Capote's exploration of the murder's effect on the community

As Section 2, titled "Persons Unknown" in In Cold Blood progresses, Capote slowly shifts around people's opinions and reactions on the murder by going in a sequence of exploring the people who were the closest to the Clutters first, and then to the occasional friends,acquaintances or neighbors. In relation to Section 1, in this section, Capote goes into more detail regarding exploration of how the people of Holcomb really felt about the murder and it's effect on them and their lives. He digs deeper and gets different but yet similar reactions and an effect as a whole on the community because of the murder. One of the examples is when a hunting companion of Herb Clutter, Alfred Stoecklein speaks his mind saying, "Him that done it,must've knowed we wouldn't hear. Else he wouldn't have took the chance-shootin' off a shotgun four times in the middle of the night! Why,he'd be crazy. Course, you might say he must be crazy anyhow. To go doing what he did. But my opinion, him that done it had it figured out to the final T." (78-9) On that same page, Andy Erhart, a current scholar but an old classmate and a very close friend of Herb Clutter at KSU says, ' "He was a modest man but a proud man, as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family. He made something of his life." (79) But that life, and what he'd made of it-how could it happen, Erhart wondered as he watched the bonfire catch.'. In contrast to eachother, Capote does a nice job of leaving the two different opinions and reactions of the close ones of Herb Clutter up to the reader to compare. Stoecklein seems to have already coped with the murder, and not at all surprised at the fact that it happened to the Clutters, while Erhart is shocked and upset by the fact that it happened to his close friend. As of the effect as a whole on the society, "Another reason, the simplest, the ugliest, was that this hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting eachother; understandably, the believed that the murderer was among themselves..." (88). Capote emphasizes the first time and unique effect that a murder had on the people of Holcomb, having a deeper effect than an ordinary murder ought to have. We get a sense that distrust is the root of the problem to a split and chaotic society, which forms after people begin to watch their backs even around people they could once confide in.