Summary
In the fifth chapter, Mollie and her family offer a reward for Anna's killer. They feel frustrated with white authorities and hope to use their money to get closer to resolving the case. A standoff between the sheriff and the Oklahoma attorney general brings the case to a complete halt. Hale decides to put money towards hiring a private detective. Grann notes that private detectives were commonly used in the time period to investigate cases, despite being shady and unregulated figures with little to no formal training.
The operatives hired by Hale, Anna's family, and others make a mess of the case. They are not especially loyal or competent and struggle to collect meaningful evidence. They receive various tips and false confessions but don't make headway toward solving the murders. At the same time, Mollie grows suspicious of Rita's husband, Bill, as he married Rita hastily after the death of Minnie, their other sister and his first wife. She dislikes his heavy drinking and is very disturbed by his physical abuse of Rita.
Still, she goes along with his investigation, as he seems to be one of the only parties interested in solving Anna's murder. In the meantime, various tribe members die under strange circumstances, suffering from an inexplicable "wasting" illness. A white man, Barney McBride, who attempts to intervene in the case is found brutally murdered near the reservation, making it clear that someone is sending a message to stay out of the matter. An atmosphere of fear overtakes the town.
In the midst of the murder, oil barons continue to come to Pawhuska, seeking their fortune. They bid for the opportunity to drill the oil out of the Osage's land. They fight viciously for these rights, as they all desperately want to make as much money as possible. The bidding escalates quickly as they jostle for the top spot. At the same time, largely due to sensationalizing press coverage, the American public grows increasingly enraged by the Osage people's wealth. Newspapers run fabricated stories about them throwing away entire grand pianos or buying new cars when their old ones get a flat tire.
Grann reveals that many of the Osage were actually under restrictive guardian relationships that limited their ability to spend their own money. Concurrently, they were surrounded by people who sought to insert themselves into their business affairs, in the hopes of getting rich off of their inheritance. The Osage felt resentful about this, as they saw, accurately, that they were once again being tricked out of their money. The government had shuffled them around on numerous occasions and was only now expressing an interest because the "pile of rocks" allotted to them turned out to be valuable.
Another murder occurs a few months after the McBride killing. The body is identified as that of Henry Roan—another tribe member and Mollie's former fiance. The murders make for an atmosphere of terror and unease on the reservation. Henry Grammar, a local rodeo star and a known criminal, becomes a person of interest in the case. Bill goes to his ranch to seek out answers. With no one home, Bill drinks some of Grammar's liquor and goes home.
That night, there is a terrible fire at his house, resulting from a dynamite explosion. Rita and her servant Nettie die in the fire. Bill suffers terrible burns and experiences agonizing pain. He dies in the hospital days later. People become even more afraid in the aftermath. A Pawhuska lawyer named W. W. Vaughn attempts to investigate the case and disappears while boarding a train. His body is later found on railroad tracks, with his neck broken. With a death toll of twenty-four, the killings cast a heavy pall over Pawhuska. Mollie fears for her life, certain that she will be the next victim.
Analysis
Racism is a major theme in this section of the book. The Osage are shown continuously contending with hate and distrust. One of the most notable ways this manifests is in the apathy of law enforcement towards the killings in Pawhuska. Grann writes that they showed little interest in the case and handled it carelessly, missing large amounts of evidence at the crime scene and shelving the case in the midst of a bootlegging dispute. What quickly becomes apparent to Mollie is that they do not view the rapidly growing number of murders as a serious matter and are instead focused only on the affairs of white people. She perceives early on that they will not get the same treatment as white citizens, despite being terrorized by a series of brutal murders.
Greed is another important component in this part of the book. The chapter describing the arrival of the oil barons shows the quick uptick in attention on the Osage once oil is discovered on their land. This sparks an immediate influx of white oil workers and a large amount of media coverage. This attention quickly turns sour when the newspapers begin to run stories falsely characterizing the Osage as wasteful and decadent. The envy of the Osage's money suddenly becomes a flashpoint, as white people begin to view them as unjustifiably rich. Grann shows how the Osage became the recipients of a significant amount of hostility as a result of people either wanting some of their wealth or hating them for having it in the first place.
Corruption is a major thematic element in these chapters as well. Grann describes how the Osage were immediately placed into restrictive guardianships that put white individuals in charge of how they could spend their money. These so-called guardianships were quickly revealed to be cruel scams, as members of the tribe were unable to take out money even for basic necessities, like medicine for their ill children. The plainly obvious reason for these arrangements was to take as much money from the Osage as possible, a situation actively created and perpetuated by the U.S. Government. The Osage saw that now that they had money, the government suddenly took an interest in them, as they now had something it wanted. As with the land treaties before, they once again found themselves in a game that had been rigged against them.
Evil is another important theme in this section. As the killings continue, and the number of murderers involved grows increasingly high, it becomes clear that these crimes are part of a conspiracy. Grann makes Mollie's fear palpable, as he frames the murders as shrouded in mystery and seemingly unstoppable. He highlights them as works of evil in that the killers acted with the most viciousness imaginable, using explosives and blunt force, stripping their victims naked, and showing no trepidation about who they targeted. By preserving this sense of dread and tension, Grann is able to show how these murders achieved their goal of instilling terror, and as is revealed later, going after the Osage people's sizable fortune. The calculated brutality of these crimes shows how inhuman their perpetrators were, a fact of which Grann reminds the reader on multiple occasions.
This part of the book gets deeper into the killings and shows the atmosphere on the reservation that resulted. Grann uses these chapters to show the historical and financial forces that shaped this awful moment, underscoring the envy felt towards the Osage because of their oil profits and detailing the series of unjust land treaties that the government used to force them out of their land. He also draws attention to the fact that law enforcement did nothing to solve or even protect them from this violence. Grann makes the case that the Osage, despite their recent influx of money, were always at a disadvantage, as they were facing hostility from many sides at once.
