Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro’s Killers of the Flower Moon: Real Vs Reel characters

Still from Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese’s movie Killers of the Flower Moon which is based on David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book, centers on the Reign of Terror, a term used by the Osages to state the murders of 60 community members in the late 1920s.

The movie, Killers of the Flower Moon shows true crime tale and how it started through marriage between Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), a local Osage woman and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a white man World War I veteran who relocates to Oklahoma to work with his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro).

According to a report published, after large oil] deposits were discovered in 1894, the Osage, who retained communal mineral rights, came into enormous wealth: Prospectors had to pay the tribe for leases to extract the oil, as well as royalties on the profits. In 1923 alone, the Osage earned $30 million in royalties, the equivalent of roughly $540 million today.”

Here is a look at the real and reel main characters of Martin Scorsese’s movie Killers of the Flower Moon:

Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone)

 Lily Gladstone who played the role of Mollie Burkhart and married Ernest. A full-blooded Osage, Mollie was convinced by Ernest’s uncle to get married to his nephew. She suffered from diabetes. Later she realised that Ernest was slow poisoning her through the insulin shots on the instruction of his uncle. She later divorced her husband and got married to a man called John Cobb in 1928. She stayed with him until her death in 1937 at the age of 50. Another thing that we learn from the film Killers of the Flower Moon is that Osages in general have very short life and they don’t live beyond 50 years of age.

William Hale (Robert DeNiro)

He is the real villan and it is he who called himself as the King of Osage and their friend who wanted to take care of them. He was the main man behind all the murders of the Osages and anybody who came in his way. He was the man who brainwashed his nephew Ernest to get married to Mollie and slowly kill everyone from her family. By planning the murders of Mollie’s family members, he managed to wash out all her family members. He had then moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1950 and died in a nursing home there in 1962.

Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio)

Leonardo DiCaprio played the role of Ernest Burkhart who married Mollie, an Osage woman on the advice of his uncle. And was party to the crime committed by his uncle, William Hale in killing his wife’s family members. And ultimately the main target was to kill his own wife, Mollie in order to get the headrights to the oil after her death. He was sentenced to seven years in jail for his hand in the murder of Mollie’s sisters. It was the murder of Mollie’s sister Anna Kyle Brown from which the actual investigation started.

WATCH Killers of the Flower Moon on Apple TV+

(With added inputs from agencies)