History Characters / KillersOfTheFlowerMoon

->'''Portrayed by:''' Pete Yorn

Ernest's Osage wife and the owner of one of the prized Osage headrights to oil, though being full-blood Osage she cannot access her money without a white "guardian."

* TheHero: He may not be the protagonist and only appears late in the movie, but given what role [[VillainProtagonist Ernest takes]], White is the closest thing the film has to a hero.

** Played straight with his children, however, who he sincerely loves. [[spoiler:The sudden death of one of his kids provokes a VillainousBreakdown that, when combined with Hale [[WouldBeAShameIfSomethingHappened subtly threatening the rest of his family]], leads to Ernest finally testifying against him.]]

[[folder:Undertaker Turton]]

[[folder:William "King" Hale]]

* AbusiveParents: Acts like one towards Ernest, though he isn't the latter's father. Hale is nonetheless cruel and domineering, making (the admittedly greedy) Ernest into an accomplice for his various vile deeds, at one point even [[CorporalPunishment paddling him]] for a "misdeed".

[[folder:Henry Grammer]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Creator/SturgillSimpson
A cowboy who runs the local underworld.
* TheDon: He runs moonshine stills, is willing to poison Osage customers for Hale, and knows where to find robbers and hitmen for any given job.
* SportsHeroBackstory: He has a TrophyRoom of rodeo blue ribbons and, even today, is almost as well known for being a world champion steer roper as he is for his role in the murders.
* TokenCompetentMinion: He is chillingly efficient in getting results for Hale and seems devoid of StupidCrooks moments, almost to KnightOfCerebus levels.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:W.S. Hamilton]]
[[quoteright:1000:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f9uag8ewiaakin3.jpg]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Creator/BrendanFraser
Hale's lawyer.

* AmoralAttorney: [[spoiler:His first act in court is to declare himself Ernest's attorney despite Ernest being set to ''testify against Hale''. He proceeds to intimidate Ernest into changing his testimony to falsely claim that he was tortured by the feds into lying about his uncle.]]
* LargeHam: Hamilton is an over-the-top embodiment of a pompous Southern lawyer, one that Creator/BrendanFraser clearly relishes playing as he bellows at a sniveling, cowering Ernest to ''insist'' the BOI tortured him.
* VillainHasAPoint: He has self-serving motives to warn Ernest that anything he says while testifiying against Hale may be used in a later case against Ernest, but he is telling the truth and Ernest is later prosecuted.

[[folder:Henry Roan]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' William Belleau
Mollie's first husband and close friend and, later, [[spoiler: victim of Hale]]

* TheAlcoholic: Roan is a "melancholic" by the parlance of the day and is fond of moonshine during his depressive episodes. This is encouraged by [[HarmfulHealing his terrible doctors]] [[spoiler:and is eventually used by Hale and John Ramsey to kill him, drinking Roan into a stupor before shooting him in the head]].
* BungledSuicide: It's mentioned that he's attempted suicide twice before.

[[folder:James and David Shoun]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Steve Witting and Steve Routman
A sibling pair of white doctors who treat many of the Osage, often on the payroll of William Hale.

* BumblingHenchmanDuo: They aren't especially competent as either doctors or henchmen, and the BOI see right through their botching of autopsies and other medical practices.
* CreepyMortician: The Shoun brothers show a complete lack of empathy for the bodies of the Osage, alive and dead. They deliberately mangle autopsies to cover for Hale's crimes, and [[FauxAffablyEvil cheerfully]] give off deliberately lethal advice or stonewall investigators, as best showcased when they flippantly blow off the BOI investigators.
* DesecratingTheDead: After [[spoiler:Anna]] is murdered, the Shoun brothers perform a public "autopsy" that involves ''hacking her entire body into LudicrousGibs'', for the ostensible reason of finding the bullet that killed her (which it's implied they already found and disposed of).
* HarmfulHealing: The Shoun brothers are small town doctors on Hale's payroll. It's ''possible'' that they are capable doctors when they choose to be, but they deliberately make their Osage patients' lives worse every time they are on screen. Their medical malpractice ranges from giving a clean bill of health to alcoholic, melancholic Henry Roan so Hale can take out an insurance policy on him (even recommending whiskey as a cure for his suicidal depression), tearing Anna's whole body to shreds to "find" the bullet that killed her, and prescribing insulin laced with poison to Mollie to keep her bedridden and sickly.
* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Due to lack of evidence, the Shouns are never persecuted.]]

[[folder:Undertaker Turton]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Creator/BarryCorbin
The local undertaker on the Osage reservation.

* CreepyMortician: Joins the Shoun brothers in inspecting the bodies of the dead Osage and shows just as little care for them, focusing on the money to made off their funerals.
* HidingBehindReligion: Turton shamelessly robs dead Osage citizens (and is later among a crowd of citizens who try to bully Ernest out of testifying) but snaps at Ernest that he works for his profits like the Bible says and views people like Ernest, Hale and the Osage as lazy leeches with too much money.
* {{Undertaker}}: Turton has a very lucrative business in Osage country arranging the remarkably high number of funerals at inflated prices (and stealing any valuables they are supposed to be buried with); needless to say, he is in on many of Hale's plots.

[[folder:Bill Smith]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Music/JasonIsbell
White husband of Mollie's sister Minnie who remarries her other sister Rita after Minnie's death.

* AmateurSleuth: Bill has no experience with law enforcement beyond having been arrested in the past, but he investigates Anna's death and does a good job of tracing her movements and learning what was going on in her life. It is implied that he figures out that King and the Burkharts are the killers.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler: Bill spends four days slowly dying of explosive burns after his house is bombed. When the rescuers first find him, he's begging them to MercyKill him. Ironically, the book notes that this actually hurt his killers' plan; they had chosen to bomb his house specifically to kill him and his wife simultaneously so that her money would pass to her relatives rather than his family.]]
* {{Foil}}: Bill and his brother-in-law Ernest both may be {{Gold Digger}}s who marry Osage women and seemingly develop some feelings for them, but otherwise they have a lot of differences between them. Ernest is a ReturningWarVet who is ultimately a DirtyCoward, Bill is a meek ex-convict who is ultimately brave enough to oppose the villains. Ernest initially has a strong and loving relationship with his wife but is poisoning her while being involved in a bigger conspiracy against the Osage. Bill has a more troubled and suspicious relationship with Rita after the death of his first wife Minnie, but he seems to genuinely care about her and wants to see the Osage murders solved.
* GoldDigger: Smith bounces back from the death of his wealthy Osage wife by marrying her ''sister''. The rest of her family are infuriated at the idea of a white man inheriting ''two'' shares of their family's headrights and mostly shun him for the rest of the film.
* TheQuietOne: Minnie's sisters jokingly compare him to a possum due to the way he sits around without talking during many conversations.
* RedHerring: The film sets him as being responsible for Minnie's death and in cahoots with Hale. [[spoiler:He's not; Minnie likely died due to medical malpractice, and Bill spends the rest of his screentime investigating her death]].

[[folder:John Ramsey]]
->'''Portrayed by:''' Ty Mitchell
One of Hale's hired henchmen, assigned to kill Henry Roan.

[[folder:Reta Smith]]
--> '''Played by:''' Janae Collins
One of Mollie's sisters. She marries their sister Minnie's widower, Bill.
----
* TheBabyOfTheBunch: She is the youngest of the four sisters, being seven years Mollie's junior.
* LoveMakesYouDumb: The book describes her as being blinded to common sense by her feelings for Bill and refuses to hear a word against him. While Bill does try to solve the murders and seems genuinely concerned about her safety, he is also suspected (wrongly, at least in the film) of murdering his first wife/her sister and the book mentions that a former servant testified he hit Rita during at least two arguments when he was drunk.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: She suggests fleeing to Colorado Springs to escape the killers.
[[/folder]]

* SycophanticServant: Ernest, the epitome of a dumb henchman, is very much this for his uncle, King Hale. Whether from fear, greed, or familial loyalty, Ernest does virtually anything Hale asks, including poisoning the mother of his child, signing everything to Hale in the event of his own death, and allowing Hale to spank him with a paddle. Ernest sycophantically obliges his uncle by calling him “King” and uses his uncle’s name to try and keep his fellow stooges in line, without much success. Until the very end it seems like a coin toss whether he will testify against Hale. Rarely has such a servile goon been the leading man of such a major film.

* AbusiveParents: Acts like one towards Ernest, though he isn't the latter's father. Hale is nonetheless cruel and domineering, making Ernest into an accomplice for his various vile deeds, at one point even [[CorporalPunishment paddling him]] for a "misdeed".

* InLoveWithTheMark: Heavily downplayed with John Ramsey and Henry Roan. Despite being hired to kill him, Ramsey ends up striking up a friendship with Roan as the two bond over their love of moonshine. [[spoiler:It's not enough to prevent Ramsey from killing Roan, though the deed weighs heavily on his conscience, and he later puts up no resistance when the FBI come to collect.]]

* StupidCrooks: The supposed "mastermind" of this complex and lethal plot against the Osage turns out to be not half as clever as he thinks he is. While he initially dons a compassionate face and takes steps to establish plausible deniability that the rapid sequence of deaths in a single family are related and/or unnatural, he is ''not'' subtle about his interest in the Osage's wealth, property, and personal affairs, appears oblivious to the growing suspicions of his guilt, and seems to either lose his patience or get overconfident after the botching of Roan's murder. [[spoiler:Even his peers agree that he is overstepping when he ''blows up a house'' in the middle of a crowded neighborhood in order to ensure Bill Smith can't take part of his wife's inheritance, making it obvious to everyone as far away as Washington D.C. that a single family is being targeted and that the culprit is a threat to public safety. His various attempts to also collect money on very recently made insurance policies, including one on the death of a man who was clearly murdered, are clumsy and make him even more suspicious.]] Ultimately, Hale is only able to get as far as he does because of his wealth, prestige, and power, is no smarter than the low status criminals he employs, and is foiled very quickly by the feds once they reach Oklahoma. [[spoiler:Even then, he has the sheer audacity to write a note to another conspirator ''while both of them are in jail'' requesting that he kill Ernest.]]

* NiceGuy: Even when dealing with cold hearted criminals like Hale, he is nothing but polite and friendly to the people he meets. He even sympathizes with Ernest when he tells him his daughter died and clearly sees him less as a monster than a weak-willed and not very bright man.

* KarmaHoudini: Downplayed. [[spoiler:Ernest loses his wealth, reputation, and the love of his wife and receives a life sentence for the Osage killings. However, he is eventually released and receives a full pardon for his crimes[[note]]He's actually pardoned a second time in 1967, having wound up in prison again for attempting to rob his former sister-in-law[[/note]], ultimately getting to live the final decades of his life as a free men after being directly and indirectly involved with the murders of dozens of people.]]

* KarmaHoudini: A DownplayedExample: [[spoiler:Hale receives a life sentence for the Osage killings but is eventually paroled and released. While both men had their wealth and reputations destroyed, they did live the final decades of their lives as free men after being directly and indirectly involved with the murders of dozens of people.]]

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Being pressured into killing Henry Roan causes John Ramsay to angrily quit after doing the deed (and apparently purposely sabotaging the murder into making it an obvious murder instead of looking like a suicide), handing back ''the murder weapon'' openly to Ernest and telling him to ''never'' contact him again. Sure enough, by the time the BOI pick him up for the murder, he's long stopped seeing Hale or his goons. It's also implied John had been chafing under Hale's orders for some time, if not a turn of conscience.
* StupidCrooks: Ramsay is tasked by Ernest with murdering the terminally depressed Henry Roan [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident in a way that looks like a suicide]] so that Hale can collect on the insurance policy he had on him. John not only shoots Henry in the ''back'' of the head but also removes the murder weapon from the scene, ensuring that Henry's death won't look like anything but murder and causing Hale's scheme to fail. [[spoiler:Since Hale ''still'' attempts to collect the insurance money, this also brings Hale's insurance schemes to the attention of the BOI and is a major factor in his subsequent arrest.]] That said, it's heavily implied John was so done with Ernest and Hale's bossing around and crimes that he put zero effort into the murder or the coverup.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Downplayed. Ramsay is fine with working for Hale and his goons, who have been openly robbing and murdering Osage, but he's noticeably recalcitrant when he's tasked with killing Henry Roan. Ernest has to practically force him to do it, and when John finally kills Henry, he deliberately botches it and tells Ernest he's not going to work for him or Hale anymore. When the BOI come knocking, he's all too happy to rat out Hale and company.