In Cold Blood's 45th Anniversary: An online Retrospective
When Truman Capote read about a Kansas family of four being killed in their remote Kansas farmhouse one November night in 1959, he decided the story would be his new book. Capote headed out to Holcomb, Kansas, population 270, and did months of research and interviews fro what would turn out to be the first nonfiction novel. In Cold Blood, released in 1965, is considered one of the finest books of the 20th century. The story of the ill-fated all-American Clutter family and that of their killers, two ex-cons who were looking for a non-existent safe full of cash, was filmed twice and made Capote world-famous. On the 45th anniversary of the book's publication, the University of Kansas has unleashed a team of journalism students on Holcolmb and nearby Garden City, Kansas to write a series of stories about the impact of the crime and the book on this quiet farm community. Their work has been posted on the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World website. In Cold Blood: A Legacy, includes interviews with friends of the family, police investigators, neighbors and relatives. The retrospective also includes a slide show, links to the paper's original stories of the crime, maps of the area, a timeline of events and a link to a student-produced documentary. And just because,read this 1966 New York Times interview with Capote on the process of writing this book.