In Cold Blood

Eveanna Jarchow and Beverly English (née Clutter)

Eveanna and Beverly are the two eldest Holcomb children who have already moved out of home and thus are not murdered along with the rest of their family. Eveanna is already married and has a son who is less than a year old when the crime occurs, while Beverly is studying nursing and engaged to be married to a man named Vere English. Both of their husbands are white collar professionals, and though this means they are not candidates to one day take over the Clutter farm, Mr Clutter still approves greatly of these relationships, noting that the men are well positioned to take care of his daughters (this judgement is highly steeped in patriarchal norms, but it nevertheless presented in a positive light in the text).

Susan and Wilma Kidwell

Susan Kidwell is Nancy’s best friend, and conveys her concern for her in relation to Nancy’s ongoing conflict with her father over her relationship with Bobby. The Kidwells moved to Holcomb when Susan was eight, a “melancholy, imaginative child, willowy and wan and sensitive” but left fatherless as Mr Kidwell abandoned his wife and child. The Clutters practically “adopted” her and came to treat Susan as a member of their own family, and though she transfers to a different school, she remains very close with Nancy. This serves to amplify the tragic loss of the Clutters, as Susan must face the acute loss of her dearest friend as well as a surrogate family that showed her so much kindness. Susan gives a police statement and later testifies in court.
Her mother, Wilma Kidwell, teaches music at Holcomb School and lives with her daughter at the Teacherage. It is implied she also wrestles with grief in the wake of the murders as she hallucinates Nancy riding her horse nearby.

Bobby Rupp

Bobby Rupp is Nancy Clutter’s boyfriend, and by all accounts the two are very much in love. Mr Clutter quietly disapproves of their relationship as Bobby’s family is Catholic whereas the Clutters are Methodists, but he permits Nancy to continue seeing him on the condition that it does not become more serious. The fact that Nancy was increasingly invested in this relationship is a source of some tension between her and her father until their deaths, and Bobby is left utterly shocked by the sudden and violent death of his girlfriend. He also wrestles with a sense of survivor’s guilt and regret, as he had wanted to take Nancy out to the movies on Saturday night but Mr Clutter refused, so they had made plans for Sunday instead.

In the aftermath of the murders, he is briefly considered a suspect but passes a lie detector test and is cleared. Though he was once close with Nancy’s friends, particularly Susan, he gradually distances himself from them, unable to engage with memories of her.

Nancy and Clarence Ewalt

Nancy Ewalt is a close friend of Nancy Clutter, and together with Susan Kidwell is part of the first party to discover their friend’s dead body, having gone to the Clutters Sunday morning before church. She is greatly traumatised by these events, and her father Mr Ewalt brings her back home so he and Larry Hendricks can go investigate. Nancy will later testify alongside Susan at the trial, reliving the dreadful memory of seeing her friend’s body and the shotgun blast of blood on the walls of her room.

Jolene Katz

Jolene is the young girl who visits the Clutter house the day before they die as her mother requests Nancy show Jolene how to bake a cherry pie. After doing so, Jolene waits for her mother to pick her up and is kept company by Mrs Clutter, though she is slightly perturbed by the older woman’s fragile mental state and self-deprecating references to how her family “don’t need [her]” as their mother.

Alfred Stoecklein

Alfred is the only Clutter employee who lives on the farm, residing with his wife and three children about 100 metres away from the Clutter home. He takes the morning off on the day the Clutters are killed so that he and his wife can take their sick baby to the hospital. Herb granting him this leave and “expressing sympathy” contributes to our sense of him as a generous and compassionate man. On the night of the murders, the couple are nursing the baby in their home but do not hear the gunshots. Alfred becomes one of many characters that the people of Holcomb suspect, and this coupled with their proximity to the tragedy is enough to drive them out of their property and to another house in town.

Mr Paul and Mrs Mabel Helm

Mrs Helm is the shy Clutter housekeeper who does her best to change Mrs Clutter’s bedsheets on the rare occasions when she is not confined to her bed by her chronic depression. After the murders, she is the one who notices Kenyon’s radio is missing, which is one of the only things Dick and Perry stole in their aborted attempt at robbery. She later goes to work at Hartman’s Cafè where she withholds her knowledge of the crime scene from prying townsfolk.
Mr Helm is one of the characters who is ‘The Last to See Them Alive’ in the eponymous first chapter, and he notes that there was “nothing out of the ordinary” about that day or their interactions. When the Clutter farm is auctioned off and he moves away, he remarks that it feels like “a second funeral.”