Episode 22: The Clutter Murders Part II: The Devil's Front Porch

In this second episode on the Clutter murders made famous by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, we clean up even more of the mess left by Truman Capote’s sloppy work by having a look at the two killers. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were not the simple embodiments of hick evil they were made out to be. Like their victim Herb Clutter, they were products of the epochal changes that the twentieth century brought to the American heartland, and specifically an institution designed to manage the wasted humans these changes created: the prison system. We take a look at the life of “the devil’s front porch,” aka Lansing prison where the 'score' was exchanged like any other currency in the hellish environment, by later informant Floyd Wells. We'll look as well as the two killers long experience of mental degradation and bodily damage. Nothing can excuse the br ...