Skip to footer

New errors are discovered in 'In Cold Blood'

The 'true crime' book by Truman Capote, which has long been plagued by charges of inaccuracy, was accused anew of factual errors after old Kansas Bureau of Investigation files were discovered.

'In Cold Blood' by Truman Capote was originally published in The New Yorker in 1965.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Truman Capote’s true-crime classic “In Cold Blood” is coming under new scrutiny after evidence surfaced that disputes aspects of Capote’s narrative.

 

Capote’s 1966 book tells the story of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, who killed farmer Herbert Clutter, his wife, and two of Clutter’s children.  

 

New findings by the Wall Street Journal question key facts in the narrative. In the book, Capote writes that one Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent went to the farm where one of the suspects lived, but newly discovered KBI documents state that four agents went, according to the Journal. In addition, Capote says that after receiving word of the possible whereabouts of one of the alleged murderers, the KBI sent an agent to the farmhouse right away. According to the KBI files, the bureau waited five days. 

 

The documents were taken home by a KBI agent, Harold Nye, and are now the basis of a lawsuit between Nye’s son, who expressed intent to release them or sell them, and the KBI, who says the papers are their property.

 

This isn’t the first time the accuracy of “In Cold Blood” has been called into question.

 

Capote called the book about the 1959 murders “immaculately factual” in an interview with the New York Times, but various reporters and writers have claimed over the years that “Blood” has numerous inconsistencies. In his biography “Capote,” writer Gerald Clarke claims that the last scene in “Blood,” in which detective Alvin Dewey meets a friend of one of the Clutter daughters, was completely fabricated. Changes were also made between the book’s initial publication in The New Yorker and its release in hardcover, including the number of churches in the town and the times of day at which certain events happened.

 

 Former KBI director Larry Welch pointed out that the rigid rules we have today for how factual a nonfiction book needs to be weren’t in place when Capote was writing “Blood.”

 

“In this day and age, we can't even recreate the proper context for these events,” Welch said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 

 

The KBI and “To Kill A Mockingbird” author Harper Lee, who assisted Capote with his investigations, both declined to comment for the WSJ article.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to New errors are discovered in 'In Cold Blood'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0212/New-errors-are-discovered-in-In-Cold-Blood
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe