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On September 11, 2012, my lawyer and I walked into the decorous offices of the Washington State attorney general in Seattle, summoned there by the attorney general of Kansas, who had demanded a formal accounting of every document consigned to me by Ron Nye, one of my business clients. Such reciprocal courtesies are apparently accorded attorneys general in other jurisdictions, but I was none too happy to be there.
After signing in at reception, we were buzzed through the fortified glass doors shielding the main offices. An escort appeared, leading us down long wide hallways, the solemn faces of previous attorneys general peering down from their frames on the walls lining the route to our destination.
On arrival we entered a large, well-appointed conference room, where thirteen state officials sat around an enormous U-shaped table furnished with pencils and pads, laptop computers, cell phones, and water glasses. On the wall facing the table, two formidable video conferencing monitors and cameras stared down silently on the group.
Leading this official cluster was an assistant attorney general for the State of Washington, along with his senior counsel and several more state lawyers, at least three forensic investigators, a court reporter, audio/video specialists, and what may have been a few interns or possibly just curious personnel from other offices.
Apparently, the videoconferencing equipment wasn’t an option, so an assistant placed a phone call to the Kansas attorney general’s office. Once connected, through a strategically positioned speakerphone names and titles were offered up as introductions went around the table in Seattle. Then a disembodied voice from Kansas called out their own cast of attendees 1500 miles away: an assistant attorney general, the director of the KBI, various attorneys and special agents—seven people in all (or so they said) were present and accounted for in Topeka.
My lawyer and I were seated at one end of the table, somewhat taken aback by the startling number of people (now at least twenty) assembled for what we had presumed would be a simple review of documents.
Only then did it hit me: This was a big deal for a lot of people. The leather messenger bag slung over my shoulder contained something every person in this room wanted to see, which likely meant the same eagerness pervaded the opposite room in Kansas.
All eyes turned in my direction as I withdrew a hefty six-inch stack of historical documents from my bag: copies of reports yellowed with age from various agencies; mug shots and fingerprint cards of the killers; personal and official correspondence; various photos; and finally, Agent Harold Nye’s personal notebooks comprising in detail his cryptic investigation notes, the reason we were here.
Everything was sealed in clear Mylar sleeved packets, numbered 1 through 22, which I had previously organized as best I could, given the diverse nature of the collection which, as Ron mentioned in the Foreword, had survived the dreaded shredders of Oklahoma. The whole historical heap was reverently passed down to the assistant AG at the center of the conference table. Then the tedious litany began.
Unsealing the first packet, the assistant AG inspected the first of hundreds of document pages yet to go. But just as he was about to start reading to the group, one of the vigilant investigators across from me interrupted his boss and, in a firm voice aimed at the phone, posed a simple question: “Kansas, are you recording this?” After a 3-beat pause, a thin, metallic voice from the speaker uttered a faintly tense, “Yes.”
All around me to a person, eyes rolled, and a few pencils flew in the air. Some groaned, a few sighed. This was proving to be more entertaining than I’d expected.
Recovering his composure, the now-irritated assistant AG stoically announced, “Kansas, Washington is a two-party consent state. Standby, we have to go around the room here...”[28]
Which he then did with every person present, asking if each of us consented to having our conversation recorded in Kansas, by who knows who and for what purposes. For a moment I flirted with objecting just to be poke the bear but assumed they would probably record it anyway.
Over the next four hours—as Kansas presumably followed along, matching the stack of copied documents I had provided them to the set under review here in Seattle—the assistant AG removed sheet by single sheet of paper from the topmost packet, flatly describing each in surprisingly fussy detail:
One page stationery, a logo at the top reading “State of Kansas, Office of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Topeka;” typewritten on one side of what appears to be an onionskin carbon copy; beige in color, a single staple mark in the upper left corner, with the imprinted word COPY centered vertically one inch from the left margin; dated 25 January 1960, this is a report by Harold R. Nye, Re: HICKOCK, Richard Eugene & SMITH, Perry Edward – Suspects, the Herbert Clutter Family Murder; signed at the bottom in black ink by Harold R. Nye, Special Agent.
After describing each page, the assistant AG passed it to the person on his left, who in turn reviewed it, silently concurred with a nod that the description was accurate, made some notes on his pad, and passed it on to the next person on his left. Around the room it traveled, each person distinctly aware they were holding something of historical magnitude. And at the tail end of that gauntlet, two people took photocopies of each document for the record.
And on it went, for another four hours. No wonder the room was mobbed. This kind of show-and-tell had to beat the drudgery of dealing with the state’s common everyday criminals.
From time to time a discarnate voice from Kansas would pipe in, asking for particular details on one or another of the pages being described. I took careful notes as to the objects of their interest, for later review.
