Capote’s Cold-Blooded Case

In the wee hours of 15 November 1959, in the small prairie community of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of a prosperous farming family were savagely murdered by shotgun blasts discharged at close quarters into their faces.

There was no apparent motive for the crime and hardly any clues. The local FBI investigator, Alvin Dewey, had never seen a crime so meaningless or “so vicious”, and vowed to hunt down and convict the killers, whatever the cost.

What began as a New York Times murder story was transformed by Truman Capote into a tale of spine-tingling suspense and extraordinary intuition.