When you read a true-crime story, and specific dates are listed do you try to remember, in general, where you lived or what you may have been doing on that day?

yes lol absolutely… I remember there being some episode of American Justice on once… I’ve seen so many they all blend together, but someone was arrested on my birthday in the 90s sometime… I thought it was rather humorous.

I don’t read true crime stories – the news is depressing and detailed enough – but when reading other books, history, biography etc., then yes. I do.

Yes, I do do that. Though usually for me, it’s watching Cold Case Files or American Justice. Of course, I was born in 1991, so not as many years to think back on. :P

Yes! I love true crime books so much. It’s interesting to think “holy shit, I was celebrating 2 months of life here on earth, and this guy was putting chopped up human in a bag and burying it in the woods!”

I do that. But for In Cold Blood, I tried to imagine where my mother or father was, since the events of that book occurred when they would have been about 10–11 years old.

I’m currently reading an Ann Rule book “You Belong to Me” I think is the title. It mostly takes place in the 80s and early 90s. I just kind of think back to how old I was when it was happening.

I am writing a book that takes place in the 90s so I love this question but I think the genre of the book (fiction or non) doesn’t matter hearing specific dates and getting a picture for the era will take you back.

@aprilsimnel Since I’m from Kansas I found In Cold Blood really interesting. It named places I’ve been a million times, etc. My grandma was barely married when those murders took place and she told me about how terrible it was and everyone was scared, etc. It was very interesting to hear her take on it.

Usually such stories relate in great detail exactly where I was and what I was doing.

@knitfroggy – Wow! I’ll bet hardly anyone knew what to make of Capote. No wonder he brought Harper Lee along. She could be the normal one.

@knitfroggy I read a book called The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. Its about a trip he takes across the states. ITs really good but anyhow he’s in Kansas in whatever the town is that that whole thing happened in and he’s asking kids about it and none of them know! Or one of them is like “oh, yeah, i think i’ve heard of that” but he basically says no one talks about it even though its really interesting that they’re living right where this horrible thing occurred. is that true or no?

@deni I don’t really know. It happened in Western Kansas and I live in South Central Kansas, near Wichita. And it happened way before my mom was born, so I never really heard anyone talk about it. I heard about the book and decided to read it when I was in high school in the early 90s. No one around here ever talked about it by then.

@aprilsimnel Have you seen the movie Capote with Phillip Seymour Hoffman? It’s really excellent. I think it’s probably pretty accurate to how Capote was seen by the people in Kansas. A lot of people here are very Republican, Christian people that don’t generally accept differences in people too easily.

@ratboy ROFL!!! Well, I think I know who you are!!!

@knitfroggy From what little I’ve learned about him, he was driven and rather eccentric…but he got the job done.

@Val123 He was gay. Can you imagine hanging out in Western Kansas in the 50s, being a gay man from New York? Hell, I’d probably hate to hang around in Western Kansas now if I were a gay man from New York! :)

I’ll have to see that picture, @knitfroggy. I’ll bet everyone was scared of being murdered in their beds. It was so random. I realized while I read the book that Capote seemed a little sweet on Perry Smith. I found that disturbing. I wonder what sort of book another author would have written. There isn’t much other true crime I’ve read that I recall of the top of my head, besides the book James Ellroy wrote about his mother. That book was just sad.

@aprilsimnel From what I’ve gathered Capote became quite attached to Perry Smith. You should watch the movie…I don’t know how accurate it was, but it was very good!

@knitfroggy I wouldn’t want to hang out in Western Kansas no matter WHAT I was! There is nothing there!!

@Val123 No…and I literally can hear “Dueling Banjos” playing in my head just thinking about it…<shiver>

@knitfroggy LOL!

Yes, I remember hearing that Charles Manson was going to return to Death Valley, CA to dig up his guitar. I was a Park Ranger there and hoped he did not break out of jail while I was there.