What Happened to the Land in Scorsese’s ‘Killers of The Flower Moon’
The answer reveals one of the most damning parts of US policy toward Native Americans: White settlement was financed with Native money.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon, scheduled to be released Oct. 20.
Photographer: Melinda Sue GordonMartin Scorsese’s latest critically acclaimed movie hits theaters in October, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone. Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the bestselling book by journalist David Grann, portrays the systematic murder of Osage people for their oil wealth, which exploded in the 1910s and ’20s in Oklahoma.
But what happened to the land owned by rancher William K. Hale, the alleged mastermind of the conspiracy and a convicted murderer? The investigative podcast In Trust uncovered long-forgotten financial documents, land records and archived tapes that reveal how Hale’s infamous ranch landed in the hands of two of Oklahoma’s most prominent ranching families.