In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences, Capote, Truman
Part I: The Last to See Them AliveThe family Clutter of River Valley Farm in the villiage Holcomb in the State of Kansas, consists of four persons: the father, Herbert William Clutter, forty-eight years old, his wife Bonnie Fox, three years younger, and the two children, daughter Nancy of sixteen, and son Kenyon of fifteen. Two other childeren, Eveanna and Beverly, have already left the house. Eveanne has married and is mother of a babygirl, Beverly has engaged to a young biology student and is studying for a nurse.
The master of the farm is a selfmade, prosperous farmer universally respected for his sterling character, farming skill and modesty. His wife is a delicate woman who has been troubled for many years by a post natal depression after the birth of her son of which she doesn’t recover. Nancy is an intelligent, efficient, kindly and thoroughly lovable girl. Kenyon is a lanky boy already taller than his father, and as intelligent as Nancy, but more sensitive and less sociable.
It is Saturday, November 14, 1959. Two young men are driving to River Valley Farm in a black 1949 Chevrolet sedan. Some time ago they have been cell-mates at Kansas State Penitentiary. Perry Smith, the son of an Irish father and a Cherokee mother, both professional rodeo-riders, is a romantically-minded, dreamy neurotic haunted by the memories of his childhood, which he spent in miserable circumstances among loveless people. His friend Dick Hickock comes from a humble but respectable family. Dick, whose intelligence ia above average, is filled with a burning desire for riches and sexual experience. He twice married a girl of sixteen and divorced twice too.