In late 1959, Truman Capote chose a Kansas quadruple murder over a profile of a Manhattan cleaning woman because he assumed it would be the quicker assignment. It became a six-year obsession. This episode follows the flamboyant New York writer, silk dressing gown in tow, into the traumatized farming town of Holcomb after the killings of Herb, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter, and explains why he needed his childhood friend Harper Lee to bridge the cultural gap with wary locals.

We examine the immersive methods behind what became known as new journalism, the 8,000 pages of notes, his refusal to use a tape recorder and claim of 90 percent recall, and his deepening identification with killer Perry Smith over Richard Hickok. We confront the ethical bind of a book that could not end until the men were executed in April 1965, the serialization in the New Yorker, the darkened blood on the cover, and the fabrications later uncovered by Jack Olsen and Philip K. Tompkins, including an invented graveside scene, a downplayed informant, and a jailer’s wife who denied the tender bond attributed to her.

• A 300-word newspaper blurb that launched a six-year project
• Harper Lee’s role in winning the trust of Holcomb residents
• Memorized interviews, no tape recorder, and 8,000 pages of research
• Five years waiting on death row appeals and the toll on Capote’s psyche
• The fabricated Dewey grave visit, Floyd Wells’s overlooked tip, and the precedent set for the true crime genre