The enduring family trauma behind ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

The Washington Post, October 20, 2023: The enduring family trauma behind ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

“Margie Burkhart can’t remember a time when she didn’t know about the murders. As a girl growing up in the 1960s, she would sprawl across her bed and listen to her father talking with her mother and aunt around the kitchen table in their small home in Gray Horse, Okla. Their voices carried; there was no sense of secrecy.

“Over time, the full story took shape in Margie’s mind:

“In 1918, Margie’s aunt Minnie had wasted away of an apparent poisoning. Then in 1921, Margie’s aunt Anna had disappeared and was later found fatally shot at the bottom of a ravine. Three months later, her great-grandmother Lizzie had also died of an apparent poisoning. In 1923, a bombing killed Margie’s aunt Rita and her husband.

“By the end of it, Margie’s grandmother Mollie Burkhart and her two children — Margie’s father, James, and her aunt Liz — were the only survivors in their immediate family.”

Additional reading:

Smithsonian Magazine, October 18, 2023: The Real History Behind ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

The Conversation, October 23, 2023: For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ still lingers

Slate, October 22, 2023: Killers of the Flower Moon’s Author on the Changes the Movie Makes to the Book