88 pages • 2 hours read
Truman CapoteIn Cold Blood
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3 Summary: “Answer”
On November 17, 1959, Floyd Wells hears a radio report about the Clutter murders. While sharing a cell with Dick, Wells mentioned that he worked for Mr. Clutter. Afterwards, Dick told Wells about his plans to kill the Clutters and break into the safe that Wells mistakenly said was in Clutter’s home office. Wells tells his story to a warden who relays the information to Dewey.
Dewey’s assistant Nye visits Dick’s parents under the pretense of investigating Dick’s check fraud. Dick’s father, Walter Hickock, explains that Dick’s life unraveled after marrying at 19 and accruing massive debt. His life further deteriorated when Dick suffered a concussion in a car crash. Nye also confirms the details of Dick and Perry’s alibi—a supposed trip to Fort Scott—and notes a shotgun that belongs to Dick.
Meanwhile, Perry and Dick hitchhike to Nebraska, where they once again try to rob and murder a driver.
Nye travels to a rundown apartment building in Las Vegas and confirms that Perry stayed there from late October through mid-November. After trying and failing to locate Perry’s father in Reno, Nye goes to San Francisco to speak to his sister Barbara, who says she hasn’t spoken to Perry in years. Barbara also confirms that she never lived in Fort Scott.
Rumors about the murders circulate in Garden City, but they bear little resemblance to the official investigation. Meanwhile, Holcomb’s post office and cafe ban the subject entirely.
Dick and Perry steal a car from a barn in Iowa and—much to Perry’s dismay—drive to Kansas City. Here, Perry waits anxiously at a laundromat as Dick passes bad checks around town. When Dick returns, the two men go to lunch and discuss their plans to travel to Florida. Police spot them, but they manage to avoid arrest, Dewey, however, now knows their license plate number.
Dick and Perry spend Christmas on a beach in Miami. To Perry’s disgust, Dick tries and fails to seduce a 12-year-old girl. As he listens to Christmas carols, Perry contemplates suicide.
While driving through Texas a few days later, Perry convinces Dick to pick up two hitchhikers: a young boy and his grandfather. With the boy’s help, the group collects discarded bottles by the side of the road to trade in for cash. With the proceeds, they treat themselves to a large meal before parting ways.
On December 30, Dewey receives a call informing him that authorities arrested Perry and Dick in Las Vegas.
At a Las Vegas post office, Perry picks up some belongings shipped from Mexico, including the boots he wore the night of the murders. As Dick and Perry arrive at the rundown apartment building where Perry once stayed, authorities arrest them.
Dick confesses to parole violation and check fraud. He talks freely to investigators Nye and Church about his childhood, his background, and his actions over the last several weeks. However, he cannot conceal his reaction when Nye mentions the Clutter case and has no response when Nye reveals he knows Dick’s alibi about Fort Scott is a lie.
In a separate room with Dewey and Duntz, Perry struggles to remember the details of the alibi he worked out with Dick. Dewey accuses Perry of killing the Clutters and adds that the police have a living witness who can testify to his guilt. Perry is silent.
The next day, Perry admits that the story about his sister is a lie but claims that the rest of the alibi is true. Meanwhile, Nye confronts Dick with a photo of footprints from the crime scene which match a pair of Dick’s boots. Dick confesses he was there during the robbery but that Perry alone killed the Clutters. News of his confession reaches Holcomb, but many residents remain convinced that someone local must be involved.
Perry maintains his silence until the trip back to Kansas, where he realizes Dick confessed. Angry and betrayed, Perry explains that Dick’s initial proposal was unclear; he only revealed his plans to rob the Clutters once Perry arrived in Kansas. Perry agreed but hoped they could avoid killing anyone.
According to Perry, Dick believed Herbert kept ten thousand dollars in a safe in his office. Once inside the Clutter home, Dick and Perry failed to find the safe. Dick woke Herbert up and demanded to know the safe’s location. Herbert’s denials and offers to write a check only enraged Dick, who woke up Bonnie. When she confirmed there was no safe in the house, Perry begged Dick to leave, but Dick insisted on searching the entire house.
After waking the children, Perry and Dick locked the entire family in a room. They then searched the bedrooms for whatever money and valuables they could find. At this point, Perry again considered leaving, but felt unable to do so. Instead, he helped Dick tie up the Clutters one at a time. Certain that Dick wanted to rape Nancy, Perry insisted on binding her himself.
Once they restrained the family, Perry asked for a knife, hoping that Dick would back down. Perry recalls, “I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit he was a phony and a coward” (281). However, when Perry knelt next to Mr. Clutter, he remembered crawling around Nancy’s room trying to find a silver dollar he stole from her purse and dropped; overwhelmed by shame, Perry slit Clutter’s throat and shot him. Dick and Perry killed the rest of the family; Perry claims Dick shot the two women). All told, they netted 40 or 50 dollars from the robbery.
On January 6, 1960, Dick and Perry arrive at the Garden City courthouse, where the crowd falls silent as authorities lead them inside.
Part 3 Analysis
For much of the investigation, Dewey feels he has a firm handle on the kind of people the murderers are. Capote writes, “A few of his conclusions were unshakable: he believed that the death of Herb Clutter had been the criminals’ main objective, the motive being a psychopathic hatred, or possibly a combination of hatred and thievery” (177). Even after the investigation closes in on Dick and Perry—both strangers to the Clutter family—Dewey’s ideas about the nature of the crime remain largely unchanged; he views it as, if not the product of a “psychopathic” personal vendetta, nevertheless the work of a uniquely cruel, violent, and evil personality. In Dewey’s nightmares, for instance, Dick and Perry are larger-than-life villains, laughing over the Clutters’ graves and impervious to bullets.
Although they do not live up to Dewey’s exaggerated vision, Dick and Perry display some traits associated with psychopathy or sociopathy—most notably, a lack of empathy. Dick in particular routinely manipulates those around him to suit his purposes, while Perry’s ability to connect with others is erratic and restricted. As the psychiatrist Dr. Jones will later note, “He has little feeling for others outside a very small circle of friends, and attaches little real value to human life” (343). Nevertheless, Dewey finds Perry’s confession deeply dissatisfying in that it “fail[s] to satisfy his sense of meaningful design” (2830, writes Capote. Because the murders seemed so sadistic and calculated, Dewey struggles to accept the haphazard reality.
This tension points to a broader question about the nature of evil. Capote characterizes the murders as an obviously evil act, an implication made clear by the title of the book. However, while the Clutter murders are technically premeditated—Dick and Perry came to River Valley Farm prepared to kill—Perry’s account suggests something very different. As Perry describes him, Dick is a petty criminal who probably lacked the nerve to kill the Clutters on his own; Dewey will later echo this sentiment, calling Dick “a small-time chiseler who got out of his depth” (393). As for Perry, he harbors no ill will towards the Clutters; he found Herbert and Nancy particularly likable. Rather, he commits the murders as a result of what Dewey calls a “psychological accident” (283). Dr. Jones will describe the mechanics of this “accident” in more detail in the following Part, but Perry’s own words suggest he isn’t fully aware of his actions when, trigged by deep humiliation, he kills Herbert.
Capote thus pushes readers to consider the possibility that the evil of the Clutter murders is not as aberrant as it first appears. Rather the evil is part of the fabric of everyday life. It isn’t entirely clear to what extent Smith and Hickock are legally responsible for their actions; as the following Part will make clear, there are reasons to believe that one or both of them may experience neurological or mental illness. But even assuming that both men are “sane,” the factors that drive them to murder are related to systems and forces that society considers normal. Dick’s bitterness and envy, for example, stem in part from his family’s inability to pay for him to go to college. An excessively punitive criminal justice system exacerbates these frustrations. His father explains,
“Locked away seventeen months, and all he done was borrow a hunting rifle [...] And that was the ruination of him. When he came out of Lansing, he was a plain stranger to me. You couldn’t talk to him. The whole world was against Dick Hickock—that’s how he figured” (191-192).
This question of societal responsibility looms even larger in the novel’s final section, which deals extensively with the issue of capital punishment.
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