Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" KBI Investigator Praises Book on Clutter Deaths
By Walter Nunn
A new book, "In Cold Blood," relates the brutal, motiveless murder of four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959.
Truman Capote, the author of the book, singles out Al Dewey, Garden City agent of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI), as one of the most important investigators on the case. Dewey's son, Al Dewey III, is a freshman at KU.
. . . Al Dewey
"Usually when you investigate a murder, you know the motive in a day or two. In the Clutter case we could develop no motive." Dewey said.
THE CASE made nationwide headlines, and the killers, paroles from the Kansas penitentiary, were apprehended and sentenced to death only after a lengthy investigation. Several years of court appeals finally ended with the double execution last spring.
Dewey, a trim, black-haired man in his early fifties, was prompted to reminisce by Truman Capote's detailed story of the case which appeared in four installments in the "New Yorker" during September and October. The account will appear in book form in January and is expected to be a best-seller.
The book is an unusual one on several counts. For one thing, true crime stories of book length are rare, the flood of whodunits and James Bond thrillers notwithstanding. Another reason is that the author is the novelist who wrote "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
As Dewey tells it, Capote first became interested in the ease when he heard about it in the news. He said, "Capote had always wanted to do something like this. He saw a squib in the New York paper, and that gave him the idea. He'd never been in the Midwest and knew no one out here, but he thought he'd give it a try."
CAPOTE's original intent, according to Dewey, was to write a short story, but the unfolding events made a book possible.
When Capote came to Kansas, Dewey had been working full time on the case for several days. Clues were limited and Dewey and three KBI associates were drawing blanks as they checked the slim leads. Meanwhile, Capote interviewed townpeople who knew Herb Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and his two teen-aged children, Nancy and Kenyon.
Herb Clutter was a prominent farmer and civic leader who had been appointed to a federal farm board by President Eisenhower. The family was highly respected, and there was no apparent motive for the shotgun killings.
After a few weeks Perry Smith and Richard Hickock were identified as the murderers through a tip from a former cellmate in the penitentiary. The motive turned out to be money but was tragically misleading — Herb Clutter never kept cash in his home or on his person.
The killers were apprehended in Las Vegas, where they confessed after questioning by Dewey and his colleagues. The trial moved the case back into the national spotlight, and the longstanding controversy over capital punishment was again brought forth.
Daily Kansan 3
Friday, November 5, 1965
AFTER THE two killers were sentenced to death, an extensive series of unsuccessful court appeals continued until 1965.
This past April Dewey, Capote, and a handful of others watched Smith and Hickock hang at the state penitentiary at Lansing—finally closing the case six years after it began.
Capote's account paints vivid portraits of each of the Clutters and the two murderers as well. He includes little incidents that bring the story to life, such as the cherry pie that young Nancy Clutter baked on the last day she was alive and the daydreams of Perry Smith about skin diving in the Gulf of Mexico.
SURPRISINGLY enough, Dewey said Capote took no notes or records of the interviews. "At night he'd write what he's gathered during the day, but I never saw him take a note."
During this interval, Capote conducted hundreds of interviews and gathered every legal transcript arising from the investigation, the trial, and the appeals.
Dewey said, "Capote conducted more interviews than we investigators. He probed and he gouged." Capote also traveled to every point covered by the murderers in their flight from Kansas to Mexico to Florida to Las Vegas.
In short, Capote attempts to recreate the stream of events as seen through the eyes of the murderers, the murdered, and
the investigators. He also explores the arguments for and against capital punishment, the psychological analysis of the killers by psychiatrists, and the way of life on death row at the penitentiary.
Dewey, who was closest to the case of all those involved, praised the book. "I thought the story was very accurate, and I thought Capote was kind to the people of the community."
HE SAID the account has been generally well received in Garden City, although he added that a few wished that the story would never have been written.
As might be expected, the "New Yorker" became very popular in Garden City when the installments ran in September and October. The magazine sold out rapidly from Garden City to Kansas City, and it reportedly moved quickly off the stands in New York City.
Dewey is favorably presented in the story, and as he admits, "I thought Capote was kind to law
Columbia Pictures has already bought the movie rights to the book. Evidently anticipating a best-seller, representatives of "Life" magazine have been gathering pictures and information in Garden City for a story when the book is released in January.
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enforcement in general." One friend of his commented jokingly, "I can see that Al Dewey is the new Wyatt Earp of the West."
The picture of the gun-toting frontier sheriff who brought criminals to justice has been created largely by imaginative novelists and script-writers. Capote may have taken the first step toward replacing the legend of Wyatt Earp and others, with a more realistic image of the conservatively-dressed Midwestern investigator who is more concerned with digging for facts than shooting from the hip.
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