Infamous ‘In Cold Blood’ murders revisited in documentary

They were unconscionable murders that shocked the nation, spawned a best-selling book and continue to fascinate today.

Director Joe Berlinger (“Paradise Lost,” “Brother’s Keeper”) revisits the 1959 Holcomb, Kan., killings in the two-part “Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders” (8 p.m. Nov. 18-19, SundanceTV).

The four-hour documentary tells the story of how Perry Edward Smith and Kansas City native Richard Eugene Hickock broke into the home of Herb and Bonnie Clutter searching for a safe that was rumored to contain $10,000.

The would-be thieves found no safe and murdered everyone present, including 15-year-old son Kenyon and 16-year-old daughter Nancy. The case was immortalized in the 1966 Truman Capote book “In Cold Blood.”

“The fact it happened in the Midwest is one of those things where there was a certain sense of innocence (shattered), but I think that sense of innocence pervaded the entire country at the time,” Berlinger said. “That was one of the fundamental ingredients that made this explode into a story we’re still talking about today.”

“Cold Blooded” includes first-ever interviews with several Clutter descendants, family friends and Paul Dewey, son of KBI investigator Alvin Dewey. (Descendants of surviving Clutter family members — daughters Beverly and Eveanna, who had moved out of their parents’ home prior to the crime — agreed only to audio interviews and don’t reveal their identities.)

“They were very reluctant up until deep into production, but I think they decided that it was time to speak,” Berlinger said. “We’ve uncovered some amazing archival coverage. It will be the first time you’ll see archival footage of the family members prior to this terrible tragedy.”

In addition to old footage — including scenes of Herb and Bonnie Clutter from a 1952 episode of CBS news program “See It Now” — “Cold Blooded” includes what Berlinger calls “a very judicious use of re-creations” for key moments in the story.

Just don’t expect “Cold Blooded” to re-litigate the case or suggest an alternate to the notion that Hickock and Smith murdered the Clutters.

“It’s not like we’re reinvestigating and presenting a whole new theory and you’re going to watch the show and say, ‘Oh, my God, this is a whole different take on what’s happened,’ ” Berlinger said. “It’s just it’s the first time anyone, I believe, has really pulled back, really focused on what was the family like and who they are and humanizing them, how did the investigation unfold. (It’s) a little bit about how the reality differs a little bit from the (Capote) book.”

Berlinger said “Cold Blooded” spends more time understanding the Clutters and their killers.

“To me, it’s just setting the scene and telling the story,” he said, referencing ESPN’s 2016 docuseries “O.J.: Made in America” as an inspiration. “We try to contextualize things that you wouldn’t have thought to contextualize if this had been 25 years ago.”

Interviews with family friends are key to that effort. Paul Dewey said his family attended the same Methodist church as the Clutters. Herb Clutter and the children had been at the Dewey home for a potluck two weeks before the murders.

“It wasn’t just another case for (my dad),” Paul Dewey said. “It was very personal.”

Dewey, who is now a lawyer in Bend, Ore., said after his parents died, he and his brother were advised by Capote friend and “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee to avoid the press.

But after his brother’s death and being contacted by Berlinger, whom Dewey researched and called “a very serious documentarian,” Dewey decided the time was right to speak on the record.

“I went through all the old boxes that Mom had saved of files and old reels from the ’50s and ’60s,” Dewey said. “I just thought this was the chance to tell that story.”

The timing of “Cold Blooded” isn’t coincidental. It’s a year after the 50th anniversary of the publication of “In Cold Blood” and comes at a time when there’s more interest than ever in true-crime stories, driven by the popularity of podcast “Serial” and the successful 2015 TV docuseries “The Jinx” (HBO) and “Making a Murderer” (Netflix).

This past summer, following the ratings growth of true-crime cable network Investigation Discovery, cable’s Oxygen channel changed its entire programming lineup to true crime.

“One of the pleasures and ironies of doing this project is that I was deeply influenced by (‘In Cold Blood’) when I first read it as a teen, and it has very much informed my filmmaking style,” Berlinger said, noting that he takes nonfiction material and gives it dramatic structure similar to the way Capote did in “In Cold Blood.”

For “Cold Blooded,” that means presenting the case in the chronological order it unfolded. The first night of “Cold Blooded” follows the case from the murders to the arrests of Hickock and Smith. The second night follows their trial and the reaction to Capote’s book.

“I also believe, without question, this crime, this book and the Richard Brooks movie (based on ‘In Cold Blood’), did give birth to the modern true-crime fascination that has now exploded,” Berlinger said. “So we can take a step back and look at the crime and these two vehicles — the book and the movie — that gave birth to what we’re now seeing today.”

That interest in true crime has opened up new formats to Berlinger and other filmmakers who work in the genre. Prior to 2015, it was rare to see a multi-part TV documentary about a single true-crime event. Now they’re all the rage.

“There has been a pendulum swing to higher quality nonfiction (docuseries) versus ‘Duck Dynasty’ or ‘The Real Housewives of XYZ,’ ” Berlinger said. “Television is craving more premium nonfiction in general. Then you have the flood of new content outlets — Hulu, Netflix — and Netflix’s success is putting pressure on everybody else.”

But just because viewers are keen on true crime doesn’t mean they are well-served by every story that has been made into a series rather than a one-shot film.

“I welcome the extra screen time, on the one hand, because series allow you to do a deeper dive,” Berlinger said. “But without naming names, I’ve seen some multi-part series that don’t deserve to be the number of episodes they are.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Infamous ‘In Cold Blood’ murders revisited in documentary."