Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood Essay The movie Capote, demonstrates Truman Capote’s uses an overly manipulative interrogation style. Which raised the question: If he can manipulate the people he is interviewing into telling them what he wants, how is he going to manipulate his readers to believe what he wants them to? Throughout In Cold Blood, Truman Capote morphs the story with his biased points of view and overly dramatic word choice which inhibits readers from developing their own opinions and knowing what truly happened that one fateful night in which “four shotgun blasts, all told, ended six human lives” (5). Capote criticizes Holcomb, Kansas and it’s inhabitants so badly that you walk away with the feeling that it is a podunk town full of idiots.
He even mentions that Dick wanted to “bust that little girl” (243). However, only small blurbs of Dick’s confession are found in the book, but Perry’s of course receives a whole chapter devoted to it. This is why Dick is always considered to be the evil mastermind behind the murders. He really has very little influence in the book because next to none of anything he said is used. It is known that Capote spent just a few hours with Dick during the time he was interviewing the killers, but he spent an immense amount of time with Perry. How can anyone be sure that Perry is telling the truth? Where is the real evidence that Dick was a pedophile? The only two “documented” ones I can find are inside In Cold Blood. The first being the one about Nancy and the second being the time in Miami where he allegedly admits to “seducing pubescent girls, ‘eight or nine times’ in the last several years” (201). This was most likely said by Perry. All we have is what Capote heard from Perry and then decided to add to the book and not one of them has been
Capote writes that Dewey believes that, “Smith, though he was the true murderer possessed a quality like an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded” (341). I highly doubt Dewey ever felt this bad for Perry. I suffered child abuse and frankly I believe Perry deserved the sentence he was given (death this is, not death by hanging, I firmly believe that is cruel and unusual punishment). Abuse suffered as a child should never be an excuse for murder, except in the case of protecting yourself from your abuser. Anything other than that gives people reason to fear those who have suffered as children instead of respecting and trying to help them as they should. If he had developed a debilitating mental condition because of this then it is a completely different story, but I cannot find much evidence that suggests he has a mental problem that should be used to influence the jury to a not-guilty verdict. Perry’s psychological examiner states that “ he has a ‘paranoid’ orientation towards the world and an ever-present, poorly controlled rage” (297). After hearing this I doubt Dewey would feel sorry for Perry, he has no debilitating mental illness and though he suffered a lot as a child it did not inhibit him from knowing right from wrong. The fact is he knew what he was doing, what he was getting into, and he had multiple chances to do the right thing, but chose not to do