Harper Lee

IN NOVEMBER 1959, Truman asked Nelle for a favor. He wanted her to go with him to a place called Holcomb, Kansas. A family of four had been murdered there on their farm late one night, and he hoped to write the story of how a small town reacts to a brutal crime. He needed her help with research, editing, and making connections with the townspeople.

Nelle had always been fascinated by crime stories, and when Truman invited her to come to Kansas, she said, “It was deep calling to deep.” Not only was her curiosity piqued, but she also wanted to help her friend.

It all began on November 16, 1959, when Truman read a story in The New York Times with the headline: WEALTHY FARMER, 3 OF FAMILY SLAIN. The story read, “A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged.”

Truman became obsessed with this horrific crime and wanted to write a piece for The New Yorker magazine about murder in small-town America. There were four victims—the parents, Herbert and Bonnie Clutter, and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon. There were no known motives or suspects. Truman decided to go to Kansas to research the story, but he didn’t want to go alone. To make it the best possible story, he knew he needed the support of a good friend and an assistant who could help him with the demanding process of interviewing a lot of people. A second pair of eyes and ears would make the story as accurate as possible, which is why he called upon the one person he knew he could trust.

Nelle had worked hard to perfect To Kill a Mockingbird but had no idea how the public would react to it. It wouldn’t be out until July 1960, and she simply hoped that the critics would be “merciful.” She was working on a new book, but it wasn’t coming fast, so maybe she thought going away to help Truman might give her a fresh perspective. In December 1959, approximately a month after the murders, the two of them boarded a train headed west to Garden City, Kansas. After three days on the train, Nelle and Truman stood under the Kansas sky, which yawned bleak and wide before them.

Truman had been a well-known author for ten years, and the president of Kansas State University, James McCain, said he would help him with introductions in Holcomb—McCain had even known the Clutter family—if Truman would first agree to speak to the English faculty. The English department hosted a party in his honor. Afterward, they rented a Chevrolet in Manhattan, Kansas, and drove the rest of they way.

They settled in at the Warren Hotel, once called “Waldorf of the Prairies.” After they were rested from the trip they set out to meet the people of the town. They began with Alvin Dewey, the lead detective on the case, but Dewey was immediately suspicious of Truman’s odd attire. He went to the police station in a sheepskin coat, a long scarf that dragged along the floor, a little cap, and what appeared to be moccasins. He didn’t dress or act like the other reporters. Nor did he endear himself to Dewey when he showed up without press credentials and only a passport to offer as identification. Truman nicknamed Dewey “Foxy,” because, like a fox, there was no getting around him. Dewey had two words for Nelle and Truman regarding the criminal case files: No access.

It didn’t help matters when Truman announced that he didn’t care whether the case would ever be solved or not. Dewey had been a friend of the Clutters, and he cared very much about catching the murderers and bringing them to justice. At this point, however, Truman was more interested in the psychological effect of the crime on the small town.

With the murders only weeks old and the criminals still on the loose, the townsfolk were understandably skittish and distrustful of Truman. Besides his falsetto voice, he appeared rather flamboyant to the folks of western Kansas, with one of his trunks packed with cigarettes, food, and wine. Nelle said later, “He was afraid that there wouldn’t be anything to eat in Kansas.”

“It looked as if the case would never be solved,” Nelle said. “Everyone was looking at his neighbors, wondering if they could be murderers—the killings seemed so motiveless. You’d see porch lights on all night. We were given the cold shoulder. Those people had never seen anything like Truman—he was like someone coming off the moon.”

The opposite was true of Nelle. She was like the girl next door, with her sense of humor and easy ways, which immediately made people feel comfortable in her presence. One of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents, Harold Nye, called her “an absolutely fantastic lady. I really liked her very much. But I did not get a very good impression of the little son of a bitch [Truman]. We go up there and he’s parading around in his negligee, it was not a good impression . . . and that impression never changed.”

Dolores Hope, a Garden City Telegram columnist, said, “Nelle walked into the kitchen, and five minutes later I felt like I’d known her for a long time.” She knew how to listen and make eye contact, and her whole focus was drawing the attention back to Truman so he could get his story written. Hope also said Nelle behaved a little like a mother to Truman—“almost like you have a child who doesn’t behave well.”

In those first few weeks, Truman began to feel desperate, though, because he couldn’t get the town to trust him or open up in any way. He confided in Nelle, “I cannot get any rapport going with these people. I can’t get a handle on them.”

Garden City wasn’t all that different from Monroeville in terms of small-town manners and how men and women behaved. Nelle said “please” and “thank you” and never showed up empty-handed when invited to dinner. She “cast herself in the unlikely role of occasional legal advisor and researcher for Truman, having come within a semester of a law degree at the University of Alabama.” Nelle knew how important this book was to him, and acted with absolute profes-sionalism. She was there on a “fact-finding” and “mood gathering” mission to help collect the details for his story, serving as his backup at every interview, listening carefully and observing each nuance and gesture. It was also no doubt a relief for her to focus her energy on assisting Truman after spending the past two and a half years on her novel.

Not surprisingly, she was the one who ultimately broke the ice in Holcomb. Without Nelle, Truman might never have gained access, much less the town’s trust. She drew a map to help him remember the geography of the place and provided insight into people and characters. Truman described Nelle to author George Plimpton in these words: “She is a gifted woman, courageous and with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour.”

Even though no one would speak to Truman and Nelle at first, when Cliff Hope, the Clutters’ estate attorney, learned that the two of them would be spending Christmas alone in the hotel, he invited them to Christmas dinner. Alvin Dewey and his wife, Marie, were there, too, which gave Truman and Nelle a chance to make a new impression on the detective. Truman charmed the dinner party with tales of famous movie stars he knew. In the end both Truman and Nelle became very close to the Deweys, and their friendship lasted for years. After Christmas, invitations began to flood in, and Truman and Nelle’s days became packed with interviews. Suddenly, people were willing to talk about the murders.

During the interviews, neither Nelle nor Truman ever took a single note. They wanted people to feel comfortable and open up, and Truman felt that taking notes affected the atmosphere. He believed that people would talk more about themselves if the interviews felt like ordinary conversations. Truman had studied the Sears & Roebuck catalog to improve his memory, and he claimed to have trained himself to remember conversations with up to 90 percent accuracy. When he and Nelle couldn’t remember something a person said, they did another interview and posed their questions in a new way. They even interviewed the same people three times in a row to make sure they had it right.

On December 30, 1959, Las Vegas policemen arrested two suspects in the Clutter case, Perry Smith, twenty-nine, and Dick Hickock, twenty-eight, which changed the course of Truman’s entire project. Initially, his story was going to be a piece for The New Yorker, but now that two suspects had been apprehended, Truman realized he wanted a much longer story. He couldn’t possibly say all he wanted to say in an article. It had to be a book, a new kind of book—“a nonfiction novel” is what he called it. “I had this theory about reportage,” Capote told Newsweek magazine in 1966 about what would become his book In Cold Blood. “I’ve always felt that if you brought the art of the novelist together with the technique of journalism—fiction with the added knowledge that it was true—it would have the most depth and impact.”

Nelle was right there helping him every step of the way those first few months in Kansas. They had already done most of the reporting, but now he needed to learn the story of the murderers. Why did they do it? Smith and Hickock had heard a rumor from another ex-con that Herb Clutter had a safe with thousands of dollars in it. They decided to go to the farm, get the money, and kill all witnesses. When they arrived they found no safe or money, but they killed the family anyway. In the days after it was over, the two murderers went on a crime spree, writing bad checks all the way to Las Vegas.

Nelle wound up typing 150 singled-spaced pages of notes for In Cold Blood. They are included in Truman’s papers, which are kept at the New York Public Library. Truman dedicated the book to her, but it took another six years before it was finished. He couldn’t publish the book without knowing the fate of Smith and Hickock.

Some in Holcomb didn’t like the way Truman depicted them in his book. Myrt Clare, an expostmistress, said, “I thought it was all right but some people around Holcomb had fits. They felt it was described as a broken-down place with hicks, but that’s the way it is, and if the shoe fits wear it, that’s what I say.”

It should be noted that Truman was later accused of unethical journalism practices, such as lying to interview subjects and changing or omitting details to serve the story that became In Cold Blood.If he’d been writing fiction, it wouldn’t have mattered, but he wasn’t. One critic wrote, “For Capote, the end justified his unscrupulous means, and he surely sent a message to some aspiring journalists over the years.”

By the winter of 1960, it was time for Nelle to go back to New York. She made a few more trips to Kansas with Truman to watch the court proceedings involving Hickock and Perry, who were facing the death penalty and were ultimately sentenced to death by hanging. But In Cold Blood was Truman’s book. It always had been.