In the book In Cold blood Perry Smith is a robber on parole from the Kansas State Penitentiary, a man who lies about killing a man just to impress. He's had an abusive childhood with an alcoholic mother who choked on her own vomit, and a father who wouldn't send him to school. Two of his siblings committed suicide and his only sister is afraid of him. His only friendship is with an Indian logger, have been with fellow convicts, and it's one of these relationships that ultimately gets him involved in a brutal murder. His childhood traumas have left him with some childlike behaviors, he still wets the bed and sucks his thumb when he cries in his sleep.

According to the book letters from his father to the Parole Board, and letters from his sister. Perrys attributes are filled with constant violence and neglect. Up until he was five, his parents were traveling rodeo performers. The family led a pretty marginal existence, always on the move and often lived in a broken-down trailer on "mush and Hershey Kisses and condensed milk" (pg.171). But he was a pretty happy kid until his father started to beat his mother. Perry saw and heard his mother "entertaining" a series of men. She eventually took her kids to San Francisco, where Perry was getting into lots of trouble. He however blames it on having “no rule or discipline, or anyone to show me right from wrong" (pg.54). He ended up in a series of orphanages and Salvation Army homes, where he got beaten for wetting the