0:00:07 > 0:00:10Now, it's time for Meet The Author.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14Oklahoma in the 1920s and the true story of a murder conspiracy that
0:00:14 > 0:00:16absorbed and shocked America, and epitomised the darker
0:00:16 > 0:00:19side of the Wild West and all its lingering lawlessness.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21Native Americans being herded into reservations and dismissed
0:00:21 > 0:00:26as inferior Red Indians.
0:00:26 > 0:00:28Then the oil gushes sprouting out of the prairies
0:00:28 > 0:00:32and changing everything.
0:00:32 > 0:00:37And eventually, a conspiracy fuelled by greed and jealousy that became
0:00:37 > 0:00:40one of the obsessions of the young J Edgar Hoover and his new FBI.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44David Grann's book Killers Of The Flower Moon is a trip
0:00:44 > 0:00:47into the story of the Osage people, a journey into a part
0:00:47 > 0:00:49of American's past that's closer than we sometimes think.
0:00:49 > 0:00:58Welcome.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07David, this is a fabulous melodrama, but it's also a human story
0:01:07 > 0:01:14that is full of tragedy.
0:01:14 > 0:01:24When you lifted the lid on this series of murders
0:01:25 > 0:01:27in Oklahoma in the early '20s, apart from knowing you'd stumbled
0:01:27 > 0:01:30across a wonderful story, how did it affect you?
0:01:30 > 0:01:33I've written so many stories, this was the one that was probably
0:01:33 > 0:01:36the most emotionally draining.
0:01:36 > 0:01:39I worked on it for nearly half a decade, and I began to collect
0:01:39 > 0:01:40pictures, photographs, of the victims.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43And I would keep those photographs by my desk
0:01:43 > 0:01:45as I worked on the project.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49And the real tragedy was, as I began the project,
0:01:49 > 0:01:54I thought there were, you know, so many victims, a dozen,
0:01:54 > 0:01:57and then a dozen grew to two dozen, and by the end of the project
0:01:57 > 0:02:00I was looking at scores of victims who were caught up in this
0:02:00 > 0:02:04incredibly sinister conspiracy.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08And of course, they were Native Americans.
0:02:08 > 0:02:10Yes.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13Red Indians, as we grew up to call them in an earlier age.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18And they faced the most terrible problems in their lives.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21The land was removed, the discrimination was at a level
0:02:21 > 0:02:25that we can barely imagine.
0:02:25 > 0:02:29Yes.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33And then they discovered the black oil was coming up through their land
0:02:33 > 0:02:34and they became rich.
0:02:34 > 0:02:36The way the story begins its extraordinary, it takes
0:02:36 > 0:02:37you to another planet.
0:02:37 > 0:02:38Yes.
0:02:38 > 0:02:39I mean, it's amazing.
0:02:39 > 0:02:41So, the Osage suffered the same fate as so many Native American
0:02:41 > 0:02:44communities and tribes and nations in the United States,
0:02:44 > 0:02:46which is that they were driven off their land.
0:02:46 > 0:02:49They once controlled most of the Midwest.
0:02:49 > 0:02:51Thomas Jefferson referred to them as "that great nation".
0:02:51 > 0:02:53And then within a few years, they had to cede millions
0:02:53 > 0:02:54and millions of acres.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57And eventually they were driven to this little corner
0:02:57 > 0:02:58of north-east Oklahoma.
0:02:58 > 0:03:01They went there because they thought the land was rocky and infertile
0:03:01 > 0:03:04and they said the white men will finally leave us alone.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07So they go there, and lo and behold they're sitting on some
0:03:07 > 0:03:09of the largest deposits of oil in the world.
0:03:09 > 0:03:10And overnight, they became millionaires.
0:03:10 > 0:03:12They became the richest people per capita, not only
0:03:12 > 0:03:14in the United States, but in the world.
0:03:14 > 0:03:19And they lived in mansions.
0:03:19 > 0:03:23It was said at the time that where each American might own one car,
0:03:23 > 0:03:32each Osage owned 11 cars!
0:03:32 > 0:03:35And the car had come, we're in the 20th century in this story,
0:03:35 > 0:03:36but it's the Wild West!
0:03:36 > 0:03:40It is the last remnants of the Wild West.
0:03:40 > 0:03:41It's lawless, it's outlaws...
0:03:41 > 0:03:42Power hungry...
0:03:42 > 0:03:43Pistol shooters...
0:03:43 > 0:03:46And because of the oil, this area drew, it was like a magnet
0:03:46 > 0:03:48for every kind of outlaw.
0:03:48 > 0:03:49Getty arrived on the train.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53All the great oil men made their fortune in the Osage.
0:03:53 > 0:03:54Getty...
0:03:54 > 0:03:56All the great names we associate with oil barons,
0:03:56 > 0:03:58they all made their fortune in the Osage.
0:03:58 > 0:04:02And in the midst of it, you tell the story of a real set of
0:04:02 > 0:04:04murders, a conspiracy, what we would now call a cover-up
0:04:04 > 0:04:07Yes.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10And a target for the nascent FBI, Hoover the new director sitting
0:04:10 > 0:04:12in Washington, sending his men in undercover
0:04:12 > 0:04:13to try to sort this out.
0:04:13 > 0:04:20Yes.
0:04:20 > 0:04:22I mean, it's a story that's, it's better than fiction.
0:04:22 > 0:04:24Yeah, it is crazier than fiction.
0:04:24 > 0:04:26It's hard to believe.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28What's amazing about this story is it has been almost
0:04:28 > 0:04:30excised from history, partly because of racial prejudice.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33I had known nothing about this story when I started writing it.
0:04:33 > 0:04:34And yet it was huge.
0:04:34 > 0:04:35Across America.
0:04:35 > 0:04:37It was big in its day, yeah.
0:04:37 > 0:04:38It was big in its day.
0:04:38 > 0:04:41It became the nascent FBI's first major homicide case.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44It became J Edgar Hoover at age 29 doing his job, believe it or not,
0:04:44 > 0:04:46insecure about his security and holding onto his job.
0:04:46 > 0:04:51It became his first big case.
0:04:51 > 0:04:53And after they badly bungled the case, and,
0:04:53 > 0:04:56just to give one example of that, they recruited an outlaw,
0:04:56 > 0:04:58appropriately named Blackey, to go in undercover to use
0:04:58 > 0:05:01as an informant.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04Instead, he slips away, robs a bank and kills a police officer.
0:05:04 > 0:05:09J Edgar Hoover is sitting in Washington petrified
0:05:09 > 0:05:12that he might actually lose his job, that his dreams of
0:05:12 > 0:05:13a bureaucratic empire might end.
0:05:13 > 0:05:15He turns the case over to an old frontier lawman,
0:05:15 > 0:05:17an agent named Tom White.
0:05:17 > 0:05:19Tom White puts together an undercover team and it is like
0:05:19 > 0:05:21something out of Oceans 11.
0:05:21 > 0:05:22Texas Rangers come in.
0:05:22 > 0:05:22Yeah, Texas Rangers.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25They have one guy pose as an insurance salesman.
0:05:25 > 0:05:26He used to sell insurance.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29He actually opens an insurance store in town.
0:05:29 > 0:05:33He's selling real policies.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37The most amazing thing is, too, that the undercover team included
0:05:37 > 0:05:39an American Indian agent, and this was remarkable,
0:05:39 > 0:05:41because there was so much prejudice at the time,
0:05:41 > 0:05:43he was probably the only American Indian or Native American
0:05:43 > 0:05:46in the bureau at the time.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50And in the midst of this, you uncover for us a conspiracy,
0:05:50 > 0:05:53the nature of which we won't reveal because it would spoil it
0:05:53 > 0:05:57for readers, and subsequently a sensational trial.
0:05:57 > 0:06:03That I think goes deep into the American story
0:06:03 > 0:06:06in the sense that you can see through this prism,
0:06:06 > 0:06:10with all its melodrama and bloodstained detail,
0:06:10 > 0:06:14the emergence of a real system of laws and order.
0:06:14 > 0:06:17Yes.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20In the 1920s - it took that long.
0:06:20 > 0:06:25Yes - this was really the emergence of what I would call
0:06:25 > 0:06:27professionalism, an effort to professionalise law enforcement.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31One of the things that shocked me was just how
0:06:31 > 0:06:35lawless the country was, how untrained sheriff's office was,
0:06:35 > 0:06:38and how widespread corruption was.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40And so this was an attempt to professionalise
0:06:40 > 0:06:41the art of detection.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44The amazing thing about Tom White is, he began his career riding
0:06:44 > 0:06:52on a horse when justice was meted out by the end of a barrel
0:06:52 > 0:06:55of a gun, and by the 1920s, when he's working this case,
0:06:55 > 0:06:58he's wearing a suit and a fedora, trying to work out how
0:06:58 > 0:06:59to study fingerprints, handwriting analysis,
0:06:59 > 0:07:01and he has to file paperwork, which he can't stand.
0:07:01 > 0:07:02This is a magical story.
0:07:02 > 0:07:06But as you said when we began, it's also a very painful story.
0:07:06 > 0:07:07Yeah.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10What did you learn about your country in the 1920s that
0:07:10 > 0:07:12you hadn't really thought of?
0:07:12 > 0:07:17You know, I was shocked, even though you grow up hearing
0:07:17 > 0:07:20about racial prejudice, the degree of racial prejudice that
0:07:20 > 0:07:25allowed these crimes to go on.
0:07:25 > 0:07:31These were crimes of greed and avarice, but they were carried
0:07:31 > 0:07:34out without consciousness, because the targets and the victims
0:07:34 > 0:07:38were Native Americans.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41And in their minds, and many
0:07:41 > 0:07:43of the killers, these were seen as sub-humans.
0:07:43 > 0:07:47And because of that, these crimes are covered up.
0:07:47 > 0:07:50I guess the thing that shocked me most is, we tend to think
0:07:50 > 0:07:52about murder stories with a singular evil force, right?
0:07:52 > 0:07:56You have one really bad man, and the whole kind
0:07:56 > 0:08:03of concept of a mystery, both in fiction and in nonfiction,
0:08:03 > 0:08:06is, you capture that bad man, you expunge it and you feel
0:08:06 > 0:08:07better about society.
0:08:07 > 0:08:10What happens when you have a crime story where the whole of white
0:08:10 > 0:08:14society, the whole town, is possibly complicit in it?
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Finally, how have the Osage people that you've been
0:08:17 > 0:08:19in touch with reacted
0:08:19 > 0:08:22to the telling of the story, and the fact that it will now be
0:08:22 > 0:08:24read by millions of people?
0:08:24 > 0:08:27Yeah, I mean, I didn't know when I began the project how people
0:08:27 > 0:08:30would receive me, and the desire to tell the story, and I was struck
0:08:30 > 0:08:33that the Osage were remarkably generous, because they carried
0:08:33 > 0:08:39this story inside them for so many years.
0:08:39 > 0:08:44And so for them, I think, the chance to share the story,
0:08:44 > 0:08:48that it might receive its place in history and a wider audience,
0:08:48 > 0:08:52at least so far, my experience has been extremely positive.