Episode 425: The Clutter Family Murders｜Morbid

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Visit audible.com slash morbid. I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner, and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.

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My Mochi. Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna.

And this is Morbid. This is Morbid. I said that.

You did. I'm just kidding. You were like, well, fuck, okay?

Okay. I was just repeating it, all right?

I don't know what to say. Yeah, this is morbid and it's going to be morbid because we're talking about a very big older, because it's me, But it's like the 50s, so don't worry, it's not that old.

An older true crime case, but one that a lot of people know about.

It's crazy because the 50s like is old now.

It's like super old, but not like, you know, when I say old, usually it's like... 1800s.

1901, 1877. I was going to say like 1492.

You know, sailing the ocean blue, all of that stuff.

Or were you? But yeah, we're here. I just saw that you guys have gotten the episode where we were talking about Sinister Pond Babe.

It's giving dark vibes. It's giving dark sided.

Because I just saw that people were commenting being like, I came here from Morbid and I cannot be fucking happier.

Yes. I cannot be fucking happier. Go. Sinister Babe is our girly girl.

Be one. Be part of the Babe cult. I needed a laugh last night.

Yesterday was just a rough day all around.

And I ended the day being like, wow, today sucked.

And I was shitty feeling. And I was just sitting there next to John.

Or put on something on TV and I just like happened to scroll.

And the first thing that popped up on my TikTok.

Dark sided. Was my favorite. My favorite.

Talking about some random town in Alabama.

Talking about whether it was a sinister pond or a bougie pond that she was looking at.

She decided it was a bougie pond because there was horses next to it.

Oh, that's bougie. Equestrians, it is a bougie.

But you can ask John. I was literally laughing out loud.

And I was like, I want her to forever have everything she wants because that's a service that I needed last night and she provided it.

I love the different ways in which we cope because we both had like a shit day yesterday.

And I just did mania at Target. Yeah. You just did mania.

I was a mania girl at Target. I love that.

Yeah. I love that for you. I got some workout leggings.

Got a notebook I'll probably never use. A lot of pens.

We love that. A new cup. What are you going to do?

All the necessities. Yeah. Just like things that Target said, you need this.

I just spent the night with Sinister Palm Vibe.

Okay. And also thinking about playing The Sims but not actually doing it.

I'm going to need for you to play The Sims because I feel like this has been going on for years that you keep saying.

Oh, no. It definitely has. Oh, I really want to play The Sims, Ash.

But it's one of those. I'm like, Helena, you should play The Sims.

But it's one of those things that I'm like, yeah, I really want to play The Sims that I'm like, when though?

Yeah, that's fair. That's the thing. Like, you're over there shocked that I haven't sat and built myself a town.

Well, you know, take a few minutes off of TikTok and just piece by piece build your town.

I know. I think that is what I'm going to end up doing.

Just give yourself, again, I say to you, self-care.

Maybe for you, your self-care is the Sims.

It doesn't have to look like everybody else's self-care.

It's not a maybe. It's for sure. It's called escapism.

Look it up. Escapism. But I keep getting – and you know what?

I'm getting TikToks. Like TikTok is even telling me stop doing this and go play The Sims because I'm getting all these Sims TikToks.

That's because it listens to us. Yeah. I like to – I know that's totally the reason, but I'm also like – But it feels like a sign.

I'm like, it's a sign, guys. It's not because I'm talking about it.

Oh, my God. How does it even know? It's the universe.

It's kind of like I was talking about like these specific, very, very specific shoes yesterday and that I was on Instagram and they were like, hey, you there.

Do you like these shoes? We feel like you would like these shoes.

I was like, oh, do you? Yeah. Who are you fooling?

So you know what? Go play The Sims if you feel like it, everybody, and go watch Sinister Palm Bad.

Yeah. So... Bye. Today, we are going to talk about the Clutter family murders.

Now, I know that I've heard of this case, but I don't know if I know exactly what this is.

So, you may, a lot of people may not know it as the Clutter family murders.

Oh, okay. They may know it as the In Cold Blood murder case.

Truman Capote. Oh, she is, she is confused.

Wait, you don't know who Truman Capote is?

Am I going to be embarrassed? In Cold Blood?

Oh. I got to move on from that. Okay. Wait, what?

Truman Capote is an author. Okay. A very well-known author who wrote in cold blood about this case.

Okay. It's slightly controversial. We're going to talk about it at the end.

I'd like to point out that this is your fault as my mother in true crime.

Yeah. You failed. It's a very big true crime book because it is known as the first nonfiction novel.

Oh. Where there was some creative license taken, but it's an actual case.

Yeah, it's an interesting situation. Philip Seymour Hoffman played Capote in like a movie called Capote, I think.

I know Philip Seymour Hoffman. There you go.

He played him. Okay. So there's that. Oh, man.

That's wild. No, I said I do. No, no, no.

I mean like the Truman Capote thing. I'm young.

No, I do. I was like, I know one of them.

I was like, I know you know Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I will not take that from you. Don't take it away.

You know him. Who is he? He's in the fucking Hunger Games.

He was great in the Hunger Games. Oh, yeah.

R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman. I know. Sad, tragic.

It's a sad one. But you know what? Let's get into another very sad, tragic case.

Okay. We're going to talk about the Clutter family murders.

First, let's talk about... So the Clutter family, they lived in Kansas, in Holcomb, Kansas.

This...

is a really terrible crime a very senseless crime as most are but this one is just like what the and especially because they went in there thinking they were going to get a lot out and they didn't get a lot out investigators you mean no i mean the murders ah and they ended up killing an entire family in the process tell me it's solved Yes, it is solved.

Thank the good Lord above. This one is solved.

We know who did it. But there's all kinds of weird little things with the killers, too, and we'll get into it.

Their names are Richard Hickok and Perry Smith.

Okay. And Perry Smith is, like, an interesting one because, like, a lot of...

sympathy went to him at one point because he showed weird signs of having empathy but like i don't believe he did clearly didn't because he had like involved in the murder of an entire family and he had a very rough childhood it was one of those things where it was like feel bad for the child So let's talk about the patriarch of the Clutter family before we get into the horrific way in which they all died.

So Herbert Clutter was the patriarch of this family.

He was born in 1911. He held degrees from Kansas State University in economics and agriculture.

His life was farming. And the whole process of farming, the whole business behind farming.

He worked as an agricultural agent for Finley County, which meant he traveled around educating farmers on advances in farming technology and stuff like that.

Eventually, he started his own farm in Holcomb in Kansas in the 1940s, and he called it River Valley Farm.

He was known as an extremely kind, very hardworking, and very loving man.

He was very active in his community. Everyone knew him as a family man.

They knew his family. They were very well known in their community.

He was very personable. He was always chatty when people came upon him.

He seems like someone everyone would have immediately been drawn to.

He just has that vibe about him. And if you look at a picture of him, you're like, yeah, like he has a very kind face.

He was literally referred to several times in several different sources that I saw as salt of the earth.

Oh, that's awful. As if we don't already love Herbert Clutter, he was successful and also showed up for the little guy.

Even in post-war United States, when farming was really going through a transformation with, like, new technology and automated, you know, farm labor happening, Clutter's farm was thriving.

And he used his own knowledge, his own experience to run it.

But he also fiercely advocated for smaller farms and local farmers.

Hell yeah. He was even president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.

And he was the founder and president of Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.

He just looks like a kind man. He does. He has those eyes and he has that smile.

That smile. And I'm not kidding you. You cannot find something that says he was a dick.

No, he doesn't look like it. There might have been like business owners who were like, yeah, we had some like business things.

Like, of course. That we would get like kind of heated.

But like... As a human outside of business and as a human in his family and his community, he was beloved.

This whole family was. I was going to say this whole family looks like just the guys next door, the family next door.

It's the picture of a 50s like, you know, era family.

They just look like the picture perfect family.

No, it's so true. In 1953, actually, President Eisenhower appointed Clutter to the Federal Farm Credit Board.

And he was a fucking gem. He was on a national level now doing this kind of stuff.

He was very active in politics, local and national, and really had to do with like the farming industry.

But he was very active in it. Now, in a little bit of contrast to Herb, who was like very outgoing, very like all over the place, a people person, his wife was Bonnie Clutter.

And she was very introverted. She did suffer a lot from severe bouts of depression and anxiety.

She went through it, like truly crippling depression at times.

Yeah. In the years before she was murdered, she had been hospitalized several times for several months.

She had been receiving care in Wichita. And her doctor said she was also suffering from nervous muscle spasms.

Oh, man. Which were painful, like physically, and had to be medicated with medicine that would kind of sedate Bonnie.

So she was like out of it a lot, like upstairs sleeping.

Yeah. Yeah. But she tried. She tried to fight through this, and she was making a valiant effort, and she was, like, making headway.

And when she had better moments, like, you know, they were few and far between at this point.

She was really fighting through it. But she would make an effort to be active with her children whenever she could.

She was an active member of the Methodist Church, and she taught Sunday school there, as well as being a member of the Women's Society of Christian Service.

And I think she was part of the garden club, too.

She was really...

trying to get out there trying to fight through this she was making it her all and she was still there for her family and by all accounts herb stuck by her and like would do anything for her and she really fought but luckily even though all this behind the scenes stuff was happening that people probably didn't see that much yeah it did not affect their children in the slightest it doesn't seem like it when you see a picture they all have like beaming smiles yeah they had four children They had two older daughters named Beverly and Eviana.

They were adults. They had moved out of the house when this had happened.

Eviana is a really cool name. Isn't it pretty?

Yeah. And then they also had a daughter named Nancy, who was 16 at the time of the murders, and Kenyon, who was a son, and he was 15 years old.

Okay. Kenyon is a cool name, too. Kenyon also is a cool name, yeah.

They were all the picture of all American teenagers characteristic of that era.

Kenyon looks a lot like his father. He does, yeah.

Both Nancy and Kenyon were active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship and were nominated in leadership roles in the organization as well.

So they were taking right after their dad.

Yeah. Being active in the community, being beloved, taking a part in things.

Nancy Clutter, like I said, was 16 years old, and she really is the picture of the 1950s.

She truly is. When you look at a picture of her.

It's like Pleasantville. It is. It looks like Reese Witherspoon in Pleasantville, but with dark hair.

Yeah. Yep, exactly. She was popular. She was pretty.

She was a straight-A student. She had a boyfriend named Bobby Rupp.

So Nancy had a boyfriend named Bobby. I love it.

It's just like, how cute can you be? They were going to the Lovers Lane.

Oh, they were going to dances and sock hops, you know?

Poodle skirts galore. Oh, hell yes. And she loved to ride horses.

She was a member of Holcomb School's Mixed Chorus and also had just received, right before the murders, the Good Citizen Award at school.

Wow. Days before. And that was like a big deal.

Kenyon, her younger brother, was 15 years old.

He was also very popular, very well-liked, but he was very quiet.

Again, very pleasant, though. Yeah, he was like very much, and he was very quiet, like reserved, but like not off-putting.

He also got great grades. He loved to tinker with things.

He liked to get his hands into things. He was especially interested in fixing up his old Jeep.

He was also an athlete. He was like a jock.

He was very athletic and was the star of the high school's basketball and track teams.

Damn, doing it all. Unsurprisingly, he was also a member of the Findlay County 4-H Club.

So it all just... Doing the damn thing. I mean, they're all killing it.

Yeah. They were a tight family who supported and loved each other, and they did good for their community together.

This is all the more heartbreaking. I mean, it's heartbreaking no matter what, but when you just hear what good people they were through and through...

Yeah. And it's like, and I found a lot that was said about like Bonnie and what she was going through.

And like, people would be like, oh, yeah, she just spent all her time like sleeping upstairs and like away from it.

And it's like, but then when you really dive into it, you see one, every family has shit going on.

Of course. Behind the scenes. Nobody is perfect.

No. They may look perfect, but no family is perfect.

Absolutely not. And, too, when you really look into it, yeah, she was struggling with depression and anxiety.

And she was struggling with physical ailments, like those nervous muscle spasms.

She was, like, in real pain with that. Well, that's the thing that people don't realize is that depression often leads to, like, chronic fatigue and physical symptoms.

Yeah. It's it's a real thing. Yeah. And that's the thing.

And it's like and when you really hear like you start digging a little further and you see people in the town talking and people who knew this family and like her family and all that, you know, like our actual family that was surviving outside of this nuclear family.

They all say she was the sweetest woman.

Of course. She was there for her kids. She loved her kids.

And she was fighting through what she was fighting through.

Yeah. It sounds like the shitty thing, too, is that this was in what year?

This was in the 50s. Yeah, like you were saying, the 50s.

So it wasn't understood back then. Depression, mental health, struggles.

Yeah, it was like she's just being lazy.

Yeah, exactly. No, that's not it. Right.

Yeah. So I just wanted to put that out there because I saw so many things that were just like –

herb was this amazing guy which he is but then it was just like and bonnie was just sleeping up in bed being a lazy bitch and it's like that's not what that was and it's also like if herb is this amazing guy clearly he's gonna be drawn to an amazing woman gonna be drawn to an amazing gal you know But, unfortunately, this would all come to an end.

In March of 1958, 28-year-old Richard Dick Hickok, which we're going to call him Dick, was in Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing serving a five-year sentence just, you know, for being an asshole.

Hmm.

He was actually in there for robbery, but it was during this time period that his cellmate, Floyd Wells, started telling him about a large sum of money that was just waiting to be stolen out of a farmer's home in Holcomb.

Wells said he had worked at River Valley Farm in the late 40s, and he knew that herb clutter kept $10,000 in cash in a safe in the home.

Who? Yeah. Did he? No. No. He did not. Dick was very interested in this and immediately started thinking about a plan to get it when he was sprung free.

Oh, good. Now, Dick had an unremarkable life.

essentially. He himself was born and raised on a farm in eastern Kansas.

And he was born on a farm. He knows farmers' lives.

He's part of the farmers, like, the community.

He's part of all that. And he's still gonna go and betray a farmer.

A fellow farmer. But... Dick was smart and athletic and well-liked growing up.

He had been hoping to receive a scholarship to college through his athletic ability, but he didn't get it.

And so instead of college, he went straight to doing work, like, you know, just odd jobs around the area because he couldn't really get a degree.

So he was having trouble. He ended up being married and divorced twice already by the age of 28.

Damn. And was truly one of those people who just won't put in the work.

Oh, that's interesting. Just won't do it.

That's a key theme in the story I'm going to tell you later.

He had also been in a car accident at one point, and he had scars on his face.

He was known as a pretty good-looking guy growing up, and he ended up having a few scars on his face from the accident, and everybody said that he was very angry about that because it ruined his face.

You're so vain. Yeah. So another criminal entered the jail cell with Dick and Floyd Wells around this time, too, and his name was Perry Smith.

So Smith grew up very poor in a family where violence and alcoholism were a constant threat over him and his siblings from his parents.

In 1948, he joined the Army and served in the Korean War.

Oof. Unfortunately, he had not gone to school and had not maintained any skills to aid in a job search.

So when he was honorably discharged in 1952, he was immediately struggling.

Now he became a drifter. He was often arrested for petty crimes like Dick.

The difference between the two, though, and their penchant for criminal behavior was that Dick did crimes because he was a lazy asshole who liked to cause problems.

Right. He just did it because he could and because he wanted to.

Smith did crimes because he was an asshole, but also because he was often desperate in situations.

Some of his crimes were out of pure desperation.

And a product of his environment. Exactly.

I'm not saying any of this is validating it.

No. It's just a different motive for the crimes.

They are both assholes. They both did crime because they were assholes, but one of them had a little bit more of a desperation mode at times and the other one was just lazy.

I think it is important to note that. It's just important to know.

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So it was in 1956 that Smith, Perry Smith, was in that jail cell at the state penitentiary in Lansing, and that's when he met Dick.

Now, according to Floyd Wells, Dick couldn't stop talking about that safe full of $10,000 at the clutter farm.

He was obsessed.

According to Wells, he said, quote, "'As soon as I get out on parole, I'm going to find me some transportation, get a hold of Smith, and go to the clutters and see if there's still $10,000 in their damn safe.'"

And he often boasted about the lengths that he would go to to get it, saying he would kill everyone in that house with no thought just to get the money.

Where are the authorities? Like, this is the reason why we need more air, more ears, excuse me, in prison.

Yeah. Like, we need this to, we need to know about this before it's able to happen.

Exactly. Like, they're planning what ended up happening.

Literally. Like, it all ended up playing out.

While there are police officers and security guards and la-di-da-do all around.

when unfortunately wells never felt like he needed to tell anyone about this because he said he saw dick as a blowhard he was all talk and no walk and he never thought he was serious about any of his outbursts he was like he was a petty criminal he was a piece of shit he was always bragging he was always saying i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that he's like i didn't think five years later no of course he was gonna go and really do this thing he's like i thought he was just talking shit to me in a jail cell But, like, rule of thumb, if somebody tells you they're going to commit murder on an entire family, you might want to tell, like, at least one person.

Well, that's the thing. It's like, and there's also the snitch thing.

He doesn't want to be seen as that. That's true, of course.

But for him saying, like, I didn't think you'd walk the walk, he's just talking it, you know?

And Ed's like... He is in jail with you, though, so apparently he does walk sometimes.

Some kind of walk, yeah. He does walk at times after he talks.

Exactly. But unfortunately, Wells underestimated Dick, and he was indeed obsessed with this score at the clutter farm.

He was ready to make real progress on making it happen, and he knew that Perry Smith was the guy to help him make it happen.

According to Sally Keglevitz, who looked back into these crimes and analyzed them in a publication entitled Cold Blood Revisited, A Look Back at an American Crime.

She says Dick saw something in Smith that he himself didn't have but wanted.

She said Dick saw, quote, he saw in Perry a talent that he knows he didn't possess, those of a natural born killer.

Jesus. So he's saying Perry Smith has killer blood.

Like he just, to her, this is what people saw in him is he could do it.

Like he could do it and probably not flinch, but Dick's going to be having a little bit of a hesitation here.

Interesting. Yeah. And the thing is, Perry also sees something in Dick that he doesn't have in himself, but would like to too.

He sees confidence in Dick. He thinks Dick has the ability to make a move without second guessing it or hesitating, but not make it that move.

You know what I mean? Like he can make that move to get us to the farm, to get this whole plan going.

But when it comes down to it, it's going to have to be Perry Smith who's going to make that like final, the real bad move.

It's like he sees Dick as the one who can really put things together and has the confidence to be like, this is going to work.

Right, like jumpstart the car, but then he's got to drive.

But he's got to hit the gas. And Perry also weirdly seemed to seek out Dick's approval or validation.

I feel like in twos, there's always one person who's seeking the other's validation.

Yeah, and it makes sense that Perry Smith would be that one because he grew up seeking validation and not getting it.

So he's looking for approval out of somebody.

Exactly. Relatable. Yeah. Not in this way, though.

I was going to say not completely, but we get it.

But yeah, yeah. So as they obsess over this, Smith's parole comes up and he's let out on July 6, 1959.

No, thank you. He is required to leave Kansas as a condition of his parole.

Damn. And he does. But he stays close by doing odd jobs and waiting for Dick to be let out, too.

He's just like hanging out on the borders.

He had a long game. Yeah. Now, Dick is let out on parole in mid-August of the same year, so he was let out a little early.

And he moved back in with his parents for a few months.

They spoke through letters about the big score that they were destined to steal.

Smith, however, was a little worried about violating his parole by returning back to Kansas.

Okay. Apparently the whole robbery and eventual murder wasn't the issue, just location was really bothering him.

It's all about location. Yeah, exactly. But with a little pushing, he agrees, and they agree to meet in Olathe in early November.

I think it's Olathe. I feel like I should look that up.

I'll pause for you. I'm going to look it up, guys, because I don't want to be yelled at.

Guys, it's Olathe. I'm really glad I looked that up.

She fancy. Olathe, because I never would have said it that way.

I'm so glad I looked it up. Look at you.

So nobody has to yell at me. I got it right.

Olathe. So they agreed to meet in Olathe in early November.

So November 14th, 1959, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok meet in Olathe as planned.

They steal a car together and they drove 400 miles to Garden City.

In a stolen car. Yes. Wow. Which is just outside of Holcomb, Texas.

Wow. Texas, Kansas. I was like, they drove to Texas?

No, I'm on a different planet. I'm bad at geography.

And I was like, is Kansas close to Texas?

Like, what's happening? I was like, I didn't think it was close.

I'm confused. So they stopped on the way to purchase nylon rope, two-inch adhesive tape, a small pocket knife, and some rubber gloves.

Yep. And arrived in Garden City just after midnight.

There they stopped at a Phillips 66 to get gas, and then they drove the mile or so to Holcomb.

When they arrived, they drove to the long dirt road that leads to River Valley View Farm.

They just stopped there at the end, and they were psyching themselves up, like, we got to do this.

But then Dick shit his pants when a light came on at a home nearby, and he was like, ah, we can't do this.

So he insisted they run back to the car, and they did.

But after a bit, they got the nerve up again, and they went to the house.

So they had a moment where they said, we shouldn't do this, and they still did this.

Yeah, that tells you everything you need to know.

They knew it was wrong. Exactly. They parked their car near a side entrance to the home office, and this is where they mistakenly believed that $10,000 would be in a safe in there.

There were plenty of times during this entire thing where they could have stopped.

Yeah. They could have stopped about a hundred times and they didn't.

So just putting that out there. Now Smith and Dick just walk right into the clutter home.

It was unlocked. And they have flashlights and weapons.

Dick has a large hunting knife and Smith has a shotgun.

Oh my God. So already we can see this is not just a robbery.

They are very prepared to do a lot more than rob these people.

Absolutely. And for them to claim anything different is bullshit, in my opinion.

Yeah, why would you need a gun and a knife?

A gun, a knife. Why did you buy nylon rope, adhesive tape?

Why'd you buy any of that shit? Ridiculous.

They search the small home office and they find no safe where Wells had said it would be, behind the desk.

It's nowhere to be found. And also, Wells described this luxurious office...

With, like, clear evidence that these people were flush with cash.

And instead, this office is pretty small and modest.

Nothing like he described. Is he thinking of, like, a different family entirely?

Or do you think he was just telling tales?

I think he was just stupid, to be honest.

I think he was stupid. He was telling tales.

I think he exaggerated. And I think he also forgot.

Yeah. All right. But they are pissed when they see that there is no safe, especially Dick, who is not going to leave without money.

He's been banking on this for years. Exactly.

It's all he had thought about for years.

So they walk right into Herb and Bonnie's bedroom and wake him up with a flashlight beam to his eyes.

Oh, my God. He awakens and is obviously startled.

Now, I think what happened was Bonnie might have been in another bedroom at this night because sometimes she would have to sleep in a separate bed because of the pain she was going through.

It would keep her awake and she didn't want to keep her awake.

So sometimes she would go sleep in a different bed.

This happened to be one of those nights, I believe.

Some sources say she was in the other room.

Some say she wasn't. I saw more that said she was outside of the room.

Okay. So Herb is awakened by a flashlight in his eyes.

He's obviously startled. And when they declare why they're in his home, he tells them there is no safe.

And he's like, there's no valuables or cash in my home.

Whoever told you that is mistaken. Oh, God.

And also, he almost always paid for everything with a check.

And everyone in town knew that. Like you could ask anybody in this town and they would have told you he uses a check.

He doesn't use cash. So he tells the murderers this, and he's like, I'll happily write you a check, and I'll give you whatever cash we may be able to find in this house in somebody's wallet or something.

Like, you can have all of that. Right. I just don't have $10,000 for you.

And he's like, but I'll write you a check for as much as I can, and you can take it out of here.

And he said, just please leave the rest of my family alone.

Oh, my God. The fact that that could have happened.

Yeah. Like, he was willing to just be like, look away, give him a check, get on your way.

I can't see you. You have a flashlight beam in my eyes.

I can't see you anyways. That alone tells you that they were not just here for the money.

Because they could have just taken it. They were here for the thrill of it.

Yeah. They could have just taken it. But instead, they wake up every member of the Clutter family and lock all four of them in the upstairs bathroom together.

Oh, God. After they're secured. And at one point, they literally hogtied them in the bathroom together.

Oh, my God. So... They are all secured, and so Dick and Perry Smith ransack the home looking for cash and valuables that Herb just told them weren't there.

You're not going to find it. It proved to be true.

Nothing was found of value, and now they were even more angry.

So they go back to the bathroom. They put tape over all the Clutter family's mouths.

They hogtie Bonnie, Herb, Nancy, and Kenyon.

Herb and Kenyon are then taken to the basement by Dick.

And he throws Herb onto the cement floor and ties Kenyon to a soil pipe in the corner.

Oh my God. So Dick then goes upstairs and he ties Nancy to her own bedpost.

He doesn't put, there was no tape found on Nancy's mouth.

Interesting. All the other ones were taped over the mouth.

Weird. She's tied to her own bedpost, and Bonnie is first left hog-tied in the bathroom, but she's later transferred to her bedroom where she's tied to a post as well.

Perry is watching Bonnie, left to watch her.

And at one point, he offered her a chair to make her more comfortable.

Okay. To me, this is scarier than straight-up cruelty.

I don't know why. Because we know that they were ultimately going to kill her anyway.

The compassionate behavior during something this scary is not comforting.

No. It's scary. Because you know what's going to happen either way.

Precisely. Why are you being kind to me if you know you're just going to brutally murder me?

You nailed it. That's exactly what it is.

It's like, you know what your, like, I know what your plan is.

Why are you even bothering? Like, that's weird.

It's like a devil angel thing, I don't know.

Yeah, it's very strange. Now, weirdly, Smith shows some of this strange, almost compassionate behavior during their ordeal in the beginning.

Later, he changes that. And he's without a doubt the more violent of the pair to begin with.

So that's why it's even weirder that he's being the one that's compassionate.

Dick is a blowhard. Dick is a blowhard. He's probably the one yelling and screaming and trying to scare everybody like an asshole.

But Perry Smith... Is actually violent and scary.

You know what, though? I think that's what makes it scarier.

It's like a weird comparison, but it's like when your dad is like, hey, stop.

Yeah. And you don't stop. And he's like, cut it out.

And you don't cut it out. And he fucking blows up.

Yeah. And he's like, cut it out. Like, and then loses it, and you're like, oh, my God.

Like, that was a scary build. It's like that, you know?

Yeah, that's true. And sometimes it's scary.

To me, it's scarier when someone is measured and calm in their terror than, like... So anybody can yell and scream and flip out.

Right. It takes a lot to be that measured calm and still be...

terrifying at the same time. It's like animalistic in a way.

Yeah. It's like how an animal will get quiet and kind of hunker down before it launches itself at you.

Yeah, like a cornered animal. Exactly. Yeah, it's wild.

Now, Perry Smith even notices that Herb is cold on the cement floor because it's in the winter.

Yeah. And so he places big pieces of cardboard beneath him to comfort him.

What? What? Then Kenyon, he's saying that his bindings are cutting off his circulation.

And he was like, can you please just loosen them?

And Perry Smith removes them and then brings Kenyon to a sofa where he ties him looser and provides him a pillow under his head.

What? Remember, there was no way they didn't intend to kill these people from the jump, in my opinion.

Yeah. So this to me, like we were saying, is almost crueler than just being cold.

Yeah, it is. Like you're giving people hope here that they can survive this.

Do you think there was like some weird part of him that was struggling internally whether he was going to or not?

I almost think... I'm wondering if he found, and I was just going to, because this whole thing lasted like two hours.

Wow. Where they were just in complete terror, not having any idea what was going to happen.

To me, the fact that it lasted for two hours and then how it ends, I think Smith was not really caring about these people or their comfort or their lives or anything.

I kind of think in this, maybe this is just me, this is my analysis of the situation.

I think he was finding some kind of amusement out of the faux show of compassion.

I could see that. I think he wanted to be seen as the nicer of the two.

They were almost doing a good cop, bad cop thing.

And I think Perry Smith was like, well, this is fun.

I can just pretend to be a nice person. Well, because it's almost more torturous.

Exactly. I can give these people hope. And then I can snuff it out at the last second.

To me, that's what it looks like. But who knows?

He was a very complicated individual later.

So, like, who really knows?

But after the two hours of terror, Smith insists, this is why I think that what I just said, it was Smith, Perry Smith, who insisted that Dick use the hunting knife that he brought with him to kill Herb Clutter.

Not even the gun. And he even teased him about being too chicken to carry out the plan that he had supposedly come ready to carry out.

So that's why I think that Smith wasn't actually having any moments of compassion.

I think it was amusement. I could, yeah.

I think it was just passing the time, just making it worse.

That's real weird. Now, after Dick hesitated...

Smith takes the hunting knife out of Dick's hands and he slits Herb's throat with it.

Oh my God. Then he shoots Herb in the head with the shotgun at close range.

There was no need. No. There was no need.

Just he wanted to do that. Now remember too, Kenyon is right there.

Oh, he's still there? Kenyon saw all of this.

Oh. The sofa was in the basement? Yeah, there was a sofa in the basement.

I see, I see. Yeah. So he saw or at the very least heard all of this.

Oh, my. Now, Kenyon was killed second by a shotgun blast to the head while laying on the couch with a pillow under his head.

That's where he was found. And then you know, obviously, Nancy and Bonnie are hearing that upstairs.

Oh, my God. They then went to Nancy and shot her as she was, like, tied to her bedpost.

That's where she was found. And then they went to Bonnie.

And as they did this, each time they would shoot one of them, they collected the spent shotgun shells because they thought they were smart.

And they thought that would help them get away with it.

So Herb was the only one who they used the knife on?

Yeah. And the rest of them were shot? Mm-hmm.

That's interesting, too. Yeah. And they were shot with a shotgun at very close range, all in the face or head.

So it was very brutal, like very brutal.

And as if we needed more proof of this pair's callous and monstrous ways, Perry Smith later told the jury at his trial, quote, it was like picking off targets in a shooting gallery.

Oh, was it? Yeah. It wasn't like ending a family's life?

Yeah. Lives? Literally, like children? Yeah.

Now, after terrorizing and murdering the entire Clutter family in the home, Dick and Smith left with Kenyon's portable transistor radio, his pair of binoculars, and the $40 that they got from Herb's wallet.

Wow. And that's it. Wow. They killed that entire family who was in the home that night for $40, a transistor radio, and a pair of binoculars.

It's interesting that they didn't write a check.

Yeah. They probably couldn't find the checks.

Probably. And they're too stupid, probably.

But they drive to the county line, they pulled over to clean themselves up, and they used water from the car radiator to clean the blood off their hands and the gun.

And then Perry Smith dug a hole on the side of the highway where he buried the knife, the spent shotgun shells, the tape, and the rope.

Yeah. It just goes back to life as usual.

Oh, yeah. And eventually they didn't even leave the knife there.

The knife was found later at Dick's farm.

So they must have taken it. Yeah. Now, Susan Kidwell always attended church with the Clutter family on Sunday.

She was just a family friend, a child of a family friend.

But this Sunday, the 15th, they didn't arrive to pick her up and they didn't call.

So she was concerned immediately with this weird change of behavior, and she tried calling them several times.

But there was no answer at the house. So she and her friend Nancy Ewald convinced Nancy's father, Clarence, to drive the girls over to the clutter farm and just check on what was going on.

Yeah. Now, right away, it was clear something was off.

When they arrived, they saw that the car was still there, but the house was quiet and dark.

So Clarence put the car in park, but Susan was nervous and hesitant to get out and go into the door because she was like, something's off.

Yeah, sometimes you can just feel it. Yeah, and she knew it.

And later she would tell Truman Capote when he came to talk to people in this community about the crimes.

She said, quote, I was frightened. I don't know why because it never occurred to me.

Well, something like that just doesn't. Like, why would you ever think?

No. She was actually hoping the dad would just go into the home, but he'd been working outside that morning and his boots were covered in mud.

So he didn't want to go in. So he was like, I don't want to track mud all over their house.

So Susan and Nancy were like, fine, we'll go in.

Oh, God. And they went around the kitchen door, which was unlocked.

And they knew it would be because that was normal for the Clutters.

And most people around the area at the time, they never locked their doors.

Yeah, it's a small, quiet town. Especially during the day.

But from the moment the two girls entered the home, they said they could just feel it.

Something was off. And they said there was no breakfast remnants, not even signs that anyone had woken up, no dishes, nothing, and that was very unusual.

This wasn't like this lively, bustling family.

Then they noticed Nancy's purse. It was lying on the kitchen floor, and it was open like someone had gone through it and then thrown it back down on the floor.

So they called for Nancy, and they started up the stairs.

They saw her bedroom door slightly ajar, and they went in blindly.

Oh. Now, Susan later told Truman Capote, I don't remember screaming.

Nancy says I did, screamed and screamed.

I only remember Nancy's teddy bear staring at me and Nancy and running.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Nancy had been still in her bed, dressed in her nightgown.

She was bound with her hands and feet with cords torn from her curtains, and her face was unrecognizable from a shotgun blast at close range.

Blood had spattered all over the room, the walls, the bed, the floor.

It was a horror show that these two girls walked in on.

And their friend. Yeah. Now, by this time...

Her father, Clarence, was actually thinking twice about sending the girls into the home alone and felt bad.

Yeah. So he had gotten out of the car and was walking towards the house.

And he heard them screaming. Because he was going to go in there.

He heard them screaming and then saw them running through the kitchen door and back outside.

So they told them what they found and he went in to check.

He found the same thing. And at this point, he had only found Nancy.

They didn't even know that everybody else was in there.

And they called the sheriff. Okay. This was not a normal or run-of-the-mill crime scene, especially not for the county sheriff's office in Holcomb, Kansas.

I would not think so. So, Phinney County Sheriff Earl Robinson called in his friend Alvin Dewey at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the KBI, and asked for assistance because this was big.

So as they went through the home, they found Nancy as she was described, and they also found Bonnie with a shotgun blast to the head.

When they went to the basement, they found Kenyon still tied to the sofa with a pillow under his head and a shotgun blast to the face.

They also found Herb Clutter. He seemed to have been tortured, possibly, before being murdered.

Really? Because he was hung from a pipe in the basement.

Oh. His throat was slit, and he was shot with the shotgun.

And that's awful because then, you know, Kenyon saw that.

Or heard it or had some knowledge of it.

The killers were on the loose and they had a quadruple homicide of an entire family on their hands.

So KBI director Logan Sanford assigned an additional 17 investigators to this case.

So they immediately believed that this was a home invasion robbery gone wrong, which they were half right.

Yeah, sort of. It really was in the grand scheme of things.

But they were confused because they had ransacked the home, but they had left an envelope full of cash on Nancy's bureau.

Oh, they did? That was in plain sight. Wow.

It was cash that was to be donated to church on Sunday.

Huh. And somehow, I don't know if Herb just didn't know about it or forgot about it in the chaos.

Yeah. But they didn't mention it and they didn't find it.

So no jewelry was taken. Like, Herb and Bonnie's gold wedding bands were still on.

They're just stupid. Bonnie was wearing a diamond ring that she always wore.

And it was still on. Interesting. So they shifted from just a random home invasion and then they thought it might be even a grudge killing where someone had an axe to grind with Herb Clutter.

It went after his whole family because local business people...

that Herb did work with said they did have slight ill will towards him because of business shit.

Yeah, like you were saying that earlier.

But since he was bigger in local politics, it wasn't far-fetched to think that someone had targeted him.

I wonder, I was just kind of thinking while you were talking, I wonder if the reason that, one, they didn't write themselves a check, and two, they didn't steal any jewelry.

I mean, it's weird that they didn't take that envelope of cash.

But I guess the jewelry and the check could be traced back to them, so maybe they were thinking that.

That's the only thing I could think of, but then I was like, are they that smart?

No. Because, I mean, they did collect the spent shells as they went, but that's like...

I feel like anybody can figure that out.

Yeah. I mean, some people don't. A lot of people actually don't.

I was just going to say, to be honest, a lot of people don't do that.

So I guess that does show a certain level of criminal know-how, I suppose.

Yeah. But, yeah, it's strange. But that's what I thought, too, when I first thought of the check thing.

I was like, well, that could be traced back, obviously.

And then, like, if you tried to pawn any of the jewelry for money, a pawn shop in the area would know.

It's true, but then on the other side of that, they do end up selling the transistor radio and binoculars to get money.

At a pawn shop? They actually end up going to Mexico.

So they could have taken that jewelry and sold it down there.

Yeah, I think they're just dumb. I think they're just idiots, to be honest.

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Now, they found very little clues until they went into the basement and found boot prints and blood on the cardboard where Smith had laid Herb on.

One was a boot print with a diamond pattern and was clearly showing the Cat's Paw brand logo.

None of these boots matched the Clutter family, and so they were sure that they had two killers on the loose because it was a diamond pattern and then one with the Cat's Paw brand logo on it.

So they determined the murder weapon to be a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun.

They were also able to determine that the shells used by that particular shotgun were a match for the shells investigators were led to four days later.

They were found in a stupidly shallow hole that Perry Smith had buried them in the evening of the murders.

Wow. They were easily found because the sheriff's office received a report from a citizen who discovered blood stains on a highway bridge.

Oh, my God. And it was only about a quarter of a mile south of the clutter farm.

Wow. And the person called it in and was like, there's blood on the highway.

Yeah. Like, maybe go look at that. Now, very quickly, the murders were top news all over Holcomb.

Oh, of course. People were shocked. Not only did this not happen in a very safe and quiet community, but the Clutter family were very well-liked and a very upstanding family.

To think they were murdered in their own home by strangers was unthinkable.

So residents started telling reporters that for the first time they bought locks or they even changed the existing ones they had.

Oh, I bet. People started thinking like they never had before.

And, of course, rumors began to swirl that didn't help the panic and chaos.

People said that at one point a, quote, one-time mental patient had must have shown up in town and committed the heinous crime, but obviously no evidence to that.

Yes, this is the movie Halloween. Yeah. Exactly.

Now, November 19th, the funerals were held at the First Methodist Church in Garden City.

Hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects.

In fact, it was estimated that over a thousand people attended.

All four Clutter family members were in silver closed caskets side by side.

The KBI and several officers from the Sheriff's Department were there because they were friends with Herb.

Wow. Obviously, they were working a case, but they were there purely because they were literally friends with him.

When they walked into that crime scene, they were seeing their friend and a family that they were very close with.

I can't imagine that, and I can't imagine a funeral with an entire family laid out in caskets next to each other before you.

Mm-hmm. Think of a funeral alone when one person has passed.

Four people, like, and a family. And in that way, just layer upon layer of devastation.

It makes me think of, like, the Villisca axe murders or the Hinterkaifeck axe murders.

It's, like, when a whole family at once.

Or what was the one that you covered one time?

At first, I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, I was like, did you already cover this?

But then this one turned out very differently.

Yeah, it's similar. The Lawson family. Yes.

That's the one. It was on like Christmas Day.

Yep. Yeah. In like North Carolina. Yeah.

And they were farmers, right? Yeah. And I think Arthur, the older son, is the only one that survived.

It's a similar vibe of like an entire family.

Right. Yeah. It's awful. It really is. And again, these KBI agents and the sheriff's department officers were friends to this family and to Herb.

That's awful. This sucked. Yeah. But they were also there to look for any signs of the killer showing up at the funeral, as they sometimes do.

A lot of times. They were laid to rest at Fairview Cemetery.

Now, very shortly after the murders became local news, it went national.

Herb was in national politics, and also the crime was just not something seen very often at this time.

It was heinous and brutal, and to have, again, a whole family snuffed out in the middle of the night in their home was...

Unthinkable. So Sally Keglevitz pointed out, I mentioned her publication earlier and we'll link it in the show notes.

She points out murder of this magnitude just didn't happen to farm families in the heartland of America.

No. So there was a brief moment November 20th where they thought they may have found their killers.

They pulled over two men traveling from Hoisington, Kansas to Louisiana for work.

These men, Marion Livingston and E.L. Gray, were suspicious in the context of what had happened in the area, to be honest.

When they were pulled over, they had a loaded shotgun and a loaded .32 caliber pistol in the car with them.

They were questioned, but they obviously denied having anything to do with the Clutter family murders and found to have zero connection with it, and they were cleared.

But when they were pulled over initially and arrested, they thought they had their guys.

Oh, that sucks. Now, a few days after the killings, Floyd Wells heard the news one afternoon while he was listening to the radio at the Kansas State Penitentiary.

He was drawn to it, but didn't want to make any kind of connection to it.

You know, anything about what Dick had said or Dick's obsession.

He just heard that the Clutter family had been murdered.

Floyd. And he was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that.

Now, looks like his conscience did get the best of him, though, because after two weeks of stewing on the very obvious connection, he decided he needed to unload his burden.

So he made a plan, but his plan was to be called out to the warden's office under a false pretense, like he made something happen that he would have to be called there.

Because he doesn't want to be a snitch. He didn't want to be seen as snitching on the other inmates.

So this way, it looked like he was in trouble and not that he wanted to talk to the warden.

Isn't that wild? Pretty fucking funny. But it's like a whole entire family got murdered and I know about it.

But I don't want to look like a snitch. It's like there's snitching and then there's just being a moral human, being a human with morals.

But unfortunately, he would have got got.

Oh, 100%. It's just wild to think about.

He would have got got because he was like, hey, I know the guy that took out an entire fucking family.

Yep, for nothing. Now, once they were alone in the warden's office, he told the whole story about the safe and the clutter farm and how he had told it all to Dick Hickok.

And he said, quote, I distinctly remember Mr. Clutter paying a large lumber bill, and I thought he paid it in cash with money from the safe.

He didn't. I thought being the key words.

The reason I remember is because Mr. Clutter made the remark to me that evening when we left his den, he'd paid out more than $10,000 that day.

I described the location of the house. I suspect I talked too much about the money Mr. Clutter had.

Yeah. Hickok talked a lot about Perry Smith, said after they got out of the joint, they could pull some jobs to get enough money for a down payment on a boat.

They would run a charter service for deep sea fishermen and eventually make contacts and use the boat to bring in narcotics.

I didn't believe Hickok, but he kept talking about it.

I tried to talk him out of it, said he would get caught, but he said he had a plan and after the robbery would kill everyone there and leave no witnesses.

So you're a witness, though, buddy. This was huge.

This was the first real lead in the case.

Now they had the names of the two very viable suspects and very likely suspects.

I'm glad that he ended up having that change of heart.

Now, Dewey and the other agents of the KBI started a huge manhunt for the two men led by Harold Nye, who was a KBI agent at the time.

They first went into both of their criminal records and were able to use those to lead to family members and other known associates to try to track down their movements.

Now, on December 9th, 1959, Nye and a team of KBI agents arrived at the Hickok family farm with a warrant to search the premises.

there they recovered that hunting knife and the savage pump action shotgun that was the murder weapon of the cl at the clutter family massacre boom they went into high gear now because smith and hickok were nowhere to be found they had only gone to the they had gotten the warrant searched it found those things they didn't find those two were they in new mexico at this point at this point they had no idea that they had fled the country yeah They went to Mexico after the murders.

There they sold the stolen car they used to get to the clutter farm.

And they sold whatever items they had stolen from the house.

And after this, they ran out of money pretty quickly.

And so they returned to the U.S. where they spent some time stealing more cars and just driving around trying to figure out how to get more money.

Even coming back to Kansas... and stealing more money and cashing bad checks for good measure.

So that was not... Idiots. Exactly. The check thing.

We're giving them too much credit. For real.

Then they left the state again. But on December 30th, two Las Vegas police officers happened to spot a car that they remembered as matching the description of a stolen car described in an APB.

And it was only a couple days earlier there was an APB that went out about a stolen car.

So they pulled the car over thinking it would be pretty routine.

But it was anything but. Because inside the car was the real life versions of the mug shots that had been distributed all over the news.

Dick Hickok and Perry Smith sat in this 1956 Chevy that was indeed stolen.

Wow. So shockingly, both of them were arrested without incident.

Weirdly. Interesting. And brought back to Findlay County, Kansas, where they were placed in separate jail cells.

Hickok pretty quickly tried to pin the entirety of the blame on Smith.

Of course. Four days later, Dick Hickok and Perry Smith were charged with four counts of felony murder for the killings of Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter.

Now, shortly after their arrest, news outlets around the country said that they were caught and everybody could breathe a collective sigh of relief.

They called Richard weak-faced Richard Hickok.

They called Perry Smith runty and that the two broke down under questioning and confessed to murdering the Clutter family because they didn't want any witnesses.

damn they did indeed confess um there was a time like i said when dick decided to pin the entire thing on perry smith but they admitted to what happened they both just look like assholes idiots now trial was set for march 22nd 1960 and judge roland green would be presiding he immediately denied the request to have them tried separately which is a boss move in my opinion They didn't need to get the opportunity to pin the blame on the other one again in a separate trial.

I totally see that. This is when shit gets strange.

So they kept them separated at all times so they couldn't concoct any kind of story to help anything.

Of course. Smart. But Perry Smith was held in what is known as the ladies' cell in the courthouse.

Not real sure why it's called that. Now, 1960, in 1960, the Garden City Sheriff's Office was contained within the Finney County Courthouse, with the sheriff's residence being located next door.

Okay. So it was very near the holding cell where Smith was being held, the residence of the sheriff.

Okay. Right. Earl Robinson, the sheriff, already had a home in Holcomb.

So he didn't want to live in the sheriff's residence.

So he offered the sheriff's residence that was next to the Finney County Courthouse to the undersheriff.

Okay. Who was like right underneath him.

Yeah. His name was Wendell. Exactly. And his wife's name was Josephine or Josie.

That's nice of him. Now, weirdly, because of the way the cells in the interior walls of the now undersheriff's residence were placed, Smith was able to see into the home at times.

What? Yeah. And Josie, the wife, actually ended up taking a liking to Perry Smith.

A man who killed an entire family. Including a 16-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy.

The sheriff was not happy about this whole thing because at first she was basically like thought he was like, oh, like poor him.

Like he's such a sad, a sad tale.

i don't get it poor him poor him he murdered a whole ass family ma'am i don't get that's like i don't get that kind of thing but like that kind of thing like what even is i mean like i don't get like i'm sure part of this was religious in some way this is a very religious community i'm sure she was a church going gal and i'm sure she felt like forgiveness needed to be placed i I feel like murder is like a really big sin, Chica.

I don't think that. You are correct 100%.

And that's why I personally don't understand the forgiveness thing in that sense or being kind to this kind of person.

No. maybe that's where it came from with her is all I'm trying to say.

Like, I don't understand it, so I think I'm trying to find some kind of... Oh, yeah.

Some kind of, like, why would you be nice to this man?

Like, I don't understand that. I think she was nice to him because she found him to be attractive.

It kind of seems like that, but who knows?

I don't get it. The sheriff was not happy with their, like, relationship here.

No! And insisted she stay away from him, but she saw him as a sort of lost boy who had a rough go in life.

girly girl yeah they ended up spending a ton of time together she would make his fucking lunch and eat it with him girl seek help thank you i'm not even sorry that's ridiculous something's wrong he murdered children and their parents an entire family for no fucking reason whatsoever not that there is a reason but no of course not but not even a reason for him like for a transistor radio getting 40 making a murderer's lunch and eating it with him that's what i don't get and it's It's like, you are the undersheriff's wife.

What the fuck is wrong with you? You chose the wrong husband, girlie.

Yeah, like you chose the wrong path in life.

Or maybe that's why she chose him. I don't know.

Maybe she had a thing for bad boys. Who knows?

This is more than just like a bad boy. But what's, Perry Smith actually wrote in his journals about how much, how kind she was and how like he really liked her.

Of course. She was kind to a fault, in my opinion.

One might say. That's just me. No, yeah.

But I don't get her. These are all opinions, but like, wowie kazowie.

Yeah, exactly. Because remember, let me just, in case you're sitting there going, well, yeah, Perry Smith had such a sad childhood and like he wasn't given a go for it.

Me too, I've never killed anybody over it.

These are cold-blooded killers, and they proved it again and again.

Dick Hickok said later that he remembered hearing a gurgling noise coming from Herb after his throat was cut, and to police, he said about Smith, he just cut the hell out of him.

So this is who we're talking about. Exactly.

That's what he said. Like, I think we can get rid of the whole, like... Turkey sandwiches with the crust cut off?

That poor guy. I think we can. And his upbringing.

Like, again, feel bad for the kid. Sure, totally.

I feel terrible for the kid. I don't feel bad for the adult.

Plenty of people have abusive childhoods.

And that's fucking awful. But not all of them go out and kill people about it.

You don't get to go murder someone about it.

No, if anything, it should make you want to be a better person in life and hopefully a better parent to break the cycle.

I'm so mad. I know. An army friend of Perry Smith's named Don Cullivan visited him in prison, and he was told the entire graphic detail of the crime.

And he said that Smith said about herb clutter, he told him, quote, as I pulled the trigger, there was a flash of blue light.

I could see his head split apart. That's what he told this man as Josie is over there cutting the crust off his sandwich.

Yeah, exactly. So just make sure we're all on the same page here.

And she's like, you know, if it weren't for his shitty childhood, I don't think he would have done that.

So lost. A lost soul. But of course, Hickok and Smith's attorneys were gun-ho about getting an insanity defense.

And in the 1960s, the predominant test for sanity in criminal proceedings was the McNaughton test.

It was originally established in the 1840s, so already it's timely and very relevant to the 60s even.

And it was a standard by which someone was deemed to be sane during the commission of a criminal act as long as they understood the act is illegal and or considered by society to be morally wrong.

Yeah. Of course, now we know it's outdated and ignores all nuance of psychology and emotional state during criminal acts, but whatever.

So the attorneys, Harrison Smith and A.M.

Fleming, filed a motion for their clients to undergo a mental status exam, which is pretty normal.

The court appointed three general practitioners, John O. Austin, M.D., R.J.

Maxfield, M.D., and Gust H. Nelson, M.D.

Gust or Goost, I'm not really sure how you would say it.

I feel like Goost. Goost Nelson. They performed the evaluation.

They all said that both killers were sane at the time of committing the act.

Duh. But I guess it's kind of important to note that at this time, Kansas law apparently only allowed the evaluation to be submitted as either yes, they are sane or no, they are not.

So you don't get any kind of insight or any kind of nuance to any of this.

Just, yep, they were sane. It's just like circle yes or circle no.

Literally. Like that's literally what it was.

It was yes or no. Yeah. The end. Color in the box.

No nuance, no psychology, nothing behind it.

Just an interesting little thing, but they were the same.

Yeah. So weirdly, this trial was short and uneventful, considering how huge this case was.

I mean, they had the murder weapons taken from Hickok's farm, boots matching the prints found in blood on the cardboard in the clutter house basement next to Herb's body, and also the other items they had found buried next to the highway.

Also, both of them confessed. They did it verbally, but not written publicly.

but neither one of them were denying what they did or how they did it.

So it was pretty much a slam dunk, so of course it was going to be pretty short and sweet.

The prosecution began their opening statements by describing in graphic detail how they methodically tortured, psychologically and physically, and murdered the entire Clutter family and reminded them all that they had about a million chances to stop and leave these people alive, but they chose to keep going further.

and further. Exactly. In fact, they pointed to the fact that when the light came on before they even entered the house, they considered leaving and they didn't.

This really hammered in the idea that this was intentional murder and not just a robbery gone wrong.

Yeah. And it didn't go wrong. They woke Herb up.

They said, where's your safe? He said, I don't have one of those.

Do you want to check? That's as good as a robbery can go, in my opinion.

Like, oh, no, I don't have a safe. You're mistaken.

I'll just give you money. Right. Like, that's not a robbery gone wrong.

If you're going in there for the sole sake of robbing, you'd say, yeah, I'll take that check.

Bye. Like, don't say.

anything or i'll kill your whole family bye like i'm pretty sure he would have been like cool that yeah don't do that so the second day of the trial was reserved for a trip to the clutter home to this crime scene during which the jury was given a tour of the entire thing and they could ask questions they were shown things the press spoke to the killer's families during the trial and And it gave a little insight into the reality of these kind of crimes and the myriad of people they affect, even past the first degree victims in the case, which a lot of people don't think about.

When asked for comment about his son's prospects with the jury, Walter Hickox said to a reporter, they'll both get the rope.

And that was his dad. That's sad. Which is, like, sad.

And this was Dick Hickok's dad who, like, they weren't abusive.

Right. Exactly. And he's probably just like, why did my son turn out this way?

And they were in very frail health, his parents, Dick's parents.

And they were at the courtroom every single day for the trial.

They maintained their son's innocence from the very beginning.

They probably just had to for their own sanity.

It was just hope. Yeah. In fact, his dad said Dick didn't do the killing.

He told me that the first time I saw him.

He had nothing to do with it. So he's just going by like my son told me he didn't do it.

Right.

Now, interestingly, it was these kinds of comments and the sight of Dick's frail parents being so distraught that their son could have possibly done this that made Perry Smith actually do another weird thing.

thing for a cold-blooded killer he attempted to recant his confession but not saying he didn't do it he recanted the part where he claimed that he and hickok had each killed two members of the clutter family he now wanted to say that he killed them all interesting the judge denied his attempt to recant and later smith said he only attempted to do that because he didn't want dick's parents to quote go to their graves thinking their son was a killer It's weird because he does have some level of compassion.

It's so strange.

If you're willing to go away for your entire life and like when you know full well that this other person had just as much as a hand of it in that than you did, excuse me, like that's a level of compassion.

Yeah. And why could you not look at that family and have that same compassion?

That's the thing. That's where I, my, my, it does not compute for me because I, and I also think back and I'm like, okay, so Josie, the under sheriff's wife, I'm like,

maybe that's the kind of shit she was hearing and that's the kind of shit she was seeing and it was bending her mind a little bit to be like could this guy have done this you know what i mean like he seems so like i mean these are like people in kansas in the 1950s yeah this is a woman's people a woman in kansas in the 1950s she's not being fed the kind of education that we are now and it's like you know what i mean so it's like She's like a good church-going, you know, housewife.

Right. She's not, like, worldly. It's like, so she's hearing this guy be, like, saying these kind of things, you know what I mean?

Which I'm sure he was able to say some things that sounded very compassionate and very empathetic.

It's strange. And maybe that's why she was drawn to be kind to him?

Yeah. No, you're not. You're not wrong. I'm trying to find some kind of way around that, but...

I think he was very good at showing those kind of things, but I'm just having trouble with the, like, what are you feeling?

What are you really feeling? Like, do you feel that way?

You have compassion for this guy's elderly parents.

So what the fuck? Like, how does it only go that far?

I don't know if it's like he had compassion.

Maybe it was, like, more compassion for Dick because his parents were struggling, and then maybe the reason why he was able to kill the Clutter family is because, like, that family represented everything he didn't have.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I'm sure there's some deep psychology involved in this, but it's a very interesting, he's interesting.

He's a dichotomy for sure. He very much is.

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only. Now, on the final day of testimonies, the prosecution called Floyd Wells to the stand.

Oh, shit.

Wells told the jury all about the information he had given Hickok about the wealthy clutter family and the safe and said he initially assumed Dick was just going to apply for a job at the clutter farm when he was released.

Yeah. Which I'm like, duh. No, you didn't.

But he said about two weeks before he was scheduled to be released, that's when Dick started talking about robbing the family to buy the boat.

So he was like, at first I thought he just wanted a job.

Maybe. Who knows? But then he admitted a couple of weeks before that's when he really went into high gear saying he was going to rob them.

And I didn't know what to do. And the prosecution asked Wells if Hickok made it known that he intended to commit some kind of act of violence along with this.

And Wells said, quote, he told me he'd tie them up, rob them, and kill them.

Boom. Boom. So in a desperate move, Dick Hickok released a handwritten note to the press saying, And he got it there through his mother.

His mother delivered it to the press. And in that letter, it said that Wells had been in on the plan all along.

I believe that. And he said Wells made a diagram of the clutter home and how to get to it.

And the note said, if the job amounted to $5,000, Wells was to get $1,000.

I mean, that's the thing. How would they have gotten there in the first place?

I think that too. Like, but I know he definitely had some involvement in it.

I don't know when he was set to be released.

That's the only thing that I'm like, when was he getting out of jail?

But maybe it was just that, like, maybe he thought he'd get out of jail early.

And if he did, he'd be a full part of the plan.

But because he gave them the diagram and the information in the first place, he was due to get some kind of cut.

Yeah. It's a strange, but then I'm like, but I don't believe Dick either.

I don't believe Dick, but just based on the fact that he told, Wells told him that the Clutter family had this money in the first place.

Well, and it's also, I mean, I think this was kind of a lot of this, what he says is a lie.

A lot of what Dick says is lies. Yeah. He, the death penalty was on the table here.

Uh-huh. And he really didn't want to die.

Of course. And I think he was really doing Hail Marys at the end to try to get anything.

And I think he was pissed when Floyd Wells got on that stand and said that.

Yeah. It absolutely could be true. But I'm more inclined to say that Dick is a lying sack of shit.

I think I believe that Wells had at least more to do with this than just the information of they had that money.

Yeah. Oh, I think he gave them a ton of information about the farm, about everything about her.

I think the diagram is true. I think he gave them all that stuff.

And I think, but I don't know how far that went.

And who knows? Yeah. That's the thing. Now, a few days later, Dick also gave the Topeka Daily Capital News Journal, a journalist from that.

His name was Ron Cull. He gave him a statement that in the paper ran it on the day after Wells' testimony.

And in this, it said, and this is from Dick Hickok, quote, I'm sorry for what I did, but I can't undo what's already been done.

But if killing me would bring them back, I'd just walk up there right now and tell them to go ahead.

But it won't. He also said he wasn't getting a fair trial.

He said KBI agents lied on the stand about his confession in Las Vegas.

And he said, quote, Well, you also tormented a man before you killed him.

Every word of this letter is a lie. Yeah.

He lied. Like he's a lying sack of shit.

I bet. It was just to avoid the death penalty.

That's all it was. He was interviewed a ton of times since he returned from Las Vegas right after he returned from Las Vegas.

Not one bruise was seen on him. Not one bit of evidence of a beating could be seen.

And one that he claimed he received for over an hour with black jacks and fists.

He would be black and purple and blue. Yeah.

Like not one bruise was found on this man's body.

No. None. Now, it was also definitely being put out there to aid their appeals later.

All of this was.

Because following their conviction, obviously Dick and Smith filed an appeal claiming, you know, their rights had been violated, the whole being denied separate trials things, the judge refused to allow evidence, you know, of the psychiatric evaluations that would have helped them, all the shit that's like, fuck off.

Y'all, we found the hunting knife in your possession.

Y'all, you confessed to it. Like, Like you confessed.

We're done here. That's pretty much it. The trial concluded on March 29th, 1960.

The jury deliberated for 40 minutes and found both men guilty of the crimes.

I bet. They both exhausted their appeals.

And finally, they were sentenced to die by hanging on Wednesday, April 14th, 1965.

On that day, their attorneys made one last day plea for mercy to the U.S.

Supreme Court on their behalf. It got denied and denied and denied right up until the last second.

And Justice Byron, it was Justice Byron White who oversaw the 10th District U.S.

Circuit Court at the time. He was the one who denied the final stay of execution and declined any comment about it.

Just denied. Bye. I feel like this doesn't need a comment.

Do you see what happened on that farm? Well, and it's like, denied.

That's all you need to know. Just denied.

I picture him stamping denied. Now, a few minutes after midnight on April 14th, 1965, Dick Hickok and Perry Smith were hanged at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing.

For his final words, Perry Smith took the opportunity to condemn capital punishment completely.

He said, I think it is a hell of a thing that a life has to be taken in this manner.

Go fuck yourself. I say this especially because there's a great deal I could have offered society.

I certainly think capital punishment is legally and morally wrong.

Yep, just like murder. You had stuff you could have offered society?

That whole family was offering society a shit ton.

Yeah, exactly. Why did you never offer society anything in the... How old was he?

Like 29, 30? Yeah. He was like... You had plenty of years to offer society a bunch of shit and all you did was steal, lie, cheat, and kill.

So go fuck yourself. And it's like...

we're talking about morals right now and like I said I've said it forever that I'm like leaning more towards like against death penalty and I'm I sat in a gray area forever but I'm leaning way more on that side of like I don't think it's a great thing But I also think it's fucking ridiculous for a cold-blooded murderer of an entire family to stand up there and be like, guys, this is wrong.

It's like, yeah, no shit, asshole. The whole thing is wrong.

Like, you're wrong. Like, this whole thing is wrong.

You killed an entire family. You can't tell me about morals and ethics and all that shit and kill an entire family.

Mm-mm. Now, Dick Hickok said he didn't want to say any final words.

But then he was like, actually, I do at the last second because he's just annoying up until the very end.

Yeah. And in his final moments, he said that the KBI agents who arrested him, he said that they were like it was their fault.

This was all on them. And then he said, you're sending me to a better place than this.

And then he shook each of their hands and said goodbye.

Wow. So Hickok and Smith were buried on the prison grounds.

And several years later, there was an expansion of the prison plan.

So their bodies actually had to be exhumed and relocated.

Oh, shit. To Mount Muncie Cemetery in Leavenworth County.

And actually, Truman Capote purchased headstones for both men.

But they were both stolen. So weird. Speaking of Truman Capote...

In 1958, Capote had the idea to create what he called the first nonfiction novel in which he was looking to take a real event and turn it into kind of a story.

Now, he just couldn't find the right subject.

And that is until he saw an article in the November 16th, 1959 New York Times that talked about a farmer and his entire family who were murdered in their homes in Holcomb, Kansas.

I don't know why I keep saying Texas. I'm sorry.

We'll deal with that in a second. He went to Garden City before Hickok and Smith had even been caught.

And along with his friend, you might know this name, Harper Lee.

I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't ring a bell.

That one I know. That one you know. I promise you guys, I know that one.

Harper Lee, a fellow author. They began a real investigative deep dive into the Clutter's lives and horrifically tragic deaths.

Now Capote stuck out like a sore thumb in Kansas.

If you look him up, he was New York high society, even though he was raised in the deep south.

But he was very much New York high society.

He was very out there, very exuberant. You would know him in a crowd.

He looks like a cool guy. Yeah, he was cool.

So he spent months and months speaking to everyone in Holcomb, really spending time getting to know the community around the Clutters and everyone who ever knew them.

He assured them all that he was planning to write a factual account of the crime and he wanted it to be from the perspectives of the people in and around Holcomb and the community.

He made an impression. But apparently when In Cold Blood was finally published in 1965, people in Holcomb and Garden City were like a little confused.

Uh-oh. So in 2009, his friend and author, you might know this name, Alan Schwartz, great author, wrote, it is different than what they expected.

It is not simply a matter of historical reporting.

I can imagine that a lot of people who were freaked out by what happened in the middle of Kansas never understood that.

Mm-hmm. So the problem people found with the work was that they felt it bordered on fiction.

The Clutter family felt like with all he put into getting to know the Clutters and talking with all of them, he didn't put nearly enough of them in the book.

They were not happy. And others said he got things completely wrong, which they were like, he just fabricated things.

In fact, in 2019, Gary McAvoy and Ronald Nye, who was the son of KBI agent Harold Nye.

Oh, shit. He published a book promoting a bunch of new theories and really going against a lot of Capote's ideas that were from the book.

Now, still, there were many others in Holcomb and Garden City who appreciated the time and consideration that Capote and Harper paid to the residents there.

Fielding Hands, a friend of the Clutter family, said, quote, I think he did the family justice for the things he said about them and what they did for the community.

Susan Kidwell, who was one of the two girls to discover the bodies, she said, yeah, the book has some factual inaccuracies and it's definitely like fiction in some parts.

But she said she had very positive experiences with Truman Capote as a person.

All right. She said, quote, to me, he was very nice and very polite and I respected his work.

I never felt that he was trying to use us in any way.

Okay. And I think that's what the, where such like people sit in that gray area with it is.

Uh-huh. He went into it saying he wanted to make a nonfiction novel.

He went into it saying he wanted to write a story about a real event.

So he didn't go in there with like total, you know, being like, I'm just going to straight report this.

Yeah. But if you're going to do a nonfiction novel, I don't think it should be about a murder.

Like, I don't think you should choose, the event that you should choose should be one like this.

Because there's just a lot of stuff in that.

So if you're going to do something about a real event, like the Clutter Family Murders, just report on it.

Just write the story of it. Right. If you want to do a more narrative, fictionalized version, maybe just choose an event that doesn't hold such...

High stakes. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Emotions. I truly don't believe, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, I truly don't believe Truman Capote went in there trying to fuck people's lives up.

I don't think somebody would. I would hope somebody wouldn't.

Well, and it looks like a lot of people who interact with him said they never had a bad experience with him.

And he seemed like he was a kind, respectful person who really did want to create something amazing.

And he did create something amazing. The book itself is amazing.

Yeah. It's like heart-wrenching. It's like harrowing.

It's a lot of things. Do you know what the parts are that people feel are fictionalized or are fictionalized?

I think it's just little details. I'm not exactly sure what pieces are.

I do encourage people to read it because I think it's a very fascinating book and I think it's very well written.

But I can see why some people are like, I'm not into the creative license part.

Yeah, it's hard to take creative license and true crime, and I don't necessarily think it's something you should do personally.

Well, and I think this was from, what, like, 65?

You know what I mean? So this was such a different era.

Such a different era and such a different time.

To point this out, he had never done this before.

No. This had never been done before. Of course it's not going to go off without a hitch, you know?

Of course not. It's the inaugural one of these kind of genres, you know?

Like, he created this genre, so it's like...

Yeah, there's going to be some hiccups here.

And from the looks of it, a lot of people that you hear, like I said, don't have bad things to say about him as a person.

Even if they didn't necessarily like the book that came out of it.

Him as a person or really him as an investigator.

No, because he did go out of his way to spend a ton.

shit ton of time in holcomb and talked to everybody he also talked to the killers like he talked to there was all of that so if you want to read it or you want to read up on it it's a very interesting story of how the book came to be i see that there's a rolling stone article about yeah go take go take a peek at it like read that like just so you can get some more information about the book and the whole process i think it's a very interesting story behind the actual book making um But either way, In Cold Blood is considered by many to be a masterpiece of crime reporting and narrative nonfiction.

All right. So it was actually adapted into a feature film in 1967 and for television in 1966.

So the Clutter House and Farmland were auctioned off in March of 1960, then sold again in, I think, the mid to late 1960s to a rancher named Bob Bird.

Tourists still flock to Holcomb, just to see the places mentioned in the book.

But a lot has changed since then. I bet, yeah.

Like, they want to go see the house. They want to go see where it all happened.

Isn't it crazy that that's really closer to 100 years ago?

Yeah. I know. Isn't that wild? It really is crazy.

Most people who are still around from the original crime, who are in the community or knew the family or part of the family...

They don't really want to speak about it anymore.

I get that. So don't ask them about it. Yeah.

They don't want to talk about it. Let those people rest in peace.

Some people want Holcomb to just be left alone.

And others are like, it's fine. This happened.

Well, and I'm sure they're like, okay, Holcomb is more than just this tragedy.

That's exactly it. Yeah. Right. But they did memorialize the Clutter family with a park in Holcomb.

Okay. And in 2009, the Holcomb City Council put up a memorial for them in town.

But the memorial only discusses their lives and accomplishments as a family.

I think that's awesome. And does not talk about their deaths.

I think that's awesome. Which I think is a really good way of memorializing them.

Yeah. Is by not even mentioning what happened.

Everybody knows. Everybody knows, obviously.

So it's like it's nice that there's a memorial that is just about who they were as people.

Yeah. And who they were to the community and as a family.

Yeah, definitely. So that is the terrible story.

Yeah. Of the Clutter family murders or the in cold blood murders as it's sometimes known.

True. Truly a harrowing case. And the more and more you were going through it, like in the beginning, I expected to know this because in cold blood sounded really familiar to me.

But then when you were going through this, I actually don't think I've heard of this case.

Yeah, that's so funny. I don't think so anyway.

Interesting. You know what, though? I'm sure a lot of people like in probably in your age group.

Yeah. And younger. Yeah.

probably they probably don't know about it either because as you just said this is this is much longer ago than it was when i started like reading about these things right like i started reading about these things and what like the 20 years ago like the late 1990s early like early 2000s it was 20 years ago much closer to the 1960s so it's like now that is pretty far removed it is which is definitely that was just just like interesting now to think about how far that is I know, and it's weird that we obviously have such different experiences in being interested in true crime.

Like, you know so many of those earlier cases that I'm just like, I've never heard of that.

And I'll be like, what? You don't know that?

But then when I actually think about it, I'm like, well, yeah, it makes sense.

I guess she doesn't know that because she was like not even born when that was even a... Yeah.

Yeah, that's weird. But it's funny because we're only 10 years apart.

And when you think about it, 10 years is not very much, but 10 years really makes all the difference.

It does. It does. It's crazy. And that's the that on that.

And that's the that on that. I really like the way that you told that story.

Thank you. Thanks for telling it. I appreciate that.

And go check out any of the Rolling Stone articles or anything about the book and stuff.

I'm sure people have written awesome stuff about how they came to be and all that background.

Totally. I love a good Rolling Stone article.

Go check it out. I don't know what it is.

There's some great ones out there. There are.

And Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair. Yeah, they do a good job.

I love a good Vanity Fair. Yeah. All right.

Well, with all that being said, guys, we hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird. But that's it where they terrorize an entire family and then talk that the death penalty is not right.

Yeah, don't do that. I'm confused. Don't.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.

The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic.

Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

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[클러터 일가 살인 사건: '냉혈한' 범죄의 기록]-[Episode 425: The Clutter Family Murders]

📋 Summary

클러터 일가 살인 사건: 1950년대 미국을 뒤흔든 비극

평화로운 가정의 비극

범인들의 동기와 범행 과정

수사와 체포

재판과 그 이후

논란의 명작 『냉혈한』

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript