The credibility of Truman Capote’s masterpiece of non-fiction, In Cold Blood, is set to be challenged by a fresh account of the notorious 1959 killings in Kansas, after a judge ruled that the secret files of one of the agents who investigated the case may be published.
A new book on the gruesome murder of a family in the town of Holcomb, drawn from the notes of Harold Nye, a Kansas bureau of investigation agent, is expected to be released next year after Judge Larry Hendricks rejected an attempt by the state government to keep the files suppressed.
Ronald Nye, the late agent’s son, said on Tuesday that his book would use his father’s investigation reports to present a “totally different theory” from Capote’s on how the killings of Herb Clutter, Clutter’s wife and their children came about.
“Capote had a fact here, and a fact there, and filled in the gaps with literary licence,” said Nye, 64. “But these files show the facts in a line, with a clear landscape on what happened.” The book’s working title is The Nye Journals – and what Capote left out of In Cold Blood.
Nye declined to go into detail about what disclosures should be expected from the book, which was co-written with Gary McAvoy, an author. “I can’t say yet because that is the central substance of the book,” he said.
Hendricks said in his ruling that he acted in error by issuing an earlier restraining order against Nye’s publication of the files, which was in fact protected by the first amendment of the US constitution. Nye says that his father kept the files at home and that he recovered from a waste paper basket after his mother disposed of them.
“The state has not articulated why its rights to maintain and preserve the Nye materials requires that the defendants not be able to use those materials in a book,” Hendricks said in the ruling at Shawnee County district court, which was made public this week. The judge did not rule on a claim by Kansas to own the files, which has been the state’s central argument for blocking their release since filing its lawsuit in 2012.
Nye said that he and McAvoy hoped to release the book in time for the 50th anniversary of In Cold Blood’s publication, next September. The authors claim that they actually discovered more new material in the course of researching their defence against the Kansas government.
“The irony is, had they simply avoided such heavy-handed tactics as pressing this lawsuit and publicly tarnishing Harold Nye’s good name, we might never have discovered sensational details that time and opportunity revealed as we prepared our defence,” said McAvoy.
In Cold Blood reported in extraordinary detail how Clutter and his wife Bonnie Mae, and their teenage children Kenyon and Nancy were killed at their western Kansas farmhouse. A pair of parolees, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, were convicted of the murders and executed in 1965.
Capote’s book, which he researched with his friend Harper Lee at his side, revolutionised crime reporting and the so-called “non-fiction novel” and spawned a series of films and other adaptations. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of the author in 2005’s Capote.
The Kansas attorney general also sought to block publication of the files on the grounds that the descendants of the Clutters should have their privacy protected. However, Hendricks said in his ruling that “publicity continues to follow this case even 55 years after its occurrence.” The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Harold Nye served as director of the Kansas bureau of investigation for two years and worked there for 20 years before retiring in 1975, according to his son. He has recalled that his father felt so disappointed by Capote’s version of the killings that he threw the book across the room a little more than 100 pages in. “But my father’s files will be jaw-dropping,” said Nye.
