In Cold Blood--A New Twist

[Guitarzan]

We've discussed "In Cold Blood" here in various threads. Florida police want to exhume the bodies of the killers for DNA testing to see if they killed some people in FL shortly after the KS killings.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...9977?p=1&tc=pg

[Maricopa]

Interesting. Wouldn't be surprised to find those bastards killed a lot more people than that.

Police are also testing some old DNA samples they found from John Wayne Gacy, trying to tie him to some murders he might have committed while on business trips.

[Buckocaster51]

Aha! Maybe they were not the sympathetic souls that Capote made them to be.

[Bones]

I was hoping this thread was going to be about this....

[macdog]

I'm not sure that Capote made them 'sympathetic'. Perry certainly had a terrible upbringing, but I don't see Capote using this as an excuse for his crimes. I find the book powerful in its contemplation of evil, uncompromising in its depictions of ordinary people doing monstrous deeds.

[Guitarzan]

If you ever saw little Holcomb, KS you would be surprised that such a thing could happen there. Definitely not a place one would expect a gruesome murder.

[Stubee]

Interesting indeed.

I read that book in the '60s and still have it. Another crime wouldn't surprise me nor change how I thought Hickock & Smith were portrayed: absolute cold-blooded killer loser low-lives who happened to have human characteristics. That's in part what made the book so interesting, insight into misfits.

The FL case sounds like a tough crime to solve now with evidence at hand, exhumation or not.

[KokoTele]

I didn't think Capote made them out to be sympathetic characters either. He told the story of their earlier lives to provide a context (i.e. "How on Earth could someone do this?"), and to eviscerate them as much as anything else.

Capote exploited the stories of the killers for his own gain, and did it rather coldly.