In Cold Blood

"How much money did you get from the Clutters?"
"Between forty and fifty dollars."

n  n

Top Picture Hickock, Richard Eugene (WM)28 KBI 97 093; FBI 859 273 A. Address: Edgerton, Kansas. Birthdate 6-6-31 Birthplace K.C., Kans. Height: 5-10 Weight: 175 Hair: Blond. Eyes: Blue. Build: Stout. Comp: Ruddy. Occup: Car Painter. Crime: Cheat & Defr. & Bad Checks. Paroled: 8-13-59 By: So. K.C.K.

Bottom Picture Smith, Perry Edward (WM) 27-59. Birthplace: Nevada. Height: 5-4. Weight: 156 Hair: D. Brn. Crime: B&E. Arrested: (blank) By: (blank). Disposition: Sent KSP 3-13-56 from Phillips Co. 5-10yrs. Rec. 3-14-56. Paroled: 7-6-59.

As I write this review, I'm sitting about 60 miles from the Clutter house in Holcomb, Kansas. Holcomb is a small, farming community located just west of Garden City. This is a place where everyone in the whole county not only knows your name, but also has a working knowledge of your family history going back fifty plus years.

I usually avoid reading true crime books. I don't want my head filled with tragedy. I want to go about my life with a degree of caution, but not be ruled by the fear I feel such books will instill.

I picked up a copy of this book at the Dodge City Library. The librarian at the check out desk, a woman about mid-sixties, slender, elegant, and still attractive ran her finger along the edge of the spine. I noticed a shiver had rolled up her back and rippled her shoulders. She looked up at me with pinched blue eyes and said in a whisper, "I remember when this happened".

She watched her father put locks on the doors for the first time. The murders became a demarcation line in her life there was life before the Clutter murders, and then there was life after the Clutter murders. Her response surprised me. We live in a time when any crime anywhere in the country is broadcast out to the nation and something tragic that happens in Illinois or in Virginia or Alaska impacts our lives. I would have thought over time some of the significance of the Clutter murder would have been buried under the avalanche of murder and mayhem that the news cycle brings us 24/7. For this community and for all the small communities dotting the map of Kansas, and even in the surrounding states, this was something that wasn't supposed to happen in a small town. This was big city crime that happened in their own backyard.

As I talked to people about the Clutter murders most everybody had some kind of physical reaction. They flinched as if they were dodging a blow or took a step back from me or developed a twitch along their jawline. Their eyes gazed through me or beyond me as the fears and anxieties of 1959 came flooding back into their mind. Most of them attributed more deaths to the crime, each of them citing six deaths rather than four. I'm sure they remembered that there was six family members, but two older girls had already left the home to start their own lives. They were not present on that fateful night when their family was murdered.

In Cold Blood was required reading in many schools in this region clear up until about the 1970s, so even people who were too young to remember the crime have experienced the tragedy through Truman Capote.

In the description above regarding Perry Edward Smith there is a reference to Phillips County. This has special significance for me because I was born and raised in Phillips County. The family farm is located in Phillips County. My Father and I graduated from Phillipsburg High School. My Dad was a sophomore in high school in 1955 when Perry Smith decided to burglarize the Chandler Sales Company in Phillipsburg, Kansas and this seemingly insignificant act was really the beginning of this story. Smith and his accomplice, also Smith, stole typewriters, adding machines etc and left town with their ill gotten goods in the backseat of the car. Later they ignored a traffic signal in St. Joseph, Missouri and were pulled over by a police officer. The cop was very interested in what was in their backseat. They were extradited back to Phillipsburg, where through an open window (imagine my embarrassment for the law enforcement of my home county) they escaped. Later Perry was caught again and sent back to Phillipsburg where the law enforcement fortunately did a much better job of keeping track of him.

Perry Smith received 10 years in the Kansas Penitentiary in Leavenworth. Richard Eugene Hickock was already serving time in Leavenworth for fraud. The two met and became friends. The final piece to the puzzle that not only determined the fate of the Clutter family, but also the fates of Smith and Hickock was snapped down in place when they meet Floyd Wells. Wells, serving time for some bit of stupidity, had worked for Herb Clutter back in 1948. He told Hickock and Smith that Clutter was a wealthy farmer, and kept a safe full of cash in his house.

Wells was absolutely full of shit.

There was no safe. There was no pile of cash. There was absolutely no reason for four people to lose their lives for $40.

n  n

After the murders they went to Mexico for a while, but even though they could live cheaply down South the money still trickled through their fingers. After they burned through the goods they had acquired through the Clutter robbery and through defrauding a series of retail stores, they found that working in Mexico didn't pay well either. They came back up to the United States and there was this baffling moment where Perry Smith is reading the paper and sees an article about a family that was tied up and shot to death. "Amazing!" Perry glanced through the article again. "Know what I wouldn't be surprised? If this wasn't done by a lunatic. Some nut that read about what happened out in Kansas."

WTF? Some nut? How about the original coconut heads that murdered the family in Kansas?

Perry does have a moment or two where he weighs what happened in Kansas. "Know what I think?" said Perry. "I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did."

"Did what?"

"Out there."

"Deal me out, baby," Dick said. "I'm a normal."

Truman Capote had been looking for the right story for an experimental form of writing he'd been considering trying. He wanted to blend fiction and nonfiction. The Clutter murders struck him as the perfect story to launch this new form of writing. I have to admire his fortitude, for a man of his sensibilities not only spending that much time among farmbillies, but having to befriend them as well. It must have been somewhat of a painful experience.

n  n
Capote in the Clutter home

Floyd Wells eventually comes forward and tells what he knows about the murders. He had always liked Herb Clutter and felt ashamed that what he had told, in a moment of prison bonding, had led to such a vicious conclusion. Without his statement I'm pretty sure that Smith and Hickock would have gotten away with the murders. The slender evidence tying them to the murders would have made it almost impossible to prosecute them. Their sentencing can have only one conclusion...death.

As they are being led back to their cells:
Smith says to Hickock, "No chicken-hearted jurors, they!" They both laughed loudly, and a cameraman photographed them. The picture appeared in a Kansas paper above a caption entitled: "The Last Laugh?"

When I consider their bravado the last vestiges of any sympathy I may have been harboring for their plight dissipated.

This is a beautifully written book. I want to thank Harper Lee for her role in helping Capote bring this book to completion. I'm not sure Capote would have had the perseverance to see it through without her holding his hand. I was surprised about how many connections I have to the events in this book many of which I had no idea until I read them in the book for the first time. I was long overdue to read this book and this experience has certainly convinced me to add more of the classic True Crime genre to my reading queue. This book is legendary not only because of the heinous nature of the crime, but also because Capote was ushering in a new way to tell a story.

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إن كل الجرائم ليست سوى/ تنويعات من السرقة/ بما في ذلك جريمة القتل. حين تقتل رجلًا، فأنت تسرق حياته. أعتقد أن هذا يجعلني لصًا كبيرًا. أنظر، أنا قتلتهم. … أتساءل لماذا فعلت أنا ذلك”. “هل أنا آسف؟ كلا. لا أشعر بشيء من هذا. أتمنى لو كنت. لكن لا شيء في هذا يثقل عليّ بوزن قشة. القاتل “بيري سميث”.


قصة حقيقية عن جريمة قتل وقعت في أمريكا في ولاية كنساس عام 1959. كان ضحيتها أربع أفراد من عائلة واحدة. تمت الجريمة دون سبب، دون دافع للإنتقام أو للقتل. هذه الرواية الحقيقية كانت سبب شهرة الكاتب ترومان كابوتي.

10/26/19 it doesn’t matter to me if some of this story is made up. it’s still great writing. Capote at his best.


Exquisite crime writing with a human outlook
Perfect book for Audible. Was like listening to monologues
Totally understand how Capote became so connected to the criminals. His attention to detail, his choice of words, his inability to determine how to end the book, all prove how emotionally involved he became. Obviously these men were guilty of four grisly murders, but Capote proved they were also two men with abusive childhoods, broken hearts, and unsatisfactory family relationships.

This book is a perfect example of why I’m not all that interested in nonfiction, or maybe it’s just True Crime in general. Because the writing was stellar, the characterizations were excellent, the scenes were vividly captured, and the dialog was spot-on. And yet this story somehow failed to captivate me. In fact, it took me nearly the same amount of time to read Stephen King’s kitten squisher of a novel The Stand as it did this book, which is roughly ¼ the size.

At first glance, there are only a few things I could pinpoint which seemed out of place. Such as a few too many digressions over ultimately irrelevant characters, or random info dumps that served little purpose. Did we really need a sample page from Perry’s personal dictionary? That was downright painful to read through, see spoiler: And there were half a hundred other items he had decided he must take with him, among them his treasure maps, Otto’s sketchbook, and two thick notebooks, the thicker of which constituted his personal dictionary, a non-alphabetically listed miscellany of words he believed “beautiful” or “useful,” or at least “worth memorizing.” (Sample page: “Thanatoid = deathlike; Omnilingual = versed in languages; Amerce = punishment, amount fixed by court; Nescient = ignorance; Facinorous = atrociously wicked; Hagiophobia = a morbid fear of holy places & things; Lapidicolous = living under stones, as certain blind beetles; Dyspathy = lack of sympathy, fellow feeling; Psilopher = a fellow who fain would pass as a philosopher; Omophagia = eating raw flesh, the rite of some savage tribes; Depredate = to pillage, rob, and prey upon; Aphrodisiac = a drug or the like which excites sexual desire; Megalodactylous = having abnormally large fingers; Myrtophobia = fear of night and darkness.”)

It’s also worth noting that this story is not a completely factual account. Capote often embellished scenes and went into great detail about private conversations, thoughts, and even dreams. He wished to bring journalism into the fold of proper literature by adding a few narrative flourishes. A new technique he described as a “nonfiction novel.” (There’s an old New York Times interview in which he discussed this style of writing with George Plimpton.)

Knowing many of the details of the case beforehand undermined any potential mystery. But then Capote didn’t make any real attempt to hide the facts or string together a mystery. He often did the exact opposite, letting major details slip long before we saw the scenes play out. He effectively piqued my curiosity at what possible motive could have led to such a horrific crime. However, when that proved to be the lowest common denominator, all that remained was essential a character study.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much depth of character to these saintly victims. I have a hard time believing anyone’s perfect, yet that’s exactly how the family was portrayed. The kind and generous father, who was a leader and pillar of the community, the perfect son, the perfect daughter, who all the boys loved, who all the girls wished to emulate. No matter how busy her schedule was, she always found the time to help younger girls with their music, cooking, or homemaking lessons. Only the wife and mother was shown to be anything less than flawless. She suffered from postpartum depression, and often stayed locked away in her separate bedroom.

When these saints were slaughtered, panic and terror ran rampant throughout the small community. Everyone assumed that the murders must have been committed by one of their own. Suspicion and mistrust of neighbors spread like wildfire. Rumors and gossip reached a fevered pitch. Front doors were locked for the first time in memory.

It’s during this frenzied time that we meet a few of the more colorful characters, such as the mail messenger, Mother Truitt, the oldest native-born resident, a loud and opinionated busybody that seemingly knew all the towns’ dirty laundry. The conscientious and hardworking KBI agent, Alvin Dewey, assigned to oversee the investigation, whose health and sleep suffered greatly with worry over what clues he was missing. But make no mistake, it’s the two criminals themselves, Dick and Perry, who were the main focus of the narrative, and thus, by default, the most interesting characters. That fact alone played into the main issue I had with the book.

I’m typically a big fan of dark stories, but knowing that these horrific events happened to real people curbed my enthusiasm by a factor of about a million. I found it virtually impossible to sympathize with these perps’ difficult childhoods or poor life decisions that led them down the wrong path. Honestly, I didn’t care to delve into any aspects of their lives. These criminals weren’t all that interesting or clever; their crimes weren’t all that unique. In fact, Capote actually went into quite a bit of detail about several other murder sprees that occurred around the same time.

I’m not sure how this rural town crime, in flyover country, involving no one of great notoriety, so captivated a nation. Maybe it all stems from the loss of innocence in America. Yesteryear was a time marked by close-knit communities and unlocked doors, with friendly neighbors willing to work together to help the less fortunate. Then this shocking crime exploded into the headlines and shined a light on the seedy underbelly of America. Where all is not peace, love, and harmony; all are not working together toward the common good. This crime was the catalyst that sparked a change in those communities. People lost faith and trust in one another and grew suspicious of their neighbors. If something like that could happen here, it could happen anywhere. Best to lock the doors, oil the guns, and stay forever diligent!

3 Stars - Sorry, but to me, the entire story played out like an extended Dateline NBC episode.

Read as part of another Non-Crunchy Cool Classic Buddy Read.

I almost gave up on this classic. The reason I didn't is that this was the very first book I added to my want-to-read shelf when I signed up for this account in 2014! It'll bring bad juju if you know what I mean.

I knew nothing about the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas, as it had taken place just a year after my birth. From the title of this book, I thought it would be a very gruesome story, but it was more about the communities reaction and some history of the two men responsible for the murder, the investigation, trial, and execution.
This was a very detailed book and I don’t think I would have had the patience to complete reading the actual physical book, but the narrator on this audiobook was very good!

"In Cold Blood" pushes the boundaries of the journalistic reportage: Capote, accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow Southerner Harper Lee, traveled to Holcomb, Kansas, to write about the real-life murder of a wealthy family of farmers, the Clutters. On November 15, 1959, Dick Hickock and Perry Edward Smith broke into the Clutter home to rob the family's safe - there was no safe though, and Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie and two of their children, Nancy and Kenyon, got killed. The perpetrators were caught, tried and ultimately hanged. This was of course no spoiler: This book is not a whodunnit or a whydunit. Capote tries to reconstruct what happened, he looks closely at the murderers, their victims, and how the events unfolded - this is the first true crime book in the modern sense, a non-fiction novel.

This double nature of the book leads to interesting challenges for the writer and the reader: It is apparent that Capote details scenes and elaborates on conversations he just cannot know about. Like every book that tries to re-create the past (take historic novels, and, to a much lesser degree, even history books), the writer is forced to make connections, to omit some aspects and to close some gaps (and there are many ways to do this). Capote seems to venture rather freely into fiction territory, but every reader who pays close attention will become aware of this. The more interesting question is whether he knowingly altered some facts in order to improve his text, and that seems to be part of a heated discussion around the book.

What you certainly cannot argue against is that Capote is a fantastic writer who, from a narrative point of view, asks the right questions and finds adequate words for a heinous crime that severely impacted a whole community - this is no small feat. The writing isn't sensationalist, but it also isn't cold, and it dares to ask some uncomfortable questions for the reader to ponder. For instance, we are there when the killers are hanged, and this scene clearly shows what capital punishment means (and it's certainly not "justice"). Capote talks about the messed-up lives of Hickock and Smith, about the hobbies, aspirations and friends of Nancy and Kenyon, about Herb as a boss and Bonnie's illness - it's a big and complex picture, and every reader who's only here for the gore will certainly be disappointed.

It's pretty obvious why this has become a classic and the second-biggest-selling true crime book ever (after Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders). Now I really have to watch "Capote" with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

4.5 stars

This is one mighty fine crime docudrama. The characters were extremely well drawn out and the narrative was a compelling telling of Americana. I have never read a book where the criminals were so multifaceted and interesting and analyzed in a rational yet compassionate way. I loved how the victims were given their own STRONG voices so that their deaths are not lost but remembered, validated and treasured. The section where the criminals pick up a boy and his grandfather was especially poignant for me for some reason and made me cry bucketfulls. I suppose it was one of the most vivid portrayals of how fragile, lost yet resilient most of us are. I want to reiterate,
Damn this was Good!!!!