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[Nye] had been assigned what he called “the damned delicate business” of interviewing the Clutter kinfolk: “It’s painful for you and it’s painful for them. When it comes to murder, you can’t respect grief. Or privacy. Or personal feelings.”[50]
In his book, Truman Capote took great pains to depict Herbert Clutter as a man standing on high moral ground. Indeed, Clutter enjoyed a reputation as a strict Methodist who demanded untarnished purity from those around him, a solemn but good-natured man revered by nearly everyone in his community. By all accounts, Clutter was self-assured and confident, a man who, in the vernacular of the Midwest, was enjoying life in tall clover.
Born in 1911, Clutter graduated from Kansas State University in 1933 with degrees in agronomy and economics, and the next year, at just twenty-three years old, he served as agricultural agent for Finney County, counseling and educating farmers on the most advanced farming and marketing methods of the day.
By any measure, Clutter was a successful farmer at a time when the industry was undergoing dramatic change. Despite the post-Depression havoc, agriculture in the United States was enjoying somewhat of a peak in the mid-1930s, with nearly seven million family farms providing some thirty million jobs.
In the twenty years that followed, however, the number of American farms declined to just over five million, with a comparable number of jobs, five million, lost largely to consolidation. Other causative factors included improved technologies for planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops—tasks made easier and more efficient by machines instead of manpower—and some to outright failure, with the vagaries of weather, and crops dependent on it, exacting a final, punishing toll on hard-working farmers whose hopes had just run out.
Post-war agriculture in the plains, however, was booming. In 1947, Kansas produced the largest wheat yield in the state’s history, a “miracle crop” of nearly 287 million bushels. Larger operations like Clutter’s 3000-acre River Valley Farm were integrating the new technologies he championed to help meet the rapidly growing family-table demands of millions of returning war veterans—a phenomenon setting in motion the Baby Boom and its ravenous appetite. Clutter’s operation alone that year boasted its best wheat yield ever, 50,000 bushels.
Like most farmers dependent on the shifting fortunes of agriculture, Herb Clutter cultivated a widely diversified cropping plan with a constant three-year outlook. In addition to wheat he grew alfalfa, barley, milo, and maize, as well as grass, both to sell as certified seed and for pasturing his 800 head of cattle.
He was also forward-thinking in securing that most crucial element crops cannot live without: water. Clutter’s shrewd business acumen was aptly described in a wide-ranging New York Times feature on the state of farming in 1954:
There is plenty of water under his land but normally it would be fairly costly to pump up. But a while ago Mr. Clutter leased drilling rights to a natural gas company. In exchange he was entitled to a one-eighth share of the profits. But he uses some of the gas himself to run a big pump. He is charged for this gas of course, but the cost runs slightly under his royalty receipts. So he is getting both gas and water for nothing.[51]
It was this kind of savvy that established Herb Clutter’s reputation in agrarian circles, not just throughout Kansas and the Midwest but well beyond, to the halls of Congress and even the White House.
That kind of influence tends to pay off, as it did in 1953, when President Eisenhower appointed Clutter to the Federal Farm Credit Board. By this time, he had already served as president of the National Association of Wheat Growers and as founder and president of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and several local co-ops.
He was also a director of the Farm Credit Administration, and served on both the USDA Grain Advisory Committee and the International Wheat Advisory Committee, two influential groups under the direction of the controversial Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, who held that post from 1953 to 1961.
It was widely known that Benson and Clutter loathed each other’s policy positions, however; feelings which conceivably extended to each other personally, despite the common but separate bonds of their deeply-held religious beliefs: a closely aligned heritage in missionary work. Clutter was a prominent and lifelong Methodist, while Benson was a highly-ranked member of the Mormon Church, with a privileged seat on the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (and who later became its 13th president).
But Ezra Taft Benson was also a virulent anti-communist crusader, strongly opposed to government agricultural subsidies, which he held to be a noxious form of socialism. By contrast, Herb Clutter’s own vocation was to ensure price parity for American wheat farmers, a fight he appears to have lost, and which may have accounted for his declining reappointment to the Farm Credit Board when his term expired.
Religion and politics aside, few people achieve such pinnacles in life without making enemies along the way, and Herb Clutter was no exception.
In the final weeks of his life, Herb Clutter became uncharacteristically anxious, even surly, and as his worried daughter Nancy confided to her home economics teacher, Polly Stringer, Clutter had even taken to smoking cigarettes, a vice so personally repugnant that he had fired employees for having the habit.[52]
There may have been good reason for his inconsistent mood, however, for it appears Mr. Clutter was having an affair with the wife of Kenneth Lyon, his banker, business partner, and executor of the Clutter estate.
The KBI certainly had evidence pointing to the likelihood, as found in official “memoranda” taken by Alvin Dewey—reports which, for whatever reasons, were never acknowledged in final investigation summaries.
At least two eyewitnesses observed Mr. Clutter at a co-op party at the Allis Hotel in Wichita, dancing and “smooching” with Kenneth Lyon’s wife, Mildred, and neither of their spouses were in attendance. After dancing the pair were seen heading upstairs together in the hotel elevator.[53]
Figure 12. Clutter & Mrs Lyon observed without spouses
Harold R. Nye Archives
Garden City, Kansas
November 23, 1959
MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE
...
On 11/17/59 REDACTED, Satanta, Kansas, advised Trooper xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx of the Kansas State Highway Patrol that approximately one or two years ago he was attending a dance given by the Co-op in Wichita, Kansas, and that he observed Herb Clutter and Kenneth Lyon’s wife together at this dance but that neither Mrs. Clutter or Mr. Lyon were in attendance.
A. A. Dewey
Figure 13. Clutter “dancing...smooching” with Lyon’s wife
Author's archives
Garden City, Kansas
December 28, 1959
MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE
...
On December 27, 1959, ________ of Abbyville, Kansas, a brother of ________, local attorney, contacted the writer and advised that two or three years ago he attended a Co-op dance at the Allis Hotel in company with a Mr. and Mrs. ________ of Chase, Kansas. Mr. ________ stated that Mrs. ________ had attended school with Mr. Clutter and that she observed him dancing with another woman; that after the dance was over that Mrs. ________ talked with Herb Clutter and he seemed very embarrassed and made excuses as to why his wife was not present and why he was dancing with this other woman. Also, according to Mr. and Mrs. ________ they observed Mr. Clutter and this woman smooching while they were dancing; that Mr. Clutter and this woman left the dance early and went upstairs together on the elevator in the hotel.
A. A. Dewey
A dalliance of this gravity seems to have been a poorly kept secret around town. Lee’s interview notes with Nancy’s teacher, Mrs. Stringer, are frankly revealing on the subject: “He had his fun on the side, and Bonnie probably knew it.”[54]
Reasons for infidelity are as common as locusts in a plague. Herb Clutter had his. His wife was enervated by mental illness, often forced into self-imposed seclusion in the family home. Physically and emotionally absent, cursed with chronic bouts of anxiety, Mrs. Clutter was hardly inclined toward coital pursuits in the later years of their marriage.
In an interview with Agent Dewey two weeks after the murders, Kenneth Lyon, who knew the Clutters intimately, was of the opinion that “Herb and Bonnie had not lived together as man and wife for the past ten years.”[55] Lyon’s observation was, in fact, confirmed in unambiguous detail by the Clutter’s own family physician, Dr. V. A. Leopold, whose professional opinions are documented in an interview with KBI Agent Wendell Cowan:[56]
Dr. Leopold stated that he had been the Clutter family doctor for many years, and had delivered all the Clutter children. Mrs. Clutter had a bad time in childbirth with Nancy and became mentally ill following that birth. She improved a little then gave birth to Kenyon. Dr. Leopold stated that he told both Mr. and Mrs. Clutter that Mrs. Clutter should not have another pregnancy due to her physical and mental condition. Mrs. Clutter was complaining of severe backaches and headaches, but Dr. Leopold stated he could find nothing radically wrong.... that he recommended that she consult a psychiatrist as it was believed her trouble was mostly emotional.
Dr. Leopold stated that it was his firm belief that there was sexual incompatibility between Mr. and Mrs. Clutter for many years following the birth of Kenyon.... He stated Mrs. Clutter entered menopause about a year ago. The Dr. further stated that he doubts that there was much sexual activity insofar as Mrs. Clutter was concerned because of her mental condition and she probably does not feel very sexy....[57]
Moreover, Capote’s and Lee’s own research notes, supported by numerous KBI interviews, show that apart from his otherwise commendable reputation as a pillar of the community, many with whom Clutter had done business made specific threats against him as retribution for various grievances. Alvin Dewey acknowledged that over 700 leads had poured in over the weeks following the murders, suggesting all manner of reasons someone might have wanted to see Herb Clutter dead. Some interviewed even thought his murder may have had something to do with the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.[58] Such swift and abundant reactions bring to mind that time-honored axiom, Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Lester McCoy, owner of Burtis Motors, Garden City’s Ford dealership at the time, was blunt in his assessment, telling Capote in an interview that Clutter’s strong power drive made him a challenging man to deal with, someone who didn’t do much for others that wouldn’t reward himself first. McCoy also revealed that Clutter, like most farmers in western Kansas, suffered under significant debt.[59]
Despite the realities of debt, Herb Clutter was unquestionably a wealthy man, with an estimated net worth, according to his own records, of nearly $2,000,000 (adjusted for inflation). As former USDA chief economist and agricultural policy expert Dr. Keith Collins told me, “Clutter appears to have been unusually successful at a time when many people were leaving farming. That success may have bred enemies through the methods he used to build his business or jealousy at his economic success.”[60]
Given this new perspective, Mr. Clutter’s decision to take out a double indemnity life insurance policy on the last day of his life is more than curious, especially since his New York Life agent, Bob Johnson, told the KBI that Mr. Clutter had been putting off getting the policy for two years. Why hadn’t he attended to such an important matter in all the years preceding? Why this moment in time? Had he been threatened, perhaps endangering everything he’d spent a lifetime building?
Author’s Note:
I must confess that Mr. Clutter’s affair was not a particularly pleasant discovery to have made, nor is it gratifying putting it in print here for the first time, having no wish to injure his laudable reputation in the Kansas farming community; nor should any revelations appearing here detract from his lifetime of good works.
Regardless, this observation alone, one kept discreetly under wraps by Clutter’s friends who may have known or suspected —and which was provably concealed by those in law enforcement—sheds new light not only on Capote’s story, but the investigation itself.
For historical purposes, then, such statements are simply provided as they appear in official documents.
