Clutter Family Murders

Date: November 15, 1959 • Location: Holcomb, United States

Two men murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas; the events became the subject of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of the true crime genre.

In the early morning of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family – Herb Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon – were murdered in their rural home just outside the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas, United States. Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. They were both executed on April 14, 1965. The murders were detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.