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Summary and Analysis of In Cold Blood
By Truman Capote OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-4382-3
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Part I: The Last to See Them Alive
On November 14, 1959, the members of the Clutter family are living out an ordinary autumn Saturday on River Valley Farm, unaware that it will be their last. Herb Clutter, the family patriarch, awakens at seven and eats a light breakfast before taking a walk on his farm. Later in the morning, he drives out to Garden City, Kansas, where he leads a meeting of the Finney County 4-H Club.
Mr. Clutter's only son, fifteen-year-old Kenyon Clutter, accompanies his father to the 4-H meeting and spends the rest of his afternoon varnishing a mahogany hope chest he made as a wedding present for his older sister Beverly. (The two eldest Clutter children no longer live at home: Eveanna, married, lives in Illinois, while Beverly is studying to be a nurse in Kansas City.)
Nancy Clutter, the sixteen-year-old "town darling," flits between several engagements: she chats with her close friend Sue Kidwell on the phone, teaches a neighbor girl how to bake a cherry pie, helps another local girl with a trumpet solo, and runs several errands for her mother, Bonnie Clutter, who has only recently returned from a two-week stay in a psychiatric hospital. Mrs. Clutter rises briefly, but soon returns to bed.
Later that afternoon, Mr. Clutter purchases a $40,000 life insurance policy; after dinner, Nancy's boyfriend, Bobby Rupp, comes over to watch television. He leaves around ten o'clock with plans to see Nancy again the next day.
Meanwhile, a black 1949 Chevrolet leaves Olathe, Kansas, around three o'clock and drives toward Holcomb, four hundred miles away. Driver and passenger are Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, two ex-convicts who celled together at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing.
The two men talk; Perry plays his guitar. They stop in Emporia, Kansas, where they purchase a pair of rubber gloves and a roll of white nylon rope; they also try and fail to buy black nylon stockings. They eat dinner in Great Bend, and drive on into Holcomb as a full moon rises over the prairie.
The Clutters, devout Methodists, often drive a young friend, Nancy Ewalt, to Sunday church services in Garden City — but on Sunday, November 15, 1959, the Clutter family does not seem to be awake when Nancy Ewalt arrives at their door. Nancy Ewalt and her father drive to the home of Sue Kidwell, to ask if she knows where the family might be. Sue doesn't know. They go back to the Clutter house and the two girls go inside.
They run out screaming. Nancy Clutter is dead.
Later, the sheriff, along with a high school teacher, a deputy, and Mr. Ewalt, discover the bodies of the other three family members. Mrs. Clutter, like Nancy, had been bound, hand and foot, with nylon rope and killed with a shotgun blast to the head. Kenyon and Mr. Clutter lay dead downstairs: Kenyon on the couch, bound and shot like his mother and sister, and Mr. Clutter in the furnace room, with his throat cut and a bullet wound in his head.
The news spreads through Holcomb. Mother Truitt and Mrs. Myrtle Clare, Holcomb's mother-daughter postmistresses, see two ambulances driving toward the Clutter farm. Bobby Rupp learns of his girlfriend's death when Mr. Ewalt stops by the Rupp farm that afternoon.
National headlines speak of the violent murders, and rumors circulate among friends and acquaintances throughout Holcomb.
In Olathe, Kansas, the two young killers sleep. Perry Smith collapses on a motel bed; Dick Hickock nods off on the couch at his family home. Dick and Perry are exhausted: they have driven more than eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours.
Part II: Persons Unknown
Faced with the gruesome murder of a respected family, the townspeople of Holcomb begin to fear and distrust each other. They lock their doors at night. In Hartman's Café and at the post office, wherever people meet, theories and gossip abound. A question reverberates throughout the town: Who killed the Clutters? And another, perhaps more urgent question follows: Why?
Alvin Adams Dewey, the Garden City representative of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, believes with relative certainty that two suspects, not one, committed the murders. Though clues are sparse at the crime scene, investigators find two footprints: one a bloody Cat's Paw half-sole mark, the other an impression made by a diamond-pattern sole. From a few other clues — the pillow beneath Kenyon's head and the way Nancy was tucked into her bed — Dewey concludes that at least one of the killers felt some compassion for the Clutters.
The investigation originally focuses on Bobby Rupp, Nancy Clutter's boyfriend — he was the last to see the family alive. Herb Clutter had recently encouraged Nancy to stop seeing Bobby, as the Clutters were Methodist and the Rupps were Catholic. But Bobby Rupp passed a polygraph test, and Dewey believes he is innocent.
Without a single clear suspect, Dewey, along with Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents Harold Nye, Clarence Duntz, and Roy Church, starts following up on dead-end leads and searching for possible motives and suspects.
As Holcomb reels and the murder investigation trips forward blindly, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock plan their flight to Mexico, where Perry hopes to hunt for treasure or buy a boat and take tourists out deep-sea fishing. First, they pass several bad checks in Kansas City and make off with jewelry, televisions, and expensive suits, which they pawn. They drive to Mexico City and then south to Acapulco. They befriend a German tourist there, and fritter away their money on prostitutes and alcohol.
In Holcomb, the Clutter funeral is a big event: more than six hundred people attend the burial. Only a few days later, Beverly Clutter, the younger of the two surviving Clutter children, gets married at the First Methodist Church in Garden City. The wedding, scheduled for December, is held early for the convenience of the relatives who came to Garden City for the funeral. Sue Kidwell and Bobby Rupp bond over their shared grief. Alvin Dewey, lacking any real leads in the Clutter murder case, becomes increasingly consumed with finding a solution to the mystery; he obsesses over the crime scene photos and loses twenty pounds in three weeks.
In Mexico, the differences between Dick and Perry grow more apparent. Dick is vulgar, cruel, intelligent, and practical; Perry considers himself artistically gifted and dreams of becoming a famous musician. Dick preys on underage girls and spends his money on prostitutes and liquor; Perry despises sexual impulsivity and hopes one day to live out the treasure-hunting adventures he reads about in cheap magazines. Dick doesn't want to talk about the murders, but Perry wants to understand why they did it. Though Perry once told Dick that he had killed a black man for no reason, the story was a lie — Perry had never killed before that November night in Holcomb.
Perry's childhood was violent and lonely. He'd always been imaginative and sensitive — throughout his life, Perry has dreamed of a giant yellow bird that rescues him and vanquishes those who do him harm. Perry was born the youngest of four children to a Cherokee woman and an Irish man, both rodeo riders. His mother, an alcoholic, left his father and took her children to San Francisco. Perry lived for a time in various orphanages, where his caretakers beat him for wetting the bed. Perry's father eventually found and claimed him, and the two lived together until Perry joined the army. After the Korean War, they lived together again until they had a vicious falling-out.
While drifting from state to state, Perry stole office equipment from a building in Phillipsburg, Kansas. For this crime, and for escaping from the Phillipsburg jail after his first arrest, Perry was sent to the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. There he celled with Dick Hickock and bonded with a preacher named Willie-Jay.
Out of money, Dick and Perry return to the States. They walk through the Mojave Desert and try to flag down passing cars. Dick's plan is simple: They'll kill the first solo driver who offers them a ride, dump the body, and make off in the car.
Part III: Answer
Floyd Wells worked on River Valley Farm in 1948. Later, he shared a cell with Richard Hickock at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. Relaxing in his cell one evening in November 1959, Wells hears a news broadcast about the murder of the Clutter family. Immediately, he knows who did it.
Wells had once mentioned Herb Clutter to Hickock. Dick wanted to know if Mr. Clutter was a wealthy man, and Wells said yes. Then Dick asked if Herb Clutter kept a safe. Wells said yes, he seemed to remember a safe. Dick wanted to know everything about the Clutter family, the Clutter house, and River Valley Farm — and Wells told him, never believing that Hickock really meant it when he said he'd rob and kill the Clutters just as soon as he got out.
But Floyd Wells hesitates to report what he knows: He fears retribution from other prisoners for snitching, and worries that he'll be charged as an accessory to the murder. When he finally speaks up, he gives Alvin Dewey and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation the first major break in the Clutter case.
The investigators begin to track down and interview Smith's and Hickock's living relatives. Harold Nye speaks with Dick Hickock's mother and father, who live a normal, humble life in Olathe, Kansas. The elder Mr. Hickock, terminally ill, tells Nye about his son: Dick had been a high school sports star and a good student. After high school, he married and found work as a mechanic, ambulance driver, and car painter. Dick got into a serious car accident; afterward, says Mr. Hickock, Dick took to gambling and stealing, and eventually wound up in prison for pilfering a hunting rifle. The Hickocks don't know where their son is now. But they do recall that on the weekend of Saturday, November 15, Dick took an overnight trip with a friend of his named Perry Smith.
Back in the Mojave Desert, Perry and Dick catch a ride, but their plan to rob and kill the driver is foiled when he picks up another hitchhiker. Perry and Dick go to Omaha, then to Iowa, where they steal a 1956 two-door Chevrolet from a barn and drive to Kansas City for another check-passing spree. They nearly get caught when the Kansas City police call Dewey and tell him Dick and Perry have been spotted writing bad checks, but they manage to escape to Miami.
Agent Nye visits Perry's sister, Barbara Johnson, in San Francisco. Barbara hasn't seen Perry for a long time, and she fears his violent, angry outbursts. Nye traces Dick and Perry to several motels, and tries without success to find Perry's father, Tex John Smith.
Perry and Dick, unaware that authorities have connected them to the Clutter murders, leave Miami and head west. Only a few minutes after they arrive in Las Vegas, Dick and Perry are arrested. Agents Dewey, Nye, Church, and Duntz travel to Las Vegas to interrogate them.
Dick confesses first. He tells investigators that he planned to tie up the family, find the safe, and leave no witnesses. But Perry killed them all, says Dick. When Perry hears that Dick has betrayed him, he confesses, too, but says that Dick shot Nancy and Bonnie. Perry describes the murder almost as it if had been an accident, as if he and Dick didn't really intend to kill the Clutters until the gun went off. They came to the house around midnight, woke up the family, and searched for the safe. Realizing that there was no money in the house (in fact, Mr. Clutter was famous among friends for his aversion to cash), Dick and Perry bound Nancy and Bonnie to their beds and tied up Kenyon and Mr. Clutter in the basement. Then they killed them: first Mr. Clutter and Kenyon, then Nancy and Mrs. Clutter.
The investigators take Dick Hickock and Perry Smith back to Garden City. The townspeople turn out to watch them walk into the Finney County Courthouse and jail.
Part IV: The Corner
Perry Smith and Dick Hickock await their murder trial in separate cells at the Finney County Courthouse. Perry admits privately that he killed all the Clutters, but that he wants Dick to be punished, too. Neither Perry's father nor his sister write to him or come to see him, but he starts a correspondence with an army friend named Don Cullivan. Dick plans to escape, so he spends his time fashioning a shiv, which gets confiscated. Perry also dreams of escape via jailbreak or suicide.
The trial begins on March 22, 1960, in the Finney County Courthouse. Judge Tate presides over the packed courtroom.
The case for the prosecution includes testimony from Sue Kidwell, Nancy Ewalt, Alvin Dewey, and Floyd Wells. The prosecution seeks the death penalty, armed with a strong case and the taped confessions of both defendants.
Dick and Perry undergo psychological evaluations arranged by their defense lawyers. Both men submit personal statements for analysis; in these statements, Perry admits that he doesn't know why he murdered the Clutters, while Dick writes that he planned and stuck with the robbery largely because he wanted to rape Nancy Clutter (which Perry stopped him from doing).
Dr. Jones, a visiting psychologist who volunteered to analyze the two criminals for the defense, testifies at the trial that Dick Hickock knew right from wrong when he was at the Clutter house. Testifying about Perry Smith, Dr. Jones says that he has no opinion as to whether Smith knew right from wrong when he killed Mr. Clutter — Jones believes that Perry Smith's personality is "very nearly that of a paranoid schizophrenic." The court hears additional testimony for the defense from Dick Hickock's father, Perry's friend Don Cullivan, and a chaplain from the Kansas State Penitentiary.
After forty minutes of deliberation, the jury returns their verdict: The court finds Dick Hickock and Perry Smith guilty on all counts. The punishment is death.
Dick and Perry await the gallows on death row at the Kansas State Penitentiary for Men. In a nearby cell, a twenty-year-old named Lowell Lee Andrews awaits the same fate as punishment for killing his parents and sister.
Perry goes on a hunger strike, which he soon gives up; he has no visitors, except reporters, and spends his time reading and painting. Dick occupies himself writing letters in protest of his trial and defense. Dick's and Perry's attorneys manage to postpone the execution several times via a series of appeals, and the two men spend almost five years on death row.
Finally, on April 14, 1965, they are hanged. Alvin Dewey attends the execution.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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