Who is Mollie married to in Killers of the Flower Moon?

If you have watched the movie Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the book by David Grann, you might be wondering about the real-life story of Mollie Burkhart, the Osage woman who was at the center of a murder plot orchestrated by her husband and his uncle.

Mollie Burkhart (née Kyle) was born in 1886 to an Osage family that owned a large amount of land and oil rights in Oklahoma. She was one of four sisters, along with Anna, Minnie, and Rita. Mollie attended a Catholic boarding school and learned to speak English, French, and Osage. She also converted to Catholicism and adopted the name Molly.

In 1917, Mollie married Ernest Burkhart, a white man who worked as a taxi driver in Osage County. Ernest was the nephew of William Hale, a powerful rancher, and businessman who was known as the “King of the Osage Hills”.

Hale encouraged Ernest to marry Mollie to gain access to her wealth and inheritance. Mollie and Ernest had three children together: Elizabeth, James “Cowboy”, and Anna. However, Mollie’s marriage to Ernest was not a happy one. Ernest was part of a conspiracy led by Hale to kill Mollie’s family and other Osage people to inherit their oil money.

Between 1920 and 1925, more than 60 Osage people were murdered in what became known as the “Reign of Terror”. Mollie’s sisters Anna and Rita, her mother Lizzie, and her cousin Henry Roan were among the victims. Mollie herself was poisoned by Ernest and his accomplices, who gave her whiskey laced with strychnine and mercury.

She also suffered from a mysterious wasting illness that caused her to lose weight and hair. The murders were investigated by the newly formed Bureau of Investigation (later renamed the FBI) under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. The agents, led by Tom White, uncovered Hale’s involvement in the killings and arrested him and his associates, including Ernest.

In 1929, Hale was convicted of murdering Henry Roan and sentenced to life in prison. Ernest pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder of Rita and her husband Bill Smith and was also sentenced to life in prison.

Mollie divorced Ernest after his arrest and remarried a man named John Henry Gibbons, who was also Osage. She lived with him until he died in 1935. She then moved to Fairfax, Oklahoma, where she spent the rest of her life. She died in 1937 at the age of 51. She was buried next to her sister Anna in Pawhuska Cemetery.