50 Fun Facts About In Cold Blood

In In Cold Blood, which prize-winning dessert does Nancy Clutter teach young Jolene Katz to bake on her last morning?

Cherry pie was Nancy's specialty. She squeezed the lesson into a Saturday that also held a younger girl's trumpet solo to coach, three errands for her mother and bridesmaids' dresses to sew.

Which novelist and childhood friend went to Kansas with Truman Capote to help him research In Cold Blood?

Harper Lee helped Capote win the confidence of wary Holcomb locals. Dill, the boy next door in her own To Kill a Mockingbird, is widely thought to be modelled on the young Capote.

In In Cold Blood, what creature rescues Perry Smith in his recurring dream of a diamond tree guarded by a snake?

A yellow parrot 'taller than Jesus' has come to Perry in times of need all his life. He tells Dick about the snake but hides this ending, afraid of being laughed at.

How much cash did Dick Hickock and Perry Smith actually carry away from the Clutter home in In Cold Blood?

Under $50 was the entire haul from a robbery that took a drive of more than 400 miles across Kansas. Four people died for it.

In In Cold Blood, what did a former cellmate wrongly tell Dick Hickock that Herb Clutter kept in his office?

A safe stuffed with cash was the whole reason for the crime, yet it never existed. Herb Clutter was locally famous for never carrying money, a habit his neighbors joked about.

In In Cold Blood, what does Herb Clutter buy from salesman Bob Johnson only hours before he is murdered?

Life insurance worth $40,000, doubling for accidental death, was signed for that Saturday afternoon. The agent honored the policy although the first payment had not yet been banked.

In In Cold Blood, the Clutters' watchdog Teddy has one flaw: he cowers at the sight of what?

Guns made Teddy drop his head and tuck in his tail, though nobody knew why. Capote plants the detail on the family's last day, when five armed pheasant hunters walk onto the farm.

In which city are Dick Hickock and Perry Smith finally arrested in In Cold Blood, six weeks after the murders?

Las Vegas police seized the pair on December 30, 1959, minutes after Perry collected a box of his belongings from the post office. A prison informant had already named them both.

In In Cold Blood, what does Perry Smith call 'meaningless' and 'inappropriate' in his last words, then do anyway?

Apologizing came only at the very end of his statement, after he had called capital punishment wrong 'morally or legally'. He also said that maybe he 'had something to contribute'.

Which British actor played killer Perry Smith opposite Toby Jones in Infamous, the 2006 film about In Cold Blood?

Daniel Craig was a very late addition after Mark Wahlberg and Mark Ruffalo both fell through. The film was held back a year so that it would not open against the rival Capote.

In In Cold Blood, which church do the Clutters belong to, the reason Herb opposes Nancy's romance with a Catholic boy?

Methodist faith ran deep in the house: Herb had headed the building committee for Garden City's new church and touched neither alcohol, coffee nor tea.

In In Cold Blood, which boyfriend of Nancy Clutter was the last visitor to see the family alive that Saturday night?

Bobby Rupp watched television with the Clutters and drove home at about 10:30. He and Nancy had just made a date to see the film Blue Denim the following evening.

In In Cold Blood, which best friend of Nancy Clutter enters the house with Nancy Ewalt and finds her body?

Susan Kidwell said she remembered Nancy's teddy bear staring at her but not her own screams. She had come to Holcomb from California with her mother, the school's music teacher.

In In Cold Blood, what does Perry Smith chew, liking the taste, to dull the pain in his badly scarred legs?

Aspirin was an addiction, in Capote's word: Perry shakes out three tablets at a time and chews them slowly. His legs had been broken in five places seven years before the murders.

In In Cold Blood, what kind of accident left Perry Smith in hospital for half a year with both legs shattered?

A motorcycle wreck in Washington State also put Perry on crutches for a further six months. Cookie, the nurse who befriended him in hospital, ended up as a tattoo on his right biceps.

In In Cold Blood, what is the Clutter family's fat old work horse called, later auctioned to a Mennonite farmer?

Babe let three or four children ride on her broad back at once. Watching her led away, months after the murders, was more than one of Nancy's friends could bear.

In In Cold Blood, what is Kenyon Clutter varnishing in the basement den as a wedding present for his sister Beverly?

A hope chest of mahogany lined with cedar was Kenyon's latest piece. The den around him was furnished almost entirely with his own carpentry, from shelves and stools to a ping-pong table.

According to the opening sentence of In Cold Blood, what do other Kansans call the lonesome plains around Holcomb?

'Out there' is Capote's first note of isolation. Holcomb lies some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, in country he says feels 'rather more Far West than Middle West'.

In In Cold Blood, what is the name of Herb Clutter's prosperous wheat and cattle spread just outside Holcomb?

River Valley Farm was built up by a former county agent whose 'university notions' the old-timers once mocked. At times it employed as many as eighteen hands.

In In Cold Blood, which Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent, a friend of the Clutters, leads the hunt for the killers?

Alvin Dewey had been a state trooper, an FBI agent and the sheriff of Finney County before the case. Capote makes him the book's detective hero, and John Forsythe played him in the 1967 film.

In In Cold Blood, what does the local hardware store struggle to keep in stock in the days after the Clutter murders?

Locks and bolts sold out in a town where people had seldom troubled to fasten their doors. Many families also left every light burning through the night.

In In Cold Blood, how does Dick Hickock raise cash in Kansas City for the escape to Mexico with Perry Smith?

Passing bad checks was Dick's specialty. Telling shop clerks that Perry was about to be married, he bought a suit, a ring and more on worthless paper, then pawned the lot.

When Perry Smith wonders in In Cold Blood what is wrong with them, Dick Hickock snaps 'I'm a' what?

Normal is the word Dick clings to all through the book. 'Deal me out, baby,' he tells Perry at a roadside picnic in Mexico, then gleefully swerves the car to hit a dog as they drive on.

In In Cold Blood, what encases the Clutters' heads at the funeral home, sprayed to twinkle 'like Christmas-tree snow'?

Cotton hid the wounds, wound into what Capote calls 'a swollen cocoon'. Two teenagers who loved Nancy drove to Garden City the day before the burial to see her one last time.

In In Cold Blood, off which Mexican resort does Perry Smith land a huge sailfish from a rich German's boat?

Acapulco gave Perry one of his few happy hours, but the money was nearly gone. Dick soon sold the car, ran through the proceeds in three days and bought two bus tickets north.

In In Cold Blood, what weapon does Perry Smith falsely claim he once used to beat a man to death?

A bicycle chain featured in a murder Perry made up to impress Dick, who decided his cellmate was that rarity, 'a natural killer'. Dick planned the Clutter job around the boast.

In In Cold Blood, which chaplain's clerk does Perry Smith call his 'real and only friend' in the Kansas penitentiary?

Willie-Jay sang tenor in the prison choir and tried to steer Perry toward religion. Perry came back to Kansas hoping to meet him on his release and missed him at the bus terminal by five hours.

In In Cold Blood, which habit of Dick Hickock's does Perry Smith keep correcting as they plan the robbery?

His grammar gets corrected even as Dick promises to 'blast hair all over them walls'. Perry, a stickler for proper English, longs to be taken for an intellectual.

In In Cold Blood, what does Nancy Clutter keep smelling in the house that makes her worry about her father?

Cigarette smoke was unthinkable in a home without a single ashtray, since Herb opposed every stimulant. Nancy's closest friend found the idea that he had taken up tobacco ludicrous.

In In Cold Blood, which prison inmate and former Clutter farmhand finally gives the authorities the killers' names?

Floyd Wells was serving time for stealing lawnmowers when he heard of the murders. Afraid of being marked as a snitch, he held back until a fellow inmate helped him reach the deputy warden unnoticed.

In In Cold Blood, where do the fugitives Dick Hickock and Perry Smith spend Christmas Day, lazing on a beach?

Miami was meant to be a winter 'like all the millionaires', but the money was almost gone. Perry was moved to tears by Christmas carols while Dick collected seashells on the sand.

In In Cold Blood, which murder weapon does Agent Nye notice leaning against a wall in the Hickock family home?

A 12-gauge shotgun, a Savage Model 300, stood in full view while Dick's parents talked to the agent. His father explained that it belonged to Dick.

In In Cold Blood, which two items do the killers carry off from the Clutter home besides cash?

A radio and binoculars were all the pair took besides the money: the Zenith portable belonged to Kenyon and the field glasses to his father.

In Perry Smith's confession in In Cold Blood, what does he crawl on his belly to retrieve in Nancy Clutter's bedroom?

A silver dollar had fallen out of a doll's purse. Perry told detectives that scrabbling for it, after coming to steal a fortune, left him disgusted with himself.

Which phrase does Perry Smith use for Herb Clutter in In Cold Blood, 'right up to the moment I cut his throat'?

A very nice gentleman, 'soft-spoken', is how Perry remembered the first of the four to die. 'I didn't want to harm the man,' he says of the killing.

In In Cold Blood, what saves the friendly driver whom Dick Hickock and Perry Smith plan to kill for his car?

He picks up a soldier, a third rider, just as Perry raises the rock on Dick's signal. Perry, sick with nerves, later calls it 'a goddam miracle'.

In In Cold Blood, what do the fugitives collect by the roadside with an old man and a boy to buy dinner?

Empty bottles, each worth a small refund, filled the car after the boy showed Dick how to spot them. The four split the takings at a motel and shared a big meal at a diner.

In In Cold Blood, which scavengers pick dead birds from car grilles in Garden City as the captured killers arrive?

Two gray tomcats prowl the cars parked around Courthouse Square, where the waiting crowd falls silent at the sight of the prisoners. Perry later watches them from his cell window and decides his own life has been much like theirs.

In In Cold Blood, what Christmas present does Mrs. Ashida plan for her husband, asking Herb Clutter's opinion?

Gold teeth, three of them, struck Herb as a fine idea: 'Was me, I'd be tickled.' On the same drive his neighbor tells him, 'I can't imagine you afraid.'

In In Cold Blood, what is 'The Corner', the place at the Kansas penitentiary that gives the final part its title?

The gallows shed could be seen from the windows of Death Row, where Hickock and Smith waited five years. Capote describes the Death Row building itself as 'shaped like a coffin'.

In In Cold Blood, which wild animal does Perry Smith tame as a pet while jailed in Garden City awaiting trial?

A squirrel kept Perry company in a cell where he also made his bed with pride, sketched flowers and portraits of Jesus, and wrote up his diary.

In what setting does the closing scene of In Cold Blood take place, a meeting the lead detective later called invented?

A cemetery in Garden City closes the book, with the detective chatting to one of Nancy's old friends beside the family's graves. He said the rest of the book was accurate.

In In Cold Blood, which Death Row neighbor of Hickock and Smith was a college student who shot his parents and sister?

Lowell Lee Andrews, a University of Kansas biology student, had been called 'the nicest boy in Wolcott' in a Kansas newspaper headline. Hickock and Smith watched from their cells as he was led out to die.

In In Cold Blood, which legal test of sanity, asking only whether a defendant knew right from wrong, governs the trial?

The M'Naghten Rule let the judge hold the defense psychiatrist to yes-or-no answers on that one point. His fuller diagnosis of both men appears in the book, but the jury never heard it.

Which magazine first published In Cold Blood as a four-part serial in the autumn before the book appeared?

The New Yorker ran the story across four issues from late September 1965, and copies sold out at once in Kansas. Random House brought out the book the following January.

What label did Truman Capote give In Cold Blood, claiming he had invented a new literary form?

Nonfiction novel was Capote's label for a true story told with a novelist's techniques. It became an international bestseller, yet he never completed another novel afterwards.

What object, topped with a single drop of red, appears on S. Neil Fujita's first-edition cover of In Cold Blood?

A hatpin carries the drop, and Capote asked for its red to be made deeper to suggest the time that had passed since the murders. A black border was added as well.

Which actor played killer Perry Smith opposite Scott Wilson's Dick Hickock in the 1967 film of In Cold Blood?

Robert Blake, a former child actor, was little known as an adult when he was cast. The studio had wanted Steve McQueen for the part, with Paul Newman as his partner in crime.

In In Cold Blood, what business do Perry Smith and his father Tex build in Alaska, only to see it fail?

A hunting lodge aimed at tourists was Tex Smith's scheme, and Perry joined him once he had recovered from his injuries. Its failure was one more dashed dream in a life full of them.

In which Kansas town is the penitentiary where In Cold Blood's Dick Hickock and Perry Smith met and were later executed?

Lansing was home to the Kansas State Penitentiary, where the two were cellmates before their parole. They came back to spend five years on its Death Row.