(AP) – State officials and the son of a deceased investigator are awaiting a judge’s decision on whether the son can use his father’s files from the 1959 Kansas murders that inspired the book “In Cold Blood.”

Tuesday morning’s hearing in Shawnee County District Court comes in a lawsuit by the Kansas attorney general’s office against Ronald Nye of Oklahoma City.

Judge Larry Hendricks could rule on whether Nye can publish material from his father’s files.

His father was a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who investigated the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were executed for the killings in 1965.

Nye had planned to auction off his father’s records but now plans to write a book. The state contends it owns the files.