Fading memory

Two days ago, November 15, marked fifty years had elapsed since the shotgun murders of the Herbert Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Four gentle, decent people were killed by intruders who mistakenly believed a large amount of cash was held in a safe in their ranch home. The killings shocked all of us in Kansas from border to border and beyond, all the way to New York where they caught the attention of Truman Capote. Capote rushed to Kansas and immersed himself in the subsequent investigation later turning it and the trial into a 'nonfiction novel,' a new literary genre, hugely successful as both a book and motion picture.

I remarked on this passing of a half-century to several people and was met mostly with blank stares. Many had not heard of the murders, book or movie. Others were aware, at least in name, but had not a hint of the significance which they held, at least for me.

Even had these deaths not been immortalized in print and on film, they are still remembered in Kansas for their sheer brutality. Four people, very much without enemies and known for their kindness were killed at home by strangers for no apparent reason. Crimes like this didn't happen in Kansas, or in the United States for that matter. It forced us all into a new era, less pastoral, less friendly and less sure.

Almost everyone in the state knew someone who knew the victims; our minister was acquainted with them. Elementary school kids like me and my peers talked nervously about the news on the following Monday and even discussed it in class. Teachers and students alike all seemed to need to talk through it, as though in therapy. In El Dorado, 250 miles east of Holcomb, the local paper opined the treacherousness of the crime and interviewed citizens who had a connection to the fallen, or who just had an opinion. Doors that had gone unlocked were secured, and porch lights burned. In some ways, it happened to us, too. Kansas was a small enough place to be a village; a brotherhood. When the perpetrators were identified, everyone, everywhere purported to have seen them pass through that day. News reported the progress of the investigation daily, whipping the already frightened public into near-hysteria.

After six frantic weeks the intruders were apprehended, tried and imprisoned. Not until I was in high school, more than five years hence, were they hanged for their crime. That was in 1965; a year later Capote's In Cold Blood --after a preview in the New Yorker --became an instant best-seller. The Clutter name was known far and wide as a result. The movie followed shortly after.

A following developed as it does occasionally for notorious crimes with even greater intensity due not only to the viciousness of the acts but because they were subjects of a movie. It was filmed on site in Holcomb and Garden City, and here in Kansas City as well, where the murderers planned and embarked on the fated journey to western Kansas. If the book left a few people in the dark about what happened, the movie turned on lights for them. Both took the whole country by storm, and parts of the world too.

As anniversaries of the crime passed, the principals of the investigation were sought for interviews and the physical evidence-the spent shells, rope, crime scene photos, etc.-were in demand. The last person to see the family alive, Bob Rupp, was stoic, refusing to discuss his memories for the morbidly interested, and the surviving two older sisters of the fallen family were equally silent.

Curiosity became a sore point in Finney County as the entire community resented the exploitation of the deaths of four of their own. Many resented the portrayal of the killers in In Cold Blood as victims of life's lottery and the lack of depth given the vanquished family. When it has been noted in the press, the details of the crime and investigation are often in error and go unchallenged.

Time goes on and even fifty years distant, enthusiasts still pull up to the driveway of the old Clutter home. The current owner estimated they come twenty time a month or more. But in recent years the community seems to have come to grips with its notoriety. The two Clutter sisters have granted interviews. Bob Rupp has openly begun to talk about his painful memories on learning his then-girlfriend Nancy Clutter was shot to death in her own bed. And Holcomb itself has erected a memorial to the family, not because they died, but because they lived and in their own personal success provided much to the town, county and state.

Had Capote never written his book, had the movie not been filmed--fewer would know of the senseless brutality that occurred in 1959. But it wouldn't have made it less vicious or depraved. Those of us who remember the crime for itself and not for what Capote made it, won't forget the loss of innocence it marked. Many who knew personally knew the family are now gone. When my generation is gone and who will remember the shock and grief and fear which gripped an entire state?

There have been brutal, horrific crimes since, but America is desensitized--perhaps in part because of what occurred in Holcomb. I guess that is what discourages me when I think that few apparently know what happened that night. Under today's laws I wonder if the killers would have been caught; if caught I wonder if they would have been convicted; if convicted I wonder if they would have been hanged. Let's hope, even if the name 'Clutter' is forgotten, that we have learned something. I think it's a name people should know.