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Who committed the actual killings is a question that still lingers in the minds of many, since responsibility was never resolved in Capote’s book.
In his confession, Hickock alleged that Smith shot all four of the Clutters. In Perry’s initial statement to investigators on the road trip from Las Vegas to Garden City, he claimed to have killed only the father and son, while Hickock killed the mother and daughter. Despite Perry’s later changing his statement to confess that he shot all four, allegedly to save Dick’s family further pain, Agent Alvin Dewey maintained his belief that each killed two. Prosecutor Duane West also believed each killed two, as did Bill Brown, editor of the Garden City Telegram, who knew the case intimately from start to finish. Capote, who had spent more time with both men than anyone else and had exchanged hundreds of letters with them over the years, was convinced that Perry himself had pulled the trigger all four times.
According to Perry himself, in his journals and elsewhere, he claims to have pulled the trigger on the entire family, one by one.
