In Cold Blood - The REAL Murder House, Gravesites and Other Locations 4K

is have you ever read the book in cold blood by truman capote or i've heard of it even well it's based off of real life murders that happened november 15 1959 here in holcomb kansas which is what we're visiting today in today's grim life adventure now today's a little extra special because we're doing something that not many people get to do and that's to get on property and walk up to the clutter family house where the murders happened most of the time people can't even get past the gate because of no trespassing signs and dogs in the family just don't want to be bothered we have permission to come back here today man this is our first time in kansas and it's just it's like driving through an open field that never ends now a lot has changed since the 50s when the clutters were here living back in 1959 if i'm not mistaken there was roughly 200 people living in this town now there's over 3 000 maybe closer to 4 000. so a lot has definitely changed but the house for the most part has remained the same since the time of the murders there it is right there over to the right i can't believe we're doing this let's look over here now if you do come here do not come on this property without permission even just right here this is closer than most people get now we're going to talk about the crime here in just a minute and just kind of walk you through history well sadly we can't go inside but we do have permission to be here on property and just walk around and talk about everything and take pictures now on that morning early morning hickok and smith came here for the sole intent on robbing the clutter family it turns out hickok actually spent some time in jail with an old ranch hand of herb clutter while in jail together he told hickok about his old boss and how rich he was and how prominent he was as a farmer here in the town of holcomb even more he told him about a safe that he had in his house that he kept stocked with a couple thousand dollars in cash and when he got out of jail he enlisted the help of one of his friends his partner in crime smith and in the early morning hours they drove right up this driveway and they parked over here the side of the house where they entered in through a an unlocked side door go over here and show you go ahead and turn this way now for the most part this house has not changed one bit i mean they update things but it looks pretty much the same as it did back whenever the clutters were here now this side door right here is where they snuck in and just on the inside is where they found herb clutter asleep the rest of his family asleep upstairs once inside the house they quickly tied up herb clutter and his wife and his two kids and he took herb and the sun canyon throughout the house tied up lights out so nobody in town driving by could see i mean we're pretty much out in the middle of nowhere so i don't know how they would have seen lights on but they went through the entire house ransacking everything looking for the money and hickok and smith were demanding that mr clutter show them where the safe is and he kept telling him no there's no safe there's no safe here i don't know what you're talking about eventually they made it down to the basement where hickok and smith finally believed them that there was no safe filled with money feeling defeated and also pretty agitated they didn't want to leave any witnesses so they slit herb clutter's throat they stabbed him and then they shot him in the head point blank with a 12 gauge shotgun they took kenyan into the next room and shot him in the head as well and what's even more disturbing about this supposedly in a 200 page manuscript written by hickok long after the fact supposedly he said let's see the embalmer fix that hole again not wanting to leave witnesses they went upstairs to the bedrooms and shot herb clutter's wife and his teenage daughter as well the very next morning a family friend came to the house knocked on the door there was no answer so she went inside and she found the clutter family brutally murdered she called the sheriff the sheriff came here with a professional photographer and they took pictures documenting this crime scene now something i found odd in reading about this is supposedly to the naked eye nobody could see a bloody shoe print in the house but whenever they're reviewing the photos afterwards they can clearly see a shoe print and also right over here by this silver garage you can see our rental car they found a tire track that didn't seem to match the vehicles that the clutter family owned what makes it even more gut-wrenching now hickok and smith came here with the intent of robbing them of a safe filled with cash but whenever they walked away after murdering this entire family they left with a handheld radio a pair of binoculars and roughly fifty dollars in cash that's it there was no safe there was no money now if you don't know anything about the book in cold blood and truman capote and his involvement with this case after the murders it made national headlines and truman capote read about it the murders here the unsolved murders in a newspaper and immediately he made arrangements to come out here to holcomb kansas he actually arrived here in town with his childhood friend harper lee the lady who wrote to kill a mockingbird they arrived here two days after the clutter family funeral truman capote and harper lee actually spent a good couple months here in holcomb talking to family members and people who lived here in the community as well as authorities and law officers and going over police records the book in cold blood which is basically all of truman capote's research is based off of all those accounts all those interviews of his time here it became an instant instant classic i guess you should say they even made a movie out of it starring robert blake now from right about here there's even a photo from the set whenever they're here filming the movie and truman capote was standing looking off camera with a house behind him in the heart of america in a small rural community occurred a crime which shocked the entire nation [Music] a book about this crime by truman capote became a worldwide best seller now a motion picture brings this book to the screen in cold blood these are the real killers these are the actors who play their parts so uncanny are the resemblances that they have said sometimes we get the creepy feeling that we really are those guys robert blake plays perry smith scott wilson plays richard hickok the crime depicted in in cold blood took place inside this house now this is nice i had no idea that this is here there's a park pretty much right in the center of town across the street from the post office it says holcomb community park dedicated to the herb and bonnie clutter family was it 63 years i think it is it's 2022. this happened in 1959 yeah 63 years of the time of recording this and the family is still remembered that white building in the center of your screen is a mexican restaurant here in holcomb kansas it's called el rancho it's authentic mexican food but back in the 50s and the 60s this was a restaurant a little cafe called hartman's the clutter family would come here and eat pretty much everybody in town would come here and eat now after the murders this is also where truman capote would meet with a lot of the townspeople and sit and talk to them about what they knew what they remembered of the clutter family and what what what life was like here in holcomb even though it's not hartman's it's still pretty cool that it's still a restaurant and it's still here let's go ahead and walk around the front not open so we can't go inside but let's go ahead and peek through the doors right what's this say good food served here let's see here [Music] now of course everything changes but you'll find with history a lot of things still the same there's a shot of the main dining area you can just imagine capote in there and people just having a good time talking and then of course after the murders just trying to make sense of everything you know it's strange a lot of times whenever a horrendous crime takes place or a brutal murder one of the very first things a town does is they tear down the house or wherever that happened not the people here in holcomb i mean they weren't glorifying what happened but i think and i read somewhere i'm not sure if it was in an interview or in the book in cold blood that at one point somebody said why ruin a perfectly good house so it stayed it still stands people live in it the town of holcomb really isn't that big there's not many old buildings here anymore a lot of them have been torn down or remodeled there's even a couple different photos online of truman capote uh standing in front of the post office here in holcomb i was hoping that building's still here that too is gone and a new post office is in its place so i've kind of resorted to walking the train tracks and there's dogs barking off in the distance so i think from here we're going to head over to garden city where the clutter family is buried we're going to talk about the funeral we now find ourselves in garden city about 10 miles up the road from holcomb to the valley view cemetery where the clutter family are buried now thank goodness for find a grave.com we were able to find them pretty easily now tell me this is not a beautiful day to visit a cemetery i got chills man oh that wind is really something there we are nancy may clutter 1943 to 1959 buried right next to her mom bonnie mae 1914 and 1959. her husband herb herbert w 1911-1959 and then on the far right hand side their son kenyon neal cutter now for some reason nancy may at the top of her tombstone there's a brass plaque it just says her name nancy in this very nice cursive script other family members don't have anything like that i wonder why now trust me when i tell you this jessica and i have visited countless graves across the united states we have yet to to leave the country we visited uh man famous graves murder victims people who've died of natural causes you name it we've been there visiting noteworthy graves i should say is one of the things we absolutely love but it's not every day that you get to visit a family that's been taken like this it's really sad i think the only other time that i got to visit a family of murder victims was uh the defeo family from the amityville horror in amityville new york my sister lives up there i think it'd be nice if we had a moment of silence for the clutter family man it's something else being here it's crazy the funeral for the clutter family was held here at the first methodist church in garden city on november 18 1959 there's even a a photo that was taken from up here near the intersection of them loading the caskets into the hearses i'm gonna go up there and try to line up a shot and see if we can get the right angle now jessica was also reading online that there's actually a a window up here towards the front of the church that's dedicated to the clutter family so we're going to try and see if there's any plaque for that as well from right about here now keep in mind this was 63 years ago this year and a lot has changed those two trees weren't there as well as the steeple with the cross on it above the front door that wasn't here at the time you see the little concrete driveway that's where the hearses were there's probably about over a thousand people that attended the service now if we peek just through these trees you can actually see these windows are still here they're in the photo above the hearses right there's the back side of the building that you can also see we couldn't find much information online except that the church dedicated the stained glass window at the front of the church to the family and i thought maybe it's gonna be something small but just looking at it it's got to be this giant thing like jessica was saying i mean it's it's massive now we can't get inside the church to take a look at everything but we can at least do what we do best and that's peek through the windows let's see if we can see anything on camera well that's as close as we're gonna get to where the funeral was held it's a beautiful church that's for sure i believe that this was the family's church that they attended and the father heard was on the building committee and he taught a version of sunday school here so they were pretty involved with the community yes yes they were a lot what you're looking at right now is the new sunflower inn and suites here in garden city but back in the 50s this was called the wheat lands motel this is where truman capote and harper lee stayed while they were here doing their research for in cold blood i walked inside and i talked to them and they had no idea what i was talking about that truman capote actually stayed here and i told them about it and sadly they weren't very pleasant they asked me to leave in fact they were kind of mean about it so i would not stay here definitely a lot different from back then but here's the thing back in 1959 1960 when truman capote and harper lee were here writing in preparation for in cold blood they stayed here and for years there was a picture of both of them posing in the lobby here and at some point somebody stole it it's no longer there so not nice people the first time here in kansas whenever somebody was really mean about something so it's okay the motel can say whatever they want and not want me on their property which is perfectly fine but they can't stop me from standing in the street and putting a camera at their building and talking about it so here we go now there's absolutely no way of knowing which room capote and harper lee stayed in we've looked we're still looking if we find it we'll put it in the video but it's definitely here at this address different name times changed 63 years across the street there's even more to the hotel it's almost like a part two but it does look like it's part of the original structure everything looks the same the design everything about it i find myself wondering you know if holcomb the murders happened in holcomb about 10 miles down the road why didn't he stay there well we drove through all of hokum it's not very big there's no motels there's no hotels or anything like that so possibly the closest place for them to stay for an extended stay would have been here so it makes sense also i should note that in research he did stay at a couple different places he was here for quite some time but this is the most prominent one i guess mainly because of the picture that was stolen from inside the lobby now let's talk about the killers for a moment hickok and smith after committing the murders they disappeared into the night and ended up writing a bunch of bad checks which caught the attention of the authorities from there they hop skipped and jumped across the country from florida to california to las vegas even back to holcomb kansas where they committed the murders why they came back i have no clue but they did when they were eventually caught i think they spent about five years in jail before they were put to death by hanging they're both hung on the same day now here's the interesting thing see everything kind of has a neat little twist to it in truman capote's book in cold blood he called this place what the once splendid windsor hotel the once splendid windsor hotel at the time of the murders this is where the men went on trial this is where they answered for their crimes and it's still here it's abandoned they're renovating it but it's still here history still stands like i said it's completely under renovation it's been abandoned for quite some time but it's neat that they're doing something with it let's see what this says the finney county preservation alliance journey with us from our past to our future let's go ahead and look through this door here so they completely gutted the inside yeah this place has seen better days now this is a look at the hotel windsor from across the street pretty much every window is boarded up sometimes you just don't know what to expect when you're out there on the road making these videos you you plan for stuff and it guides you but sometimes you get taken off your your path we're about ready to leave garden city and we just found out that there's a museum here that has an exhibit to in cold blood to be accurate though it's not just about in cold blood it's about keeping the memory of the clutter family alive in about five minutes this place is closing we called them sadly we're here a little bit late but they're kind enough to stay here after hours and let us in to explore really excited about it had no idea that this was here the finney county historical museum has a bunch of artifacts and different things on display but one of the cool things they they like to tell stories with their exhibits and this one here is true crime and as soon as you walk in they have all this different information and different historical pieces from a local gang kind of like bonnie and clyde but they're called the fleegle gang and jessica laughed a little bit because she's a big fan of duck tales and in duck tales there's the beagle boys and they are loosely based off of the fleegal gang now this is really really awesome these guns right here these are actually used by the gang now what we wanted to show what we came here for is over here still in the true crime area but it's over towards the back of it we're going to kind of walk through we just got done having a little bit of a tour now what you're looking at right now is the driveway leading up to the clutter house doesn't look like that now and all those trees now it's just open come over here let's take a look at this there's the house we were at earlier like i said still looks identical a family photo different happy times the whole family is here including the two older sisters those two older daughters they have a dress that was made by bonnie and what's really cool is as we turn you're going to see this magnificently giant safe now what's really cool about this it's a safe cabinet and manufactured in manure marietta ohio between 1906 and 1912 the evidence for the clutter murders trials was stored in this safe right now it's filled with actual newspapers how wild is that but it gets crazier you ready check this out now when we were standing out front of the house we were talking about as hickok and perry smith left the house into the night the sheriff came in with professional photographer and they took photos and in the photos they saw a footprint that they couldn't see with the naked eye this is the boot that left the footprint pretty wild right it says perry smith wore this boot the night of november 15 1959 when the clutter family was murdered and if you look closely in that photo you can see those sole plugs pretty wild now i stand corrected there's a little plaque behind the dress right there in the center of your screen it says this dress was worn by nancy clutter who was known to make her own clothing she was buried in a dress she had made and laid out for you know church the night of november 14 1959 and then over here towards the end after the book came out truman capote held a a black and white gala ball in new york city let's get a little closer to this there's a couple different things talking about that including one of the dresses worn let's see black formal evening gown worn by marie dewey to truman capote's black and white ball november 28 1966 got pictures of perry smith on the left hand side and richard hickok on the right and just below that them in court here you can see the four different photos of those who were killed nancy kenyon herb and bonnie and right below it here's a picture of nancy's bedroom in 1959 see the little teddy bear and then right over here over a thousand estimated community members attended the clutter family funeral services at the united methodist church on november 18 1959 original newspapers now this is one thing that i've always wanted to collect or start collecting you know different crimes that are well known a lot of times when you see them online if they're in good condition or anything worth keeping people want like insane amount of money for them but for the most part most of them kind of been destroyed over time so this is kind of cool to see these here and preserved look at this one here in the bottom left hand corner right next to the picture of truman capote it says smith confesses and there's the life magazine it says in cold blood is filmed on scene of the crime nightmare revisited i mean they actually filmed it here in town in the house now here's the thing the people of garden city and holcomb kansas have a love-hate relationship with truman capote yes in cold blood is a non-fiction book based on real life events based on real murder that happened based on real people's fears and sadness of what happened here in 1959 but he still managed to get some things wrong according to those who lived here it happens he's human we get things wrong heck sometimes we go to a place based on information that we've done research on or somebody gives us an address when we get there and it's the wrong place and it turns out it's two blocks away same thing here earlier in this video we stood outside of a building and said this is where the trial of the murderess took place it turns out it was one of the seedy hotels that truman capote stayed at he stayed at a lot of places around here one of the many this building right here has been the courthouse this is where the trial took place heckins if you even look up to the very top just beyond the flag it says finney county on it this is where hickok and smith were put on trial and held accountable for their crimes beautiful building there's actually even a few different pictures of them on trial here and also another little interesting photo there's a photo of the jurors actually walking down the street they probably would have come right out these steps down the street to the hotel that we showed earlier now i don't know where those people got the information saying that that is where the trial was maybe they had a meeting there maybe that's where the jurors had lunch maybe that's where the jurors were staying it's hard to tell but this is definitely where the trial happened today is day two of our in cold blood tour here in kansas it's a lot colder as you can see there's some snow on the ground but we're in lansing kansas visiting the muncie cemetery where the killers hickok and smith are buried we weren't really sure what to expect rolling up to the cemetery but i will tell you this it's kind of secluded it's on top of this hill right behind this mausoleum that jessica's standing in front of his is a prison and there's really nobody here except us out in the middle of nowhere in kansas even though the cemetery is pretty massive it was pretty easy to locate where their graves are it's just down this hillside it's rather steep so we're going to walk up to it look at it and walk around they committed their crimes together they murdered the clutter family together they were on the run together they got captured together went on trial together went to prison together they were executed together and then get this buried right next to each other i've never heard anything like that now this is the embankment that i was telling you about you see that tree right there just in front of that is where they're buried now keep in mind they committed the murders in 1959 and in 1965 is whenever they were put to death by hanging both of them were hung within minutes from each other but they're actually not buried in a prison cemetery they're buried here in a cemetery amongst a whole bunch of other people normal folks like you and me i don't know if you'd call us normal but i mean it's just a normal cemetery filled with families mother father sister brother right father yeah richard eugene hickok june 6 1931 to the date of execution april 14 1965. and pretty much the same exact inscription the only thing different is the birth date and the the name we got perry edward smith october 27 1928 to april 14th 1965. now i said that they were hung together i mean it was probably 20 to 30 minutes apart but hickok was actually hung first because the prison went alphabetical which means perry smith had to watch him die and knew what was coming before they were hung they both had last words if i'm not mistaken hickok had a lot more to say than smith did but both of them really didn't give the impression that they were sorry for what they did they just kind of was like hey i did it pretty much deal with it earlier in this video i mentioned that truman capote and harper lee arrived in the town of holcomb and garden city two days after the funerals of the clutter family and if i'm not mistaken it was something like two months after they were here is whenever hickok and smith were caught now not only did they talk to the townspeople and the sheriff and the law authorities and take notes but he actually started talking to the killers i mean what better source than the people who actually committed the crimes now i'm not going to say that they were friends but truman capote and hickok kind of formed a bit of a friendship if you would want to call it that whatever you want to call it a friendship a business arrangement they definitely had some sort of understanding so much so when hickok was scheduled to be executed he actually requested that truman capote attend and he did now the rumor is after hickok was pronounced dead truman capote ran out of the warehouse where they hung the men and threw up and he didn't stay to watch smith hang on this channel we often talk about walking history experiencing history and learning it by actually moving through history now growing up i had this very morbid curiosity i've always wanted to visit the house where the clutter family died in the town where they lived and were such prominent members the graves of the killers walked the same streets that truman capote and harper lee did back in the 60s doing research for in cold blood now like i said earlier the town the people who live here who spent their entire lives here have a love-hate relationship with truman capote it is listed as a non-fiction novel he was so proud of it and he was really ticked off that it didn't win the pulitzer prize but supposedly truman capote took a lot of i wouldn't call it creative he wouldn't say he embellished he exaggerated some of the truth a little bit and some of the townspeople here weren't too happy with it instead of non-fiction they said it was a very well done work of art now the more research you do on the murders and especially hickok and i'm going to say it i'm not going to get too much into it a 200 page handwritten manuscript that hickok wrote while he was in jail i do believe you start to really question a lot of things and i will give it this whatever the whole truth is and i think there's truth in every piece of it and all together it makes the puzzle it is one hell of a good story one hell of a good crime story in fact i think in cold blood was the very first non-fiction crime not novel that's fiction but crime story to ever really hit anything it happened a good 10 years before charles manson and his followers were responsible for what happened to sharon tate in the la biancas in 1969. it changed the world it's funny how history does that with that being said thank you for joining us on another grim adventure and as always happy halloween is

Channel: grimmlifecollective

Views: 362,432

Keywords: In Cold Blood, In Cold Blood Audiobook, In Cold Blood Summary, In Cold Blood Trailer, In Cold Blood Audiobook Part 1, In Cold Blood Audiobook Part 2, In Cold Blood Audiobook Part 3, In Cold Blood Truman Capote, In Cold Blood Truman Capote Audiobook, In Cold Blood True Story, In Cold Blood Truman Capote Movie, In Cold Blood Truman Capote Summary, In Cold Blood House, In Cold Blood True Crime, In Cold Blood Documentary, In Cold Blood Graves, In Cold Blood Truth, Truman Capote

Id: A5zrG-xZ_f4

Length: 38min 3sec (2283 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 17 2022