What If Truman Capote Was Wrong?
Book Review of We Were Killers Once
We Were Killers Once begins with a flashback to 1959: six-year-old Brigid Quinn sits on her father’s lap as he and his police buddies recount the brutal murder of a Florida family just before Christmas. As the men sit in the kitchen drinking and smoking, they can’t help but make the connection between the Walker murders and the equally gruesome killings of the Clutter family just a month before in Kansas.
Their talk terrifies Brigid and though she outgrows her fear, the Clutter and the Walker murders continue to obsess her for decades. As she tells the story of that long-ago night to her husband Carlo, she has no idea he is even more closely connected to the Clutter case than she is and that the past is about to come knocking on their door. Or to be more precise — to turn up in their backyard.
I never sat in my kitchen listening to stories about murder but I vividly remember my childhood fascination with In Cold Blood. The novel sat on our bookshelves, Truman Capote’s name spelled out in an ominous shade of red.
And like Brigid, true crime stories still rivet me, whether I’m listening to the latest “My…
