The Clutter Murders: The Trial, the Execution, and Capote's Obsession Pt. 3
6/4/202626 min
The jury took 40 minutes to convict Dick Hickock and Perry Smith of the Clutter family murders. On the gallows five years later, Perry Smith's last words were an apology.
In the third and final episode on the Clutter family murders, Katie Ring walks through what actually happened inside the farmhouse that night, based on the killers' own confessions. Then the trial, the executions, and the complicated legacy of Truman Capote: the writer who formed a personal bond with the killers, may have let them die to finish his book, and never completed another major project afterward. This episode contains descriptions of murder and violence. Please listen with care.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKatie Ring· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hi, listeners. It's Katie Ring. Before we get into today's episode of America's Most Infamous Crimes, I wanna tell you about another show I think you'll love, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhatt. Every Monday, Dr. Bhatt goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bhatt treats these moments like open case files. Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you never miss a mystery.
Speaker 20:38
This is Crime House.
Katie Ring· Host0:50
After Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested for murdering the Clutter family, justice came swiftly. And once they were convicted, the punishment was the harshest the state of Kansas could give. But this story doesn't end in a courtroom, because the murder of the Clutter family didn't just change Holcomb, Kansas, it changed the way America thinks about violence, about safety, and about the stories we tell about crime. It inspired one of the most famous books ever written that defined true crime as we know it, and it left scars that have never fully healed, even more than 60 years later. Today, I'm going to walk you through what happened at River