Killers of the Flower Moon: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

The killings of both Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn are quickly sensationalized in the local newspapers. Because both were killed by gunshots from a .32-caliber pistol—and both were wealthy Osage Indians in their thirties—the murders are thought to be the work of a repeat killer.

Lizzie relies on Mollie to deal with the authorities—during her lifetime, the older woman has been “unmoored” from the way of life she once knew and has “nothing familiar to clutch and stay afloat in the world of white man’s wealth.” Mollie has taken the lead for her family—as a speaker of English married to a white man, she has ventured into realms once unfamiliar to her people, but has not been tempted or hurt by the ways of life that have compromised some younger members of the tribe—like Anna. An Osage chief said, in 1928, that he feared his tribe would not know peace and happiness until the “fat checks […] and fine motorcars and new clothes” that had come to characterize their lives had evaporated.

The racist authorities have little concern for a “dead Injun,” and so Mollie turns to Ernest’s uncle, William Hale, a “powerful local advocate for law and order.” Hale, once a scrappy cattleman, has worked his way up from nothing to become a distinguished man of good repute and a reserve deputy sheriff in Fairfax. He is so wealthy and powerful that local politicians court his support, and Mollie is among many members of her tribe who consider him Osage County’s greatest benefactor—Hale himself once stated that he was, and would always be, “the Osages true Friend.” At Mollie’s behest, Hale vows to obtain justice for Anna.  

Mollie, Bryan, and Ernest are all questioned about the last time they saw Anna. As Bryan was the last person to see her before her death, he and Ernest are detained and questioned further, but soon turned loose. Ernest’s testimony states that he knows of no “enemies she had or anyone that disliked [Anna.]”

Officials theorize that Anna’s killer, whoever he was, came from outside the reservation. Organized crime and lawlessness are rampant throughout Osage County, where the prospect of striking it rich in oil has “drawn every breed of miscreant from across the country.” Outlaws and fugitives hide out in the Osage Hills—such as the dangerous Blackie Thompson and the notorious Al Spencer (leader of a gang of outlaws.)  

Another theory about Anna’s death is that someone on the reservation committed the crime and is “living among them in sheep’s clothing.” Mollie begins to suspect Anna’s ex-husband, Oda Brown, a no-good carouser, who was shut out of a chance at Anna’s inheritance after the divorce. Brown has, since Anna’s death, hired a lawyer to try to contest her will.

Several weeks after Anna’s funeral, Frea receives a letter from a man who has been arrested in Kansas for check forgery—the letter states that Brown paid him $8,000 to murder Anna and describes the specifics of the murder. A posse of lawmen arrest Oda Brown, but within days, authorities have debunked the claims presented in the forger’s letter and released Brown.

Hale, who has close ties with the county prosecutor (after effectively securing the election for the man,) confers with him and other local officials about Anna’s murder. The county prosecutor, wanting to search again for the bullet, obtains an order to disinter Anna, but even after digging up her grave and having the Shoun brothers search again for the bullet—cutting up Anna’s head with a meat cleaver—nothing can be found.

By July of 1921, the justice of the peace has closed his inquiries and declared Anna’s death a mystery—just as he did with Whitehorn’s. Lizzie, meanwhile, has grown sicker and sicker, and despite Mollie seeking the help of Osage medicine men, Lizzie dies in July, just two months after Anna’s murder.

Mollie’s brother-in-law Bill Smith—a “bruising bulldog of a man”—expresses his deep frustration over the authorities’ investigation, wondering whether there is something “curious” about Lizzie’s death. He begins taking matters into his own hands, and soon comes to believe that Lizzie died of poisoning. Bill is certain that all three deaths—Lizzie’s, Anna’s, and Whitehorn’s—are all connected to “the Osage’s subterranean reservoir of black gold.”