In Cold Blood Book Summary - In Cold Blood Book explained in key points

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In Cold Blood summary

Name: In Cold Blood
Rating: 4.2 (59 reviews)
Author: Truman Capote

Truman Capote

A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences

4.2 (59 ratings)

19 mins

Topics

Memoirs

Table of Contents

In Cold Blood
Summary of 9 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Step behind the scenes of a brutal murder that shook a rural Kansas town in 1959.

When American novelist and screenwriter Truman Capote first saw the news of a quadruple murder in Kansas in November 1959, he was intrigued. The murders quickly became a top news item, and Capote decided to travel to Kansas to learn more about the event firsthand.

Together with his travel companion, novelist Harper Lee, he befriended people in the small Kansas town where the gruesome murders took place.

As the investigation unfolded, Capote followed the events closely and even spoke extensively with the murderers after they had been apprehended.

So what happened that day in 1959? This is the story behind a brutal crime committed in cold blood.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what stockings have to do with the murder of a Kansas family;
how a sleepy sheriff’s office became the center of a media frenzy; and
how a lone hitchhiker inadvertently saved the life of a traveling salesman.

In a small town in Kansas, two men went on a shopping spree and talked about the perfect crime.

Which tools would you need to execute the perfect murder?

Maybe some carefully selected drugs? Or something as blunt as a chainsaw? The two men found guilty of the murder of a Kansas family in 1959 were very straightforward in their approach to committing their heinous crime.

This is their story.

One afternoon, a 28-year-old mechanic named Dick Hickock and a 31-year-old car painter named Perry Smith, both of them ex-convicts, went on a shopping spree for some strange items in Emporia, Kansas.

First, they stopped at a store to buy rubber gloves for Perry; Dick already had a pair of his own.

Then they visited a women’s hosiery store to buy black stockings but gave up after finding the store only carried lighter shades.

After that, they sought out a shop where they could buy some sturdy rope. Perry knew a lot about ropes and knots, having been a Merchant Marine. His knowledge led him to select a white nylon cord for their purposes.

While the items these two men purchased were odd, alone they wouldn’t cause suspicion. Yet if bystanders had overheard their conversation while shopping, they might have notified the authorities.

While in the stocking store, for instance, when they discovered there were no black stockings, Dick reminded Perry again that there were to be “no witnesses.” Whether or not they wore stockings to obscure their faces was irrelevant.

Perry was still nervous. Dick reassured him that all would go off without a hitch. How could it not, when the plan was so perfectly devised?

Yet the men didn’t know how many people might be in the house they intended to invade and rob, which made purchasing the correct length of cord difficult. The men knew the parents would be there, and two children for sure. But there might also be guests.

To be safe, they purchased 100 yards of cord, enough to tie up at least 12 people.

Neighbors found a bloody scene at the house, in which family members were bound, gagged and shot.

On Sundays, the Clutter family usually drove to church, as did most of their neighbors in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas.

But on this particular Sunday in 1959, the Clutters didn’t show up. Concerned, a neighbor named Susan Kidwell phoned their house to check on the family.

State detectives took over the murder investigation, and a media frenzy followed.

In the Clutter family murder case, local law enforcement faced a dilemma, as there were no clues and no apparent motive.

Quickly the local sheriff's office was transformed from a sleepy place with a friendly, bubbly secretary who made great coffee to the focal point of a media frenzy over a quadruple murder.

A “ghost” at the scene of the crime was thought to be a key suspect but turned out to be just a drifter.

How would you react to seeing a ghost at the scene of a crime? When the Clutter’s gardener saw an apparition in the family house, surprisingly he kept his calm.

Later that December after the murders, the Clutter’s gardener, Paul Helm, was pruning trees in front of the empty Clutter home. Relatives were planning to sell the property.

A radio program reminded a prison inmate of a conversation that inspired the Kansas crime.

Luckily for the police, there was one person who could give them a clue as to what took place in the Clutter household that Sunday in 1959.

The mystery that police couldn’t seem to solve was finally unraveled from within the Kansas State Penitentiary, of all places!

Perry was a complicated person with a checkered past, whom Dick saw as a “natural killer.”

So if Dick was the one who learned of the Clutter family’s riches, how exactly did Perry become involved in the scheme?

The duo knew each other from their time as cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary. Initially, Dick didn’t have a particularly high opinion of Perry, but this changed when he heard how Perry had beaten a man to death with a bicycle chain.

A traveling salesman offered a ride to the two murderers in Nebraska but was saved by a twist of fate.

Being a traveling salesman isn’t necessarily an exciting job, but that depends on the people you pick up while on the road. For instance, your next hitchhiker might be an outlaw!

This is exactly what happened to Mr. Bell, a traveling salesman on his way to Omaha, Nebraska.

The murderers were finally cornered after making the mistake of returning to Kansas for a con job.

It’s often said that when hunting criminals, you just need to wait for them to make a mistake.

In December 1959, the murderous duo made the seemingly reckless move of returning to Kansas, their home state and the place where they’d committed the crime. They returned to Dick’s old habit of con jobs, which had occupied him before the Clutter murders.

Upon learning that there was no safe stashed in the Clutter home, no riches to steal, Perry started the killing spree.

So what happened on that fateful Sunday in Holcomb, Kansas?

After Dick had admitted to investigators his complicity in the killings, Perry offered an astonishingly detailed confession of the events of their killing spree.

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What is In Cold Blood about?

In Cold Blood (1966) tells the true story of a multiple murder that baffled both police and the public in 1959. These blinks recount how investigators gradually unraveled a meticulous yet simple plan devised by two criminals without scruples or remorse.

Best quote from In Cold Blood

The only sure thing is that every one of them has got to go. – Dick Hickock

—Truman Capote

Who should read In Cold Blood?

Fans of suspense or crime novels
Anyone interested in criminal psychology
Readers curious about how the true crime genre got started

About the Author

Truman Capote was one of the most prominent postwar American authors. Born in New Orleans in 1924, he dropped out of school at 15 and traveled to New York, where he got a job with The New Yorker. He went on to become a celebrated writer of both fiction and nonfiction books.

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