In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

On the night of 15 November 1959 ex-cons Dick Hickock and Perry Smith broke into the wealthy Cutter family’s home in Holcomb, Kansas. Unable to find the safe stuffed with money they’d been told about, they tied up and then killed the four family members before going on the run. Six weeks later they were caught in Las Vegas. They were tried, convicted and executed by hanging six years later.

Truman Capote read about the murders in the New York Times and immediately travelled to Holcomb with his childhood friend Harper Lee. Over the next six years he interviewed everyone connected with the vase, becoming particularly drawn to the stories of the two killers. In Cold Blood, published six months after their deaths, was written as a ‘non-fiction novel’, a new kind of journalism, which brought literary techniques to reporting.

Its genius was immediately recognized upon publication.