Original subtitles

Bascue: That night at the Clutter home,

Dick Hickock thought Perry Smith was a killer.

Jones: Dick Hickock told me that night

he had designs on the teenage girl in the house.

Don: Perry was really getting furious at this point.

Jones: Once he lost control,

there was no stopping him.

**

Craig: Garden City was flooded with reporters.

Shields: They wanted to see evil incarnate.

Penick: The community wanted to hang them

from the highest tree.

Don: It took the jury less than a half an hour

to come to a decision.

Death by hanging.

**

**

Capote: I decided to follow this case

shortly after it occurred

until the case was solved

in the arrest of two young men, ex-convicts.

Truman knew that he had something totally different.

He knew that the story he had started out with,

which was about the effect of the killings on this town,

had changed quite a bit,

and it was a much larger project altogether.

Capote: This new adventure of mine, this experiment,

is what I call the non-fiction novel,

a non-fiction novel being the synthesis of journalism

with a fictional technique.

Crable: Capote wasn't a trained journalist,

but he definitely felt that he would be the one

to change the game for literature.

He had cultivated this relationship

with these strangers

over a course of five or six years.

Those strangers turned into friends.

**

As he returned to Garden City on these many visits here,

Truman, he seemed to change

to kind of become a Midwesterner

like the rest of us.

That's right. We're very good friends.

Paul: I remember Truman would write

to Mom and Dad and say,

"Could you find out this information,"

as he was writing the book,

and they would send it to him.

A number of questions have come up over the years

of whether Dad granted special access to Truman.

You know, access to records

or information.

Professional?

Probably it was not professional

that Al Dewey shared everything,

but that's the way Al Dewey did things,

and it worked, and thank God it did.

"In Cold Blood" is the story of these people, the Clutters,

who died together November 15th, 1959,

and Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.

This is the story of their lives and their deaths.

**

Shields: Truman had a keen sense

of the drama of the Clutter murders.

And so Truman's task was to interpret events

in a manner that would create a narrative.

He had to frighten you,

but it had to come out organically from the facts.

It was really daunting for Truman.

Whether he could take this large subject

which dealt with death and love and murder

and all Dostoevskian kinds of intricacies,

whether he could do that was another question.

**

I always had this theory

that if you want to move someone else,

you yourself necessarily must have been deeply moved

by what it is that you are writing,

but you must keep exploiting that emotion in yourself

over and over and over and over

till you've become completely cold about it.

**

Clarke: Truman knew that he had a book that

would be something special.

Not only a best seller,

but something that would change his life forever.

But Truman knew that other people were after the story.

Mack Nations was a journalist, freelance writer,

who had an in with true-crime-type magazines

and wrote a feature that was the killer's side of the story,

from Dick's perspective.

But Mack Nations couldn't get both men, Perry and Dick,

to agree to working with him, only Dick.

So Truman had an advantage over Mack Nations in that regard.

**

Dick's very easy to get along with and easy to know

because he was like somebody you would meet on a train

that would just start up an instant conversation

while he'd tell you everything that ever happened to him,

but Perry was a strange and difficult boy.

But of the two, I certainly got in the end,

what I considered, closer to him because

he was so difficult to get close to.

But we became very intimate, an intense sort of friendship.

It wasn't love, love, love. It wasn't an amorous love.

Perry had had a terrible childhood.

It really was awful.

Truman had also had a bad childhood,

but it wasn't anything like Perry's.

His problem was lack of love,

but he saw in Perry sort of the image of himself

as he might have been,

and oddly enough Perry saw the same thing --

He saw in Truman the image of a man he might have become.

Perry Smith was what people would call as a bad character,

but he was ever so much more than that.

If Perry could have just been left there

to draw and paint and do what it was,

he would have developed into quite a different person.

Crable: Capote famously wrote he and Perry Smith

could have easily grown up in the same house,

but one day Capote walked out of one door

and Smith walked out of the other.

Clarke: But the problem was the distance between

what he was telling them and what he was thinking.

It was enormous.

He was torn apart by the two competing desires.

One, his friendship for them, particularly Perry,

and the other, by his genuine desire

to have his book published.

Shields: And his book was still simmering,

year after year.

He had to have a conclusion.

In Truman's mind, it had to be --

it had to end with the execution,

and, of course, he was absolutely right.

It couldn't be anything else.

Because it would put a period

at the end of this story.

But yet these two fellows were getting stays of execution.

**

Capote: I used to visit them in death row there

about every three months.

They both used to write me twice a week,

and these are just over a period of about a year,

these letters -- all from Perry and Dick.

**

For five long years, he dealt with the agony

of having a book in draft with no ending,

and he wanted it to end with the death

of someone that he cared about.

Perry wrote him a very chilling letter

not long before he died,

and he'd gone to a medical dictionary

and discovered what happens when you hang somebody.

**

And he quoted it at great length in a letter to Truman,

from a medical dictionary, so it's accurate.

This was what was going to happen to him.

Capote: Oh!

**

**

Russell: Tonight,

shortly after midnight, two men,

residents of this institution since 1960,

will be hanged by the neck until dead.

Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith

have exhausted all legal means of escaping the gallows.

Four men are on death row of the Kansas State Prison

awaiting execution.

Tomorrow, only two will remain.

**

Jones: In early 1965,

the appeals are coming to an end,

and a date for execution was set.

So Perry Smith wrote to me

and asked me if I would serve

as a witness for him to his execution.

**

This is the sign-in list

for the execution for Smith.

I was the next to last to sign in,

and Capote was the last one.

Shields: Hanging is such a terrible thing to witness,

but Truman felt he had to be there.

This was the last chapter of the book.

He had to see how his friend died.

**

[Police radio chatter]

Collins: The day of execution,

there was kind of a carnival atmosphere around,

and we had to set up road blocks

on the south side of the penitentiary

because curiosity seekers was going around.

Everybody's all excited,

and it was just crazy.

Jones: I went up in the afternoon.

And they let me visit him.

He was eating a pint of ice cream.

He was in pretty good spirits.

He said he was ready to go.

**

Troutner: Dick Hickock --

he had gotten word to his first wife, Carol,

that he'd like to see her,

but Carol had remarried

and didn't want anything to do with him.

But then she changed her mind,

and she did go and see Dick on the last day of his life.

She came with her husband to tell Dick goodbye.

Dick asked about the children, of course,

and he was very apologetic.

Troutner: Apparently, Dick had started

reading the Bible the last few days of his life,

had found religion,

and Carol reported seeing

a golden aura around Dick's body.

**

Collins: Richard Hickock -- he called me down to his cell,

and I told him, I said, "Richard, you want a cigarette?"

He say, "Oh no," he says, "Cigarettes causes cancer."

[Chuckles]

And he was just joking and laughing all this time.

And that's when they started putting

the old harnesses on him. [Chains rattling]

Cuffs -- They cuffed their hands down on their side

so they won't throw their arms out

when they're going down through the trap door.

That's when the joking stopped.

Jones: The execution is at midnight

at one end of the big warehouse, wooden gallows, 13 steps.

**

The hangman --

he would stand on top of the gallows

with his back to the audience.

Collins: And it's okay. Dick. It's time to go.

He walked out of his cell,

and he was just as white as a sheet,

and he just sat there, and he just looked at the sky,

back and forth like this,

and he said, "Are there any members

of the Clutter family present?"

The deputy warden said, "No,"

and Hickock, he says, "No hard feelings.

You're sending me to a better place as there's ever been."

Up the steps he went.

[Creaking]

Then then hangman lowered the noose,

and he walks up to the -- the lever.

He gets a hold of the lever and the warden went like this

and [Clicks tongue] pushed it, and that was it.

**

And, all of sudden,

there's pigeons just flying every place.

They was up in the rafters.

They're just flying every place.

**

Jones: I was standing by myself,

and then Capote came in and stood with me.

He'd been drinking,

and he was crying,

obviously distressed.

Of course, he was not really geared

for some emotional experience of that enormity.

**

Collins: On the Perry Smith execution,

which is minutes later,

when he got up to the top of the thing,

the hangman come out a little bit earlier,

and they was just staring each other down.

Boy, they just looked at each other.

And so, anyway,

the warden, he said, "Do you have any last words?"

He says, "Yes, a word or two."

Man: "I think that it's a hell of a thing

that a life has to be taken in this manner.

Any apology for what I have done

would be meaningless at this time.

I don't have any animosities

toward anyone involved in this matter.

I think that is all."

Collins: After Smith made his little statement,

it was just like a pin dropped.

I mean, complete silence.

Anyway, when Perry hit the bottom of the rope...

[Thud]

...there's a big clap of thunder.

[Thunder rumbles] That was it.

**

Wilson: The trap door was swung

at 1:02 this morning,

and the prison physician

pronounced him dead at 1:19,

17 minutes after

the trap door had swung.

I would further like to say

that I have seen the newly born

and there I saw a purpose.

I have seen the maimed, the crippled, and the dead,

and even there I saw purpose,

but what I saw tonight...

I saw no purpose.

**

Tedrow: I remember the night they were executed.

I was at a sleepover,

and I said this is bad,

but it has to be.

**

It makes you feel a little less human,

but I didn't mind that they were put to death,

and that sounds cruel.

Edwards: I've never been in favor of capital punishment.

It wasn't like I was going to suddenly be feeling better

because they were going to be killed.

No, that...

I'm not somebody who wants

to see anybody killed, you know?

**

Clarke: Truman had said he could not have a book

unless they were buried 6 feet under,

and that's what he said he wanted.

**

Be careful what you wish for,

and he got everything with "In Cold Blood,"

but it somehow all turned against him.

**

**

Reporter: Truman Capote became famous almost two decades ago,

but nothing he'd written prepared the public

for the dramatic impact of his latest work,

"In Cold Blood."

Man: It is my pleasure to introduce to you

Mr. Truman Capote.

**

Good evening.

Man #2: Truman Capote is here.

One of the great men of letters of our time.

Clarke: "In Cold Blood" not only make him more money,

but raised him to a prominence

he had not had before.

He was the most famous writer in America,

most famous writer in the world, probably.

Man: I really think you've written

a masterpiece here.

Thank you.

You'll get a much better dedication.

[Laughter]

Reporter: There is no bookstore in Garden City,

but Norris Drug Store has never sold as many copies of any book

as "In Cold Blood."

Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Finney Countians gave Capote a warm welcome

at an autographed scene in the Garden City Library.

It's been a privilege to have you.

Well, thank you very much.

It's been a great privilege to be here.

Thank you.

[Applause]

Al: In regard to the book,

I think it is very accurate and very well written.

I just love it.

I think it's marvelous.

But it certainly is real.

My husband was Herb Clutter's college roommate

so he'll be especially happy to... Really?!

Reporter: The people of Finney County

who are buying the book are

divided into two camps -- those who like it

and those who feel the book

exploits the murder victims.

There was a little promotional applique that

would appear on store windows that were selling the book,

and it looked like a little -- it was a little blotch of blood,

with the title "In Cold Blood" in white on this black blotch,

and there was some of those on the front of Woolworth's,

as I recall.

That seemed like a really tacky awful way

to promote a book

about four murders that had happened in our community.

Frack: I don't know why anybody

would want to write a book like that.

I think you got to be a little bit...

to write a book like that.

I think the town, as a whole,

appreciates all that Truman has done.

There are few who are not happy about it,

but I think, probably, they resent the fact that,

say, an outsider came to publicize the murder,

but what -- what they don't stop to realize

is that whenever there's a catastrophe,

there is publicity.

And we were fortunate to have someone like Truman

do it for us.

When Capote first came to Holcomb and Garden City,

most of the local people had never heard of him.

Today, his "In Cold Blood"

is known here simply as "the book,"

and now there are two books every western Kansan

is sure to have read --

the book and the Bible.

George Page, NBC News, reporting from Holcomb, Kansas.

**

Richard Avedon shot several portraits

of Smith and Hickock and Capote in the early '60s.

Steinbicker: Avedon was very famous

as a fashion photographer.

Capote was a very close friend of Richard Avedon's.

Corbin: In the most famous image of Hickock,

he looks out at you with these soulless eyes.

Steinbicker: I was haunted by those photos.

They -- They just looked terrible,

like this is the end of their lives,

and they know it.

Now Perry Smith -- I look at his,

and I don't think he feels sorry at all for the murders.

But that is the magic of the book.

At its most basic,

"In Cold Blood" is a story of dichotomies.

You have very good people. You have very bad people.

Capote adds an element to those bad people

by humanizing them,

by talking about...

their psychology, their past, their nuances.

I think it disturbed people, as well,

because they found themselves curious

and even liking the killers.

They wondered how they could care about murderers.

Corbin: And by the end of the book,

you as the reader do tend to feel a sense of pity

for these two men.

**

Great-Granddaughter: To know that people have been

sitting in their living room,

reading a book about my murdered family,

that's a real unsettling feeling.

**

Granddaughter: One of the reasons why

we don't want to be on camera is we're not going

to sensationalize it even farther.

**

There were 45 inaccuracies

in just the part that's about the family,

which makes me wonder how much of the rest of it's

actually even real.

**

Lyon: I administered the estate.

We have asked one of the surviving Clutter daughters

to mark objectionable passages in the first installment

of "In Cold Blood," which I am enclosing.

Granddaughter: Absolutely, hands down,

the biggest one was the portrayal of Grandma.

**

He makes Grandma out like she was a very sick woman

and that she had no energy and she stayed in bed all day,

and she was anything but that.

Lyon: Mr. Capote's perception probably arose from the fact

that Bonnie appropriately sought professional help

for periods of depression.

Her health problems included recurring pain

from a back injury when she was young.

The person described in the book

is not the person I knew.

Edwards: I'm sort of surprised

that she coped as well as she did,

but she was always reliable, you know,

and she did do things in the community,

and she did know how to keep house

and how to, you know, can and cook

and all the stuff you were supposed to know,

how to be a woman, how to be a gracious woman.

Reporter: I understand that some people

in the Clutter family are not happy

with your portrait of Mrs. Clutter.

I know that their minister wrote a letter to a newspaper

saying that they were very unhappy about

my portrait of -- of the family in general,

not particularly Mrs. Clutter.

That's all I know about it.

Granddaughter: That one factor has been more hurtful,

I think, than any other thing 'cause a lot of that stuff,

the 45 things that are inaccurate,

were little things.

They felt like they were so burned by Capote.

You know, my mom and aunt felt like,

rightfully so, that they didn't trust anybody.

They didn't give interviews

and they just were quiet about everything.

Woman: The Clutters became cardboard figures,

hardly more than a backdrop for Capote's sympathetic

depiction of the killers.

Edwards: I was angry.

I thought that if he wrote about how they really were that --

that it would help heal how I felt, too,

because somebody else would say how important they were,

and what I read was just like they weren't real to him.

We're real here.

We're not cardboard people. They weren't cardboard people.

They were real.

Announcer: "In Cold Blood,"

worldwide best seller.

Now a motion picture brings this book to the screen.

Reporter: This morning, the film crew

for the movie "In Cold Blood" began shooting.

the director, Richard Brook, shouting his orders,

at the residence of the Herbert Clutter family.

Wilson: Richard Brooks was a very focused filmmaker.

He wanted to recreate the event.

I think he would have been very happy

if he had been able to hang me and Robert Blake

at the end of the film.

Brooks introduced the world to Kansas through the camera,

and Quincy Jones introduced the rhythm and the tempo

that kept the film moving along.

Jones: Not many shows like that have been presented, you know?

shot in the location,

the same place the murder had occurred

so it was really authentic.

It smelled like the situation, you know?

It felt like the situation,

and that's why Richard shot it there, I'm sure.

Some people would naturally like

to see the whole thing forgotten.

Other local residents, however,

feel much the same as Terry Schmidt,

who says when they switched

to that long shot of the courthouse,

"Maybe I'll be the guy washing the windows."

Penick: When the film crew came into Garden City

and, of course, set up at the courthouse,

I wanted nothing to do with it.

I mean, I shut it out of my mind.

Reporter: Many of these same spectators and reporters

were in the sullen crowd that saw the actual killers

brought to this courthouse after their capture.

In this courtroom, they were tried for murder,

and seven of the jurors in the film

are the actual men who decided their fate.

Currin: We were all stuck in this house,

especially the week that they shot the murder scene.

Every single window was blacked out

so it was claustrophobic.

There was a scene in the Clutter house

where Hickock was in the room with Nancy Clutter,

and he was going to violate her,

and the Smith character came into the room

and pulls him off of the bed,

jams him in the doorway.

Hickock says he's going to bust that little girl,

and he says, "No. No, you're not."

Then there was a line right after that

that I thought should go in there,

which was, "Okay, honey."

No.

Okay, honey.

It denigrates Smith.

He just put him down.

He said, "Okay, honey. You're not a man.

I'm the man in this situation, not you.

I'm the man."

It was so intense.

It was so intense.

Wilson: I wanted people to dislike Hickock

when they saw the film.

I wanted them to know that he was a human being,

but he was a very flawed human being

and not someone that you would want to emulate,

and so I don't totally agree with the supposition

that they're humanized.

The Smith character is humanized.

There are justifications for what he becomes.

Isn't it, in fact, just glorifying two killers

who but for the film -- You've got to be putting me on.

You've got to be putting me on.

What are you trying to do, get me riled?

No, I feel this very strongly.

What do you want to do, just make "Mary Poppins"?

Shall we just make films like that?

When I turn on television,

I want to see what the hell's going on in Vietnam.

I don't want a fiction.

**

Wilson: These two young ladies came up to us and one says,

"You look familiar."

Do you recognize him from the movie he starred in?

"Oh, what movie?" He said, "In Cold Blood."

They started screaming and backing up,

and it had to be 20 feet, if not more,

and the wall stopped them from backing up further,

and I said, "Damn.

I guess I did it." [Chuckles]

I had nightmares for years after having done the movie,

kind of a guilt-based nightmare of, you know,

this great experience that was so married to this tragedy.

I remember I just wanted to walk out in front of traffic

after I saw it for the first time.

It -- It's -- It's a hard film to watch.

After I saw the film,

I went to the bathroom, and threw up.

That was my initial reaction to it.

**

Critically, it was very well received.

It got, I think, four Academy Award nominations.

There was no question whatsoever how special it was,

and the amazing thing is that is has endured.

**

I think what Capote did with the book

and what Brooks did with the film are very similar.

It's truth.

It's not -- It's not --

It's not Hollywood fiction. It's truth.

Wilson: It transformed how people made movies.

It brought a reality to them that before...

nothing wrong with the films that proceeded them,

but it certainly influenced how films were made.

**

There was so much attention on the book

and then the making of the movie,

and there was a whole press week devoted

to the making of the movie.

Capote was there.

He said this was his last trip.

He would never come out again.

He said it was too painful for him.

He never survived "In Cold Blood."

It knocked him off his equilibrium,

and he was torn apart by it.

He drank a great deal, and he was on drugs a lot,

mostly prescription drugs.

[Laughter]

**

Finally I said, "Well, Truman, you're killing yourself,"

and he said, "I can't live without them."

**

He once told me that the whole experience

of "In Cold Blood" had

scratched him down to the marrow of his bones.

**

Can I ask you some serious questions?

[Slurring] Sure, you can go right in.

I-I feel perfectly fine.

Have you been drinking?

You mean very lately?

What's going to happen unless you let this problem

of drugs and alcohol --

The obvious answer is that eventually,

I mean, I'll kill myself... Yes.

...without meaning to.

**

Reporter: At his favorite summer watering hole,

Bobby Van's in Bridgehampton, New York,

Truman Capote's corner table was empty today,

nevermore to be filled

by the man who once described himself

as a drunk, a drug addict,

a homosexual, and a genius.

**

**

My name's Gene Kirby.

I'm the manager of Mt. Muncie Cemetery,

which is located in Lansing, Kansas.

This cemetery is known for several things,

one of them being that this is

where Hickock and Smith are buried.

Here they are right here.

When people come, we show them where it's at,

and they just kind of walk up and take a look,

and that's it. [Chuckles]

This is the second set of markers.

The original pair that were purchased by Truman Capote

were stolen.

You know, I don't really pay much attention to it anymore,

unless somebody comes in and asks for them.

It's not anybody I think of on a daily basis,

that's for sure.

Back in 2012,

I was here one day, and a guy came to the door.

He identified himself as a reporter

and wanted to know what my thoughts

on doing a disinterment of Hickock and Smith were,

for DNA.

I hadn't heard anything about it.

I started getting phone calls from people I knew

that said, "Hey, you need to turn on a TV."

Now the bodies of the killers are being exhumed.

Investigators are checking to see if the killers

may have slaughtered another family.

The Walker family -- Cliff, Christine,

3-year-old Jimmy, and 2-year-old Debbie --

were also shot and killed.

Thomas: We still had inquiries about the potential

of Hickock and Smith being involved in other crimes,

mainly from investigators in Florida,

about this one particular case in an area

where I think Hickock and Smith may have been.

Police in Sarasota, Florida,

were the ones that were willing to have this done.

They thought with the DNA,

they could tie them in to a murder.

Sarasota homicides occurred

approximately a month after the Holcomb homicides,

and there may be a connection.

[Police radio chatter]

Kirby: There were a lot of people out here,

KBI and their forensics people,

and they had on their suits and mask and gloves,

and the results came back "inconclusive."

I wasn't really surprised by it at all.

The two worse things to preserve DNA

are time and moisture,

and they've been laying in the ground for 50 years

in just a concrete box.

**

Paul: For years, many critiques have come out

about "In Cold Blood"

and the factual issues or inconsistent facts.

And then The Wall Street Journal went one step further.

There had been a hidden cache of documents

that were discovered in the basement to Harold Nye,

and basically the issue was a prisoner, Floyd Wells,

came forward on December 4,

what turned out to be the most important tip of the case.

What The Wall Street Journal pointed out was

nobody went to go to the farmhouse of Hickock

until the 9th.

The conclusions of these articles are

the KBI waited five days to act on the tip,

and this is not a trivial matter,

because if the KBI had acted quicker,

the killers may not have made it to Florida,

where they may have killed other people.

**

The documents that I found in Dad's files --

there was a report on December 5th,

and then on the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, the 9th,

the 10th, and the 11th.

It's gumshoe detective work,

going from place to place to place,

getting search warrants,

and so far from Dad or the agents not responding,

the KBI was all over it.

**

My dad knew the Clutters.

He was so worried about not catching them.

And it's not just defending Dad. It's defending the KBI.

**

He really cared.

**

I have Dad's badge from that era.

A prized possession of his and of mine.

I'm just not going to let it go.

**

[Birds chirping]

**

Kirby: We've had people from all over the country.

We've had a guy here from England one time

to see where Hickock and Smith were buried.

They far outnumber all the other requests put together,

that's for sure.

I've often wanted to ask people, "Since you came here,

did you bother to go out to western Kansas

and visit the graves of the Clutter family?"

That makes more sense to me,

to go pay your respects to the family who suffered.

**

Granddaughter: I don't know why this story

just doesn't ever want to go away.

A family was murdered.

It was a tragic murder,

and it was in 1959.

**

I mean, I know that there have been multiple movies made

and multiple stories written about Capote and his life.

**

I don't know that it will ever go away at this point.

**

Rupp: There are different memorials

for the Clutter family,

like at the co-op, at the Methodist church,

but in the little town of Holcomb,

absolutely nothing,

and so I went to the Holcomb City Council

and asked them if we can build a memorial

dedicated to the Clutter family,

and the council gave us permission

to do exactly that.

They made quite an impact on my life.

Herb Clutter was so involved

in Garden City and the state of Kansas.

I guess I wanted to try and be a lot more like him.

As long as I am able

to take care of the memorial,

I will,

but they have agreed that when I'm gone,

they will see to it

that the memorial is taken care of.

This piece is solid concrete beneath the brick.

Now if a tornado come through,

wiped everything else out,

this would still be standing.

**

**

James: Oh, you know, there's an untold story.

My older brother's gone now,

and he goes, "Before I die I want to tell you something.

Dad's not your dad."

[Chuckles] I go, "What? Why would you say that to me?

That doesn't make sense. What are you saying?"

He goes -- He goes, "No."

He goes, "Perry Smith's your dad."

He goes, "When you were a baby,

my job was to hide you from Dad.

Mom and Dad fought all the time over you,

and Mom would run to me and tell me,

'Go hide little Jewell.'

He didn't like you. He hated you."

And I asked my Aunt Cordelia, she nursed me.

She goes, "Well, Joe's not your dad.

Perry is.

You're short, he was short.

You're stocky and broad-shouldered.

He's stocky and broad-shouldered.

You look at his eyes and your eyes,

they're the same eyes looking back at you."

**

You know, with all the facts

and the things I've seen and heard...

yeah, I probably am.

Yeah, it's kind of sad.

Somebody can come into your life

and leave a legacy

of doubt and sorrow,

subtle pain, unspoken pain.

So that's what I think he left.

It wasn't a gift.

Guarantee it was not a gift.

**

[Dog panting]

Edwards: A death like that and a loss like that

has so many reverberations.

It doesn't just effect the mothers, the fathers,

the sisters, the brothers --

it affects the whole community,

it affects the next generation,

and the generation after that.

**

Welch: You can't separate

the Clutter killings

and "In Cold Blood."

You can't say they were a success,

but together they were famous.

Crable: This book is where we got the genre of true crime,

but at what cost?

Clarke: Truman Capote never survived "In Cold Blood."

It was the greatest thing he had ever done,

and it was the worst thing he had ever done.

Quakenbush: Holcomb and Garden City

and all of Finney County,

we don't want to be defined as the community

of "In Cold Blood."

We don't want to be defined

as the place where a terrible thing happened.

We want to be defined as a place where a lot of great things

still have yet to come.

**

Bascue: The murder, Smith and Hickock,

the trial, the executions,

everybody has heard about that.

But what nobody really knows, except for a few,

is how great this family was

that was taken away from this community.

**

Granddaughter: My mom and my aunt have

really passed on the fact that it's about joy.

And that was, I feel like,

what they did when we all got together,

and they told us about who Grandma and Grandpa were

and who Nancy and Kenyon were.

They weren't just murdered.

They were wonderful people.

That's, I guess, the part

that gets lost sometimes in these stories.

**

**

**

**