see the remnants of that today there's still quite a few attorneys had passed and and then with the land with with setting up the reservation like we did we were the only tribe to do that to a lot the surface and then and then and then we held the other collectively and then divided it up like Marvin said at least two thousand two hundred twenty nine divisions which is still active today but the bad part of that is that you could will it out as you read in this book and and then that's when the corruption come in Margie anything you'd like to contribute to this part no just the same pretty much Katherine said well let me ask you this David because you're writing about Sherlock Holmes for instance you have a strong sense of the history of crime fiction or not just not crime fiction but crime reporting crime writing is there a point when you're inside of this book going oh my gosh I've really got something here and how did you balance between not sensationalizing it but trying to tell this story that's so incredible and horrible at the same time and yet keep the reader going because that's what everybody says that I hear talk about this book this is a horrible read but it's a great read at the same time so you do I guess I'd say two things one is I've always been a big believer that you can tell stories in such a way to reach people and when you write stories you want to try to reach people who don't necessarily want to read about this kind of thing and so this story has elements that are of intrigue and conspiracy and you know all these these elements but within that I think you can tell a really important story and and and get the moral gravity of it and I thought with a story like this I really saw it as a work of documentation and I wanted even the voice and the style while describing these sensational events to be very reserved because the events need to speak for themselves I cut out adverbs like I wanted to distill it I wanted just I almost wanted it to be just a collection of facts of documented facts and it was one of the reasons I did something this book that I'd never done before which was to integrate photographs because I wanted it to feel like a work of documentation and also because sometimes the events seemed too hard to believe and then you see the bombing and you could see the house before the bombing you could see it after the bombing so that was kind of my approach I don't know if I fully succeeded but that was my hope mm-hmm and what do some of our Osage guests hope that will come out of this writing and these events and this has brought a lot of awareness not just to this story but Osage people as a whole so what do you hope comes out of this whole process well I think telling the story as awareness we're not who you think we might be from the stories that you've heard from somebody else you know and also I think that the people that did this and I've office how could they do that because they didn't have a heart and it didn't have a soul and they're old there's only ambition was to it was for the money that's all it was so how bad can that be well I could we've seen it could be pretty bad mm-hmm you know I just it's really hard from what some of these people look like cuz I'd seen their picture but some of those people I didn't know what they look like still don't know what they look like sometimes I wished I could meet him but I mean they were you know we had we get that there's a tribe up along the Canadian border and they're going through an oil burn I wish they had to come and talk to us cuz we could have told them what it was gonna be like and sure enough it's happening to them as well it's if they don't have guardians because people are stealing their money they got drugs they got alcohol they got prostitution they got the state that's taking all our money from him because well you know you guys don't need you know they've got big wall trucks or tearing up their roads you know but the states are not repairing them you know so we've experienced this and we experienced you know my granddad died just a little bit more than 20 years before I was born you know and I just think that was way way back in the colonial days when I was a hearing about all that stuff you know and but it wasn't you know and I claim what my granddad had got to live a while what if you've got to live til he's in his 60s I had a very good relationship with my with my mom's dead he's taking me fishing and camping he had a cousin lived over on the Kansas Missouri border we should go over there you know you ever drive from Wichita to Blue Mountain Kansas doing 45 miles an hour and a cheap wagon let me tell you but so what if my dad dad had lived that long you know what could he have told me about being an Osage mm-hmm something about his faith about his family because he was raised by someone who wasn't his father what could he have told me about his family because there's a big disconnect there there's a big gap there so my dad grew up an orphan he died at a young age so there's a big gap that we don't know anything about mm-hmm and I think it's one of the things that is a theme in the book is loss obviously not just material and money but people and stories and families so how about you Margie what do you think you'd like to see come out of this whole process well I think maybe awareness maybe it will I don't know trigger someone to to investigate more of Indian history maybe I you know I know people that will read the book to their husband every evening they're read parts of the book and I'm thinking well I hope you know they'll read it to their grandkids or their kids and maybe it'll just help them maybe just learn a little bit more about them Indian history that in all the tragedies and all the good things that the tribes did mm-hmm you know before Europeans came over just you know make them aware of what what what what tribes are what tribal citizens are and how they prospered and you know but going back with Marvin said I don't know why this is the question about Hale I mean the guy was wealthy and how much money did he need that that was always a question that I always asked myself how much money did he need because he was a wealthy man mm-hmm and there there are houses he built them in Fairfax you know he built them for people Eva Paul bearer's other people's funeral and that sort of stuff and I told a friend of mine who's 15 16 years older than I am he said I said I remember when he died we lived up for which Toth um he's yesterday were there oh they just claim that he didn't do that thing he was a really good man that didn't his funeral I found that incredulous well what I would like to see come from this is you know there was a land grab going on here too at the same time and I think that's still going on and I think it needs to stop and I and I think that one of the best things that the Osage Nation has done at this point is purchased one of the biggest ranches and and now is starting to buy back land from tribal members where they don't sell it outside of the of the nation and I think that's one of the greatest things and that's what I'd like to see come from this book that people will know that that there's still people out there trying to get what we have what's left now of course there's a lot of talk about a movie going to come out of this process so the book has gotten this much attention how involved will you be in the moviemaking process and what do you think is gonna happen there so my involvement pretty limited I you know really focus on the books and the history and but it seems to be in hands of people who care about the project I know they have been speaking to the Osage two chief Standing Bear my hope is you know a book can reach so many people but my hope is that the movie will make this even more part of our national conscious you know if people ask me the one thing I would hope that comes out of the book is that there are less people like me who know nothing about this history mm-hmm one of the things we say about Native American history is kind of almost a cliche to say you get mad you get sad you get glad you're mad for the way things went down there's obviously a sad part but they're sort of a swing up toward the glad part so would you talk a little bit about some of the good things happening within the Osage Nation today and then the purchase of a big turn arrange uh-huh because you know a lot of people and and I've read it in the newspaper where ranchers have said well we need to get our land back I thought what are they talking about get it back they never had it in the first place it was iers and so you know I'm all for this and I and I hope that from this book that that that osage's will start to purchase land themselves back in our in our because we still it's not called a reservation anymore but I still look at as a reservation and I have on my return address on my stamp that says Kathryn Redcorn Osage reservation that's what I want there are a lot of good things that we're doing yeah because of the business interests that we have and that sort of thing we we employ I don't know two three four thousand people you know and they all pay you know most of them are not oh say but they're not Indians or there are people from other tribes they all get the nice paychecks and they get they paid payroll taxes the state of Oklahoma you know and and so it's just all going around and we we we do our share people think that we don't do our share but we do you know so I'd like that part of it you know and if you want a job up there while you know you've got some kind of skill a lot of times you can get a job those skills are open you know I like going through the through the Christmas time they have a ham turkey giveaway for all the employees and you line up and you get to a big semi-truck and there's your hand buddy you know Marty you're on the minerals Council would you tell us a little bit about what that's like today Oh Kathryn I'm sorry on the minerals council yes we have a council that made up of eight people and it's a we're elected by the shareholders but they that's what we call them share whole Osage shareholders because they're the only ones that can vote in the election and we handle the oil and gas royalties for the nation so all the oil and gas royalties now are controlled by the Osage within the Osage Nation well the council is an old council it was established in 1906 and then when the nation turned we set up the Osage Nation then the minerals council become the Osage tribal council become the minerals council but still a part of the nation I see all right well we're getting to the end of our presentation here David what have you not said about this book that you would like to tell the people who are here tonight well I guess two things one just friend to your last question you know one of the reasons in the book I have the section in the present was to try to broaden out the story and show these other cases but was also to show how vibrant Osage Nation is today and I always think of the this quote from this attorney and I said you're turning away I spoke with and I'm paraphrasing but she said something like we were victims of these crimes but we don't live as victims and I think it's always really important to underscore that history did not stop and I I really look at history as kind of a living organism and even since this book has come out I have had more information come to me I've had other families reach out to me Margie we had somebody reach out to me who was the son of the man who Molly married after Ernest and I know that he is that she has now spoken to Marty history is still kind of percolating and I hope that this just kind of continues to grow I mean I think that would be you know I see this as the beginning and not the end of the story so that's one thing that you didn't say what's not the other things are two things Oh two things well this is a part of that the flip side of that which is for me one of the hardest things that I often tell a bit futile and helpless about was so for example Katherine had mentioned at some point after we got to know each other better she told me the story about suspicious death and her family and she had given me a little bit of trails of evidence and I tried to look into it and because so many of the witnesses were dead and because so many of the suspects are now dead and because the conspirators and so many of these cases covered up the crimes that in many of these cases you're not able to fully bring that resolution for me that was one of the hardest parts about this was knowing that there were these other cases I had always thought of when I began this project that history I've written about in justices other situations and I always thought of history as a way to provide an accounting in which you record voices of the victims and you identify the perpetrators but that was not always possible and the perpetrators in these cases in many cases they did not only erase the lives of the victims they also erased their history and it's a secondary crime but in no less nefarious crime but I do hope that over time that at least we'll get at least a few more clues and bits of evidence because I know a lot of people people like Mary Jo web of here who have had to live with this and investigated it where there isn't this you didn't have these cases resolved properly and adjudicated and the criminals prosecuted now if not necessarily a criticism but we all have access to social media and one of the voices that kind of came up through this book process was here's David gran coming from New York he's exploiting this story and he's just another non Osage whose reaping the benefits of this story for his own purposes and how do you respond to that well I hope not you know when I began this project I did not envision it would to be honest it would have success I began it because I thought it was a really important story and I spent about five years on it and during those five years there was more struggle then then then reward and I hope those aged who I've met know that I want to give back I feel very committed to that I feel committed to the relationships I formed I'm not good at many things Tarawa athlete I dreamed of becoming a basketball player and I think this will be the closest I ever come I don't have many talents I'm semi-blind I'm awkward but I care passionately about the things I write about and try to document it and so the one thing I hope that people will feel when they read the book and more than anyone I hope the osage feel that way that I at least try my best to do this story justice and to hopefully give back partly by making it part of not just my consciousness but a broader consciousness in this country that we begin to reckon with this history mm-hmm good answer we have just a few minutes left is there anything that you'd like to say is kind of a final statement something that Marvin was talking about he'd like to have met these people and it so happened that the woman that my grandfather was married to was still alive when he was doing some of these checks and and I found her and so I had made all my arrangements to go meet her and go see her and divine intervention stepped in and she died before I could get there and and but it was gonna happen really quick and I just assumed that from that we were not supposed to meet these people Margie you know I I appreciated the book I really did I thought it was well written and when I was in high school I had a history teacher and he said you know you know write a story you ever write a book about this and I can't those comments that but the osage should have wrote this book you know we had there was a plenty of opportunity for someone to write that book but no one did and so I can't imagine why they would say something you know so I didn't I was telling so you know and can I just have one last thing I don't think my book is like I said history is living I think you learn more through more perspectives and I hope there are more accounts I hope more people tell the story and tell their portion of the story cases are closed and history is not definitive it is a it is a evolving learning process and so I've told what I could tell but I know there are others will tell more and and that's a great thing you want to build you want to learn more you want to construct and there were great books before this too people said we should have wrote our story of Scylla but nobody can write as well as he can and but there are so many people involved you know there's really and he pulled all of those people together and and may just made a whole story out of it you know and I just their foot kiss because I just don't know how one guy could do all of that how he'd have so much control but he did and you know he was the Al Capone of Fairfax you know and a friend of mine a guy went to high school and I've been on high school for a long time and he wrote me a email the other day and he said well Steve read the book and he gave me the book to read and he's a spoiled hurt he told me it's you were in it he said but we didn't know about this oh but we did because when we were in high school there's a book coming out called the FBI story and there was a chapter about that in that which was made into a movie and but in the move they called Fairfax in heute City but yeah that was that's what that was about you know and what's a while you'll see it on late-night TV or something you know and but I'm gonna remind him of that when I not want to answer his email all right ladies and gentlemen we've come to the end of our presentation here tonight so how about a hand for our awesome [Applause] thank you very much and I would be remiss if I did not ask for a hand for the people of the Stillwater Public Library Linda Reynolds and her staff they put together a wonderful two months of Osage presentations [Applause] Stillwater public librarian just all free programming has just been really wonderful and of course we appreciate all of you who came out tonight to be with us we want to remind you that mr. gran will be signing books in the lobby after we finish here we hope you all have safe trips back to your homes and we wish you a good night [Applause]

Channel: City of Stillwater TV

Views: 68,468

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Id: cntWt2s5NcI

Length: 52min 33sec (3153 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 18 2018