RS: Welcome to this month’s bonus episode of Rite Gud, the podcast that helps you write good. For this edition of the Book Club, we’re dipping our toes into the world of nonfiction with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Joining me is producer Matt Keeley.
Matt: Hello, how’s it going?
RS: Hello. So this is a very important book. It transformed the true crime genre. [00:01:00] It was a big part of launching New Journalism. Originally, it ran as a four part series in The New Yorker in, I think, 1966, I believe.
Matt: The book was 66 and the movie was 67, right?
RS: Yeah, they didn’t, they didn’t waste any time. They were quick.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think The New Yorker might have been like the tail end of 65.
RS: Right. Which is right after the killers were executed.
Matt: Yeah, their bodies were barely cold.
RS: Yeah, I get the impression though that Capote, he started writing this, well at least he started working on it and researching it before the murderers were identified. It was just after this murder took place and it made really big, big news. So he headed out there with, I believe, with Harper Lee and took like shitloads of notes, just thousands of pages of notes or something crazy like that.
Matt: And he didn’t give Harper Lee any credit.
RS: Didn’t give her any fucking credit [00:02:00] because, because that’s Truman Capote. That’s Truman Capote. He was a piece of shit. Oh, God.
Matt: High droopy dog sounding motherfucker,
RS: Just absolute trash human. And, and fascinating though, because of what a big piece of shit he was.
Matt: Oh, I know, I know. It’s like, I mean, we’ve, I know that we’ve both fallen into a Capote hole after this
RS: I am currently watching that series Feud, Capote vs. The Swans, because I want more Capote content.
Matt: same, same
RS: I cannot get enough of this horrible little man.
Matt: Have you seen Murder by Death?
RS: Yes, but that was a long time ago.
Matt: Yeah, well it’s just funny because there’s that one scene of him disassociating while during the filming and stuff, so.
RS: Right, I’d forgotten that he was in it. I think because I watched it when I was a kid and I didn’t know who Truman Capote was.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With me, I watched it as a kid and I re watched it relatively [00:03:00] recently, a couple years ago.
RS: Yeah, now that you can actually get the jokes.
Matt: Exactly, exactly.
RS: So anyway, let’s start off. Speaking of Truman Capote, it’s kind of inevitable as you’re reading this, but as you’re reading this, you really get the sense that Truman Capote was thirsting for murderer Perry Smith really, really fucking hard in this book.
Matt: Oh my god, totally. It is almost absurd about how much he leans into Perry being, you know, ooh, soft boy, sad, and except that, you know, he’s the dude who blew them all away.
RS: Yeah, there’s this very, “he’s neurodivergent and a minor,” well not really a minor, but minor coded because he’s only 5’3 inches tall. Perry, in a lot of ways, is the protagonist of this book. I know it’s not a novel, but it really takes the structure of a novel with Perry as the protagonist and Perry’s internal, if there is anything, [00:04:00] sort of internal conflict and Perry’s trauma and Perry’s many, many issues in his relationship with Dick. And I was reading this thinking, why is he so sympathetic for Perry? The story went that he fell in, that Capote kind of fell in love with Perry while he was writing this article. There, there was a movie about that called Capote, where he sneaks into the prison cell to hand feed him baby food while he’s on a hunger strike.
I don’t know if that really happened, probably not,
Matt: Yeah, yeah, I saw that movie too when it came out and. I, I didn’t know the exact stuff. I just basically knew that’s kind of the thumbnail version of In Cold Blood. Cause even though like my mom has always hated Truman Capote, she always is fascinated by him basically. So we’re kind of following in the tradition because he was a phenomenal writer and very, very interesting, but such a prick.
Oh my God.
RS: Yeah, yeah, just, just wretched. Just [00:05:00] wretched. But, one of those you love to hate him types, and at the same time he was, he was very talented at what he did. What he did was usually completely amoral and selfish and cruel, but he was good at it, he was really fucking good at it, and he was catty and mean and nasty in some very appealing ways.
It’s this sort of junk food for the soul thing, where like, his anecdotes are really great and really entertaining.
In part they’re so mean and because it’s this like oh, I’m being so bad listening to this, you know
Matt: Even though he never really wrote anything after In Cold Blood. I mean, other than, you know, like, he had been working on Answered Prayers for the rest of his life, which is what The Swans is about. But I mean, at a certain point, he became a professional talk show guest. And so, he was on Carson all the time.
And stuff, and my mom was always like, “oh, I have to watch Truman Capote’s on. Fuck him.”
RS: [00:06:00] Yeah Yeah, he was good at that. So he built this career out of this story about murder. Which feels a little a little gross and is very appropriate for Capote, but I just found it very compelling because I looked this up while watching the movie Because I’d known that Capote had fallen in love with Perry Smith supposedly and I noticed in the movie less than five minutes in they’re showing Perry and In his underwear, wet,
Matt: Yes.
RS: and they’re like, I’m like, they’re really fucking leaning into this.
They keep showing this guy pantsless. What did he look like? And I looked it up, the, the, the mug shots, and while Dick Hickok looks like a typical kind of 1950s guy who was probably malnourished as a kid, Perry was a looker. He, he was a looker, and I realized, really? That the only reason Hmm You felt so compelled for this.
Wasn’t anything like charisma or intelligence or some deeper anything. It was literally just, well, he’s kinda hot.
Matt: Yeah. When [00:07:00] you posted the, uh, pictures in the, the discord, it was honestly before I’d really gotten into the meat of it because I, I, I admit I’ve got the procrastinator gene, but a weird, variety of it where I will do everything to beat the deadline, but I won’t do anything until enough before the deadline that you know. So basically you you said, you know, oh, well, why don’t we record next week?
I went okay It’s time to read the book and I plowed through it in four days, Watch the movie and you know Because I I can’t miss the deadline because I hate missing deadlines even though sometimes I have to but
RS: Yeah.
Matt: But yeah, but um, it was just kind of funny because I’m going looking at those like and yeah You like you say Dick is just a dude. I didn’t even notice like his fucked up eye that much that Truman makes a big deal out of
RS: Yeah.
Matt: But but with Perry it’s like dude, you’re not a murderer You’re the star of a bunch of like Frankie and Annette knockoff movies[00:08:00]
RS: Yeah, he legit looks like he, and he played guitar too, so you just know Truman’s having fantasies about this guy launching into a Latin love ballad or something, like, goddammit.
Matt: Short dark and handsome
RS: it’s so funny, but also so sad that that’s the sole reason, really, you made this guy your protagonist, cause you thought he was sort of good looking.
Matt: Yeah,
RS: that’s literally it.
Matt: yeah.
RS: If Herb Clutter had been hot,
Matt: I know,
RS: would have been written in a completely different way.
Matt: Yes, yes, it’d be like, this is the tragedy of our times. A hot dude died.
RS: if Herb Clutter had been a daddy.
Matt: but I could fix him. I, I
RS: Like a, like a big midwestern daddy with broad shoulders and farmer muscles.
Matt: yeah, yeah.
RS: No, he wasn’t. So this is not, this is the book we got. We didn’t get that book. We didn’t get Hot Herb book, unfortunately. So it’s so strange, and it’s very odd reading this. There’s so much Perry [00:09:00] apologia in this book. The book makes a very big deal about the fact that Dick Hickok was a rapist and a pedophile and, and, But Perry, the very sensitive Perry, he was not.
And Perry had no patience for Dick’s lack of self control. Like, well, congratulations, you’re not a rapist, but you’re still a murderer, dude. That’s significantly worse.
Matt: I know, I
RS: that is way worse!
Matt: yeah, yeah, it’s like, yeah, at least a lot of Dick’s victims survived.
RS: Yeah, like, not to, not to, you know, undercut how horrible the act of rape is,
Matt: Yeah,
RS: murder is objectively worse.
Matt: yeah,
RS: Like, murder is objectively worse, because you can’t ever heal from that, you know? And that’s it, you’re just gone.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s weird reading the book that’s between the lines of In Cold Blood. Just because it really is like, the fact that both Perry and [00:10:00] Dick are pieces of shit comes through,
RS: Yeah.
Matt: Capote is trying to convince you that Perry isn’t quite a piece of shit.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: a very odd situation because He’s doing his best to, like, kind of go, Oh, poor Perry, if only things had been different, I could fix him.
But,
RS: “I can fix him.” That wasn’t a very
Matt: I can, I can fix him.
Truman is a hard voice
RS: He, it is!
Matt: you start it like droopy dog,
and then you go up, but then you over enunciate everything. He’s like that.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: It’s, it’s this weird combination that it’s kinda hard to pull off.
RS: Yeah. It’s fun to try though, and I love watching actors attempt to do the Truman Capote voice because it’s great.
Matt: Yes, yes.
RS: But there really is this “I can fix him” thing going through it. There’s much [00:11:00] made of his traumatic background, his terrible upbringing, his injury. He’s portrayed in this very childlike way.
There’s so much emphasis on how small his feet are. There’s all this talk about the His fantasy of a big yellow bird coming and rescuing him. And there’s this implication that if he’d found another man to guide him, instead of Dick Hickok, maybe he’d be okay. But I’m very, very skeptical of that, simply because of Perry’s sister.
There’s a, there’s a chapter, or, not a chapter, there’s a part where the police talk to Perry’s sister, who seems very well adjusted, she’s normal, she’s nice, she’s stable, and she’s She’s terrified of him. She’s straight up terrified of him. She insists to the police, “Please do not let him know where I live.
I’d prefer if he doesn’t even know that I’m alive or not. Like, I want nothing to do with him. I’m terrified of this man.” And if, if the guy’s own sister, who knows him probably the best, is frightened of him, That tells us that he’s, he’s [00:12:00] dangerous. He’s, he’s bad news.
Matt: exactly. And I mean it’s, it is said that she’s like the only one who seems to have made it out of that family.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: Because their brother kills himself and after his wife kills herself because he was like,
RS: He was abusive to her.
Matt: abusive. And also, you know. One of those, “you’re cheating on me.” “No, I’m not.” “You’re cheating on me.
I know it all” type of assholes. And then his sister who apparently he the the other sister the one he loved, uh, either fell or jumped from a uh building after potentially being drunk or high but. And And I mean to his mom drank herself to death and The dad basically seems like kind of at best a dipshit.
RS: at him.[00:13:00]
Matt: Exactly, yeah.
RS: So there’s a lot of mental illness in this family. There’s a lot of traumatic upbringing in there, and that’s true. But also, he’s still a piece of shit.
Matt: exactly, and he’s super sensitive about his legs, uh, in the motorcycle wreck that got tore up. And it’s implied that that might be the reason why he’s short, like they might have had, I don’t know, like take some bone out or something. I don’t, I don’t know.
RS: I don’t know how medicine worked back then. I don’t know what the hell they were doing. Right.
Matt: So, I mean, it could just be that, he was short, but it needed an excuse.
So “it was the, it was the crack up that shortened me. Yes.”
RS: of this long running true crime tradition of thirsting after serial killers and murderers. Ted Bundy, of course, had his whole fan club. Jeffrey Dahmer. And yes, of course, there are fics about Jeffrey Dahmer on AO3. White women are extraordinary.[00:14:00]
Richard Ramirez, even though he had really fucked up teeth, managed to get married while in prison. And that there’s this long running True crime tradition of thirsting after really, really vicious murderers.
I
Matt: And it’s, and it’s funny too, because like they always with Ted Bundy, they would talk about how hot he was, and I finally saw him, as an adult, and I was like, he’s kind of mid, I mean, he, he’s, he’s put together, but I mean, he’s like,
RS: Yeah.
Matt: he’s like, okay, normal dude, he’s not anything, like, I mean, Perry, I, I at least get it.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Like I can kind of go like, yeah, okay, Truman, I, I get where you’re coming from. I mean, aim a little higher next time, but I mean, at least I get it. But like, you know, Ted Bundy was just a
RS: He was sort of generic college Republican man.
Matt: Exactly. Yeah. Just, you know, central casting young Republican.
You could pick pretty much any law student. At least half of them are gonna [00:15:00] look like that guy. It’s just not really, just not that special. I don’t know. Not that special.
RS: Anyway. Yeah. But this book really focuses on Perry and on Perry’s relationship with Dick. And it is this very, very interesting, there’s this I, I, I’m not the only one who saw this.
Granted, this is our Discord, where people are rather special. But, there is definitely this sort of, I don’t know, sexual tension or homoerotic tension between the two leads. Dick comes across as more of a beast to me than Perry. He’s impulsive, he’s stupid, he’s operating on this like, animal instinct. But that somehow makes him less scary to me than Perry, even knowing that Dick was, you know, a massive, a massive rapist.
But there’s this strange sort of admiration and frustration and These feelings that Perry has for Dick, where he sort of adores Dick and idolizes him in some ways, but is also incredibly frustrated with him over and over again. And his frustrations with Dick [00:16:00] spending so much of their mon– so much of the time, uh, chasing girls.
And it’s this unclear idea of, is Perry really frustrated by his lack of self control? Or is it like, dude, you’re spending all our money on whores, you dumbass. Or is it this this envy? You know, like why are you chasing them when I’m right here?
Matt: yeah, it’s a, it’s a very odd ad just because, yeah, like you say, Dick comes off as this just dipshit lummox, just, “oh, I want to either sell it or stick my dick in it.”
RS: Yeah.
Matt: And that’s, that’s basically Dick. And that’s one of the things I do also find kind of funny is that there’s a thing where, um, Dick also had a crash and Dick’s dad, says that he wasn’t the same after that, after he hit his head and stuff.
And, but that is, seems more dismissed by, in the [00:17:00] book. And while, you know, Perry had a similar thing, but, you know, ooh, soft boy, you
RS: Yeah.
Matt: you know, it’s, it’s just interesting, but there is like a lot of that where it is like, , I know we’re going to talk about the movie more later, but it seems that the book really leans more into the, the gay coupleness of it.
Where the movie seems a bit more, you know, two straight dudes.
RS: Mm.
Matt: At least to me, you know, I don’t
RS: Yeah, I don’t know about Perry, but
Matt: But, but okay, but I mean it seems at least like there’s less of a chance that they’re doing makeouts between the scenes, you know,
RS: Between the murders and, and check frauds and so on and so
Matt: Yeah, where in the book it’s very much like Are they a couple? Especially just because everything that Dick especially says, but I think Perry like, uh, does this too, where [00:18:00] everything is, honey, or sweetie, or, or, you know, ” what babe?” And it’s like, yeah, did straight dudes actually call each other honey, like this?
Is this some beatnik shit
RS: Yeah, was that some, some, some slang thing from back then? Yeah, Truman Capote. “Yeah, heterosexual men call each other baby all the time, right? That’s what happens. That’s how it”
Matt: “I, I write like real life.”
RS: Yeah,
“this is how men talk to each other, isn’t it? I don’t know.”
Matt: But yeah, it’s, it’s an odd, it’s odd because it’s sort of like, Okay. This, this book is very gay, but how gay was the actual , you know,
RS: Right,
Matt: I’m
RS: much of this is Truman projecting on here?
Matt: Yeah, exactly. And I’m not saying the the, the real life gay meter was necessarily zero, but
RS: Right.
Matt: but Truman really kinda leaned into it.
RS: [00:19:00] Yeah, and that is this big aspect of the book is that as much as this is true crime and journalism, this is really more of a novel based on facts than necessarily on a dispassionate, realistic portrayal. And in some ways, that’s great because it is very engagingly written and it’s, it is, it’s well written.
It’s a terrific read. But novels, the structure of a novel, the way novels are written, doesn’t really, that doesn’t line up with real life particularly well. So how much was Truman nudging? I mean, there’s tons and tons of dialogue in this book that Capote was not there to witness. He could not have heard, he, he had to have made a good bit of it up.
So how much of it was it made up? And maybe that doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but it’s not just the information being conveyed, but how the two people talk to each other, that conveys a lot beyond just the facts stated, right? [00:20:00] So, how much of this is just Truman sticking himself into it and, and nudging things to make them more compelling to him, to the readers, him projecting his desires and feelings onto it?
And, and of course, uh, There, there were criticisms of the book by some, some people said, Okay, this didn’t happen, that didn’t happen, this thing you said that I said, I didn’t say that. And that’s not, that’s not necessarily meaning that it was completely inaccurate, because witnesses are also unreliable in, in terms of memory.
Be, everybody’s memories are kind of shaky. But this, this, this book, Coda of this book, the last bit where the uh, policeman Dewey goes to visit the graves of the family and runs into their old friend Susan. Not Susan,
Matt: Oh, um,
RS: I think it was Susan.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: Yeah, that never fucking happened.
Matt: Yeah, and, uh, apparently the, you know the scenes when they’re in the small town prison where they’re separated and, like, Dick is in the general population [00:21:00] but Perry is in the apartment cell?
RS: Yeah, it’s weird, there’s this cell in the apartment of the sheriff or something like that where he and his wife live
Matt: And his wife really bonds with him and cri and he cries in front of her and stuff, and she says, like, “Yeah, no, I would cook for him because that’s what we have to do, but I mean, Otherwise, like, he didn’t he never cried in front of me. We never really,
RS: yeah.
Matt: You know, went beyond, you know, Hey, it’s this dude that’s in my house.”
RS: Yeah, they didn’t bond. There wasn’t this, Oh, he was this special little boy and I held his hand while he wept. Just, here’s breakfast. There you go.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, I know that when, he was working on this, it was called a, uh, nonfiction novel. And I, and I think that does get to, what you were getting at earlier with, the new journalism where things were not necessarily true, but got to the truth of things.
Like Hunter S. Thompson famously, would [00:22:00] make a ton of shit up. Like, I mean, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I think is maybe, I don’t know, 25 percent true? I don’t really know, but it, it also gets to the truth, or the broader truth, I guess you’d call it.
RS: So we were talking about Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. We had a little bit of technical difficulties and you were sort of talking about how new journalism was taking the Herodotus approach rather than the Thucydides approach to history. A little joke for you classical nerds, but, uh, Thucydides and Herodotus were both ancient Greek historians, and Thucydides tried to actually tell history, while [00:23:00] Herodotus, the father of history, just fuckin made shit up, like a complete chad.
Matt: Well, yeah, and that’s what I was kind of getting at with Hunter S. Thompson’s, Fear and Loathing, you know, well actually both Fear and Loathing books, but especially Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, where the book was ostensibly a diary and a companion piece to The Boys on the Bus by uh, I’ve got a copy across the room, but I can’t see that far to say who wrote it. Anyway, though like even though it was supposed to be, you know an actual tour diary of following the campaign, he, he, uh, would, uh, confabulate things like there was this like runner in there of, I, and this has been like, it’s been about like 15, 20 years since I read the book.
So I, I’m a little bit hazy, but you know, my point is that, uh, he had this whole runner in there about, and I think it was McGovern’s vice presidential candidate whose name I don’t remember being addicted to [00:24:00] Ibogaine, which A, he wasn’t, and B, I don’t even know if that’s a real drug. Considering, considering that how in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he has the whole thing about adrenochrome, which is yes, where the QAnon bullshit comes
RS: Whaaat?
Matt: Yeah, he invented the idea of adrenochrome as, this intense Satanist drug that, it’s harvested from kids pineal glands and all this bullshit.
And no, like, adrenochrome is real, but it’s just a hormone and it doesn’t really do shit. I mean, at least not if you take it recreationally. I don’t remember what exactly it does in the body, but I mean. You don’t need extra. If you take extra, it’s not gonna make you, like, I don’t know, rip off a kid’s face and wear it as a mask or whatever QAnon bullshit you
RS: Oh my god, I had no idea that came from [00:25:00] Hunter Thompson.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. As far as I know, that is like the first instance of adrenochrome as a thing. Other than just, you know, whatever it actually does in your body, you know.
RS: my god, that is crazy.
Matt: I know, I know, right? Holy shit, it’s, who knew that this, like, riff in a, in a book from 50 some odd years ago would,
RS: show up to a pizza parlor with a gun.
Matt: I know, exactly, it’s, it’s that meme with the, the dominoes and,
RS: Yeah!
Matt: Low, low tax, you know, or moot bans child porn on 4chan and Trump, you know?
RS: It’s so crazy. Goddamn. Goddamn.
Matt: is weird.
RS: History is nonsense. Jesus Christ.
Matt: But, but my, my original point was that new journalism was more about not necessarily eschewing the [00:26:00] real facts, but playing fast and lose them to get to a broader truth. I. e. like, the monologue of, with the right kind of eyes, you can see where the wave crested in, in, uh, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I mean, that’s a great piece of writing and honestly does get to something about that, that time and place and history. But yeah, but again, too, it’s also in a book where they talk about getting adrenochrome from satanists. So, Heh heh
RS: Oh, wow. Right. Now, there is an implication in this book that’s explored, I think, more in the movie, which we’ll talk about more, that this relationship between Perry and Dick kind of became more than them. I think it’s explicit in the movie that neither of these guys could have done this stuff on their own, but their two personalities melded together to create a third and more dangerous personality.
And that’s what did it. And I’m thinking of something similar in the friendship [00:27:00] between Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, which was depicted in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, where these two girls created a friendship. A very, very intense, really extreme friendship that ended up resulting in a murder where neither of them could have really done this on their own, but they just had some kind of strange folie a deux, I suppose, to, To quote the title of the new Joker movie with fuckin Lady Gaga in it, um,
Matt: hope it buys Lady Gaga a nice house because Joker 1
RS: for her.
Matt: I will die on this hill, that movie was a piece of shit. It was like, What if a man made a movie about a Joker that ripped off King of Comedy while getting neither? Pfft. Heh heh heh.
RS: was okay. It was, it very much ripped something off, but at least it ripped off something good. I’ll give it credit for that.[00:28:00]
Matt: Yeah,
RS: You ripped off a good movie instead of a shitty movie, I’ll give you credit for that.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: I don’t know. But anyway,
Matt: But yeah,
RS: sort of implication, and I’m having to wonder, Did Dick make Perry more dangerous? Or was it just that Dick saw this guy and recognized, Oh, wow, this guy is nuts. This guy is a fuckin murderer. I’m just gonna direct that where I want it to go. Because he’s going to kill someone anyway.
Let me just fuckin use this. Because I noticed, not just, with the Clutters, but also in their scheme to Ooh, excuse me. In their scheme to kill people while hitchhiking, it’s Perry who’s supposed to carry it out. Perry is the one who’s supposed to strangle people when Dick gives him the signal. And that’s kind of their relationship.
So is it like, is Perry just a pair of hired hands? Is he just being told what to do and misled by Dick, or is it just Dick recognizing that he’s got this, this thing? This fucking force of nature for murder and saying, [00:29:00] all right, cool. I’m gonna use this, you know?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I think it is interesting to point out that, even though they bonded over Perry’s story of having killed a black guy in Vegas. That was a pure fabrication meant to get Dick to like him.
RS: Right.
Matt: And that Perry actually hadn’t killed anybody before the Clutters.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: Which I mean, I guess like, great way to start, geez.
You know, but
RS: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, cause that was like a vicious crime. And, but, so yeah, I think there is something to that idea of them feeding off each other and making this horrible thing instead of just, you know, Because I, I mean, honestly, I’m not going to say that Perry wouldn’t have killed anybody left to his own devices.
But I, I see them more as basically, if they had never, if they had never met, both Dick and Perry would just be low level scummy hoodlums who’ve, you know, [00:30:00] rolling people all the time and stealing all sorts of shit and, never doing anything good. But I don’t see, I don’t necessarily see them as becoming Dick and Perry if that, if that makes sense.
RS: Yeah, doing something this big, I guess.
Matt: exactly. Yeah. I think like, uh, Floyd kind of had it right. Yeah. Or Floyd Wells, who was the jailhouse snitch where it’s like, yeah, Dick was constantly talking about how he’s gonna kill the Clutters and steal their shit. Yeah. But he just kind of assumed it was talk. I, I get the impression that if Dick had never met Perry or presumably like another Perry, that he would have just been that guy being all like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get a big score.
I’m gonna kill these dudes. While he’s in jail for the 500th time for bouncing checks all over town again.
RS: Right.
Matt: Because, because, [00:31:00] yeah, and, and Perry, I don’t know, I, I kind of see him kind of like his dad going off into random things, having various dumb ideas like the hunting lodge in the middle of nowhere that’s gonna
RS: Right, he had that dream of we’re gonna hunt for buried treasure in Mexico. No the fuck you’re not, you dipshit.
Matt: Yeah, you’re not, like Dick even says, he can’t swim. How are you gonna get, how are you gonna get the sunken treasure of Captain Cortez if you can’t go in the fucking water?
That’s kind of a big, a big first step.
RS: Yeah, Perry’s weird little fixations about, oh, I’ve got to have the, these, this box of stuff. I’ve got to have all these boxes of luggage and Dick is all, kind of being portrayed as an insensitive jerk for wanting to get rid of him. But he’s right. He’s like, dude, we got to move. Fuck your suitcase. Why do you have notebooks and shit, dude?
“Oh, these are my old pictures.” Yeah, of your family that you hate.
Matt: [00:32:00] yeah, and I mean, too, it’s like, That’s the thing that gets them.
RS: It is, which is so good.
Matt: like if
RS: The way it’s set
Matt: his box full of bullshit, including the murder boots, why are
RS: could have tossed the murder boots, Perry. Dick could have stolen you a new pair of boots. You did not need to hold on to those.
Matt: know. What are they fucking sentimental?
RS: Just Perry.
Matt: going to get in his old age? Go. Oh, you know, him and Dick sitting in rocking chairs being all, Hey, Dick, you remember that time we killed that family? Ah, good times, you
RS: And the way Capote sets it up is brilliant too, that he makes a very big deal about how the only bit of physical evidence we have is this distinct boot print.
Matt: Yes.
RS: then, of course, when picking up, picking up the suitcase shipped in from Mexico which had the pair of boots in it that if [00:33:00] they hadn’t bothered to pick it up, the cops never would have had this bit of physical evidence.
Ah, I have no idea how much of that is true. It feels too perfect.
Matt: Yeah. But, but I mean, as you’ve said, these guys are total fucking morons. So, Oh,
RS: idiots, which I quite liked. I mean, we have that cliche in so many thrillers where it’s this deadly game of cat and mouse and the brilliant detective is up against an equally brilliant murderer with an erudite, twisted, brilliant mind, and like, no, these guys are fucking dumb as shit. They are absolute oafs.
They are fucking morons. Complete morons. They think about getting black stockings to use as masks, but really go, Eh, it’s too hard, nevermind. That is the amount of effort they put into this crime.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, it’s like, it’s the bare minimum of covering their tracks. They were smart enough to pick up the shells and bury them in the, out in the prairie wherever, but not smart [00:34:00] enough to ditch the fucking gun and knife or the boots.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: It’s like, come on, guys. Yeah,
RS: dumb.
Matt: it’s,
RS: also that they were doing this, this crime at the time they did, I mean, they were doing it not that long before Christmas.
Matt: yeah.
RS: like, family tends to visit that time of year. You got Thanksgiving, you got, you got Christmas coming up.
Like, this is a time of year when there are a lot of people around a house. You might want to pick it in January when there’s fucking nobody around. No one’s doing shit.
Matt: Exactly. And, but yeah, no, it’s like, oh yeah, the week before Thanksgiving, perfect time to, come on a family and kill them. And I mean, like
RS: When there’s a non zero chance that there’s already an auntie or grandma staying there.
Matt: exactly. Yeah. I mean, I guess part of the whole thing of it being the perfect big score or whatever, is that they had no connection, but I mean, They [00:35:00] didn’t even bother to case the joint or anything. It was,
RS: Nothing.
Matt: you know,
RS: We just assume there’s gonna be a safe there, right? No there fucking wasn’t, you dumb shits.
Matt: Yeah, and everybody knew that there wasn’t a safe in the town,
RS: And everybody knew that Clutter didn’t carry cash either. Not only was there no safe, he didn’t even have money in his wallet. He conducted every business transaction by check, including paying for a haircut.
Matt: He offered to give them a check. I mean
You do the the bare minimum and I mean too I, I, I gotta admit that, or I gotta think that even Floyd knew this, and just, it was like, Well, you didn’t ask, and I didn’t think you were actually gonna do this stupid
RS: “I was just shit talking in the cell, man. I didn’t fucking mean it, Jesus Christ.”
What, are you gonna go find the lost gold of the dude Perry killed in Vegas?
RS: No, they’re gonna go find the lost gold of Cortez. It’s a solid plan. It’s a really good idea.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. Cause [00:36:00] no one’s thought of looking for the, what was it, 60 million dollars of Spanish gold before. I’m sure that’s out there still,
RS: and, and I’m sure that, while a bunch of really talented, experienced divers and treasure hunters haven’t found it, you two fucking dudes, you’ll do fine.
Matt: yeah.
RS: You can’t swim, it doesn’t matter.
Matt: Yeah. And I like, too, the thing of like, you know, Oh, well, I guess we’ll have to cut in the kid and the guy who owns the boat and be like, A, obviously this isn’t gonna do anything, but I mean B, a quarter of 60 million dollars in Spanish gold is still pretty fucking good. Oh,
RS: dude? Some European dude in
Matt: yeah, Otto,
RS: there. I got Otto, is this a creepy sex tourist? This is a creepy sex tourist, isn’t it? This guy’s gotta be a creepy sex tourist.
Matt: Totally. I, I mean, yeah, no, I, I totally got
RS: There’s no way that that relationship between Otto and the [00:37:00] handsome, uh,
Matt: Handsome Kid, yeah.
RS: was, in any way appropriate.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
RS: Gross. It’s just a gross book. This book is gross and intense. And I mean, it’s good. It’s just, there’s so, even as much horrible shit goes on, there’s even more horrific shit hinted at just under the surface where you’re going, uh, gross, gross, gross,
Matt: like it’s, I mean, in a fucked up sort of way, it’s almost a very dark comedy just in terms of how ill equipped these idiots were to do it. Any sort of big score beyond bouncing checks.
RS: Right. They made more money bouncing checks. They made more money pretending to buy a suit.
Matt: Yes, yes.
RS: It’s just, oh god damn, man.
Matt: if, yeah, if, if they had kept on that one, they would have been ahead of the game, which, some people are born low level dirtbags and you don’t have to, you, you, hey, hey. [00:38:00] Some people are born in the gutter, lying, gazing up at the stars, and
some people are born in the gutter just to stay in the gutter because they’re too fucking stupid to do anything else.
RS: These guys are basically Ricky and Julian from Trailer Park Boys, man. Only way worse, way scarier.
Matt: needed a Bubbles.
RS: They needed a Bubbles. They needed a Mr. Lahey to fuckin calm them down. They needed a Randy. To fight him.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: So, you know what? Notably, we have spent this, almost this entire time talking about the killers Dick and Perry, and that is a big feature of the book. I will give credit to the book that it actually does spend time with the family. This victimized family, and it goes through their last day alive, and talks a bit about the family dynamic and everybody’s individual personalities, like the mother very clearly suffers from some sort of mental illness, the son is kind of a [00:39:00] nerd but a sweet kid, Herb is this extremely upstanding, wholesome, decent man who’s very strict but very good in that German Protestant way.
The daughter, Nancy, is the most pure hearted 16 year old girl who ever lived, and there’s a bit where you’re going, Okay, you’ve gotta be ironing some stuff out to make them even more wholesome and lovable and cute so that it’s extra sad when they get murdered, even though, like, if they were just sort of average, it would still be really, really, really sad.
And I know when we talk about crime reporting, when we talk about true crime, a lot of people do rightfully point out, Hey, you’re kind of making celebrities out of these murderers and giving them the big emphasis and not talking very much about the victims, but I mean, you know what I mean? There is the simple truth, which is that murder victims are normal people, and murderers, at least as far as I can tell, aren’t.
Like, I’ve never murdered anyone, I don’t think I could do it. I wanna know, what is it [00:40:00] that makes a person do that? Cause I can’t imagine myself doing something that terrible. As angry as I’ve been at people before, I couldn’t actually imagine planning out a murder and doing something like that. That is the more novel and unique thing versus being murdered.
Yeah, I could imagine being murdered. Sure. Hope, sure hope it doesn’t happen, but you know, you’re, you’re a regular person and then something real fucked up happens to you and, and there it is. And there’s also this reality, which is respecting the dead often means we’re going to iron out a person’s flaws, which means we’re going to portray like a flatter, less complicated person.
Because if we talk about their flaws, it’ll look insulting, or like we’re blaming them. You know, what if it turned out Nancy had some kind of flaw? I’d be like, you, how could you say that about Nancy after what she’s been through? You can’t, don’t trash talk Nancy. You gotta talk about how wholesome and good these people are so that it’s extra sad when they’re murdered.
Matt: exactly. Yeah. I mean, you have Nancy making the pie with the neighbor girl [00:41:00] and then, Herb picking up, going to the 4 H meeting and then picking up the Japanese family and taking them home because, you know, Unlike our murderers, they’re not racist pieces of shit.
They’re, they’re the good folks. And then you have,
And Dick and Perry are incredibly racist. They’ve got like, it’s the slur a palooza with them. But, you know, but the Clutters are very, yes, they, they might be a, you know, small town white family, but they’re good folk who love you for who you are and not, you know,
RS: Unless you’re a filthy Catholic.
Like Bobby Rupp. Unless you’re a fucking catholic.
Then don’t you marry my daughter!
Matt: Yeah,
And even then, they’ll, they’ll let you in the house to watch TV with them, but, make sure it doesn’t get further than that, you know. No make outs. Oh,
RS: no, you can’t, you can’t marry him. You can’t marry a catholic.
Matt: [00:42:00] know. Yeah.
RS: dude. Oh, man. Oh, fuckin There’s that chapter where it just goes over Bobby’s grief, and it is really harrowing, because this is a teenager whose girlfriend was murdered. He was at the house on the day. He probably drove past the murderer’s car, where they were like hiding in the darkness, on his way home.
So you know that guy’s gonna have some terrible Survivor’s Guild.
Matt: Oh god, yeah, I mean, I, I really hope Bobby turned out okay. I, uh, yeah, because, uh,
RS: It sounds like he got married at the end of the
Matt: yeah, yeah,
RS: good. Like, okay, good. Good for him. Good for him.
You know, hope it was a happy relationship. Yeah.
Matt: But, but yeah, but I, I, I hope that it’s one sentence because nothing else interesting happened and he just got to have a happy life, you know?
Uh
RS: cause god damn, dude. That is rough. So there is a little bit of that. The book does give us that of the victims and things, but there’s, um, [00:43:00] there’s this tendency in the novel, and I think way more so in the movie, to make this family, particularly Nancy, into this symbol of America’s lost innocence.
This is, you gotta consider when this was made. This murder happened at the end of the 1950s. This book, it was happening in the 60s during a time of massive, massive social change. There is this feeling of a loss of, like, American innocence. And, and, and I feel a little weird about that, cause these were people who didn’t want to be symbols, you know?
Nancy probably just wanted to be a regular girl doing girl stuff. Making out with her forbidden catholic boyfriend and stuff. Not like, becoming a symbol of America’s tainted innocence. And, and I get it, like, we, we like, we’re pattern recognizing creatures. We look for patterns even when they’re not real. And I’m, I’m wondering how much of this is, are we looking into the symbolism of this act to try to give it some kind of meaning, when so much of the horror of it is how senseless and [00:44:00] awful it was. Like Dick and, Dick Hickok and Perry Smith murdered a perfectly nice family with four people, hoping to rob a safe in the house that did not exist, and ended up getting just forty dollars.
Like, four people got murdered for 40 bucks.
Matt: yeah, and the thing with getting the, when he’s getting Nancy’s silver dollar and it falls, and it’s like, come on. I know a buck was worth more then, but I mean, it’s still like, it’s kinda pathetic, you know? I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna kill you for a buck.
RS: Yeah, he’s on his hands and knees scrabbling around for a silver dollar under the bed. And they, they also make out with, or they make off with a little radio or something, and that’s it.
40 bucks and a radio is what they get.
Matt: and the, uh, the, um, binoculars with the case with the, uh, uh, hilarious initials [00:45:00] on there if you happen to be a fan of Liz Phair’s self titled record. I,
RS: get that reference.
Matt: uh, there’s a song on there called HWC, which is Herb Clutter’s initials, but it also stands for Hot White Cum. Yeah. Yeah. Then, then, then, then, then, the, the, the, the chorus of the song is, you know, “give me your hot white cum”
RS: Goddammit.
Matt: and I, and I, I like, I like got that. It’s like, you know, oh, and then Perry opened or not Perry but Dick opened the binocular case with the legend HWC written on it. I’m just,
RS: Oh no! That and the cat named Boobs, you know, I know.
concerned.
Matt: Justice for Boobs!
RS: Yeah, Nancy had a cat named Boobs. That, that something terrible happened to this poor cat.
Matt: Poor cat. Poor boobs. I really felt for boobs. [00:46:00] Ba dump dump.
RS: So there is something that I found kind of interesting, too, is that there’s a lot in this book about how the trial they got was really slanted and biased. I would not say that that’s necessarily being sympathetic to the killers, though.
Matt: Yeah, and,
RS: everyone deserves competent legal representation, even if they’re obviously murderers.
Matt: And honestly, too, I think, I think even though, Truman gets into that, I don’t even think that he really thinks that the trial was slanted. It, it’s, like, he wrote it pretty straight, and I, I think he framed Dick’s constant trying to reedle his way out as kind of a, a doomed quest, you know, like,
RS: There was a lot made, though, about how the psychiatrist was not really able to actually testify.
Matt: True, true.
RS: And how one of the jurors knew the Clutters, which, that’s a no no.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. And, but, but yeah, I was sort of, I, I don’t know. It was, there, there [00:47:00] seems to have been, like, more kangaroo y trials than that one.
RS: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And, and I mean, it’s small town Kansas, so, what are you fuckin gonna expect? Not that it’s better anywhere else.
But there was, there was that in there, but without too much making it so that, oh, poor Perry again.
RS: Poor Perry, the trial wasn’t fair. Like, well, buddy, I don’t know what you expected there.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, I, I, and I mean, the, the lawyers for them weren’t very good, but it was also sort of like, well, how are you going to defend this? I mean,
RS: Yeah.
Matt: there’s all this evidence,
RS: Yeah, you got nothing to work with here.
Matt: yeah. I mean, like, maybe the Dream Team could have got him off, but even then,
RS: yeah, maybe if he had one of Robert Durst’s lawyers or something, but even then, I don’t know, but
Matt: Well, I mean, considering that, you know, Season 2 of the Jinx,
RS: yeah,
Matt: there.
RS: if [00:48:00] it had been in Galveston,
he would have been okay
Matt: yes.
RS: But
Matt: even with Galveston, I get the impression that, like, there was a chunk of it that, of that douchebag juror who just wanted to befriend Durst to get his money.
RS: That fucking juror,
Matt: Oh my
RS: of, um, how is that legal? What the fuck?
Matt: know it’s like, do you, do you watch on cinema at the cinema with Tim Heidecker and stuff?
Okay there, because there’s this whole thing where Tim holds this thing in the desert and ends up killing 20 kids with these like horrible bait pens and basically, you know, spoilers for a 10 year old arc, you know, on, on this, but.
That’s how he gets off is that one of the jurors has a crush on him and they later
Get married and I’m just thinking of thinking of of that with The Jinx
RS: Right, right. Anyway, but back to In Cold Blood, we will probably talk about the Jinx later. Another thing that this book does is talk about the [00:49:00] community and the lingering effects of grief on the community and the effects on the community of how this was this nice little small town and now everybody locks their doors and they’re afraid as this sort of symbol of this growing mood throughout the United States of, oh, this used to be a nice simple place and now it’s scarier and bad.
And there were some parts that really do hit though, like the part about where the town auctions off all the Clutters’ stuff, cause that’s inevitable, they’re a farm family, there’s farm equipment, unless they’re relatives or farmers, there’s, you don’t really have much use for a tractor.
Matt: yeah,
RS: And just, where they, where they auction off Nancy’s beloved fat ass horse, Babe.
Matt: Oh, I felt
RS: It really is sad. It really is tragic. Oh, that’s, that’s the end of it. And it does capture that feeling you have when you’re getting rid of dividing a person’s stuff after they die. It feels so strange reading this, because I know that Capote was from a small, rural town. He [00:50:00] grew up in the same little town as Harper Lee.
They were friends as kids. Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird is based on him, which blows my fucking
mind. But I can’t, I can’t help but think about how this was originally written for the New Yorker. So here’s this story about this innocent little Midwestern town torn apart by a terrible crime, and it’s written for this metropolitan, big city, New York audience.
And so I’m, I’m How much of this is, I can’t help but feel this tone. I don’t know whether I’m getting it from Truman or whether I’m getting it for Here’s who he’s writing it for of like, “oh these poor little corn shucking crackers, you know, these sad little peasants Oh, they’re having to deal with the crime,” you know, it feels a little odd
Matt: no, I, I get that too. It’s like, even though Herb Clutter was an educated guy who even served with, like, under, uh, Eisenhower on a, farming
RS: Right he had a degree he was he was not just
some He was not a [00:51:00] dirt farmer. He was a prominent guy. He had a good bit of money. He was a well to do businessman.
Matt: Yeah, and it’s really made up as, Oh, he fulfilled the American dream. He worked up from nothing and made this like big clap Big farm. I don’t know why he almost said clown. He mailed a big clown
RS: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah in cold honk. But uh, he built his farm from nothing and it It ended up being this huge farm that made 10, 000 a week and da da da da da da da and But it really did feel like Local boy makes good kind of stuff rather than anything else. It was again kind of like you’re getting out with symbols, but also with that corn kind of corny big city patronization
RS: Kind of not getting that running a successful, significantly sized farm requires a fair bit of [00:52:00] know how. And the guy had a degree in agricultural studies. He was not just some, some doofus squatting in the dirt going, “well, I suppose an almanac says plant this time of year.” Like he was a pretty sharp guy.
He had a lot of people working for him. He was a businessman. It’s just, that’s how you do business in Kansas at that time.
Matt: Right, right. And one thing I also think kind of interesting is that near the end of the book, and I think this gets a shout out in the movie too, is that, that it’s kind of written that this is almost the damn break for other similar murders. I mean, there’s that one murder in Tallahassee that
they try to kind of pin on Perry and Dick, but I, like, it’s kind, it’s definitely written that it wasn’t them. It was copycats, and I’m inclined to agree just because you would think that, like, if it were real, or if it were them, Truman would have gone harder on that, too, you [00:53:00] know?
RS: Yeah.
Matt: But, And then like at the end, there’s this thing about oh, after that there were like, you know, four similar murders the next year, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And I mean, I know that that is like a real thing. I mean, that’s one of the things that crime analysis or analysts and stuff have been saying for years is that by make, by reporting on murderers in this way, it makes it more attractive for other.
RS: Yeah, I could see some criminal type guys going, “Well, I could do that, but I could get it right.”
Matt: Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, that’s like a real phenomenon. And that’s why there’s every, I don’t know, every ten or twenty years, it seems that there’s like a flare up of the, you know, don’t name the murderers discourse and honestly, I kinda, even though we’re doing, you know, In Cold Blood,
I kind of agree with that. I, I like, what I always call the Some Asshole Rule, you know, Oh, this school was shot up by some asshole.[00:54:00]
RS: Yeah.
Matt: But, the thing is too, is people are interested in these and as, as high minded as the Some Asshole rule sounds, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there just because the.
The interest, it’s, like, yes, we’re, yes, you know, speaking as, journalist, yes, there is that temptation to dive into this because, journalists are explainers and we want to explain things to people and people want to know because, we were getting at the beginning of the thing, like, I couldn’t kill anybody, you couldn’t kill anybody. What’s it like to be a dude who can kill people, I guess, you
know. This probably goes beyond the purview of this podcast, but it’s something to think about. And,
RS: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: you know, is, how, how complicit is journalism in this? And I mean, I’m not saying it’s a lot, but I, it can’t be zero either.
RS: Right, which, we’re gonna skip the talk [00:55:00] about the movie for a moment and talk about, I guess, nicely into “I have mixed feelings about true crime as a genre.” I have mixed feelings about it. I absolutely do watch or listen to true crime. I
watched that dramatized miniseries about Gypsy Rose Blanchard. I’m on season two of The Jinx.
I fucking love it. The latest episode, the prosecutor just, just got Robert Durst on a bunch of Encyclopedia Brown shit and it rocks. It’s really, really good. “Mr. Durst, you say you played this game with your mother, but your mother died a
Matt: Yeah. Oh, no, was it?
RS: and this game wasn’t invented until 1971.” Like, oh shit, I didn’t know the law actually happened that
Matt: I know, I
RS: I didn’t know
knowing this shit would help.
Matt: Yeah, like, I fucking love The Jinx. I mean, that’s like one of the things that we’ve been talking about for the past month. Is as soon as a new Jinx drops, we’re like, Oh, shit, did you see? Did you see?
RS: Did you see this? Did you see this weird fucking thing? And, [00:56:00] and, like, I listen to true crime podcasts at my boring day job, and I can tell myself, oh, well, I only listen to the classy ones that have something to say about society, but, you know. The truth is, this is morbid fascination. Part of the reason I’m watching The Jinx is, it’s entertaining, you know, that Robert Durst is an entertaining figure because of what a fucking weirdo he is.
He’s fascinating. Every time they play a recorded phone call with him, and it starts with, call from
Matt: Bob!
RS: It’s, like, it’s funny! It’s fucking funny the way this guy answers the phone, that he just cannot do a single goddamn thing like a normal human being, just including answering the phone. Call from, Bob. Call from, Robert.
No, call from BBBBOOOOOOOOBBBBBBBB It’s just insane!
Matt: I.
RS: And like, it’s great. It’s fucking, it is really entertaining. But at the same time, there, I do draw a line, [00:57:00] like, I’ll listen to In the Dark, you know, that season two of that genuinely did like help an innocent man get out of jail. And these are, these things are, some of these are genuinely classy, and they’re trying to educate people or bring justice.
At least this isn’t like a fucking true crime mukbang, where somebody eats 17 hamburgers while talking about the Golden State Killer or something.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: entertainment, I’m watching this for entertainment.
Matt: Yeah. Let, let me do my makeup while I talk about how someone was had their head blown off and painting the, painting the walls with hair.
RS: yeah,
Matt: and
speaking of hair, you know,
RS: and in fact, true crime mukbang is a genre.
True crime mukbang, true crime ASMR, true crime makeup tutorials, this is, that’s a little distasteful, that’s a little, this isn’t education, this is just, I don’t like this, you’re a bad person, you’re eating a pound of cheese while talking about the fuckin Heaven’s Gate suicides, I don’t like this.
Matt: Yeah, [00:58:00] yeah. And I mean, too, I, I have a soft spot for this. My mom loves Crude Shrime and I grew up with her. And so like. Like, one of the, the, like, when I went to the UK, one of the things I found for her was an encyclopedia of murder that I bought, and she loved it, you know? I’ve got a signed copy of Helter Skelter.
I’m not
above this.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: I, I’m, I’m not above this. And I mean, that’s the thing too, is like, In Cold Blood really is a page turner. Yeah,
RS: it’s well, it’s, it’s a terrific book. It’s very well done, but there’s this part of me going, Is this disrespectful to the victims? Does it fuck up our brains to watch this? How much of this is copaganda? I mean obviously if you’re, if you’re Dewey and it’s your job to solve a quadruple murder, you’re, you’re by default, you’re the good guy. Perry and Dick are the bad guys.
They murdered four people. And you kind of feel bad for the cops, because like, how the fuck do you [00:59:00] solve a crime like this in 1959 with the forensic technology available? You got fuck all. If the killer isn’t known by the locals and had enough sense to like, wear gloves, you got nothing. You got nothing to work with.
Matt: yeah, yeah. And, and I mean, too, it’s like, that’s one of the big things I think in this country too, is like, not only just like the distrust of lawyers, but like defense attorneys, in particular. It’s always, you know, ah, they’re getting them killers off just because of all of our stories, are here’s like, I mean, In Cold Blood.
Here are these clear, obvious murderers who couldn’t be more guilt, or obviously guilty if they were wearing shirts saying ” I, I did it, and by it, I mean blew the Clutters away with a shotgun,” you know? So, I mean, of course you’re gonna see the, the defense attorneys, or again with The Jinx, where you have Bob Durst who, again, very obviously [01:00:00] killed everybody even it was obvious before he even said “I killed them all” And you’re
RS: is insanely guilty.
Matt: you and you watch it you watch this layers being like “well We doot doot” and you’re like “fuck you you’re getting a rich guy off a murder.”
Fuck you. Just because That those stories are more interesting and the stories of people being railroaded which happens a lot are sad. You don’t like those stories. They’re sad. They’re harder to watch. These
RS: And they don’t really have happy endings, even when the guy gets out of prison. It’s like, well, 20 years later, he was freed from this crime he didn’t commit. Like, god damn, he still had to spend 20 years in fuckin prison. That sucks ass.
Matt: exactly. But these ones, they, they feed our sense of justice. We can be like, yeah, these obviously bad dudes got, got, you know, punished for being obviously bad dudes. And it makes us feel good. Like, yeah, [01:01:00] system works. You might kill somebody horribly, But you’re gonna hang. And that’s not real life. And it’s so frustrating, watching, NCIS type shows where it’s very much, ” the fucking defense attorney got him off again,” even though
RS: Yeah.
Matt: a that,
RS: That is the job of a defense attorney. They’re supposed to do this.
Matt: And too, there’s a lot of times like there are a lot of cases of cops just deciding, “oh well that’s our guy. We’re gonna make the evidence fit the obvious guy even though he’s not a guy.” Like, uh, did you ever watch the documentary on Amanda Knox?
RS: Right.
Matt: it’s clear there that the dipshit cops think they’re fucking Matlock. And it’s all this shit of, ” well, when her roommate was murdered. She wasn’t sad enough. So obviously she did it.” I’m like
You you get [01:02:00] your roommate dies horribly There’s gonna be a lot of complex feelings. It’s not just gonna be boohoo, you know rending of clothing and whatnot. But and I mean that one that that case was particularly mishandled but it’s still it’s like you know just because These, Italian cops were such dipshits that they ended up fucking themselves over. A lot of times they don’t, just because people are inclined to believe cops. There’s very much, like, I remember, like, a long time ago when I was taking the bus into work, I was reading this book of stories from the Innocence Project of people doing stuff, and I was, and like, someone on the bus was trying to make small talk, and I, And they asked what I was reading, and I told them, and they go like, “Yeah, but I mean, you gotta think if there was something there, they wouldn’t have, or if there wasn’t anything there, they wouldn’t have been
arrested.” And I’m like, no, that’s what this book is about. There was [01:03:00] nothing there, but they got arrested anyway, you know. Yeah,
RS: Dewey was Reasonably, I think, had a theory that this was someone who was pissed off at the Clutters, because, I mean, when you make a lot of money, you’re probably gonna have, have, you’re probably gonna have enemies, maybe someone who got the raw end of a business deal you were on, or maybe a disgruntled former employee or something, and I have to wonder if it wasn’t for this jailhouse confession, with all the pressure they were under to solve this crime, would they have just found a guy?
Could they have just found some guy who used to work for Herb Clutter and got fired for being a dipshit and be like, Maybe this is the dude who did it, maybe this is him, maybe this is the And get, you know, someone who was an asshole but innocent and just fuckin railroad him.
Matt: exactly, yeah. I mean. It’s hard to tell, you don’t know and, and I mean, even then, like, Oh, asshole who kills [01:04:00] Clutter for vengeance is a good story too. And people will be inclined to believe it, you know?
RS: Yeah, yeah, that’s a very, that’s a very compelling narrative. It’s a very compelling
Matt: Yeah, he, he fired him for, for drinking because he was a teetotaler and didn’t deal with drinkers.
So obviously this was unjust and he was mad about it and he stewed and got drunk and blasted him.
RS: Right.
Matt: That’s a totally believable story. Bullshit, but it’s believable.
RS: I’d believe it. I could see that, yeah. Just, or, or, envy. Some less successful farmer who envied them and wanted to teach them. So, so many things. If, if Dewey had gotten a real hair up his ass about one of these theories, you gotta wonder, would they have just found someone to railroad?
Because that happened like the, the Richard Jewell story.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: The bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, there was this,
Matt: I think he
RS: I think the 90s. Yeah, he [01:05:00] was a security guard working at the Atlanta Olympics, and he’s the guy who actually discovered this bomb that was planted there. And he, like, warned everybody, managed to get an evacuation, and saved a lot of lives.
But the FBI hadn’t He legit was a hero, but the FBI didn’t know who planted this bomb, so they just got it in their heads that actually Richard Jewell planted the
Matt: Yeah, he’s been
RS: he pretended, he pretended that he found it because he was this loser who wanted to look cool, and they did like everything they could to pin it on this fucking guy, and he didn’t do it.
He just straight up didn’t do it. It turned out years later they found out it was some like, weirdo extremist who’d also like, bombed abortion clinics and shit like that. Just some, some right wing psycho.
Matt: Yeah, but they had made up this whole thing of that like while richard jewell’s been doing a lot of like tv lately He clearly wants to be famous and the thing is is like wasn’t he
RS: he collects guns, like, well yeah, he’s a midwestern
Matt: Yeah, yeah, and I mean wasn’t the thing that he kind of actually hated doing all the press but you know, [01:06:00] whatever
RS: Yeah. Well, I’m sure, I’m sure he likes being called a
Matt: Well, yeah, I mean who
RS: being called a hero, that feels pretty
Matt: gets old It gets old after a while having to like, you know, go on a Good Morning America for the 50th time,
RS: Uh, I wouldn’t get tired of that. I would not get tired of people calling me a hero. Hi, would you like to go on our show and get your makeup done and we’ll give you some nice snacks and tell you you’re cool? Like, yes! Yes, I would! Please do! I would not ever get tired of that shit. That would rock. Butter me up. Pat me on the head and tell me how I’m good and cool. Absolutely. Fuck yeah.
Matt: But yeah, but I think that was like the main reason why the FBI focused on him is because he was in the news all the time, so Obviously it was a case of setting something up so he could be the hero and get attention instead of actually just
RS: Just right place, right time. Dude just, just followed his training [01:07:00] and did what he was supposed to do. And plus, I mean, a bomb at the Olympics, you gotta figure out who the fuck did that. That’s so, that’s so bad, that’s so scary. You gotta bust somebody. Here’s this fucking guy, let’s get him, you know. So, so, there’s this eerie situation there where you’re wondering, like, well, what if, what if this dude hadn’t confessed?
Cause they had no, they had nothing else to go on.
Matt: Yeah, like honestly I think if it hadn’t been for Floyd Nothing would have happened with this. Like, in terms of Barry and Dick, they would have got away with it.
RS: Oh yeah. Yeah. Unless, like, maybe years later, I could kind of see Dick bragging about
Matt: Oh, yeah.
RS: that’s Dick, that’s a Dick move, ha ha. He would fuckin do that, he’s, he was a piece of shit, but, yeah.
Matt: Yeah, I could easily see Dick being in prison for hanging checks and then getting, like, You know that Clutter thing? That was totally me.
RS: Gettin drunk, gettin drunk at a bar and yelling it, “oh, watch out, or my friend Perry’ll beat you up. Maybe he’s short, but he killed four people.”
Matt: [01:08:00] Exactly, yeah.
RS: Trying to say it to impress some underage girl he’s hitting on. We don’t know. Dick Dick sucks, dude. We don’t like Dick. Dick is very bad.
But, before we end up, let’s talk a little bit about the movie. Because, this was a book, and it was made very quickly into a movie. The movie was made two years after the killers were executed. Which is real quick. Uh, what did you say? That is, Made for TV, movie
Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that is Long Island Lolita turnaround almost.
RS: Yeah, that
Matt: who grew up in the
RS: that is a Lifetime original movie, turnaround
Matt: Yes, yes.
RS: a very good
movie. It’s very well shot, edited,
Matt: the editing is amazing.
RS: It’s stylish, it’s brilliantly done. It spends even less time with the Clutters. We had very little time with them. It really leans much harder into the THIS IS SYMBOLIC OF AMERICA’S LOST INNOCENCE THING.
It’s a stylish [01:09:00] neo noir, and it was made in a post Code era so they can talk about sex and use swears in a way that, like, 1940s noir couldn’t do. And the whole time I’m watching it, I’m going, Oh, fuck, this is Twin Peaks. This, this movie is Twin Peaks. Nice little town, torn about by a horrible murder. The jazzy soundtrack is very Twin Peaks.
You got a lot of upright bass.
Matt: Yeah, I think that Quincy Jones guy who scored, I think he’s gonna go places.
RS: I think so. I think so. The, there’s the focus on Nancy in particular as this symbol of America’s innocence destroyed. And I think that an interesting choice is that in, in the book, it says that the mother was the last one to get shot. And in the movie, it’s Nancy. Is the last one. And there’s the very quirky small town characters emphasized in the book.
They’re very Twin Peaks. It’s less so much in the movie. You don’t spend as much time with these quirky rural people. But the whole time I’m watching it, I feel weird about how stylish and slick this is.
Matt: Yeah.
RS: really slick and stylish. And the [01:10:00] way they introduce Perry is this very dramatic shot of, like, a lighter in the darkness and then these, these cool boots.
It’s,
Matt: I was very glad that they actually showed the cat’s paw boots because that’s one of those cultural things that is completely gone.
And so, Yeah, I had no idea. And so, since Perry has introduced boot first, It was nice that, you know, go, Oh, okay. That’s what they’re talking about.
RS: Right. And it is a very good movie, but at the same time I feel very strange about how stylish and slick it is. Like, alright, let’s get this peppy bongo soundtrack to this true story about a bunch of people who died incredibly recently.
I mean, the murder occurred in 1959, this movie came out in 1967.
That’s not that
Matt: no.
RS: That’s fast.
Matt: I mean, they, you know, especially too, I mean, since Perry and Dick had been dead for barely two years,
RS: Yeah.
Matt: it’s like,
RS: So I, I feel strange about it, and I’ve, I’ve gotta know how many times did David Lynch [01:11:00] watch this
Matt: Oh, I know. I mean, Robert Blake alone. Oh God. It’s like. I, I know that this is mean, and I mean, I, I think it’s probably tempered by having recently watched Lost Highway, but I mean, Robert Blake is nowhere near hot enough to be Perry. Nowhere near,
RS: Goddamn.
Matt: but,
RS: It’s 1960s hot, okay? There’s,
there’s like been a hotness inflation.
Matt: I guess, but I still see this, like, you know, the weird little gremlin dude in, in Lost Highway,
you
RS: with the videotape.
Matt: Yeah, but I do have to say that this is good casting because Blake did probably kill his wife in real life. So, you know, he, you
RS: it’s well done.
Matt: he, he went future method. Yeah, he never left the role of Perry. Yeah.
RS: Oh my [01:12:00] god. So there’s this queasy feeling of, while you’re doing this, it is vicariously enjoying this terrible act of violence, and I mean, I can cluck my tongue and scold about it, but I’m doing it too. We’re doing it right
now. We’re recording this. And we’re monetizing this.
Matt: yes, this is the one that you have to pay three dollars to get. You know,
RS: Yeah.
Matt: you know, like, no one is innocent, especially not us.
RS: Yeah, and my question is, but there is a line. I would not do in aforementioned mukbang. I feel it is a little distasteful. The, “Stay sexy and don’t get murdered.” My Favorite murder podcast. That feels a little like, uh,
Matt: a little gross. Yeah.
RS: that’s a little gross. That’s a little much. Maybe, maybe don’t be that peppy and bubbly.
But then again, am I, When we’re putting on our little solemn faces to talk about murder, are we just sort of doing it as a matter of politeness, and how sincere is it?
Matt: I [01:13:00] mean, too, I mean, we’ve been making jokes all through this, too. I
RS: Oh yeah. We opened it up with, literally our first segment was, let’s talk about how Perry Smith was kind of hot.
Matt: exactly. Yeah, that’s, yeah, it’s, It, it, it’s the, the water we’re swimming in, you know?
RS: Yeah, we posted about this in the Discord. And one of our members, who shall remain nameless, their first response was, “Okay, that harness they got Perry in when they’re hanging him. How can I get one of
Matt: I know. And
RS: God damn it. You people.
Matt: I mean, they’re
RS: Dammit. So,
in conclusion, how, how do, what do we say about mixed, what do we say about true crime? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I
Matt: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s a kind of fucked up that We, we like. It’s, it’s, it’s, [01:14:00] it’s the, it’s huffing the gas that we shouldn’t huff, but it tastes so sweet. Yes,
RS: thing I do want to give the movie credit for is it does a lot less sad boy Perry. There’s a lot less of like, “oh, feel sorry for Perry.” It really, I think, makes the choice that Perry’s, the reason Perry does not permit Dick to rape Nancy is not any kind of nobility, but just that Perry has a lot of, a lot of hang ups and mommy
Matt: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s his own thing. It’s not any sense of nobility.
RS: Which I do really respect that as a choice,
Matt: yes, and and honestly, I mean, even though I joked about Robert Blake not being hot enough, I think that is a good directorial decision just because, through time immemorial, people feel more sympathy for pretty people. Even though Robert Blake isn’t as, like, isn’t the, the Lost Highway troll guy I was [01:15:00] joking about at this time. He, you know, Perry
RS: He has weird little guy
Matt: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And It makes it a little bit easier to be like, yeah, this guy’s a piece of shit dirtbag. That if they had cast, like, Rock Hudson.
RS: Yeah.
Matt: They’d get Rock Hudson to do Dorf, kind of thing, on his, like, knees,
RS: Oh god dammit.
Matt: Dorf on
RS: This isn’t Gary Oldman, we’re not doing that.
Matt: But, but yeah, it’s, it, I don’t know, it, it, I, I was honestly, like, really impressed with the film, even if it did get a little bit, Here is our point in three little monologues at the end, you know, like I think they could have probably cut some of that because I think a lot of it was a little obvious. And that was what they were going for.
RS: I’m kind of wondering if part of it is we need to say this moral point we’re making to justify this as a work of art because we are making art out of human suffering and a really awful tragedy that was quite recent and had [01:16:00] a lot of, a lot of bereaved people still around to remember it and probably feel pretty bad about seeing it.
At the movie. “Oh, here’s the Coming Soon marquee at our local movie theater. What’s coming up? Oh, fuck. That movie
Matt: it’s the movie about
RS: oh, they made a movie about my ex girlfriend getting murdered. That’s cool. Not a fan of that.”
Matt: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was definitely in living memory. I mean, considering it, it wasn’t even a decade.
RS: Yeah.
And it was right after the execution. The execution was in 1965.
Matt: Exactly, yeah. So yeah, I mean, like, it was probably a little bit of a fig leaf, but it’s And, I mean, kind of, you know You can argue about whether, how necessarily the fig leaf is, but I mean It probably should be addressed that it is kind of a creepy fucked up thing to To do, even if it is, like Even if, you know, and I mean the book too, like, even if it is great art, but it’s still built on puddles of blood.
It, it is [01:17:00] the, it, it is the, you know, the house on the burial ground
RS: Yeah, and we can be pretty confident saying that Truman Capote did not have noble ambitions while making this. One, because he fell in love with Perry Smith, and two, because he was Truman Capote.
Matt: I don’t think the dude did a noble thing in his life.
RS: He was just trash. Just, just absolute trash from beginning to end.
Matt: Yes. Yes. Such a piece of shit, but such a fascinating piece of shit.
RS: Oh yeah,
Matt: He, he’s the, he’s the piece of shit you want to know but not very well.
RS: Yeah, you want to know of
Matt: Yeah, and maybe bump into him at a party but at a point where he knows nothing about you.
RS: Yeah, cause he will gossip about you and tell everybody all your fucking business and ruin your life.
Matt: Yeah, like, he, he was basically like, I don’t know, 1950s and 60s kiwi farms almost.
RS: Oh, gosh. Oh, God.
Matt: You know if he were alive today, he would be [01:18:00] doxing people and being all like, “Well, the people have a right to know.”
RS: The most extraordinary thing is after just selling out all of his friends and writing gossip columns about their terrible secrets, him getting really shocked that they,
Matt: They were mad.
RS: they disinvited him from Thanksgiving. “Are you mad at me?” Yes, Truman. Yes, you’ve told everybody that my husband cheated on me. I’m very upset, Truman.
Matt: “I have no morals, so I assume you had no morals. Oops a doodle.”
RS: Yeah, yeah. So, we’ve been talking for well over an hour, so why don’t we wind down? Is there anything we want to plug? I don’t, I don’t know. Is there any more Capote content?
Matt: I mean, honestly, you know, I’m halfway through The Swan or Capote Versus The Swans and it’s a fun watch. I do it, you know, if you to get the Capote bug or got the Capote bug from reading this book, check it out. There’s lots of interviews with him online because, like I said, he was a talk [01:19:00] show, a professional talk show guest for the last, 20 years of his life. But, yeah, I don’t know. I, I think I’m, like, tapped out of
more things to say about Capote other than him being a piece of shit.
RS: yeah. So, uh, In conclusion, stay sexy and don’t be Truman Capote. And thank you for listening and thank you for supporting us. If you haven’t already, check out our Discord. Until next time, keep reading and keep writing good.