Author Harper Lee wrote a news story back in the 1960s for a magazine aimed at FBI professionals, her biographer has discovered.
The article is about the Kansas murder that became the subject of Truman Capote’s award winning, In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied Capote to Kansas and served as his assistant when he was on assignment for The New Yorker. The article does not have a byline, but according to her biographer Charles J Shields, the piece has all the markings of a Lee piece. The Guardian has the scoop:
The piece was written for the March 1960 issue of the Grapevine, a magazine for FBI professionals, just months before she was to publish her classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. It was unsigned, but Shields’s detective work uncovered evidence which appears to confirm its true authorship.