Transcript In Cold Blood - Scott County Preschool

•A work of creative
non-fiction
•Written like a novel,
but true.
•Not necessarily
chronological
•Told from alternating
points of view
 Born 1925
 Childhood friend of
Nell Harper Lee
 Novel first serialized
in The New Yorker in
1965
 Novel launched his
career to the high
society circles
 Died 1984
Capote first learned of the
murders through an article in
the New York Times
 After reading that article, Capote was interested in
how crime like this would affect a small, American
town like Holcomb.
 Convinced his current employer, The New Yorker, to
send him to Kansas to investigate
 Harper Lee helped with the interviews
 Uses accounts told by others prior to meeting those
involved with the case, as well as accounts of his own
personal interviews with the murderers
 Journalism that is characterized by the reporter’s




subjective interpretations and often features
fictionalized dramatized elements to emphasize
personal involvement.
Term coined by Tom Wolfe who wrote the book
entitled The New Journalism
Capote’s In Cold Blood is considered to fall into this
category although he called it a “nonfiction novel”
Said to “dethrone” the novel as the #1 literary genre at
the time.
First reaction from many was that it wasn’t factual
Law
and
Order
Setting
The road to the Clutter home
The village of Holcomb stands on the
high wheat plains of western Kansas, a
lonesome area that other Kansans call
“out there.”
Clutter Family Home (as it stands today)
The Victims
The Criminals
The Witnesses
The Investigators
The Victims
• Head of the Clutter
household
• Well-liked,
respected member of
the Holcomb
community
• Fairly prosperous
 Wife of Herb
Clutter
 Mother of four
 A recluse
 Daughter of Herb
and Bonnie
Clutter
 Well-liked and
popular
 Bright, energetic,
responsible
 Dating Bobby Rupp
 Son of Herb and
Bonnie Clutter
 Quiet and
reserved
 Enjoys working
with his hands
 Fifteen years old
•Convicted
thief
•Sentenced to
Kansas State
Penitentiary
•Met Dick
Hickock in jail
•Inmate in Kansas
State Penitentiary
•Friend of Perry
Smith
•Learned of
Clutter family from
fellow inmate
Floyd Wells
 Past employee of
Herb Clutter
 Tells Hickcock
that the Clutters
are wealthy
 Connects Hickcock
and Smith to the
deaths of the
Clutters
KBI
•Main detective
in the Clutter
investigation
•Acquaintance
of Herb Clutter
KBI Supervisor Al Dewey, County Attorney Duane West, Sheriff
Earl Robinson, and KBI Agent Clarence Duntz. (left to right)
“At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb
heard them – four shotgun blasts that, all
told, ended six human lives. But afterward the
townspeople, theretofore sufficiently
unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to
lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating
them over and again – those somber
explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in
the glare of which many old neighbors viewed
each other strangely, and as strangers.”
~~In Cold Blood p.5