Perry and Dick decide they want to head back West and decide on the location of Texas, because Dick isn’t finding work in their current location. On the way out West Dick and Perry give two hitchhikers a ride, and originally plan on killing them, but end up becoming friends with them and find a way of making some money by picking up scrap bottles off the side of the road. When Dick and Perry reach Las Vegas, Dick starts thinking of way he can leave Perry because Dick doesn’t want to travel with him anymore. Then on December 30th, a cop passing by the post office that Dick and Perry were at notice the old car they had stolen, and arrest Dick and Perry. At first Dewey isn’t sure that he can prove that they are the murderers, but when the cops find Perry’s old box of all of his possessions they match the footprints of his boots with the ones from the images of the murder scene. They both go through many interviews and at first Dick doesn’t admit to killing the Clutters, but when Perry is accused he doesn’t deny it. Later Dick states that Perry killed the whole Clutter family and he just witnessed it, but Perry claims that Dick killed Nancy and Mrs. Clutter, and Perry killed the other two. Once the two murderers arrive in Kansas, Perry admits that he killed all four of the Clutter members, and tells the investigators where to find the evidence at. Perry and Dick are put in separate cells, and are both trying to figure out a way to escape, but Dick is not planning on taking Perry with him. The day of the trial Perry and Dick figure out who the “living witness” was (Floyd Wells) and he gives his statement. Wells is rewarded with cash and is given parole. The court has still not made the decision on what will happen with Perry and Dick. 

 

2.  Do you think that Perry really pushed that man off the bridge like he told his sister he did? Or is it only another one of the fake stories he used to intimidate people or pump up his ego in prison, like the story that he told Dick?

3. Is Dick really so unfeeling due to the accident he was in that his parents claimed “he was never the same afterward”, or is Dick actually a psychopath by nature?

4. Do you think Capote made a conscious decision to focus on Perry and portray him in a way that made him seem more human, when he could’ve instead chosen diction and stories that showed him in a more sinister light? 

5. Why do you think Capote has tagged Dick as the more evil one behind the case, when it was Perry who really did the actual killing of the family.

6. Do you think that the recount of the killings as told by Perry was true? They had nothing to lose but Perry still could’ve fabricated parts of the story, and if he did which do you think they would be?

7. Do you think that the loss of 4 innocent lives was really just over some petty cash and their concern for “no witnesses”, or could Perry and Dick have had another motive that was overlooked or unexplored?

8. How weird do you think it would be to write the way Capote does, from the point of view of the murderer, and constructing their thought process throughout the story?

9. For Dick and Perry to do what they did, do you think they are extremely dumb, or extremely intelligent to devise something like that?

10. Who do you personally think killed the clutters, because they never reveal who specifically murdered the family? Dick, Perry, or both?