In Cold Blood’s Last Meal

“Read in the paper, afternoon paper, what they ordered for their last meal? Ordered the same menu. Shrimp. French fries. Garlic bread. Ice cream and strawberries and whipped cream. Understand Smith didn’t touch his much.”

There’s something very haunting about a last meal—the paradox of eating and dying both bound up together, each a fundamental part of being human. Famous last meals from notorious death row inmates largely consist of opulent or gluttonous options: Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber, asked for two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. The Vampire of Düsseldorf, Peter Kürten, requested Wienerschnitzel, fried potatoes and a bottle of white wine. Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of murdering the Lindbergh baby, opted for chicken, buttered peas, French fries, olives, celery, cherries and a slice of cake. Ted Bundy declined a special meal and instead received the standard prison fare of medium-rare steak, eggs over easy, toast with butter and jelly, hash browns, milk, coffee and juice (he ate none of it.) 

In my very scientific Twitter poll, many people chose a last meal based on nostalgia. Mom’s roast chicken and gravy. Grandma’s chicken paprikash. The food that gave us comfort when we were children. So is it compassionate or perverse to offer a final taste of humanity before snuffing it out?

I was a gawky child with a morbid fascination in the macabre, so it wasn’t long before I discovered the True Crime section at my local library. I borrowed books with titles like Devil in the Darkness and Killer Clown, sandwiched between Sweet Valley and Baby-Sitters Club books to throw off the scent of any concerned adult. It was my dark secret. My guilty pleasure. My trashy Harlequin romance wrapped in a leather skin suit. I devoured grisly stories on Crime Library (RIP) and watched episodes of Forensic Files and Unsolved Mysteries. The popularity of true crime podcasts like Serial, In the Dark and My Favorite Murder gave me more ways to consume crime, and it became clear that my obsession with murder was not unique, nor was it necessarily creepy. 

Women in particular seem to gravitate to the genre. I think a lot of it has to do with our need to protect ourselves in a world that continues to prey on us. True crime stories provide cautionary tales—a tally of mistakes to avoid, an alternative to the social conditioning for women to be passive or agreeable in the face of male aggression. I was a dreamy, inquisitive child who blossomed into a paranoid, anxiety-ridden adult, due in no small part to seeking these horrific things out. I can’t say this self inflicted paranoia is necessarily a good thing, but it makes me smarter. I’m much more aware of my surroundings, the cocktail in front of me, the sharp point of my keys gripped between my fingers on dark walks home. 

“Imagination, of course, can open any door—turn the key and let terror walk right in.” 

On November 15, 1959 in a small town in Kansas, two men broke into the home of Herbert Clutter intent on robbing him of a rumored safe filled with money. After learning it didn’t exist, they murdered the whole family in cold blood. Truman Capote would go on to write the titular novel detailing the crimes of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock and their eventual execution by hanging.

In Cold Blood pioneered the true crime genre and set the tone for all future crime novels to come. Capote, along with childhood friend Harper Lee, spent an extensive amount of time in Kansas researching the case. The result is a comprehensive and engaging novel, told from varying perspectives, in which the grisly details of the murder are not revealed until the end. But before we are confronted with the horror of all that, we spend a great deal of time getting to know the killers. Capote likes to confuse the moral compass of his readers and manages to make us sympathize with murderers. 

“I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”

The accuracy of the book has been called into question since its publication, with Capote even admitting that the final scene of the novel is a complete fabrication. While I do believe a bulk of it is factual, I still wonder what parts of it came from the novelist’s pen as opposed to the journalist’s. I also find the complexities of the author’s role in this case to be fascinating. Capote injected himself into the lives of the killers, growing especially fond of Perry Smith, and cared about their well-being. And yet in order to have an ending for his book…he needed an execution. This dichotomy is brilliantly explored in the 2005 film Capote, starring the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Truman.

The case file (made public for the first time in 2013) is dense, made up of 1307 pages between the two inmates. For those curious, I’ve included a few interesting documents from Smith’s file below. From left to right:

• A letter to the warden from Truman Capote regarding his intent to visit the prisoners.
• A letter from the warden regarding Capote’s clearance, stating “if a man about 5 feet tall, approximately 50 years of age, and with a walk and voice such as you have seen and heard many times during your prison career, comes in your office it almost undoubtedly will be Mr. Capote.”
• A note from the warden regarding Smith’s self imposed hunger strike, an attempt to take his own life before it could be taken from him.
• A telegram from Perry Smith to Truman Capote, anticipating Capote’s arrival on the eve of his execution. Capote ultimately did not attend the execution, stating the emotional buildup would be too much to bear.

Rebecca Ritchey

Writer & Creator of Eating Books.

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