When True Crime Became All Too Real

Sixty years ago, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were executed for the murders of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas—crimes famously depicted in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The chilling story of the home invasion and subsequent killings of the family of four continues to absorb the public, so much so that cellblocks such as the one where Hickock and Smith were held—and where Capote conducted the interviews that formed the basis of his true-crime classic—will now be open for guided tours.

This announcement, made last fall, triggered memories that I had long tried to suppress. When I was a teenager, my family also experienced a brutal home invasion—but with this crucial difference: we lived to tell the tale. Whether any of us ever wished to tell that tale was another matter. None of us wanted to revisit the terror-inducing details of being handcuffed, gagged, and held at gunpoint. Neither did we want to address why we had become the target of such a crime. Or how broken our pretend-perfect home already was, long before it was physically invaded.

The facts were reported in the January 13, 1968, edition of The Baltimore Sun under the headline, “Doctor, Family Bound as Home Is Looted.” As the article recounted, “A northwest Baltimore physician and three members of his family were handcuffed and gagged by a pair of bandits who barged into their home at 7:15 p.m.” The physician was my father. The three other family members were my mother, my 16-year-old brother, and me, age 15. My other brother was away at college.

The evening had begun as normal. Because Dad worked late most nights, he wasn’t home when our doorbell rang—a normal enough occurrence. Dad’s friend, the owner of a small pharmaceutical company, would often stop by around dinnertime to drop off boxes of unspecified medical supplies. That evening, however, it wasn’t Dad’s friend at the door but two men wearing Groucho Marx Halloween masks. They pushed their way inside and pointed their pistols at us.

“Dr. Cole? Dr. Cole!” they shouted. Clearly, they knew whom they were looking for. But what did they want with Dad?