The Clutter Family Murders

In Brief

Four members of the Clutter family were murdered near Holcomb, Kansas, on November 15, 1959. The crime shocked their rural community. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were later arrested, tried and convicted. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood brought the case lasting literary attention. The book's narrative techniques should not be confused with a verbatim record of private conversations.

A Family Killed at Home

Herbert and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon were found dead at their farmhouse near Holcomb, Kansas, on November 15, 1959. They were four members of a family with connections throughout the community. The initial problem for investigators was to establish why someone had entered the home and whether people nearby remained at risk. Later fame made the case appear destined to become a book, but to neighbors it was first a crime with no obvious explanation. The names and relationships of the victims matter more than the notoriety acquired by the people who killed them.

The Story of a Safe

Richard Hickock and Perry Smith had heard from a former prison inmate about an alleged safe at the Clutter home. There was no such safe available for them to rob. Investigators did not know about the prison tip at the outset. Information provided later by the inmate, Floyd Wells, gave them a way to connect the men with the house despite the lack of an ordinary personal relationship with the victims. This was a different kind of lead from a rumor circulating in Holcomb. It supplied a possible reason why offenders from outside the immediate community might have chosen that particular home.

Arrest, Trial and Punishment

Hickock and Smith were arrested in Las Vegas late in December. They were returned to Kansas, convicted and eventually executed in 1965. The arrests and court proceedings followed the murders rather than forming part of the same night. A historical account can distinguish testimony and evidence from what the defendants later said about their conduct. A confession or recollection may answer some questions while leaving details disputed. The surviving investigation and trial material is the firmer source for what authorities were able to prove and what consequences followed.

What the Book Changed

Truman Capote traveled to Kansas and made the case the subject of In Cold Blood, published in book form in 1966. The work shaped what many readers remember, but a literary reconstruction is not a transcript. Scenes, dialogue and accounts of private thought cannot be accepted on the same terms as a dated police record. Holcomb had to live through an investigation and its aftermath before it became a setting recognizable to readers far away. Preserving that order keeps the case from turning the victims into supporting figures in a story about a writer or two convicted men.