Dick deserves the death penalty, so does Perry. They both are guilty of killing the Clutter Family, other crimes, and breaking many laws. Capote interviewed and talked to them before they both ended up on death row. In the book, Capote says that they both planned the murders. Dick heard about the Clutter family from a cellmate Floyd Wells that there was a safe in the family’s house containing $10,000 dollars. Floyd had worked for the Clutter family, and that is how he knew about them. When Perry and Dick invaded the Clutter house, they discovered there was no safe to be found! All they stole was a pair of binoculars, 40 dollars, a radio.
Perry & Dick met in the Kansas State Prison in Lansing, as they both had their own troubles with the law. Dick was in prison for passing bad checks, Perry for killing a colored man. Perry had a bad childhood. His mother and father were well known rodeo performers, but his father was abusive to his mother, himself, brothers, amd sisters. In 1935 his mother left him, she took Perry and his family to San Francisco. They were raised differently because his mom was an alcoholic. She later died when he was 13. Perry and his siblings were placed in a Catholic orphanage, and the nuns constantly physically abused him because of a long life problem with wetting his bed.
Dick, on the other hand, grew up as a popular student and athlete at Olathe High School. His parents were farm workers. He had bad head injuries from a car accident in 1950 which left him disfigured. He wanted to attend college, but his family did not have enough money to provide for his education so he worked as a mechanic. He got married and had 3 sons, then later ended his marriage in a divorce. He turned to petty crimes such as creating and using fake checks.
Both Perry and Dick both testified at the Clutter murder trial, both giving different testimonials as to who actually did the killing. Perry initaly confessed to killing all four members of the family. No one will ever really know who killed them, who only Perry and Dick, whom were executed hanged on April 14, 1965.
You started strong, but then seemed to get lost in giving me a summary. How can you refocus the writing so you are talking only about whether or not they deserved the death penalty?
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