The Clutter Family Murders: The Story Behind Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood'

On the morning of November 15, 1959, the town of Holcomb, Kan., awoke to a crime that would haunt the nation for decades. Four members of the Clutter family were found brutally murdered in their farmhouse. The killings shattered the quiet rhythms of rural life and left neighbors reeling at the sheer senselessness of the violence.

The Clutters were well-liked pillars of their town. Herb was a civic-minded, prosperous wheat farmer, and Bonnie a devoted mother. Their daughter Nancy was an outgoing, popular 16-year-old, and 15-year-old Kenyon was a quiet boy fascinated by mechanics. To neighbors, the Clutter family exemplified Midwestern decency and stability.

What began as a local tragedy quickly drew national attention, not only because of the brutality of the crime, but also because of the way it was later immortalized in literature by author Truman Capote. His groundbreaking 1966 book, In Cold Blood, transformed the story of the Clutter family into one of the most famous true crime narratives ever written, reshaping both journalism and American popular culture.

In the early hours of November 15, ex-convicts Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith entered the Clutter home. Expecting to find quick riches, they were shocked to discover there was no safe in the house. It later emerged that the Clutters preferred to use checks, not cash.   

What Hickock and Smith discovered instead was a family fast asleep in their farmhouse. Rather than retreat, the pair bound and gagged the four family members and methodically executed them. The intruders left with less than $50 in cash.

The brutality, paired with the lack of clear motive, stunned investigators, it was a crime that seemed to make little sense. What had the criminals gained?

Hickock and Smith came from very different backgrounds. Intelligent, outgoing and a successful high school athlete, Hickock was raised in a close knit family. Hickock’s life was upended after a serious car accident in his late teens. The accident left scars deeper than the ones that disfigured his face, with friends and family noticing dark changes to his personality. Instead of pursuing college or steady work, he drifted into bad checks, petty theft and eventually, prison.

Perry Smith, three years older, endured a deeply troubled childhood. Raised in poverty, he suffered abuse from both parents and spent much of his youth in institutions. Despite his hardships, he showed artistic talent and harbored dreams of becoming a performer or writer. But he also carried simmering anger and resentment toward the world.

Hickock and Smith met at the Kansas State Penitentiary, where Hickock learned from another inmate—a former employee of the Clutters—that the wealthy family supposedly kept a safe of cash in their farmhouse. Convinced it was an easy score, he recruited Smith to help, and the two agreed that no witnesses could be left alive. After their release in 1959, they put the plan into action.

The murders set off a massive manhunt. Alvin Dewey, the KBI agent in charge of the case, was tasked with solving the most difficult of his career. For weeks, authorities pursued dead ends and fielded tips from across the state. Small-town Kansas was suddenly flooded with reporters and journalists, including Capote. 

Already a celebrated literary figure for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Capote wanted to move beyond the literary limits of fiction and traveled to Kansas after reading about the murders in The New York Times. He brought with him his childhood friend, Harper Lee, who had just completed work on her own novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The pair began meeting with local residents, and Capote developed a friendship with Dewey. They made for an awkward pair, the taciturn midwestern cop and the diminutive, flamboyant Southern writer, but Dewey granted Capote unusual access to case files as the manhunt continued.

The breakthrough came from an unlikely source: a former prison cellmate of Hickock’s, who told investigators that Hickock had bragged about a “big score” and claimed that a safe in the Clutter farmhouse could hold as much as $10,000. On December 30, police arrested Hickock and Smith in Las Vegas. Investigators recovered a pair of boots Smith had worn on that fateful night,  in the Clutter home, confirming their involvement.

Hickock and Smith’s trial began the following March. Media from across the country descended on the courthouse. Capote, meanwhile, had already met the killers, allowed to interview them shortly after their arrest.

The prosecution presented damning evidence, including confessions the men had given. Both defendants attempted to shift blame, each suggesting the other had pulled the trigger. But the jury had little doubt of their shared responsibility. On March 29, after less than an hour of deliberation, both men were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

Their appeals stretched on for years, and during this period, Capote made frequent visits to see the pair at the Kansas State Penitentiary, developing a complicated relationship with Smith in particular. Capote recorded interviews that would form the backbone of In Cold Blood.

Finally, in April 1965, Hickock and Smith were executed by hanging. Neither expressed remorse in their final statements.

The Clutter murders might have faded into obscurity if not for Capote’s book. Published a year after the executions, it became a literary sensation, blurring the lines between journalism and literature and using novelistic techniques to reconstruct the crime and its aftermath. 

Readers were horrified not only by the murders, but by the eerie intimacy Capote achieved in portraying both victims and killers. The book cemented the Clutter case in the national consciousness and helped create the modern true-crime genre. Although, since its publication, some have questioned the accuracy of Capote’s account of the case.

Today, the Clutter murders endure as a cultural touchstone. The questions Capote raised about the dark side of human nature and how violence could shatter even the most ordinary of American communities still resonate, decades after that fateful night in Kansas.