In Cold Blood door Truman Capote

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood – a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences – Eerste druk 1967, New York: Random House. Summary 1- The Last To See Them Alive
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas. The majority of Holcomb’s homes are storey frame affairs, with front porches. Farming is always a chancy business, but in western Kansas its practioners consider themselves “born gamblers”, for they must contend with an extremely shallow precipitation and anguishing irrigation problems. However, the last seven years have been years of drought less beneficence. Until one morning in Mid-November of 1959 few Americans have ever heard of Holcomb. In the earliest hours certain foreign sounds impinged on the normal nightly Holcomb noises. Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives. The master of River Valley Farm, Herbert William Clutter, was forty-eight years old, and in first rate condition. Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it. He was married to Bonnie Fox who had given him four children. Bonnie suffered from “little spells”- such were the sheltering expressions used by those close to her. Everyone knew she had been an on-and-of psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years. Mr. Cutter looks a conservative man. He is the chairman of Garden’s City’s First Methodist Church and works at a farm. At the end of the day he headed for home and the day’s work, unaware that it would be his last. Perry and Dick are thinking about gold-hunting. Perry is a short man, he finds his looking’s very important. Nancy is a good-looking girl. Nancy’s father has been in an awful mood the last three weeks, because he and Nancy are thinking different about Nancy’s boyfriend, Bobby. The two girlfriends are planning to go together to Kansas State University in Manhattan. They now are on separate schools. Dick was driving a 1949 Chevrolet, at the backseat are a guitar and a shotgun. They ( Dick and Perry) pretend they are hunters and ask a Mexican if they could use the phone. Perry and Dick have been alled together at Kansas State Penitentiary. Dick had been employed at the Bob Sands establishment, an auto-repair garage. He earned sixty dollar a week. They preparing the car for hard work. Dick’s family don’t like him seeing anybody from the Walls. Twice married, twice divorced, now twenty-eight and the father of three boys. Mrs. Clutter shows Jolene her miniature things. Mrs. Clutter has a postnatal depression. Dicks face seemed composed of mismatching parts. He’s had a car collision in 1950. Perry told him he has a wonderful smile. Dick is very intelligent. Perry too, had been mained, and his injuries received in a motor-cycle wreck, were severer than Dick’s. The people of Garden City are proud on their city. “There’s no better place to raise kids than right here.” A combination of Baptists, Methodists, and Roman Catholics would account for 80 per cent of the country’s devout, yet among the elite Presbyterians and Episcopalians predominate. Mr. Clutter is an educated man successful in his profession. He is a member of the 4-H Club ( Head, Heart, Hands, Health). By mid-afternoon Dick and Perry reached Emporia, Kansas. They buy some stuff like rubber gloves. They buy a whole roll of rope, enough for tying twelve men. Kenyon has only one close friend, Bob Jones, the son of a rancher who lives a mile west of the Clutter home. Lately things had changed, Bob is seeing a girl. Kenyon could not conceive of ever wanting to waste an hour on any girl that might be spent with guns, horses, tools, machinery, even a book. He and Nancy have their own ‘play-room” in the basement. Mr. Helm is working at the garden. Nancy herself came jogging across the field aboard fat Babe (horse) and Teddy the dog. All three were water-splashed and shining. Mr. Helm picked up his spade. “Evening”, he said, and started his journey through the tunnel of Chinese alms to his home. “And that”, he was to testify the next day, “was the last I seen them”. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perry was most respectful of his superstitions. His “real and only friend” Willie-Jay was being
Released from Kansas State Penitentiary. He desired a reunion with his man. Willie-Jay was in Perry”s opinion “way above average intellectually, perceptive as a well trained psychologist.” Perry produced a pastel drawing, a large in no way technically naïve portrait of Jesus, with Willie-Jays full lips and grieving eyes. Perry received a farewell letter. It say Perry lives between self-expression and self-destruction. Perry thinks Dick is full of fun, without clouds in his head or straw in his hair. After Perry’s parole, Dick’s letter reached him four months later. It says they found the perfect score. Only Willie-Jay has ever recognised Perry’s worth. Perry did not have any reunion with him. Mr. Clutter always writes cheques, he never uses cash. When those tax fellows come poking around, concealed cheques are your best friend, Johnson sales him a insurance. Mr. Clutter has plenty to be grateful for, he says. Perry hates the Texas Plains. He loves seaports. They are crowed. Spaces horizontal and sparsely inhabited make him depressive. He dreams of going to Japan. Young Bobby Rupp described his last visit to the Clutter home. He watched television with them. Nancy was his girlfriend. Dick and Perry go to a tank station. They disturbed the attendant. They say they just passing by. A year ago when they first encountered each other, Dick had thought Perry too much “the dreamer”. One day Perry described a murder simply for “the hell of it.” From that time on he decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities, absolutely ure, but conciousness. Perry’s gift could be profitably exploited. Dick wanted just a regular life. It was important that Perry not suspect this, not until Perry, with his gift, had helped Dick’s further ambitions. Nancy’s bathroom was girlish, with a picture of “Boobs”, her cat who had died not lang ago, probably by poison. Before saying her prayers, she always recorded in a diary a few occurrences. Perry and Dick left the highway, sped through a deserted Holcomb and crossed the Santa Fe tracks. They dazed the headlights when they come near Clutter’s house. Nancy Ewalt was dropped every Sunday at River Valley Farm to accompany the Clutter family to Methodist services. When she had knocked there was no response. Both cars were in the garage, so they must be at home. Nancy and her father drive to Susan Kidwell. Nancy and Susan go in the house and discovered Nancy was dead. Susan tells Mr. Ewalt that there is a telephone in the kitchen, but the liner had been cut. Larry Hendricks, a teacher of English, aged twenty-seven tells his story. The sheriff, Mr. Ewalt and Larry go in the Clutter house. A lady’s purse lay on the floor. They went up the stairs into Nancy’s room. She’d been shot in the back of the head with a shotgun held maybe two inches away. She was laying on her side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered with blood. She hadn’t gone to bed yet. Her hands were tied behind her and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on Venetian blinds. In the bathroom was a dining-room chair. The bed of Kenyon was empty though it looked as it had been slept in. On the bed they found Mrs. Clutter. She’d been tied too, like she was praying. She was holding a handkerchief. She was complicatedly tied. She was wearing some jewellery. Her mouth had been taped. Her eyes were open. In the master bedroom, Mr. Clutter’s billfold was open, neither Mr. Clutter nor Kenyon could see a dorn without glasses. Mr. Clutter’s glasses were sitting on a bureau. The undersheriff Wendle found the two other bodies downstairs. Kenyon was lying on a couch. He was the one that looked most like himself. He seems he had dressed in a hurry. In the furnace room lays Mr. Clutter. His throat had been cut, and after that he had been shot right in front of his face. His ankles were tied, but his hands were not. There was a steampipe overhead, with a piece of rope, the same the killer (s) had used. After a bit the house began to fill up. Alfred Stoecklein lived not a hundred yards from the house, but he had heard nothing. When Larry goes home he sees Kenny’s old collie. Mrs Sadie Truitt or mother Truitt is Holcomb’s mail messenger. She works at the station. A stocky, weathered widow who wears babushka bandannas and cowboy boots. One of her children is Mrs Myrtle Clare, who happens to be the local postmistress. On 15 November, while she was waiting for the westbound ten-thirty-two, she was astonished to see two ambulances cross the railroad tracks and turn towards the Clutter Property. Mrs Clare is a famous figure in Finney Country. Until 1955 she and her late husband operated the Holcomb Dance Pavilion. They didn’t hold with it and they decided to close the dance hall. She too, she’s the two ambulances and they decide that it couldn’t be for Bonnie, because there are two. Mrs Clare is not surprised because Herb was always in a hurry. They are probably murdered by the man in the airplane. The one Herb sued for crashing into his fruit trees. Or somebody across the street. Mrs Bess Hartman, the owner of the Hartman’s Café, can’t imagine who has murdered the Clutters, and why? An old customer thinks it will be a bigger surprise than the murders themselves. The two persons who benefited by the honourable attitude of Bob Johnson, the New York Life Insurance – Eveanna Jarchow and her sister Beverly- were, within a few hours of the awful discovery, on their way to Garden City. Gradually in the course of the day, other relatives were notified. The scenery occupied Bobby Rupp for perhaps an hour when he heard the news. Larry his younger brother accompanies him to the Clutters house. Susan Kidwell tells him how much she wanted to tell him. He began to cry. The murders are already far off. 2- Persons Unknown

The quartet of old hunting companions of Herb are going to clean the Clutter house the next day. They made a pyramid of Nancy’s pillows, the bedclothes, the mattresses, the playroom couch; Stoecklein (neighbour) sprinkled it with paraffin and struck a match. Or this present, none had been closer to the Clutter family than Andy Erhart, he had been a classmate of Herb’s at Kansas University. He had seen his friend evolve from a poorly paid County Agriculture Agent into one of the region’s most widely known and respected farm ranchers: Everything Herb had, he earned with the help of God. Towards the end, a total of eighteen men were assigned to the case full time, among the three of the KBI’s ablest investigators – Special Agents Harold Nye, Roy Church, and Clarence Duntz. Al Dewey, a detective, was satisfied that a strong team had been assembled. The case, then commanding headlines as far east as Chicago, as far west as Denver, had lured to Garden City a considerable press corps. They don’t know in what order the family died. Dewey think it a queer coincidence that Mr Clutter should have taken out a forty-thousend-dollar life-insurance policy. He had developed a ‘single-killer concept’ and a ‘double-killer concept’. His doubts were: If Herb had thought his family was in danger, he would have fought like a tiger. So there must be more than one murderer. Among photo’s and other articles on Dewey’s desk was Nancy’s dairy. His colleagues have found several persons who could be the killers. Paranoia and mistrust spread through Holcomb. The Clutters were perhaps the most secure, upstanding family in the community. No one now feels safe. They distrust each other. Four hundred miles east of Holcomb, Perry and Dick are shearing a buffet. Perry is reading a front-page article about the murders in the Kansas City Star. He says the grammar is incorrect. He thinks he has a built-in radar. He sees things before any other can see them. It was obvious they could not now safely separate. Perry dreams several times about a yellow parrot, he winged Perry away to paradise. Susan Kidwell tells about her friendship with Nancy Clutter and Bobby Rupp. Nancy and Bobby went to the Funeral Home where they had a last look on the family, Susan despites it. Perry was impressed by the number of people at the funeral. Dick and Perry had stolen money, enough to get them to Mexico. In the case of the murders had been two developments, they discovered that a radio is missing and the found a golden watch among Nancy’s clothes. But why were the bodies laying on a soft ground, like the bedcovers which covered Nancy and her mother. Dewey cannot sleep because his phone is constantly ringing. Everyone has a tip. The old Chevrolet left Kansas City on 21 November, Saturday night. Luggage was lashed to the fenders and roped to the roof. Beverly is married on the next weekend. The whole family was already there, so they decided to get married a month earlier. Also, a letter from Bonnie Clutter’s brother, Mr Fox, appears in the local paper, asking the townspeople to forgive whoever killed the Clutter family. Perry and Dick are in Mexico, surrounded by mountains. The morning of 23 November, they had crossed the border at Laredo, Texas. Their next destination is Mexico City. Perry was surprised that he was able to go trough with the killings. He once told Dick he killed a black man for no reason with a chain, but this was a lie. Dick loves to running down dogs, which was something he did whenever the opportunity arose. After Thanksgiving the last out-of-town newsmen convinced that the case was never going to be solved, left Garden City. But the case was by no means closed for the people of Finney County, at least of all for those who patronised Holcomb’s favourite place, Hartman’s Café. Some people think that the wrong family is murdered, the Jones family were the murderer’s intended victims. Mr Jones is far more richer than the Clutters. One resident Mr McCoy, has decided to move away, because his wife is so scared she cannot sleep. The Ashida family is also leaving. They go to Nebraska, they think they can get there a better farm. Dick and Perry are travelling by a small boat in Mexico. Otto, a rich German tourist, had become a friend of them, and is taking them out fishing. Perry sings and plays guitar, while Dick is complaining of a headache. It’s Otto’s last day. Dick and Perry are running out of money, they will go to Mexico City again. When they go back to the riverside Perry catches a giant sailfish He is photographed with the fish. It looks like a tall yellow bird had hauled him to heaven. One afternoon Mr Helm sees a person behind the window of Mrs Clutter. Mr Helm is still keeping the ground of the farm. The people from the village don’t want that somebody else moves in, but that was what Mr. Clutter had wanted. He had said it a year ago to Mr Helm.He calls the police. They find Jonathan Daniel Adrian, a vagrant who has been living in the house. He has a shotgun and a hunting knife, so he is arrested. Jonathan was on his way to Mexico and was looking for a place to sleep. Perry and Dick had soled the car, but there is less money left. Dick is tired of Perry’s stories about diamonds and lost treasures. Dick bought Bus tickets which can bring them as far as California. Perry is afraid to leave Dick He decides to go with him and is picking some things from the two boxes which he is carrying since Olathe. The guitar has been stolen from him. There were a few things to precious for leaving. He finds a letter from his father, Tex John Smith. Perry’s father first describes Perry’s childhood. He was the only child who didn’t follow his drunk mother. His kids aren’t allowed to start a fight, but if the others start a fight, do your best. Perry must pay the hardway when he does wrong, law is Boss he knows that by now. After childhood comes youth, recreation, interests and relatives. Perry is mechanically inclined. Since he had a good taste of what speed will do, and his both legs broke and hip injury he now has slowed down. Perry has had several girlfriend, but he was never married. He knows how to make a living. Freedom means everything to him you will never get him behind bars again. The law is boss, he knows that. He loves his freedom. One sister Bobo married, and his father is all that is living of Perry. The biography always set racing a stable of emotions. His mother has put him in a Catholic orphanage. The Black Widows were always hitting Perry, because of wetting the bed. Later he came by the Salvation Army. It was even worse. With his father he shifted six years around the country. In Alaska Tex taught his son to dream of gold. He did never got encouragement from his father. He went into the army. They gave him the Bronze Star. When he wants to go to his father, he has an accident with the motorcycle. He recoveres at Joe James and his family. He likes kids. He and his father opened a tourist place in 1953. The business isn’t going well and Tex began to take it out on Perry. In a fight he ever wants to kill Perry. He goes to Phillisburg where he did got arrested for a robbery. They escaped. In Worchester he’s being caught for vagrancy. He went down to New York and took a room in a hotel on Eight Avenue. At New York he’s caught by the FBI for larcery, jailbreak and car theft. On 28 April 1958 he received a letter from Barbara. She tells about her three children. She also writes: “It is no shame to have a dirty Pace- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.” She blames Perry for his attitude towards their father, Willie-Jay gives his replay. Perry also has a personal dictionary and a private diary. He says to Dick who is with a girl that he must hurry. They should left the room before 2 p.m. Dewey is very concerned with the case. He looks awful and talks a lot about it. Marie doesn’t like this. She doesn’t want to live in a lonely country house. Dewey loves the Clutter House. He goes there every day. One day he sees a scarecrow in the wheat field which reminds him to a dream of Marie about Bonnie Clutter. Perry and Dick are in the Majore Desert trying to get a lift. 3.- Answer. Tuesday, 17 November 1959, Floyd Wells is listening to his radio in Kansas State Penitentiary. He hears about the murders. Not only had he known the murdered family, he knew very well who had murdered them. Eleven years ago he had been an employee of Mr. Clutter. Wells liked the family. Later he’s caught for robbery of some lawn-mowers. In prison he comes to meet Dick. Dick tells about what he’s planning to do when he’s free and about his friend Perry, a half-Indian. Wells tells about his early job at the Clutter House. A wealthy family. Dick wants to rob and murder them. Wells doesn’t believe it, until now. He’s afraid to tell the authorities about it. Some Catholic tells him to say what Wells knows. Eventually Wells goes to the deputy. When Dewey hears he soon has got the pictures and names of the murders. Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith. He shows them to Marie. She’s impressed by the face of Hickock. Perry’s state of mind was bad: he was emaciated; and he was smoking sixty sigarettes a day. She wishes she hadn’t seen the pictures. Mr. Nye talks to Mr. And Mrs. Hickock. They tell Dick wasn’t such a bad man before he was in prison. Prison made him different. They also think it is Perry’s fault. Nye had next driven to the suburban village of Olathe, were he interviewed Hickock’s last employer. He also interviews several neighbours of the Hickocks, Dick’s family tells Dick and Perry went to Fort Scott on November fourteenth. They stayed away for one night. Sunday after Dick’s return he falls asleep in front of the television, This was unusual. Now Dick is ashamed to write his parents. Dick and Perry want to murder a salesman and robbed him of his car, but approach of another hitchbiker saved the salesman life. At Las Vegas, Nye interviews the landlady. He finds a box with stuff of Perry, no clues. In Reno he contacted Mr. Driscoll, chief criminal investigator, he’s looking for Tex Smith. A clerk of the post office tells him he hasn’t seen Smith for a long time, he probably lives in Alaska. Nye goes to San Fransisco, where he interviews Mrs. Johnson, Perry’s sister. She’s afraid of Perry and haven’t seen him for four years. When Nye has left she thinks about the terrible destinations that seemed promised the four children of Tex John Smith and Florence Buckskin. She respects her father for his fortitude. She remember Perry hates his family for the fact that he’s the only one who hasn’t got good education. He thinks himself brilliant. Their mother had died in a alcoholic drama. Fern (later Fen-Joy) had fallen out of a window, she was drunk. Jimmy killed himself after the suicide of his wife. Perry and Dick are in Iowa. Dick wants to Kansas City, it was the one place he was certain he could successfully “hang a lot of hot paper.” In a barn they find a Chevrolet with a key in the ignition. Dewey doesn’t know how to prove Dick and Perry are guilty. They have to find them guilty. At Garden City there are stories about who killed the Clutters. Perry and Dick are back in Kansas City. Dick sets his friends off for money. Dewey has had a dream about Perry, Dick and the Clutter family, all alive. Then, he called by Ney. Ney tells Perry and Dick are back in town. Also he has the license number from the Chevrolet. He hopes to wrap this up before Christmas. Perry and Dick went to Miami Beach. Perry reads in a newspaper about a murder at Tallahassee, it happened at the same time as they were there. Dick’s enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have. Dick has sexual interest in female children, he’s ashamed of it, but he has seduced eight or nine times pubescent girls. Perry hoped that some day he have his own business “Perry O’Parsons”. But this idea had died without having ever lived. With only twenty-seven dollars left off the money raised in Kansas City, they were heading west against, to Texas, to Nevada- “nowhere definite”. Bobby Rupp thinks at his earlier Christmas days. He would always go to Nancy first. This year the winter will be not so tough as the other years. He sees Sue a lot. At River Valley Farm he meets Babe, Nancy’s horse. Perry and Dick pick up two hitchhikers. A young man (Bill) and his grandfather. Bill learns them to get money from collecting bottles. Dick leaves them near the road to Sweetwater, because he’s afraid the old man dies, then the police will find them. Dewey gets a call from his boss. The killers have been caught. He hopes everything will be over soon. They haven’t got enough prove yet. Dick and Perry were in Las Vegas. Dick wants to get rid of Perry. The interrogation of Dick will start. The agents have found the boots which the killers were wearing at the Clutter House. Dick says they visited some café’s and clubs at Garden City. Ney confronts Dick with the murders, Dick denies he dod not do it. Nye don’t think Perry as pretty as his sister. He looks a like a lizard. Also Perry denies the murders. Dewey and Duntz say they have a witness. Dick is thinking of murdering Perry. He regrets he didn’t murder Floyd Wells. Ultimately, at five minutes past three that afternoon, Smith admitted the falsity of the Fort Scott tale. Hickock was undergoing his second interrogation. After he was showed the two mistakes Dick says: “Perry Smith killed the Clutters. It was Perry. I couldn’t stop him. He killed them all.” They invaded the Clutter home expecting to find a safe containing at least ten thousand dollars. But there was no safe, so they tied the family. At the Hartman Café is the rumour going that there is a third man, the brains behind the murders. Dewey and Duntz are bringing Perry away on the Arizona Highway. In the car behind them sits Dick. Perry tells how the robbed and killed the Clutters. Perry holds Dick when he wants to rape Nancy. Mr. Clutter asks a several times if they won’t hurt Bonnie. (They locked the family up in the bathroom, because there was a chair for Bonnie). Perry cuts Mr. Clutters throat, he didn’t mean to. Dick had shot the other family members. Perry regrets that he hasn’t killed Dick. No witnesses. Dewey could not forget the sufferings of the Clutter family. He wants Perry and Dick dead. Many people are watching the return of Perry and Dick to the Courthouse in garden City. 4- The Corner. The under sheriff Wendle Meier and his wife Josephine live next to the county jail, Jerry and Dick are parted from each other. Perry tells Mrs. Meier that he was afraid being turned to pieces by the crowd at his arrival. That day the first snow is falling, it’s January. Perry becomes very clean. He has also met a squirrel, Red. He doesn’t want to sign a statement. First they must correct the lie of Parry that he killed all four. He wanted to fix Dick fo being such a coward. Later the KBI finds the remaining of the cord and tape of the prairie. On monday 12 January Perry and Dick get lawyers. The county attorney wants them dead. The murderer of the Walker family remains unknown. Mr. Hickock had spurt three cows with his son. He would be killed by cancer a few months later. Dick says he should have shot Perry before Perry shot the family. Perry wants to talk to Dick, but they aren’t allowed to. Mid-February he receives a letter from a Don Sullivan, he was in the army with him. He calls himself a friend. Perry replies immediately. Hickock is preparing his escape from jail. He’s making an instrument for killing Mr. Meier. It doesn’t work out, the under sheriff found the weapon. The lawyers think that Perry and Dick should be mentally examined. The day before the trial begin the estate of the Clutters will be sold. Many people come to see the house. Mr. Helm thinks it is like a second funeral. Babe is sold for seventy-five dollars to a farmer. Sue wants she could keep Babe. It was hard to find a jury for the trial. Dr. Jones, the psychiatrist, who had volunteered examine
Perry and Dick had interviewed them separately for approximately two hours. He wants them to write an autobiographical statement. Perry writes about some hard episodes from his youth. He gets mad when his father doesn’t understand him. Dick thinks he had a good youth. He’s ashamed when he writes that he loves young girls. Also he writes why he has divorced from his first wife. The trial begins. It began with Susan Kidwell and Nancy Ewalt. Then a Chief Investigator and great photographer. The jury is impressed by the photo’s. The final witness of that day is Floyd Wells. The lawyers of Hickock and Smith open a cross-examination. Wells has got the reward and a parole. Mrs Hickock is also present at the trial, she has to cry. Then, it is Donalds Sullivan’s turn. He thinks Perry’s soul can de saved by God. Perry isn’t sorry for what he did. He’s glad that Don is calling himself a friend. Perry doesn’t want to die among police-men, He’d rather killed himself among friends. At Monday Mr Hickock is being interviewed. The psychiatrist follows. He says Dick knows the different between right and wrong. He wants to say more about it, but he isn’t allowed to. Next it was the turn of Arthur Flemming, Smith’s elderly cousellor. He presented four character witnesses; persons expected to attribute to the accused a few human virtues. Joe James was one of them. Again Mr. Jones isn’t allowed to talk about Perry’s mental condition. He and other psychiatrists are discussing about sane and insane criminals. They think there is more than that. Green says to the jury that he wants Perry and Dick get the maximum punishment: death. Some papers think Green is too brutal. The jury’s deliberations had lasted forty minutes. They verdict calls: death. Mrs, Meier misses Perry, so does his squirrel. Late on rainy April afternoon the Clutter murderers ascended the first time the staircase to Death Row. In accordance with the sentence of the court, Smith and Hickock were scheduled to visit the ‘warehouse’ or the ‘Corner’ six weeks hence: at one minute after midnight on Friday 13 May 1960. Another criminal Lowell Lee Andrews has murdered his own family, without any reason. Andrew is a schizophrenic. Friday 13 May, the first date set for the execution of Smith and Hickock, passed harmlessly. The Kansas Supreme Court having granted them a stay pending the outcome of appeals for a new trial filed by their lawyers. Andrwe is correcting Perry, he disgusts it and is jealous on him because Andy has got a good education. Perry doesn’t want for the rope, he refused to touch food or water. He’s forced-feeding. Even so, on the next nine weeks his weight fell from 168 to 115 pounds. Andy doesn’t care how he leaves prison, walking or laying in a coffin. Perry suffers from nightmares. When he receives a postcard from his father, he decides to eat again. He thinks: “Anybody wanted my life wasn’t going to get more help from me. Mrs. Hickock came once a month. Her husband had died. She lost the farm. Two other murderers, young soldiers, keep andy, Perry and Dick company. Hickock continued writing letters protesting his conviction. Everett Steerman, Chairman of the Legal Aid Committee of the Kansas State Bar Association, was disturbed by the allegations of the sender, who insisted that he and his co-defendant had not had a fair trial. And so it came to pass that almost two years after the trial, the whole cast reassembled in the courtroom of Garden City. Shultz, a young attorney, had a score of charges, but underlying them all was the implication that because of community pressure, Fleming and Smith ( their earlier attorneys) had deliberately neglected their duties. The Clutter slayers, granted a reprieve by a Federal judge, evaded their date. Andrews kept his, Andy went to the gallows on Friday, 30 November 1962. His hart kept beating for nineteen minutes. Mrs Hickock has become a friend of another mother of a prisoner. Dick is feeling sorry far his mother. Perry doesn’t ever gets a visit from friends or family. In March 1965, after Smith and Hickock had been in confined in their Death Row cells almost two thousand days, the Kansas Supreme Court decreed that their lives must end between midnight and 2 a.m., Wednesday, 14 April 1965. Alwin Dewey read on the first page of the Star a headline he had long awaited: Die on Rope for Bloody Crime. Dewey had watched them die. Hickock was first to be killed. He says towards Dewey and others that he has no hard feelings for them, they are sending him to a better place. Perry apologises for his behaviour. Later Dewey sees the same childish feet, tilted , dangling. Dewey had built a new house in town, not in the county. Bobby Rupp had gone married. Dewey sees Susan Kidwell once more at the graveyard near the graves of the Clutters. The story ands with the wheat on the land. Just as it started. Theme This was hard to find. I think the theme is (are) the Clutter murders and the persons who did it. The story begins with a little fragment of the Clutter family; who they are and what they do. You don’t gets to know them very well. The rest of the book is about Perry and Dick, the murderers. You find out about their life, what they like and how their youth was, for example. You follows them from the moment they are planning the murder till they die. Characters Perry Edward Smith
Along with Dick, one of the two murderers of the Clutter family. His legs are badly injured in a motorcycle accident. He wants very much to be educated and he loves treasures and all that kind of stuff. He thinks himself very intelligent. He has had a hard childhood. Richard Eugene Hickock
The other murderer, was married twice. He writes bad checks a lot of times. He loves young girls. He thinks he’s not blamed for the murders, but he also has done a lot of ‘wrong things’. He’s ashamed for the things he has done and loves his mother a lot. Herbert Clutter
Married to Bonnie, has four children. He has built up large, successful farm. He’s a gentle man and always pays with cheques, never with cash. Alvin Dewey
An investigator for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI). He becomes veru involved in the case, to the distress of his wife, Marie, and his two little boys. Tex John Smith

He’s Perry’s father, married with Flo Buckskin. He had met her at the rodeo circuit. He wants Perry to be happy. He taught Perry a lot of things. In the story there are a lot of flat characters, who are involved. It’s to much to describe them all. So I described the most important ones.