In Episode 6, Tara Darby considers the true nature of killer Perry Smith
Truman Capote masterfully evokes a pre-lapsarian America full of kindness and strong moral values versus a bleak, debased world inhabited by the attackers. Detectives on the case were perplexed by the “fragmentary indications of ironic, erratic compassion” of a killer who gave Kenyon Clutter a pillow to rest his head on, and who laid out a cardboard mattress box for Herb Clutter in case he got cold. All this before shooting them at point blank range in the head.
The enduring mystery of Perry lies in these contradictions. Norman Mailer described him as one of the great characters of American literature; Capote was compelled by him; Joe James, a young Cherokee friend of Perry’s travelled for two days and a night from Alaska to stand as a character witness for him during his trial; Don Cullivan served briefly with Perry in the army and travelled from Boston to give his support. Josephine Meier, the wife of the assistant sheriff at Garden City Jail shows a kindness to Perry in the novel that I found incredibly moving: her open heartedness, her lack of judgment. I asked the sheriff about her and he told me that she was his aunt. The courthouse has been converted now and the cells that were there no longer exist. I asked if he had ever seen the picture Perry gave to Josephine when he left for death row. It was a picture of Perry as a young boy, as he wanted to be remembered. The sheriff said he had not.
Perry told Don Cullivan that the Clutters had never “hurt him as other people” had all his life, “maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones that had to pay for it.” Poignantly, Alvin Dewey, detective of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation remarks in the book, “The crime was a psychological accident, an impersonal act. The victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered.”
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
