In the book, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote the two killers, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, should have both been sentenced to death. Even though Dick never pulled the trigger or assisted anyway in the killing of the Clutter family he never told Perry not to stop. Dick brought the shotgun and had intended on using it but never did. Perry was the one that killed all four if the Clutter’s so his sentencing was more clear cut than Dick’s. They killed them left and on their way back to where they came from Dick was making jokes and Perry was laughing at them. This shows that they did not feel bad for they had just done. Most people would have been hysteric or full of adrenaline for doing something so shameful but they did not,
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He spent a lot of his adolescence in orphanages and Salvation Army homes. “A children's shelter operated by the Salvation Army. They hated me, too. For wetting the bed...Oh, Jesus, was she an Evil Bastard! Incarnate. What she used to do, she'd fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under until I was blue." (Page 132) He was abused everywhere he went and never had an education after the third grade. This mental and physical abuse had taken its toll on him by the time his father took him out of the orphanage and took him to Alaska to live with him. When he turns sixteen Perry joins the Merchant Marines, then the army until a motorcycle accident, that disfigured his legs, gets him discharged. “The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act;...Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage or another.”(Page 245-246) Perry killed the Clutter Family because of all the abuse he took growing up he just snapped and killed all of them one by one. There was nothing that the family could have done different Perry was too on edge and just flat out
He spent a lot of his adolescence in orphanages and Salvation Army homes. “A children's shelter operated by the Salvation Army. They hated me, too. For wetting the bed...Oh, Jesus, was she an Evil Bastard! Incarnate. What she used to do, she'd fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under until I was blue." (Page 132) He was abused everywhere he went and never had an education after the third grade. This mental and physical abuse had taken its toll on him by the time his father took him out of the orphanage and took him to Alaska to live with him. When he turns sixteen Perry joins the Merchant Marines, then the army until a motorcycle accident, that disfigured his legs, gets him discharged. “The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act;...Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage or another.”(Page 245-246) Perry killed the Clutter Family because of all the abuse he took growing up he just snapped and killed all of them one by one. There was nothing that the family could have done different Perry was too on edge and just flat out