Two men murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas; the events became the subject of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of the true crime genre.

In the early morning of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family – Herb Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon – were murdered in their rural home just outside the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. They were both executed on April 14, 1965. The murders were detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.

Holcomb is a city in Finney County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,245. It is located south of Highway 50.

Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, and he is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. His work and his life story have been adapted into and have been the subject of more than 20 films and television productions.

In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by the American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 Clutter family murders in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.

True crime is a genre of non-fiction work in which an author examines a crime, including detailing the actions of people associated with and affected by the crime, and investigating the perpetrator's motives. True crime works often deal with violent crimes such as murders and serial killers, including high-profile cases. A true crime work may use either a journalistic style with a focus on known facts, or a speculative style with a larger focus on the author's personal conclusions regarding a crime.