Harper Lee article about Clutter murders for FBI journal Grapevine found

A piece about the murders that inspired Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood suggest author had a bigger role than she let on.

Truman Capote signing copies of In Cold Blood with Harper Lee in 1966.

A previously unknown article by Harper Lee about the murders that inspired Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood offers a tantalising hint that she may have had a bigger role than she let on.

Capote, who published his book in 1965 to widespread acclaim, only ever described his friend Lee as his “research assistant” - a title that many believe underplayed her role.

Charles Shields, Lee’s biographer, has found evidence that the author of To Kill a Mockingbird wrote a substantial feature about the case for Grapevine, a journal for FBI agents. The article was published in March 1960, four months before Mockingbird.

Although the article was published anonymously, Shields found a reference to it in the Garden City Telegram in a column written by Lee’s friend Dolores Hope. Hope wrote that an article about the murder of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their two children would soon appear in Grapevine.

“Nelle Harper Lee, young writer who came to Garden City with Truman Capote to gather material for a New Yorker magazine article on the Clutter case, wrote the piece for Grapevine,” Hope wrote in February 1960. “Miss Harper’s first novel is due for publication this spring and advance reports say it is bound to be a success.”

Shields said that he found the article while updating his biography. He was taken aback when he came across Hope’s otherwise trivial columns. He checked back issues of Grapevine and found the “very well-written feature story” about the case.

Lee’s article recalled how Alvin Dewey, an agent for Kansas Bureau of Investigation, embarked upon solving the murders. “The clues Dewey and his colleagues worked on in the beginning were meagre,” she wrote. “The killers took with them the gun and shells used to murder the family; adhesive tape used to gag three of the victims could have been bought anywhere. The nylon cord with which the family were bound was of a common variety. Fingerprints were out of the question; when the house was carefully gone over the results were prints of scores of Clutter’s friends. The house, according to one friend, ‘... was like a railway station’.”

The Guardian reports that The Grapevine will reprint Lee’s article next month.

The Times