Story Highlights
- historical event: Burglars killed Clutter by cutting his throat and shooting him in the head, and then they shot his wife and two children with a shotgun, in order to get rid of the witnesses.
On this day the two robbers, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, killed the Clutter family of four on their family farm in Kansas. Prior to this event, Hickock served time in prison in Kansas. He heard there from one prisoner that the Clutter family has a safe with a lot of money in their farm house.
When he got out of prison he took Smith as partner and they broke into the Clutter family house. They could not find the safe, so they woke the residents and forced them to tell them where it is. In reality, there was no safe at all, because Mr. Clutter carried out all his transactions using checks. The burglars killed Clutter by cutting his throat and shooting him in the head, and then they shot his wife and two children with a shotgun, in order to get rid of the witnesses.
Later they were arrested thanks to a report made by the prisoner who gave false information about the safe. They were executed by hanging. Truman Capote, after carefully examining all the circumstances related to the crime, wrote a book about the murder. This book is considered a debut in the so-called true fiction genre.
