(TRUMAN CAPOTE)
EXTRACT
Monday, January 11. I have a lawyer. Mr. Fleming. An old red tie.
The court, informed that the accused had no funds to pay for legal assistance, representado por el juez Roland H. Tate, nombró como representantes suyos dos abogados del lugar, Arthur Fleming y Harrison Smith.
Fleming, setenta y un años, antiguo alcalde de Garden City, hombre pequeño que anima su aspecto nada sensacional con vistosas corbatas, se resistía a aceptar el nombramiento.
—No deseo encargarme del caso —le dijo al juez—. Pero si el tribunal juzga conveniente designarme, entonces, naturalmente, no tengo otra alternativa.
El abogado de Hickock, Harrison Smith, de cuarenta y cinco años y metro ochenta de altura, jugador de golf, Elk [1] high level, accepted the task in a spirit of resignation.
"Somebody has to. And I will do my best. Although I doubt that will increase my popularity by these contours.
Friday, January 15. Mrs. Meier had the radio on in the kitchen and I heard the district attorney asked the death penalty. " The rich do not never hang. Only the poor and friendless " .
In his statement to the press, the district attorney, Duane West, ambitious young man of twenty years for its large size, appears sometimes forty to fifty, said
- If the case goes to jury, I will ask the jurors who convicted the defendants declare that death. If the defenders to forgo a jury and presented to the court conviction, I will ask a judge to issue the death penalty. I knew you would have to take a decision and I have not come such a decision lightly. I think that given the violence of the crime and the absolute lack of compassion shown by the murderers the only way to get the audience to feel totally secure is to decree the death penalty against those defendants. And this is especially true in Kansas, where there is no life without the possibility of getting parole. In practice, those sentenced to life imprisonment remain in jail not more than fifteen years.
Wednesday, January 20. I have asked that I submit to lie detector tests as the case Walker.
Cases such as the Clutter, crimes of this magnitude, arouse the interest of men of law everywhere, especially those who are responsible for the investigation of similar crimes still unsolved, because it always is possible to solve a mystery can be solved one at a time. Among the many officials who were concerned by the events of Garden City included the Sheriff of Sarasota County, Florida, the district in which Osprey, a fishing village near Tampa and stage, only a month after the tragedy Clutter, the quadruple murder an isolated ranch, which Smith had read in a newspaper Miami on Christmas Day. The victims were also four members of the family: a young couple, Clifford Walker and his wife, and their two children, boy and girl all dead from a gunshot to the head. As the murderers of the Clutter had spent the night of December 19, the date of the murders in a hotel in Tallahassee, the Sheriff of Osprey, who had no clue to follow, was understandably anxious to question two men and submit to a polygraph examination. Hickock consented to be tested and so did Smith, who told authorities of Kansas:
"I told when it happened, telling Dick: "I bet that whoever did it is someone who had heard about Kansas. A maniac. "
The results of the test, with great disappointment Osprey Sheriff and Al Dewey, who does not believe in exceptional matches were conclusively negative. The Walker family's murderer is still to be discovered.
Sunday, January 31. Dick's father came to see him. I said hello! when passing (in front of the cell), but has continued to walk. I may not have heard. I knew Mrs. M (Meier) that Mrs. H (Hickock) did not come because they do not feel strong. Snowing devilishly. Last night I dreamed I was in Alaska with my dad and I awoke in a cold puddle of urine!
Mr. Hickok spent three hours with his son. Then he turned, walking in the snow, the Garden City station, an old worn, bent and emaciated by cancer would kill him a few months later. At the station, while waiting for a train that would take him home, he told a reporter:
"I saw Dick. We had a lengthy conversation. I can assure to you it's not like people say. Or as they write in the newspapers. These guys did not enter the house with a violent agenda. My boy, no. He may have its bad things but never come to that. Smitty was. Dick told me he did not even know when the man attacked Smitty (Clutter), and opened his throat. Dick was not even in the same room. He ran when he heard the fight. Dick took his gun and as he tells it: "Smitty took my gun and shot him in the middle of the head." He added: "Dad, would have taken his gun and killing him before he murdered the rest of the family. Had he done so, now I find this situation. "I also feel so. Now, as things stand, as seen by the people, has no chance. Hang them both. And he added, with fatigue and defeat hovering in his eyes see a child hanging, knowing they're going to hang himself, is the worst that can happen to a man.
Neither the father nor the sister of Perry wrote or came to visit. It was assumed that Tex John Smith was looking for gold somewhere in Alaska, although the police, despite their best efforts, could not locate it. The sister had told investigators that he feared his brother and asked them please not to inform him your current address. (When they told Smith smiled slightly and said: "I wish I had been in that house that night. What a beautiful scene!")
Apart from the squirrel, apart from Meier and rare queries Fleming with his lawyer, Perry was very lonely. Dick missed. I think a lot Dick, wrote one day in his improvised daily. Since their arrest they were not allowed to communicate and that was, apart from their freedom, what I love: talking to Dick, to be with him. Dick was not the "rock hard" that once thought: 'pragmatic', 'manly', 'a real Man of Steel ", had proven" quite weak and superficial, "" a coward. " Yet, of all people in the world, was with him that he was most identified at the time, because, at least, were of the same species, brothers in the race of Cain. Separated from him, Perry felt "all alone. As an individual covered with sores. Someone only a madman would have something to do. "
But one morning in mid-February, Perry received a letter. The postmark was from Reading, Massachusetts, and said
Dear Perry: It hurt a lot hearing about the situation where you are and I decided to write you, tell you I remember you and I would like to help as I could. If you do not remember my name, Don Cullivan, I send a photo taken at the time that you and I met. When I recently read in the paper about you, I was surprised and started thinking about those times when I was. Although we were not close friends, I remember much more about you than most guys I met in the military. It must have been in the autumn of 1951 when I pointed to the 761 th Engineer Company Light Team at Fort Lewis, Washington. Were low (I am not much higher) robust, dark, with a rich and thick black hair and almost always a smile on your face. Having lived in Alaska, many will called "Eskimo." One of the first times I noticed you was on a visit to the company in which we opened all the closets. All the cabinets were in order, even yours, just had the cap full of pictures of girls. We all think you were going to charge you. But the official inspection took it well and when it was over I remember we all thought you were a guy's nose. I remember we played quite well at the pool and I can see even in the recreation room of the company; playing. You were one of the best drivers truck body. Do you remember the exercises they had us do? On a trip in the winter remember that each was assigned a truck for the duration of the training exercise. In our body, the trucks were not heated and we were dying of cold. I remember you made a hole in the floor of your truck so he could get the heat engine. The reason I remember so well is the impression I was, so that the " mutilation" of the Army property is a crime for which you can be punished very severely. Of course I was still very novice in the military and was probably afraid of breaking rules at all, but I remember how you laughed (and were warm) while I worried (and I was freezing). I remember you bought a bike and not very well what happened to you with it. Do you chase the police? An accident? Whatever it was, was the first time I realized I had something weird. I may be wrong in some of my memories because of it eight years ago and I just tried you for eight months. As I recall you took me very well and I liked your way of being. You were always cheerful and bluffing, you did your job well and do not remember that you complain about anything. Course looked a little wild but I never knew much about it. But now you're really in a hurry. I try to imagine how you are now. What are you thinking. When I first read it I was stunned. Really it is. But then I left the newspaper and I started to think otherwise. But think of you again. I could not forget. I am, or try to be fairly religious (Catholic). There always was. I simply get by without much thought the only important thing there is. I had never thought seriously about death or the possibility of another life. I was too full of life: car, college, girls, etc. But my little brother died of leukemia, he was only seventeen. He knew he was dying and then I've often wondered what he thought. And I think about you and want to know what you think. I did not know what to tell my brother in the last weeks before he died. But I know what she would say now. And so I write: because God made you like me and He loves you as much as me and how little we know of God what has happened to you you could very well have happened to me. Your friend, Don Cullivan.
The name meant nothing to him, but Perry immediately recognized the face of the photograph, a young soldier with the brush hair and round eyes very serious. He read the letter many times and, despite the religious overtones seemed little persuasive ("I tried to believe, but do not believe, and I can not pretend no good), the letter moved him. There was someone who offered help, a wise and respectable man who had tried at one time and that he had had sympathy, a man who signed your friend. Full of gratitude, in a hurry, he began his letter:
" Dear Don: Why, of course I remember Don Cullivan ... "
La celda de Hickock no tenía ventana. Daba a un espacioso corredor y a las otras celdas. Pero no estaba aislado, tenía gente con quien hablar, una variedad de borrachos, falsificadores, hombres que habían pegado a sus mujeres, vagabundos mexicanos, y Dick, con su desenvoltura parlanchina de «confidente», sus anécdotas sexuales, sus chistes verdes, era popular entre los reclusos (aunque había uno que no quería saber nada de él, un viejo que le silbaba: «Asesino. ¡Asesino!» Y que una vez le había arrojado un cubo de sucia agua de fregar).
Exteriormente, Hickock looked like all young singularly unconcerned. When no alternating or asleep, was lying on his bunk smoking or chewing gum or reading sports magazines or novels. They often spend hours merely whistling your favorite tunes (you Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, Shuffle off to Buffalo) staring at the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling of his cell and was kept on night and day. I hated the dull light of that monitoring, disturbed sleep and, more specifically, jeopardized the success of an intimate project: to escape. Because the prisoner did not feel as carefree as he seemed not so resigned; try our best to avoid "Rocking in the Great Swing." Convinced that this ceremony would be the result of any process, especially if the process took place in Kansas, had decided "to take them. Take the first car and take to their heels. " But first it needed a gun for weeks to be devoted to the preparation of a: something very like a punch to break the ice and that would get mortal gently between the shoulder blades of vicesheriff Meier. The components of the weapon, a piece of wood and a hard wire, were originally part of a toilet brush, which he had appropriated, removing it and hiding it under his mattress. Late at night when the only sounds were snoring, coughing and moaning mournful Santa Fe Railroad that resounded in the city in darkness, sharpening the wire against the concrete floor of the cell, and while laying his plans worked.
The first winter after graduating from high school. Hickock Kansas and Colorado had traveled hitchhiking.
"It was when I was looking for work. Well, once a truck driver and I started discussing about anything in particular, but undertook to blows with me. I stood in the road. Back at the top of the Rockies. Sleet fell, and walked many miles with his nose bleeding fifteen pigs. Then I came upon a group of huts in a wooded slope. Cabañas summer, all closed and empty at the time. And I got one. There was wood and tin cans and even some whiskey. I stayed there a week and was one of the best times I spent in my entire life. Although it hurt his nose and his eyes were green and yellow. And when he finished snowing, the sun rose. I've never seen the same sky. And Mexico. If Mexico had cold weather. I recorded the other huts and found ham radio and a rifle. It was great. All day there with the rifle. Turned on the sun face. Boy, how well I passed! I felt like Tarzan. At night, wrapped in a blanket by the fire, I tired of beans with fried ham, and I fell asleep listening to music on the radio. No one came by. I bet you could have stayed until spring.
If the leak was successful, that's what Dick meant to do: go to the mountains of Colorado and find a hut to hide until the spring (only, of course, the future of Perry did not care). The prospect of an idyllic rose through the inspired fervor with which sharpened his wire limándolo to achieve flexibility and finesse of a stylet.
[1] Member of the American Association was founded in 1868 whose main objective to promote a feeling of brotherhood and good citizenship. (N. of T.)
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