'In Cold Blood' Killers Exhumed, Investigators Hope to Solve 53-Year-Old Cold Case - ABC News 'In Cold Blood' Killers Exhumed, Investigators Hope to Solve 53-Year-Old Cold Case By Alyssa Newcomb WATCH 'In Cold Blood' Killers Bodies' Exhumed in Kansas 0 Shares Email The bodies of the killers who were the basis of Truman Capote's true-crime book "In Cold Blood" were exhumed today in Kansas, as authorities hope to crack a 53-year-old cold case using DNA. After committing the "In Cold Blood" murders of Herbert Clutter, his wife and two children on Nov. 15, 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock hit the road, hiding out from law enforcement in Mexico and Florida, among other places, according to Capote's book and law enforcement accounts. They were ultimately captured in Las Vegas. But it just so happens that Smith and Hickock were near Osprey, Fla., on Dec. 19, 1959, when the Walker family was murdered in their home.

The men were briefly investigated in 1960, but were ruled out as suspects after passing lie detector tests. Hickock and Smith were hanged on April 14, 1965 and buried at the Mount Muncie cemetery in Lansing, Kansas. Detective Kim McGath, who has been assigned to the Walker case for the past four years, said she decided to start from the beginning last year in investigating the case, and through her research developed a hunch that Smith and Hickock could be responsible. "Some things started jumping out at me," she told ABCNews.com. By the time they reached Florida, the men were spotted throughout the state looking for odd jobs to make a quick buck, often at mechanics' shops and gas stations, according to Capote's book. It's possible the young family, who had been in the market to purchase a Chevrolet Bel Air, may have crossed paths with Smith and Hickock, who were driving a 1956 model and likely needed money, McGath said. They were spotted several times in the Sarasota area the day of the murders, and after the Walker family was killed, one of the men was seen with a "scratched-up face," McGath said.

Physical evidence, long before the emergence of DNA testing, was also left behind, McGath said. Christine Walker had been raped and semen was found in her underwear, she said, and there was a bloody cowboy hat found at the scene. And two suspicious hairs, which were inconsistent with the Walker family, were found in the home. "There was a dark hair found in the bathroom, where baby Debbie was found in the bathtub, and a long blond hair inside the dress of Christine Walker," McGath said. According to Capote's book, Smith recalled reading about the murders in the Miami Herald. "Know what I wouldn't be surprised? If this wasn't done by a lunatic. Some nut that read about what happened out in Kansas," Smith told Hickock while the two were on the beach in Acapulco, in an exchange Capote recounted in his book. The men never confessed to the murders. Mitochondrial DNA may prove otherwise if it can be extracted from the bones of the men. "It's absolutely possible," McGath said. "It depends on all kind of circumstances. The soil conditions, the weather, what type of casket it is in.

We will have no idea until we get out there." Fifty-three years after the murders, closure remains just as important to residents of the Osprey. "People really changed the way they lived. They locked everything, were afraid of their neighbors," she said. "There has just been such a great desire for this to be solved because it really affected so many people. It really is a lot more far reaching than a lot of people realize." 0 Shares In Cold Blood : Truman Capote : 9780141182575 In Cold Blood Classics Review Text **"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby... I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty seventeen year old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them - enough for ten people if necessary.

This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues - Just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters - he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich.

And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words - "It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize."... It's a magnificent Job - this American tragedy - with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it. (Kirkus Reviews) show more About Truman Capote Truman Capote was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was raised in various parts of the south, his family spending winters in New Orleans and summers in Alabama and New Georgia. By the age of fourteen he had already started writing short stories, some of which were published.

He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for the New Yorker which provided his first - and last - regular job. Following his spell with the New Yorker, Capote spent two years on a Louisiana farm where he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He lived, at one time or another, in Greece, Italy, Africa and the West Indies, and travelled in Russia and the Orient. He is the author of many highly praised books, including A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1965), which immediately became the centre of a storm of controversy on its publication, Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published by Penguin. Truman Capote died in August 1984. show more Customer reviews Despite being a little difficult to get into at first, I found that this book was so well-written and paints a perfect picture in the reader's mind exactly what happened in that town in 1959.

Being in my 20s, it was a different experience having to read a novel that was written over 50 years ago, as the style of writing was quite different to what I was used to reading. However, I fast became used to the style and even enjoyed and deeply admired the way it was written. Capote wrote so eloquently yet spoke of the events so matter-of-factly. I could not put this book down, and there isn't a lot of books that I can say that about. Brilliant read, and I recommend this to anybody, especially those who are interested in true crime. show more by Marianne Galvez The Clutter family remains the nightmare of Holcomb, a small Kansas city knowing just peaceful life till the unmotivated and unexplainable murder of the four family members in 1959. The novel, a real documentary analysis of crime, shows that greed combined to lack of feelings and problematic social background form criminals who kill, never repent or feel bad after their crime. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock started with petty crimes and theft but prison life and spirit pushed them to dare and try more. Believing that the FBI investigation could not trace them they moved freely till their arrest and trial.

The novel shows clearly that some types of weak personalities are not capable to resist if they find themselves in problematic surroundings and after starting criminal life they can not retrieve but fall deeper and deeper in crime actions. The irreversibily of their decision acts like fate which leads obligatorily to a tragical end. show more by Nada BN “In Cold Blood” turns 50: Capote’s spellbinding true crime novel gave us “The Jinx,” “Serial” and “Making a Murderer” - Salon.com Log out Sign in Saturday, Jan 23, 2016 10:30 PM UTC “In Cold Blood” turns 50: Capote’s spellbinding true crime novel gave us “The Jinx,” “Serial” and “Making a Murderer” Published in January 1966, the book launched half a century—and counting—of American obsession with real murders Robert Blake in "In Cold Blood" What is the most famous crime in U.S. history? Was it the assassination of Lincoln? JFK? Martin Luther King, Jr.? Was it the Manson Family murders? The O.J. trial?

Was it the Pearl Harbor attack or the events of 9/11 – crimes so big and world-changing that we forget to call them “crimes”? It’s a complicated conversation. But there can be little debate about our most famous crime story. Its inspiration was a 291-word New York Times article headlined “Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain.” Its writer: Truman Capote, the dazzlingly talented, distinctly high-voiced, five-foot-three-inch author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The finished product – full title: “In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences” – was published in four installments in the New Yorker in the fall of 1965, and then released as a book in January 1966.

Its first sentence sits near “Call me Ishmael” among American literature’s most famous opening lines: “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’” Indeed, the entire story – which offers access to every conceivable aspect of the quadruple homicide, right down to the “the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed windpipe,” during the massacre – occupies a near-mythical place in American culture. “Everything he had set out to do Truman succeeded in doing,” wrote Gerald Clark in his 1988 Capote biography . “On a superficial level, ‘In Cold Blood’ is a murder story of riveting vitality and suspense. On a deeper level, it is what he had always known it could be, a Big Work – a masterpiece, in fact, that he has infused with the somber energy of a Greek tragedy.” The story was an overwhelming success. The four New Yorker installments propelled the magazine to record newsstand sales.

And when the book was released, Capote “was the subject of twelve articles in national magazines, two half-hour television programs, and an unparalleled number of radio shows and television stories,” writes Clarke. In the article “A Book in a New Form Earns $2-Million for Truman Capote,” the New York Times estimated that the author stood to make 14 dollars and 80 cents per word. Across the Atlantic, the Guardian wrote : “Whatever its merits, ‘In Cold Blood’ is already more than a book: it is a happening.” And it still is. American audiences never seem to tire of Dick Hickock , Perry Smith , and their impossibly All-American victims, the Clutters. The book was adapted for the big screen in 1967 , and has since been the basis for a TV mini-series (in 1996), and two near-simultaneously released Capote biopics, “ Capote ” and “ Infamous ” (2005 and 2006, respectively).

Last year, Variety reported “The Weinstein Company has optioned television rights to Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ with plans to make a TV event series.” And if all of that isn’t enough, we’ve got a graphic novel about Capote’s reporting trips to Kansas , and a book about the “party of the century” he threw at the Plaza Hotel in New York to celebrate the book’s success. So what else is there to say at this point, as the book turns 50? A lot, it turns out. I recently spoke with three experts who offered their insights. Harold Schechter, editor of the Library of America’s “ True Crime: An American Anthology “: The greatest artists – people like Shakespeare and Dickens, the great popular writers – intuit and know what the audience needs and craves on the most primal level. You get all the violence, you get all the terror, you get all the erotic titillation – you get all that stuff. But at the same time, it’s cast in language that is so, in itself, exquisite and beautiful and memorable. That is, to [me], the highest kind of art, and something like “In Cold Blood” does that.

“In Cold Blood” is really a landmark book in the development of American true crime writing. Up until the publication of “In Cold Blood,” true crime was basically perceived as – and, to a large extent, was – kind of a disreputable, sub-literary genre, very much associated with this history of pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks. Capote really elevated the genre into this very serious literary form. It’s one of the, if not the most, culturally influential books of the 20th century. Everything is now true crime. There are whole cable channels devoted to it. This is in no way a form of bragging or anything, but I’m contacted, almost on a weekly basis, by the Discovery Channel, or this channel, or that channel to be a talking head in something they’re producing. It’s become such a dominant, dominant form of popular entertainment now. Ralph F. Voss, author of “ Truman Capote and the Legacy of ‘In Cold Blood’ “: Truman Capote, himself, was probably one of the most conspicuous literary figures in 20th-century American literary history. He was a celebrity in ways that Hemingway was a celebrity, although not in any way similar.

Capote, through a remarkable talent for self-promotion as much as anything else, and his sort of over-the-top flamboyance – he just drew attention to himself. People remember Truman Capote and remember his appearances on late-night television [as] a funny little man who would say outrageous things, and who actually became famous for being famous. It just astonishes me that, here we are, 50 years after the publication of it, and it still has legs. People still read this. It’s still in print. People are really interested in this story and [at a basic level] it’s a crime story about a really stupid and senseless botched robbery, in which the perpetrators were not very bright and got caught by very methodical, sort of gumshoe detective work. Jean Murley, author of “ The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture “: I’m still trying to understand it, and to really comprehend how good it is, and how he could have written such a thing of beauty. And it still has an impact on me. I remember just being floored by the strength of the prose and my inability to put it down.

It was one of the very first books that grabbed me in that way. What comes to mind [today] is the fact that it’s still so fresh. It’s still so salient and poignant, and, honestly, I don’t think a lot has changed. If it were published today, I think it would still pack the same punch. Because there’s something that is so shocking and startling and upsetting about the idea that you could be sleeping in your bed at night and someone could break in and murder you with a shotgun. That still startles and that still upsets. Everybody knows at the outset what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and what happens to the killers at the end. Capote’s job was to figure out how to keep people reading a story that they already know, front to back. And he was able to do that and was a genius for it. And true crime writers have been copying him, to a greater or lesser extent, ever since. *** And, still, there’s more to say. One must note, for example, that on the other side of the book’s success awaited a spectacular downfall for its author.

The 2005 film “Capote” ends with a few stark sentences: “’In Cold Blood’ made Truman Capote the most famous writer in America. He never finished another book… He died in 1984 of complications due to alcoholism.” And a Telegraph essay by Clarke , the biographer, brings that bleak picture into sharper focus. Excerpt: “’No one will ever know what ‘In Cold Blood’ took out of me,’ he told me. ‘It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.’” And then there’s the fact that we find ourselves, a half-century later, in the midst of a mini true crime renaissance. In the last 18 months, stories like “ Serial ,” “ The Jinx ,” “ Making a Murderer ,” have reminded us that, in the right storyteller’s hands, years-old crimes can still leave audiences spellbound. Would we have ever seen and heard these tales without Capote’s book? Unlikely.

And it’s hard not to see homage in things like episode 5 of “Making a Murderer,” “The Last Person to See Teresa Alive,” when Part 1 of “In Cold Blood” was called “ The Last to See Them Alive .” Of course, those recent true crime stories spring from a more complicated cultural moment than the mid-1960s. As a recent Times op-ed put it: “Out with the old tropes about truth-seeking investigators and tidy resolutions; in with the disquieting, dysfunctional reality of many courtrooms and police stations.” These days, true crime stories are animated by one of the few things scarier than random homicide: an entire justice system gone haywire. At the end of the twelfth episode of “Serial’s” debut season, the host/reporter Sarah Koenig doesn’t have many answers – only more questions. “You, me, the State of Maryland – based on the information we have before us, I don’t believe any of us can say what really happened to Hae [the victim of the story’s central murder]” she says.

“As a juror, I vote to acquit Adnan Syed… as much as I want to be sure, I’m not.” Perhaps it was inevitable, then, in our moment of skepticism and doubt, that Capote’s book would be sent back to the lab for DNA testing, so to speak. Read through one of the many recent articles unraveling his claim that the book was “immaculately factual ” – from Slate , the Wall Street Journal , Reuters and even the New Yorker itself – and it’s hard not to admit that the book needs an asterisk when it appears on lists like NYU’s “ Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century .” Which isn’t to say the book should be dismissed. Even if it floats in a kind of semi-fictional, semi-factual journalistic No Man’s Land, few books offer such a searing glimpse at America’s split personality.

As Clarke describes it: “Going about its peaceful pursuits in Holcomb is one America—prosperous, secure, and a little smug… Speeding across the plains is the other America—poor, rootless, misbegotten… Together, victims and killers are America in microcosm—light and dark, goodness and evil.” But, of course, biographers aren’t the reason we read “In Cold Blood.” It’s the book itself. And, 50 years on, Capote still can’t be out-written. Listen to the sounds of his sentences when you read them aloud: “The handcuffed men, white-faced and blinking blindly, glistened in the glare of flashbulbs and floodlights. The cameramen, pursuing the prisoners and the police into the courthouse and up three flights of stairs, photographed the door of the county jail slamming shut.” There’s writing like this on every page. And it never ages. The year 1966 recedes further and further in our rear-view mirror, but Capote’s characters never do. Herb Clutter is still the healthy, proud, self-made farmer with a farm Capote compares to the Garden of Eden.

His daughter, Nancy, is still the straight-A, class-president, champion pie-baker who scribbles about the day’s events in her diary. And the feeling of doom when Dick and Perry roll toward them – destined to find less than 50 dollars, instead of a cash-filled safe; destined to execute the house’s inhabitants anyway – only sharpens with time. “The headlights disclosed a lane of Chinese elms; bundles of wind-blown thistle scurried across it,” Capote writes. “Dick doused the headlights, slowed down, and stopped until his eyes were adjusted to the moon-illuminated night. Presently, the car crept forward.” Philip Eil is a freelance journalist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Follow him on Twitter at @phileil Book Review: 'In Cold Blood,' By Truman Capote | : NPR by Truman Capote A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences Author Independent Booksellers Twenty years after O.J. Simpson's "Trial Of The Century," another murder trial featuring a global sports star has taken its place in the spotlight.

The crime in question is that of double amputee and superstar Oscar Pistorius, who shot and killed his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. Pistorius escaped a murder charge, but he was convicted of culpable homicide. His sentencing hearing has been going on all week. Pistorius never denied shooting Steenkamp. He even handed himself over after it happened. He says he fired that gun thinking an intruder was breaking into his house. So there's been a killing, and we know who did it. The question is why. Which makes it a good time to re-read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It's a classic of the true crime genre, the one against which all others are judged, and the most disturbing, compelling, book I've ever read. The big reveal in In Cold Blood isn't who killed the Clutter family — you know who murdered Herb, Bonnie and their two teenage kids. The challenge for Capote, and the reason it's the perfect book to read now, is that he managed to make the story gripping even though you know the end. Article continues after sponsorship He spent hours interviewing everyone involved. He sat down with the killers, and developed personal relationships with them.

Dick Hickock and Perry Smith had heard about some money in a safe in the home of Herb Clutter. Their plan was to rob the house and kill the family, leaving no witnesses behind. Capote uses a number of different perspectives — the killers themselves and also neighbors and investigators — to weave his story together. He wrote In Cold Blood like a novel, re-creating dialogue, which became controversial when the book was published. "You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction," Capote writes about one of the killers. "You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you." He could have been writing about Oscar Pistorius. Could the killing of Reeva Steenkamp have been purely an accident? Either way, like one of Capote's anti-heroes, Pistorius has shown himself to be a flawed character, and the end result was tragic. Mandy Wiener is the author of One Tragic Night.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Banned Book – True Crime) | Book Journey In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Banned Book – True Crime) Posted by Sheila (Book Journey) In November of 1959 a family who lived in Holcomb Kansas was brutally attacked, killed and left. The murders of the Clutter family were senseless. The family was well-respected humble farmers and had no enemies as far as anyone knew. It turned out it was two ex convicts from the Kansas State Penitentiary had heard from another inmate who had worked for the Clutters at one time that the farmer had a safe of money. As it turned out, this was untrue and the convicts left with $43 after they killed the family. One thing went wrong after another. The foiled crime did not give the two men the money they thought they would have to escape and start new lives. Instead they stayed in hiding, writing out bad checks to survive until they were captured and tried for the murders. Author Truman Capote heard about the crimes and traveled with his fellow author friend Harper Lee to investigate the crimes. This book is the true account of the murders.

Richard Hitchcock (left) and Perry Smith were executed on April 14th, 1965 for the slaying of a Kansas family. Initially this book was chosen by our book club to read for our October Classic. To me, it was also a bonus that it is a banned book. While I am not sure how a true crime book will go over in book club (it has been many years since we have read one as a group), I however enjoy a true crime now and then. Enjoy? That sounds awful. I listened to In Cold Blood on audio mainly because I was not sure when I would get to it in book format. Narrator Scott Brick was a good voice for this style of read. Informative and crisp in his words, he read like a detective novel unfolding its story page by page. I While this is a true crime book, it reads as fiction. Truman Capote wrote this book in a story format where it is easy to slip into a fiction state of mind and forget that you are reading about horrible senseless murders. I did enjoy (there’s that word again!) the book and learning about the crime novel that made it to a classic.

There is a lot of information about the two killers before, during, and after the crime. At 14 hours and 27 minutes on audio, it felt a little drug out. Over all… happy to say that I have read this one, but will more than likely not be revisiting it. Why was In Cold Blood Banned? 2012 Some Glendale (CA) Unified School District officials and parents attempted to block a request by a high school English teacher to add the text to the district’s advanced English curriculum because the nonfiction book was “too violent for a young audience;” the school board voted 4-0 to approve the book for Advanced Placement students. 2001 Banned, but reinstated in an English Advanced Placement class in Savannah (GA) after a parent complained that it contained sex, violence, and profanity. You will hear from the Bookies Book Group in October about their thoughts on the book.

Listening Length: 14 hours and 27 minutes Program Type: Audiobook Truman Capote | Biography, Books and Facts [Cite This] Truman Capote The best known author of the classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), Truman Capote was an eminent American author of numerous short stories, plays, novels and other non-fiction works. In addition to being known for his works of literature, Capote was also famous for his flamboyant public persona, extravagant and outrageous lifestyle. Truman Capote was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 30, 1924. An intelligent child, Capote was a fast learner. He learned to read at the age of four before entering school. He had begun writing stories by the age of eight. Capote was awarded the prestigious Mobile Press Register short story award when he was only ten. He developed the habit of writing for 8 to 9 years daily by the time he was eleven. In 1933, Capote moved to New York and then to Greenwich, Connecticut with his mother and stepfather. At both places, Capote attended several schools and a military academy.

He completed high school at Franklin School graduating in 1943. This marked the end of Capote’s formal education. His obsessive love for writing forced him to quit college because he believed college was teaching him nothing, instead it was taking away valuable time he could otherwise devote to writing. Capote began working at The New Yorker while in school and held the job for two years before being fired for infuriating poet Robert Frost. The job, although not a very grand one, proved to be very beneficial for Capote who got a chance to learn about the inner workings of the magazine publishing world. During the early 1940’s Capote began to gain recognition as a promising short story writer. It took him only three years to make way for his stories to be published in established magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Yorker. He won the O. Henry award for his short story works in 1945. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms was published in 1948 under an advance Capote was granted by Random House. The book launched Capote’s career as a novelist after becoming an instant bestseller.

Other Voices, Other Rooms was followed by another successful publication, A Tree of Night and Other Stories which came a year later in 1949. Capote’s first non-fiction work, The Muses are Heard (1956) was a collection of articles which included travel essays from his trip to Europe as well as theatrical pieces. Breakfast at Tiffany’s which became Truman Capote’s identity was published in 1958. The novella revolved around the central character of Holly Golightly, a Manhattan playgirl. After the success of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Capote focused on combining fact and fiction. The attempt led to In Cold Blood, Capote’s other most significant work. The book researched the story of the murder of Kansas farmer Herbert W. Clutter and his family in November 1959. Harper Lee , a very close friend of Capote and also the author of To Kill a Mocking Bird assisted Capote in researching and writing the book. Published in 1965, In Cold Blood became a bestseller and won Capote an Edgar Award. Leaving behind a wealth of literary works, Truman Capote passed away in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984.

He suffered from liver cancer. Buy Books by Truman Capote The new “In Cold Blood” revisionism: What if Capote’s classic wasn’t fully true? - Salon.com Sunday, Dec 7, 2014 10:30 PM UTC The new “In Cold Blood” revisionism: What if Capote’s classic wasn’t fully true? From "In Cold Blood" to "Serial," the criminal justice system is founded on true-crime storytelling Topics: Books , Crime , Criminal Justice System , Editor's Picks , In Cold Blood , Murder , Serial , True crime , Truman Capote , Entertainment News Truman Capote (Credit: AP) Last week, a judge in a state district court in Kansas ruled that a significant critic of Truman Capote’s seminal true-crime classic, “In Cold Blood,” can finally have his say. He’ll have to do it from beyond the grave, however, because Harold Nye, an agent for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation who worked on the case recounted in Capote’s book, died in 2003. For several years, his son, Ronald Nye, has been attempting to publish information from documents and notebooks his father kept while working on the investigation.

Now he’s free to do so. Harold Nye is a character in Capote’s book, which recounts the 1959 Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas, the successful efforts of the KBI to solve the case, and the final days of the killers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, who were executed for the crime in 1965. But Nye isn’t the book’s hero; for that role, Capote chose Alvin Dewey, the lead investigator. Capote relied heavily on Dewey for access to official records and for persuading key witnesses to agree to interviews. Dewey even helped Capote get a Kansas driver’s license. A Wall Street Journal story last year reported that a recently discovered contract pertaining to the film of “In Cold Blood” listed as one of Capote’s requirements that Dewey’s wife receive a handsome consultancy fee from Columbia Pictures. Ronald Nye claims that his father so objected to Capote’s account of the investigation that he read to page 115 before throwing the book across the room. He also walked out of the movie.

Ronald Nye and a memorabilia dealer, Gary McAvoy, told the Kansas City Star that they plan to write a book based on Nye’s father’s records of the investigations, a book that will contain “sensational details” that will “bring you to develop a whole new theory as to what happened in that house.” One reporter has obtained a sneak peek at some of these documents. Kevin Helliker of the Wall Street Journal wrote last year of how these and other recent revelations undermine Capote’s claims that “In Cold Blood” is “immaculately factual.” That Capote’s book contains numerous inaccuracies and at least one fabricated scene has long been common knowledge. However, Nye’s records also indicate a misrepresentation of the investigation that might have more serious implications. As I wrote last year (see that piece if you want all the details), Dewey was slow to follow up on the lead — a tip from a jailhouse snitch — that would eventually bring the investigation to Hickock. Capote describes Dewey acting immediately on the tip, while Nye’s records indicate that the investigator waited five days.

If investigators had been on their trail sooner, Hickock and Smith might never have left the Kansas City area for Florida, where they have long been suspected of killing a family of four. Investigators in Sarasota, Florida, hoped that exhumed DNA evidence might tie the murderers of the Clutter family to the Dec. 19, 1959, murders of the Walker family in Osprey. Unfortunately, when finally analyzed last year, the samples proved too degraded and/or contaminated to offer a conclusive result one way or the other. From the remarks of Ronald Nye and Gary McAvoy, it seems unlikely that their e-book will shed further light on the possible links between the two crimes. But the affair of that five-day discrepancy, however minor it might ultimately be, is a pointed reminder of a truth we all too easily forget about crime and justice. The millions of new true-crime enthusiasts currently enthralled by the hit podcast “Serial” are grappling with it right now. Much has been said about the storytelling techniques of “Serial,” which comes out in weekly installments even as the show’s host, Sarah Koenig, reinvestigates the conviction of a Baltimore-area teenager for the murder of his ex-girlfriend.

The serialized approach teases its audience with cliffhangers, prompts its listeners to construct their own theories and invites outsiders to glimpse the tricky winnowing process of reporting. But “Serial” also testifies to how much the criminal justice system itself is founded on storytelling. The most recent episode is in part a critique of the narrative inadequacies of Adnan Syed’s defense attorney and, by contrast, the prosecution’s effectiveness at invoking stereotypical stories about Muslims in the minds of the jurors. In an earlier episode, Koenig asked a former police detective about a piece of evidence that seems to support Syed’s claims of innocence; why did investigators ignore it? The detective explains that once the police and prosecutors have settled on their “case” — that is, the story they plan to tell the court about what happened — they will only look for and collect evidence that backs it up. Similarly, Capote erased the five-day delay from “In Cold Blood” because it didn’t fit with his characterization of Dewey as a brilliant, tireless and obsessive detective.

Most significantly, Dewey initially shrugged off the tip as a red herring because, according to the prosecutor on the case, Hickock and Smith as the killers didn’t jibe with Dewey’s own theory about the crime. “Dewey was convinced it was somebody local who had a grudge against Herb Clutter,” the prosecutor, Duane West, told Helliker. These aren’t the methods and attitudes of the police detectives we typically see on television and in the movies, or the ones we read about in most crime novels. Our favorite fictional detectives are devoted to justice above all, and they’re always open-minded enough to completely reverse their theories when a persuasive piece of new evidence turns up. We consume so many of these stories that they shape and distort our perceptions of how the criminal justice system works, especially if we’re fortunate enough not to have much contact with it in our own lives. Meanwhile, every week brings news of the tragic malfeasance of police officers who are wedded to toxic stories about some of the citizens they’re sworn to serve. True crime is a troubling genre, and it should be. It’s about the lives and deaths of real people, people who suffered and leave suffering loved ones behind.

It inevitably brings with it anxieties about lurid voyeurism because human beings have always had an unwholesome interest in such things. But true crime is also an insistent challenge to that other, more comforting and very, very popular way of feeding such interests: crime fiction. At its best, true crime invites us to consider other versions of what happened and to interrogate our own certainties. It shows us again and again that the authorities we want to believe are dedicated to unearthing the truth are more often doggedly committed to the most useful story they can tell about what happened. Convincing and convenient stories can send someone to prison for life or let a murderer go free. And, if we let them, they can even kill. Further reading: The Associate Press reports on a ruling allowing the publication of “In Cold Blood” files

Question: Who wrote the true crime novel "In Cold Blood"?
Answer: Truman Capote