The Clutter family murders

Much of the world knows that in 1959, two drifters murdered four members of the Clutter family at the Clutters' home in Holcomb, Kansas.

The reason much of the world knows this is that Truman Capote fixed upon and immortalized that crime in his 1966 "non-fiction novel," In Cold Blood.

The phrase I quoted above is Capote's own. There have long been critics, both of the idea that forcing those two words together in that way makes any sense and of the presumption specifically that Capote was scrupulous about the "non-fiction" part.

There is a new source of light on this now, and it comes from an unlikely source. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the late Harold Nye, a one-time agent for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, brought a cache of records on the Clutter investigation home with him at some point. The Journal report is a bit vague on when and the circumstances in which this occurred, but it says the son of Mr. Nye has the papers in his possession and plans either to publish or to sell them. The KBI isn't happy with either possibility.

However that all comes out, the WSJ says it has reviewed the material and it significantly modifies Capote's telling. Capote was engaged in some blatant "beat sweetening," a spinning of the story in such a way as to make his sources the heroes and the uncooperative the goats, at the expense of a more complicated investigative picture.

This doesn't lead me to any very profound thoughts, but it is good that the record has been set straight. And RIP, Herbert and Bonnie Clutter, and their two children also killed that day, Nancy and Kenyon.

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