The Anniversary of the 'In Cold Blood' Killings

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"Now, on this final day of her life, Mrs. Clutter hung in the closet the calico house dress she had been wearing and put on one of her trailing nightgowns and a fresh set of white socks. Then, before retiring, she exchanged her ordinary glasses for a pair of reading spectacles. Though she subscribed to several periodicals (the Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, Reader's Digest and Together: Midmonth Magazine for Methodist Families), none of these rested on the bedside table — only a Bible. A bookmark lay between its pages, a stiff piece of watered silk upon which an admonition had been embroidered: 'Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.'"

Truman Capote
In Cold Blood

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They happened before I was born, but the murders of the Clutter family 55 years ago today in Holcomb, Kansas, still have the power to grip people.

I re–read Truman Capote's riveting account of those murders, "In Cold Blood," about a year ago. I was just as engrossed by it as I was when I first read it in college. As a reading experience, it reminded me of Vincent Bugliosi's account of the Manson Family murders, "Helter Skelter."

Capote did a lot of writing in his life, but "In Cold Blood" was the book he was born to write. It seems almost like the kind of book that would write itself, that all it needed was a person to be the go–between. But writers are a funny sort, and my understanding is that Capote agonized over aspects of his book. Some writers are like that. The creative process makes impossible demands on them.

So writing "In Cold Blood" may have been a very emotionally trying experience for Capote. It may have been unimaginably wrenching to try to put everything on paper. I know it took awhile for him to finish it. Some writers find it very difficult to achieve the level of detachment that is necessary to write about unpleasant things. It is often essential, I have observed, to be detached in the news business. You must express in print the shock and revulsion people feel upon hearing about such things — without letting those things affect you personally. It is why many talented writers don't make it as news writers.

Such a level of detachment must have been necessary for the local officials who investigated the murders. In a small town like Holcomb (which, more than half a century later, has a population that barely exceeds 2,000), everyone knows everyone else, and Herb Clutter, the family patriarch, was a pillar of the community. He was a farmer, he hired people to work on his farm, and, by all accounts, he treated them well. He was rumored to be very wealthy — after all, he didn't drink or smoke. Had no vices of any kind, as far as anyone could tell. He was also rumored to keep all his money in a safe in his home.

At least, that is what one fellow in particular had heard. This fellow had worked for Clutter about 10 years earlier and told a jailhouse cellmate about him and the money he supposedly had in his remote country farmhouse. Truth was, Herb Clutter didn't have a fortune in his home. He didn't have a safe, either. This cellmate didn't know that, though, and he started planning to rob this farmer as soon as he and another buddy of his were released.

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Fifty–five years ago, they were both free, and they made their way to Holcomb, where they intended to rob the Clutters. When they discovered that there was no safe and no fortune, they could have left and, in all probability, never been charged with a crime. Instead, they killed each member of the family so there would be no witnesses and left with $42 in cash, a radio and a pair of binoculars.

The crime shocked America, which was a more innocent place (at least, it seems so in hindsight) in the 1950s than many people today realize — even with all the jokes that are made about the simplicity of that decade. It's my opinion, though, that the difference between that time and today is the level of technology. I doubt that shocking crimes happened any less frequently then than they do today; people just didn't hear about them as much.

Nearly two years earlier, the nation was transfixed by the murder spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the inspiration for "Natural Born Killers." It must have taken a lot to transfix the nation in those days. TVs were not fixtures in every American home in those days — maybe 60% would be my guess. Cable didn't exist, nor did the internet. The primary sources for news and information probably were newspapers and radio.

Those same news sources must have been the primary sources for most Americans when the Clutter family was killed, and the word spread so far that it reached Truman Capote via the New York Times — and he and his lifelong friend, Harper Lee (author of "To Kill a Mockingbird"), traveled to Holcomb to do research for a book on the case.

What is often lost in the telling of the murders is the fear that the victims must have experienced in those early morning hours. They did what people are usually told to do if they are abducted — cooperate with your abductor, do whatever you must to stay alive. Yet, they did not live through the night.

Their deaths led to Capote's book and at least two movies of which I am aware. For Capote, of course, it was a career–defining book — which has been criticized frequently since its publication for fabricating conversations and scenes it described. Sometimes that was obviously necessary, given that it described conversations and/or scenes that no living person could verify. But sometimes Capote appears to have deliberately misquoted some people whose versions of events did not support his narrative.

Sometimes that wasn't terribly important to the story; other times, though, it was. That seems to be how it is with the new journalism, the nonfiction novel.

One fact cannot be changed or fabricated. The Clutter family has been dead for 55 years.

The Right Name

Tonight, I've been musing about the difference having the right name can make.

Entertainers and writers often take a nom de plume, and it seems to be beyond dispute that having the right name can make all the difference, no matter what one's line of work may be.

And it's funny, sometimes, the names that gravitate to certain professions.

I recall seeing, for example, a sign for a dentist whose name was Dr. Paine. I often wondered how many potential patients were driven to a different dentist simply because of his name.

(Which reminds me of something George Carlin once said. "If 'Janitor in a Drum' made a douche," he said, "no one would buy it.")

I once knew a florist named Rose. No kidding.

A few times I have known of basketball players whose last name was Short. That doesn't sound like the right name for someone who plays a game in which height is looked upon as a decided advantage.

For many years, I worked on copy desks for daily newspapers. On one such job, I worked nights. It was a morning paper. For awhile, I worked with a fellow named Day. I suppose that is considered ironic.

Another irony from those days involved one of our lead editors, the fellow who designed the front page of the paper every night. In those days, color was not as widespread as it is today. The editors could use it on the front pages of their sections if they wanted to — but it was with the understanding that the color process would make production more expensive.

Color gradually became commonplace for newspapers, but, in those days, the decision to use color was often a gut–wrenching experience for the editors, who frequently had to justify their decisions. For those who designed the front page, the most compelling reason to use a color photo was to attract readers. We were in the midst of a newspaper war, and the editors of the main section saw color as the key to boosting circulation.

I worked in sports, which seemed to have been given the green light to use color whenever we wanted to. And color really did bring sports photos to life, whether they were produced by one of our photographers or came across the wire. But the front page of the sports section was not the one on display in convenience stores and news boxes.

Anyway, this fellow on the news side had a reputation for resisting color. I always assumed it had something to do with his frugal nature — and, truth be told, I agreed with him most of the time. In those days, it was hard to justify using color for photos of people's faces — like the photos you see on columns.

The newspaper term for such photos is mugshot, and most of the mugshots that news had were of men wearing dark suits and dark ties standing in front of a dark background (think Blues Brothers without the sunglasses). What could color possibly add to that?

But there were times when I disagreed with the decisions that were made.

The name of the night editor who stoutly resisted using color photos on the front page was ... Ed Gray.

Known as the "aptly named Ed Gray" by some of the copy editors on the news side.

Still with me?

Well, the reason I'm on this tangent this evening has a lot to do with some interesting facts that are connected to tomorrow, November 19:

• Forty years ago tomorrow, Apollo 12 landed on the moon, and Pete Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth men to walk on its surface.
  
  For more than 40 years now, children have studied the Apollo program in school, and they have been told that Neil Armstrong spoke the now iconic words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he took the first steps on the surface of the moon.
  
  I suppose it was the luck of the draw that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to step on the moon, but sometimes it seems like it was destiny. What if the crew had come down with something and a backup crew had to go instead? Suppose it had been Conrad or Bean who spoke the first words from the moon. What was said surely would have been different. And neither Conrad nor Bean has the same impact as the name Armstrong.
  
  Maybe that's because it conjures up images (for older Americans) of Jack Armstrong, the All–American Boy, a radio character who was popular when Neil Armstrong was a boy.


• Ten years earlier, in 1959, the Ford Motor Co. discontinued the Edsel. It was named after Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, company founder. Edsel the man died of cancer in 1943. His namesake vehicle was introduced to the public in September 1957, but it was discontinued a little more than two years later because it was so unpopular.
  
  No one ever determined an overriding reason for the Edsel's lack of popularity. But I always thought the name had something to do with it. Edsel didn't have much magic.


• Sometimes, I guess, it isn't necessary to do anything at all if you've got the right name. On Nov. 19, 1990, a pop duo that went by the name of Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy Award because they did not perform at all on the album that won the award — studio musicians and singers were used instead. The duo merely lip synched in live performances.


• As I said, some names just seem destined for certain occupations. On Nov. 19, 1862, a boy named William A. Sunday was born in Iowa. As an adult, he was known as Billy Sunday, the most famous evangelist in America in the early part of the 20th century.
  
  Billy Sunday influenced national policy. He was a supporter of Prohibition, and it was widely believed that he played a key role in the passage of the 18th Amendment, which made the transportation and sale (but not the consumption) of alcohol illegal.
  
  If your aspiration is to be a preacher, Sunday is a pretty good surname to have.