The murder of Herb Clutter, forty-eight, his wife Bonnie, forty-five, and their two children, Kenyon, fifteen, and Nancy, sixteen, on the night of November 15, 1959, was to become one of the most celebrated cases of this century, because what happened was chronicled in the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
The book, really the first major work that treated a real-life crime in a novelistic way, was brilliant, and there are those who would argue—myself included—that it is the best account of a true crime ever written. (Though I had some problems with Capote exaggerating some scenes.)
On the face of it, Capote certainly had something to work with. It would have been a shocking crime even if it had occurred in downtown Milwaukee, but it occurred in Holcomb, Kansas, a quiet little town typical of so many other quiet little towns across America.
The man who was in charge of the case, Alvin A. Dewey, an agent from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, was to become world-famous because of his pursuit of what turned out to be two killers.
Dewey first learned of the deaths while investigating a bombing incident in Wichita. His wife called him in the early morning hours of the fifteenth and told him about the Clutters, that they had been shot and stabbed. On the way to Holcomb, Dewey reflected that it might be a murder/suicide case. Bonnie Clutter had been suffering from depression, and just maybe that was behind it.
Before he got to the scene though, Earl Robinson, the Finney County sheriff who had been called when the bodies had been discovered, disabused Dewey of this notion. Everyone, Robinson told him, had their hands tied behind their backs. The murders were a shock, not only because of the quiet Kansas town they had occurred in, but because of the kind of people who had died.
Herb Clutter and his family were Mayberry RFD come to life. The American Dream, at least on the surface.
Herb Clutter was a farmer with a college degree. He kept his farm—he mostly grew wheat—as neat and orderly as his life. He was active in community organizations, including the 4-H Club, and was president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, which he had helped develop into a national force.
Herb Clutter and his wife, Bonnie
Bonnie Clutter was a soft-spoken, pretty lady, a good wife with the same high moral and ethical principles her husband had.
Herb and Bonnie had two other daughters, one who was married at the time of the killings and one who was in college. Nancy was the one who was home that terrible night. She was a pretty, slim brunette who liked dogs and horses. She was vivacious and high-spirited.
Kenyon was the quiet one in the family, but he was well liked by adults and kids alike and was active in school and church. If he had lived, there was little doubt that he would have followed in his father’s footsteps to a large degree.
Nancy Clutter
When Alvin Dewey arrived at the Clutter farm, the bodies had been removed to the morgue. He viewed them there—an extradifficult task because Dewey knew the Clutters and liked them very much. When he went to the house, he didn’t relish it, but it was his job.
Each of the victims had been killed in a separate room, and the scenes bore mute evidence of the ferocity of the assault. A shotgun had been used. There was blood in all four rooms, as well as hair adhered to the walls with blood.
Herb Clutter, wearing pajamas, had been found lying facedown on a mattress carton in the furnace room, his hands bound behind him, shot in the head with his throat cut.
Kenyon Clutter
Kenyon was found barefooted and in a T-shirt and jeans on a couch in a large recreation room next to the furnace room. He had been shot in the face.
Bonnie Clutter, in nightclothes, was found on the second floor on her bed, also shot in the head.
Nancy Clutter, on her bed in her room, was shot in the back of the head. All but Nancy had tape over their mouths, but the concussion from the shotgun blasts had loosened the tape on the other victims.
Nylon rope had been used in tying all of them.
On the main floor, investigators found a black purse and a billfold. The telephone wires had been cut in the den and kitchen.
The house was dusted for fingerprints, and a bloody footprint was discovered on the mattress carton where Herb Clutter’s body had been found. A section of the carton that included the footprint was cut and preserved. Everything was photographed.
Then the investigation spread outward from the house. The farm buildings surrounding the house were searched, and neighbors within a five-mile radius were interviewed to see if they had seen or heard anything unusual. Police also talked to service-station personnel in an even wider area.
The fingerprints found were confusing. In most of the house the prints were consistent, strictly those of the Clutters. But in the recreation room many other different prints were found. Then it came out that Nancy had had a party the week before. Subsequently, police fingerprinted about a dozen of her friends and were able to match many of the prints, solving that little mystery.
Mable Helm, a woman who cleaned for the Clutters, was brought to the house and went through it to see if anything was missing. The Clutters were organized and orderly and she quickly determined that nothing was missing except Kenyon’s Zenith portable radio.
The Clutters also had a hired hand, Alfred Stoecklein, who lived on the property in a small house about a hundred yards from the main house.
Rather mysteriously, Stoecklein, who was in his house on Saturday night, heard nothing. Perhaps he should have, given the sound a shotgun makes when it goes off. The wind was blowing up to thirty miles per hour Saturday night and maybe that is why he didn’t hear anything.
When the crime scene photos came back they held an interesting fact: There were two killers. The footprint made in the blood on the cardboard mattress box was a cat’s paw heel, but there was another imprint in the dust that was diamondshaped, indicating a different brand heel.
The investigation continued, including stopping and speaking with anyone—hunters included—who owned shotguns, but after two weeks the investigation had gone cold, and the police were worried. There is a cliché among police that a crime that is not solved or cleared, as cops say, in the first forty-eight hours becomes a “whodunit” and is much more difficult to solve.
It was around that time that Truman Capote, accompanied by friend writer (Nelle) Harper Lee, author of the great book To Kill a Mockingbird, showed up, and Capote announced that he was to do a story on the Clutter case, with Lee helping him with typing, note-taking, and interviews.
Alvin Dewey and Capote didn’t get along at first—Dewey was put off by Capote, saying he was just interested in what happened up to the point of the murders and “couldn’t care less” if they were solved.
But that was to change and they were to become good friends.
The townsfolk, of course, were taken aback by Capote, with his incredibly high, stilted voice and effeminate mannerisms. “He sounds weird when he first speaks,” one Holcomb citizen said. “But you listen what this fella’s got to say and after a while you don’t notice how he speaks, just what he says.”
On December 5, three weeks after the murders, investigators got a big break and it was from, not atypically, a snitch—a source that solves several crimes. This snitch was one of the jailhouse variety. Inmates are always looking to shorten their prison terms, and one way to do this is by providing authorities with information on various major crimes.
Floyd Wells, an inmate at the state penitentiary in Lansing, said that he had told a cellmate, Richard Hickock, about working on a wealthy farmer’s place—and that he knew the farmer had a safe with $10,000 in it.
Hickock was extremely interested in the farmer—and the safe—and pressed Wells for details on how to get the layout of the place and so forth.
He told Wells that he was going to contact a buddy of his in Nevada, Perry Smith, who had been Hickock’s cellmate until a few months earlier, and they were going to rob the safe.
They did—and, of course, much more.
The cops followed through, and investigation showed that Perry Smith and Dick Hickock had met, and that Smith had been hanging around Hickock’s house in Olathe, Kansas, a few days before the killings. Investigators pursued the two and learned that parole officers were also looking for Smith, whose parole stipulated that he must stay in Nevada. Olathe, Kansas, was a no-no. Authorities also wanted Hickock on a separate matter: He had written a forest of rubber checks in Kansas.
But Dewey and the FBI could not find the two. In his book, Capote describes the travels of the pair all over the South and Northwest, including Mexico and Florida, during the time they could not be found.
And he described two hair-raising escapes people had. The pair, apparently unconcerned about killing, had decided while hitchhiking through Colorado to kill the next person who picked them up and steal that person’s car.
Someone did slow down for them, but just as they reached the car the driver had a change of mind—and sped away.
Hickock yelled at the receding car, “You lucky bastard!” The next person was also in great luck. He was described as a salesman, a father of five kids. Capote called him “Mr. Bell.” He picked up Smith and Hickock. They had devised a signal that would trigger his murder. Smith was in the back, Hickock the front. As soon as Hickock went to light a cigarette, Smith was to hook a belt over the man’s head and strangle him while Hickock grabbed the wheel.
They were in the middle of nowhere, seconds from doing it, when what Capote described as a miracle occurred. They came over the crest of a hill and standing at the bottom of it was Mr. Bell’s salvation: a soldier was hitchhiking, and the goodhearted salesman stopped and picked him up, forcing Smith and Hickock to abort their murderous plan.
A few days after Christmas, Alvin Dewey got some wonderful news: Smith and Hickock had been picked up by the Las Vegas police for driving a stolen car and for parole violations.
On a snowy New Year’s Day, Dewey and some other cops drove to Las Vegas to question the pair.
The suspects were split up. Dewey saw Smith and his partners questioned Hickock. Thereafter followed a rambling, hours-long dialogue during which the suspects at first didn’t know what the investigators were interested in.
Dick Hickock, one of the Clutter family killers.
Then Dewey broke the bad news to Smith and thereafter played Hickock against Smith, and also told a lie: that someone had seen the pair leaving the Clutter house. Dewey also had some physical evidence. While they were on the road, Smith and Hickock had shipped their personal belongings to general delivery in Las Vegas, and the police picked the package up. Among the articles of clothing were shoes—one pair with cat’s-paw soles, which were Smith’s, and a pair with diamondshaped soles, which were Hickock’s. Dewey and his partners used everything as a wedge to break the suspects down.
Perry Smith, the other Clutter killer who some people feel was the actual murderer.
It is not exactly clear who broke first, but it was likely Hickock—Smith was one tough piece of work—and before long Hickock was telling the story of what happened, and that Smith was the first to kill—that Smith killed two and Hickock killed two.
Shortly, the story was detailed and it was a horrific one. Mindless violence seemed to describe it perfectly.
Around midnight of the fifteenth, Smith and Hickock pulled into a service station on Route 50N just inside the Garden City limits. They then drove the short distance to Holcomb and found the road that led to the Clutter farm. Floyd Wells’s directions were perfect.
The house itself was dark. There was a small building about a hundred yards from the larger one where the lights were on; they parked and waited for those lights to go off.
They were able to enter the house through an open side door. Herb Clutter had heard them come in, and the still sleepy man asked what they wanted. They asked him where the safe was, and he denied that he had any.
They forced Clutter to go upstairs and he pointed out each of the bedrooms where other family members were. They herded them all—Clutter, his two kids, and his wife—into a large upstairs bathroom.
Then Smith and Hickock considered what to do.
Until that moment, Smith told investigators, there had not been any plans to kill anyone. But they discussed Hickock’s mode of operation: “If anyone sees us, they have to go.”
One by one they took the Clutters out of the bathroom. Smith led Herb Clutter downstairs to look for the safe. Then he tied up Clutter, and looked himself. The two men kept looking, but had no success.
It was perhaps because of the frustration of not finding a safe—at least in the killers’ minds this might have been the reason—that, as Smith said, “all hell broke loose…that’s when the violence started.”
They decided to kill the Clutters, but didn’t want to use a gun because of the noise.
Smith said he had a knife, and he would use this.
Downstairs, Smith pretended to adjust Clutter’s ropes and plunged the knife into Clutter’s neck. Clutter struggled, got a hand loose, and touched his throat, and Smith plunged the knife into him again and again.
But he wasn’t dead, and then Hickock, who had been watching, became unnerved and handed Smith the shotgun. Smith shot Herb Clutter in the head.
And then they went to the next room and shot Kenyon, and then went upstairs and killed Nancy, and finally, Bonnie.
Smith and Hickock searched the house a bit more, and after an hour, left. Their total haul: $50 and Kenyon Clutter’s radio. In fact, there was no safe.
***
The trial of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock was held in March 1960 and each was quickly found guilty of murder in the first degree of four counts each—with each count punishable by death.
Logan Green, the fiery prosecuting attorney, had told the jury at one point not to be “chicken-livered”—to convict Smith and Hickock, and to recommend death. Smith was heard to comment as he was led from the courtroom after the verdict, “No chicken-livered jurors they.”
Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were caught quickly, but the carrying out of their death sentence by hanging was by no means swift. Various appeals, all the way up to the Supreme Court, took almost five years, while Smith and Hickock waited on Death Row.
This appeals process was most frustrating for author Truman Capote. He had gotten permission from their defense attorney to talk to Smith and Hickock and had conducted in-depth interviews with both of them, particularly Smith. He completed the book a year or so after the trial, but it couldn’t be published without its final scene.
Finally, the word came: the convictions were affirmed. Smith and Hickock had exhausted all legal appeals and were to die on the night of April 14, 1965, five years and five months after they had killed the Clutter family.
Someone’s Shooting Blanks
Although there are five sharpshooters in a firing squad, only four bullets enter the condemned because one bullet is a blank. Hence, each shooter can rationalize he was not the one to deliver the fatal shot.
First Hickock was hanged, then Smith. All the people involved in the pursuit of Smith and Hickock were at the execution, as was Truman Capote, who had received the killers’ personal invitation to attend the event, which was held in an old warehouse where scaffolding had been erected. Alvin Dewey, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s lead detective on the Clutter family murder case, remembers thinking at the execution how hard it must have been on Smith to have to wait to die until Hickock was hung. But he didn’t worry about it for long. “I thought of the gentle Bonnie Clutter, who lay tied to her bed listening to first one and then another and then another shotgun blast before her turn came.” No, he didn’t agonize over it long at all.
The Clutter house still stands essentially the way it was the night Perry Smith and Dick Hickock slaughtered the Clutters. It has no number and is on an unnamed road, but is located about a half mile west on the south side of the road that runs out of the south end of Holcomb, down at the end of a tree-lined lane that runs perpendicularly off that road. It is a brownish color.
If you have trouble locating it, you can call the Garden City Telegram—they’ll tell you.
For a while, Leonard Mader, its owner, made it sort of a tourist attraction, but in 2005 he put it up for sale.
Truman Capote is deceased, and a couple of years ago Alvin Dewey passed away. No one seems to know what happened to the surviving Clutter girls.
For me, the best line in In Cold Blood was the last, at once sad and mysterious, seeming to articulate the tragedy and the terror of the event as Al Dewey said good-bye to one of the surviving Clutter girls. “Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”
It was a beautiful piece of writing, a lovely scene filled with sadness and, somehow, ghosts. There was only one thing wrong with it, said Alvin Dewey: “It never happened.”
Q. What is the most requested last meal?
A. French fries are the most requested last meal, followed by (in order of popularity) hamburgers, steak, ice cream, and fried chicken.
Q. What was Gary Gilmore’s ad idea?
A. Before he was executed for murder, Gary Gilmore had an advertising idea: after he was executed by firing squad, John Cameron Swayze, the famous spokesperson for Timex, should hold a stethoscope to Gilmore’s chest and say, “This one is not ticking, folks…” and then the camera would pan down to the Timex on Gilmore’s wrist and Swayze would put the stethoscope on it and say, “But this one is!” The ad might not have worked: despite being shot in the heart with four .30 caliber bullets, Gilmore lived—along with his ticking heart—for two minutes.
1. I was born in Fort Worth, Texas.
2. I lived in constant fear of my father, who beat me and my mother constantly.
3. To compensate for my sense of inadequacy, I fantasized that I was the king in a kingdom of little people.
4. I moved to Decatur, Texas, and by the time I was fourteen I was using drugs.
5. I looked like a nerd who wouldn’t harm a fly, and had few athletic skills in high school.
6. My favorite band was the Beatles.
7. At sixteen I became a born-again Christian.
8. At one point in my life I read The Catcher in the Rye and started to model my life after its lonely and rebellious hero, Holden Caulfield.
9. As I reached adulthood I moved various places, apparently trying to find him. But voices started talking to me.
10. I became obsessed with Holden Caulfield, as well as Beatle John Lennon. In September 1980, I wrote a letter to a friend, Lynda Irish, in which I stated, “I’m going nuts,” and signed it “The Catcher in the Rye.”
11. At one point I came to New York, my mission to kill John Lennon.
12. At around 11:00 p.m. on December 8, after stalking Lennon all day, I saw him come back to his home, an apartment in the Dakota, with his wife, Yoko.
13. I got Lennon to sign an album, and as he walked toward the entrance to the apartment building, I shot him four times in the back with a Charter Arms pistol. He died and I read The Catcher in the Rye until the police showed up.
Answer: I am Mark David Chapman.
Notable Quotable
…two attendants were having fun and playing grab ass…while there, behind them, in a refrigerated box, was the Sixties.
Pete Hamill, on the assassination of John Lennon in New York City