In Cold Blood
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- This article is about the book and its subsequent adaptations. For the video game, see In Cold Blood (game).
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences, by Truman Capote, details the 1959 murders of Herb Clutter, a wealthy farmer from Holcomb, Kansas; his wife, Bonnie; his sixteen-year-old daughter, Nancy; and his fifteen-year-old son, Kenyon, and the aftermath (ISBN 0679745580). Capote claimed that he had created a new type of book, the non-fiction novel, by applying traditional literary conventions to crime reporting. Critics debate whether Capote in fact invented this type of writing.
Capote learned of the quadruple slaying from a news article in The New York Times. He decided to go to Kansas and write about the murders, even before the killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith, were captured. He brought his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee with him. Together they interviewed the locals and the investigators. Capote and Lee took thousands of pages of notes, and Capote spent years working on the novel.
The story was originally published in serial format in The New Yorker magazine in 1965. It was published as a novel in January 1966.
The 1967 film In Cold Blood was based on Capote's novel. Richard Brooks adapted the novel and directed the film. Portions were actually filmed on location, including at the Clutter residence where the murders were committed. The film stars Robert Blake as Perry Smith, Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock, and John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey.
The 1996 television movie was also based on the novel. In that adaptation Anthony Edwards portrays Dick Hickock, Eric Roberts plays Perry Smith, and Sam Neill plays Alvin Dewey. Although both the theatrical film and the made-for-television movie are faithful to the novel, Brooks used his film to convey an anti-death penalty message.
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The story
The book weaves a complicated psychological story of two parolees who commit a terrible crime together, while by themselves never could have been capable of such evil. The book also paints a detailed picture of the victims, and the effect the crime had on the rural community in which they lived.
The Clutters
The story begins in a rural community, Holcomb, in western Kansas, and with the Clutter family. The patriarch, Herbert, was a widely respected and successful farmer and dedicated Methodist who abstained from alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. He was a pillar of the community and built his home and business from scratch. He employed as many as eighteen farm hands, all of whom reportedly admired and respected him for his fair and moral treatment, good pay, and bonuses.
His four children, three girls and a boy, were universally admired in the community for their character. The two eldest, Eveanna and Beverly, had moved away and started their adult lives. The two younger children, Nancy (age 16), and Kenyon (age 15), were high school students and still lived at home. Herb Clutter's wife, Bonnie, a member of the local garden club, had been incapacitated with depression and physical ailments since the birth of her children.
On November 15, 1959, Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter were bound, gagged, and murdered during a robbery.
The murderers
Two ex-cons on parole from prison committed the murders and robbery. They had heard from a fellow prisoner, who had once worked for the Clutters, that there was a safe at the ranch that never had less than ten thousand dollars in it. The information was false; Mr. Clutter never kept cash and did all his business with checks.
Richard "Dick" Hickock (age 28) was a con man. He had above average intelligence, with an excellent memory and a flair for talking. His childhood was relatively normal, with stable but not-well-off parents. Although professing love for his parents, Dick seemed to lack a conscience; subjecting family and friends to the consequences of a lifetime of petty crimes, always returning home for acceptance, a job and another chance in life, and then repeating his criminal behavior. His forte was writing bad checks and petty theft. He relished the act of running over dogs in the road and had unnatural desires for young girls (which he acted on), but denied his own abnormality.
Perry Smith (age 31) was son of rodeo performers. Perry was half Indian, short and dark. He was partially disabled from a motorcycle accident and in constant pain from poorly healed leg bones.
Perry, too, was of above average intelligence. He was artistically and musically gifted and enjoyed performing for others. But he had a life of tragedy; he was from a broken home with an alcoholic mother who committed suicide, a brother and sister who committed suicide, and a father who was a wanderer. He also had nightmares of beatings at the hands of nuns and caregivers while in various orphanages.
He suffered constant rejection since childhood, despite a lack of cruelty towards others. He talks of his grade school principal who stood back and watched as the school bully twice his size attacked him. And when he won the fight, the school principal spent the following months making his life miserable. The only fights he got into at that school were for defending the victims of this bully.
He was a combat engineer in the Korean War and winner of the Bronze Star, but he was unhappy with his lack of promotions, because, he said, his C.O. didn't like him. By this time he had formed violent tendencies and got into frequent fights. He was noted by coworkers as excelling to a high degree of skill in any job that he did.
Perry was the opposite of Dick in many ways. He was quiet, shy, introverted; and had a hard shell forged from a lifetime of abuse, rejection and perceived injustices. He had a facade of arrogance built on his self image, which didn't match what those around him saw. He eventually entered into crime with a man who picked him up hitchhiking, and this led to becoming Dick's prison buddy.
Perry suffered from enuresis (bedwetting), which is a very common characteristic of serial killers.
Partners in crime
A large part of the book involves the dynamic psychological relationship of the two felons that gave birth to a terrible crime. Dick was the mastermind. He recruited Perry to do the dirty work, the actual murders. He seems to have misjudged Perry, because of his made-up prison tales, as a natural born killer. In truth, neither had committed murder before, but competed with each other over their criminal boldness.
Dick's idea (hatched in prison) was to commit the robbery, leave no witnesses, and start a new life in Mexico with the proceeds. They both had dreams of fleeing wherever they were, at the time, and starting a new life elsewhere.
The parole agreement forbade the two to associate or use alcohol, which they did anyway. Shortly after their release they committed the crime. Perry did the killings, but interestingly enough, prevented Dick from raping the teenage Clutter girl. They then went on a whirlwind tour of Mexico and America.
The former Clutter employee and fellow prisoner to Dick, who had unwittingly inspired the crime, told his warden that he thought Dick was the murderer (after reading of the crime in the newspaper). The tip led to Perry's and Dick's arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada, about six weeks after the murders.
Trial
The trial was held at the Finney County Courthouse in Garden City, Kansas. The judge, jury and lawyers had known (or known of) the victims. The judge denied a change of venue, noting that several ministers in the area were preaching against capital punishment in their sermons.
The prosecution based its case on confessions prior to trial, matching boots in the custody of the accused to footprints found at the crime, and stolen items linked to the crime. The confessions were achieved when Dick broke under questioning, and then by playing the accused against each other, while being interrogated separately.
The defense was temporary insanity. Local GP's, along with an expert psychiatrist who volunteered his skills, evaluated the accused. Perry and Dick were pronounced sane and that they understood the nature of their crime while committing it.
There were failed appeals based on the judge denying a change of venue and his preventing the accused from traveling to the state hospital for psychological evaluations.
Perry and Dick were executed by hanging for their crimes - on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, then 33, died first at 12:41 a.m. Perry Edward Smith, then 36, died at 1:19 a.m.
See also
External links
| Films Directed by Richard Brooks |
| Crisis | The Light Touch | Deadline - U.S.A. | Battle Circus | Take the High Ground! | The Flame and the Flesh | The Last Time I Saw Paris | Blackboard Jungle | The Last Hunt | The Catered Affair | Something of Value | The Brothers Karamazov | Cat on a Hot Tin Roof | Elmer Gantry | Sweet Bird of Youth | Lord Jim | The Professionals | In Cold Blood | The Happy Ending | $ | Bite the Bullet | Looking for Mr. Goodbar | Wrong Is Right | Fever Pitch |
