Sixty-five years ago today, prison parolees Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock went to the Kansas home of farmer Herbert Clutter and murdered him, his wife Bonnie, and their two teenage children. Each of the victims were tied up and shot in the head. If the crime sounds familiar to you, it's most likely due to the book that Truman Capote wrote a few years later titled In Cold Blood, or the movie made from it in 1967. Capote wrote it as what he called a "nonfiction novel," or a true story told in dramatic style using literary storytelling techniques. It became a bestseller, and was foundational in establishing the literary genre of true crime novels. Capote did painstaking research into the crime, but was criticized later on for embellishing some of the facts.
What happened that day in Holcomb, Kansas, was horrifying enough, and scarred the community permanently. Read an account of the murders of the Clutter family on November 15th, 1959, at Smithsonian.
Some years ago, the Clutter house was on the market and one could see each room as well as the cellar. It was quite spooky looking, even without its bloody history. The kitchen still sported cabinets and shelving made by Herbert Clutter. Not mentioned was that the Clutters had two other daughters, both married and living elsewhere at the time of the murders.