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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsAnother anniversary: this is the day in 1959 when the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, was killed.
Who? This family:
....
Overview of the crime
Herb Clutter was a widely respected self-made man, who had established a successful and prosperous farm in western Kansas from modest beginnings. He employed as many as 18 farmhands, and former employees reportedly admired and respected him for his fair treatment and good wages. His four childrenthree girls and a boywere also widely respected in the community. The elder daughters, Eveanna and Beverly, had moved out of their parents' home and started their adult lives. The two younger children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15, were high school students living at home. Clutter's wife, Bonnie, a member of the local garden club, had been incapacitated by clinical depression and physical ailments since the births of her children, although this characterization of her has been disputed by surviving family members.
Two ex-convicts recently paroled from the Kansas State Penitentiary, Richard Eugene "Dick" Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, committed the robbery and murders in the early morning hours of November 15, 1959. A former cellmate of Hickock's, Floyd Wells, had once worked as a farmhand for Mr. Clutter, and had told Hickock about a safe at the farmhouse where he claimed Herb Clutter kept large amounts of cash. Hickock soon hatched the idea to rob the safe (which he believed contained as much as ten thousand dollars), leave no witnesses, and start a new life in Mexico with the cash. According to Capote, Hickock described his plan as "a cinch, the perfect score." Hickock later contacted Smith, another former cellmate, about committing the robbery with him. The information from Wells ultimately proved to be false, however, since Herb Clutter did not keep cash on hand, had no safe, and did all his business by check, to keep better track of transactions.
After driving more than four hundred miles across the state of Kansas on the evening of November 14, Hickock and Smith arrived in Holcomb, located the Clutter home, and entered through an unlocked door while the family slept. Upon rousing the Clutters and discovering there was no safe, they bound and gagged the family and continued to search for money, but found little else of value in the house. Still determined to leave no witnesses, the pair briefly debated what to do; Smith, notoriously unstable and prone to violent acts in fits of rage, slit Herb Clutter's throat and then shot him in the head. Capote writes that Smith recounted later, "I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Kenyon, Nancy, and then Mrs. Clutter were also murdered, each by a single shotgun blast to the head. Hickock and Smith left the crime scene with a small portable radio, a pair of binoculars, and less than fifty dollars in cash.
I read that book for the first time in August 1969. It was the first book I read from cover to cover, stopping only for bathroom breaks and maybe food.
LisaM
(27,850 posts)I've never, ever been tempted to pick it up again.
lame54
(35,345 posts)still remember certain passages very clearly
Phentex
(16,334 posts)I read the book "The Swans of Fifth Avenue" first and Capote plays a huge role in it. That got me interested in the stuff he wrote and the movies of his books. That's why I read in Cold Blood. Fascinating. A terrible tragedy though.
elleng
(131,391 posts)TexasBushwhacker
(20,255 posts)It's already been made twice.
elleng
(131,391 posts)Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders Trailer: Joe Berlinger Reexamines the Crime Made Famous by Truman Capote.
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/cold-blooded-the-clutter-family-murders-trailer-joe-berlinger-in-cold-blood-1201890108/
TexasBushwhacker
(20,255 posts)It's a documentary. It will be on Sundance TV on the 18th and 19th (2 parts). Too bad I don't have Sundance.
Kittycow
(2,396 posts)I was seven and somehow picked up on it. Probably from the news. It was so horrific that it imprinted on my memory bank to an extent.
I did read the book as a young adult. I went on to lap up true crime books for years, mainly because I was nosy about other people's lives. I quit a few years ago, though, to stop putting the mental images of murders in my mind. Also because our present administration is using up my mental health reserve.
edbermac
(15,951 posts)There was also an episode of America Justice that had crime scenes pics and Hickocks taped confession.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)That's amateur hour, sir -- a rookie mistake.
LeftInTX
(25,804 posts)I read it in 1969 after a friend told me about what a perv this Boston Strangler was.....he didn't just strangle
I was in 8th grade. I read it while we were moving from CA to WI.
I read In Cold Blood in 1972. It was assigned reading in a high school class that I took called, "This is Man". (We also read Auschwitz in history class that year)
Paladin
(28,286 posts)Absolutely riveting account of a pointless bloodbath.
raccoon
(31,135 posts)One of my favorite books. I read it when it first came out. Have read it several times since.
It intrigued me so much I went out to Kansas and saw the house ( from the outside) also the cemetery in Garden City.
Also the courthouse where the perps were tried.
Everything I've read about it now I think that Capote definitely whitewashed Perry and made him seem a lot nicer if I can use the word - then he really was. But it is still an intriguing book and good read