Episode 7: Grim Apparitions

Lonely sounds at night in Holcomb, “the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles.”  Thinking of Perry's father, the Lone Wolf and the desperate fate of his wife and children who “shared a doom against which virtue was no defense”  Thinking of Perry's skewed relationship with Cookie, the nurse he had almost married.  His deification of Willie Jay, his thwarted attempts to escape his own fate. First the slow alcoholic death of his mother, then the suicide of his brother followed by his sister. Now his own repellent crime. Perry's only remaining sister Bobo was terrified of her brother and haunted by her past.  Capote writes that when she ‘bolted the door, she had in mind the dead as well as the living”
In Lansing, north east Kansas, we met Davis, an undertaker who was in his 20s at the time of the murderers’ state execution on April, 14, 1965. His job was to wait for Dick’s dead body and drive him to the funeral home. 
It was not raining as Capote reported. Davis said it was a still night with a low-lying mist in the air. He heard the terrible drop of the trapdoor.

By a strange twist of fate, traditional death row protocol was derailed that night: the condemned used to walk across the wasteland to the warehouse, but on this occasion the prisoners were driven. Unaware of the change in procedure, Davis drove past the prison car. No one will ever know for certain, but Davis is sure that because of this, Dick saw the arrival of his own hearse.

Tara Darby is a photographer based in Hackney, London. She is a regular contributor to Another, Dazed & Confused and many other international publications. She is currently working on a short film and exhibition

JM Lapham is a musician based in Austin, Texas. He has recorded albums with the band, The Earlies, for Names/679, and collaborated with Micah P. Hinson on The Late Cord for 4AD. He is currently finishing an album for an as yet untitled new project