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On discovering its first apparently solid lead three weeks after the murders, the KBI dispatched Special Agent Wayne Owens to the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing to interview inmate Floyd Wells.
Figure 34. KBI interview of Floyd Wells at KSP
Author’s archives
Wayne Owens
December 5, 1959
I just got back from Kansas State Penitentiary where the boss and Roy sent me to interview a prisoner over there, who had something he wanted to get off his chest. I have told this story to the boss and he feels it is worth putting it on the belt and rushing on to you fellows.
Now the prisoner who told me this story worked for the CLUTTERS during 1948 and 1949. His name is Floyd WELLS, he is a white male, 32 years old, 5’ 8”, weighs 148 pounds, medium build and dark complexion.
Wells was a cell mate to Richard HICKOCK, HICKOCK is 28 years old, 5’ 10”, weighs 150 pounds, has blue eyes and brown hair. His description KSP and other ID numbers will be on his photo which will accompany this report. These two men spent long hours visiting with each other as most all cell mates do. During this conversation WELLS related how he enjoyed working in western Kansas and what wonderful people the CLUTTER’S were. He told HICKOCK about the CLUTTER’S financial standing and it wasn’t long before he noticed his experiences with the CLUTTER’S greatly fascinated his cell mate. WELLS told HICKOCK that Mr. CLUTTER had a safe in the old house and that he always paid in cash way back there in 1949. WELLS also remembers telling HICKOCK that he saw Mr. CLUTTER pay a large lumber bill from this safe during construction as the new CLUTTER farm home neared completion in 1949 and that Mr. CLUTTER told him that he paid out more than $10,000 in cash from the safe that one particular day....
In his own signed statement under oath, Wells recounted a scene of pastoral contentment working for Herb Clutter and claimed that he enjoyed a surprisingly close relationship with the family:
The Clutters were all good to me and Mr. Clutter, who was a very “well-to-do man" financially was very generous to me, the other help too but he was always giving me a “bonus” when the work was extra heavy or the hours extra long. I was very close to Mr. Clutter and liked to visit with him Sundays, evenings and other times when we weren’t working. I spent considerable time with him in his den or office where he had a desk and I believe a safe—this was in the old house where the Clutter's lived in 1949. I remember just a short time before I left the Clutters, I was with Mr. Clutter in his den, this was just about the time the new house was completed, Mr. Clutter was sitting at his desk and men were coming in for their pay. I distinctly remember Mr. Clutter paying a large lumber bill and I thought he paid in cash with money from the safe. The reason I remember is because Mr. Clutter made the remark to me that evening when we left his den that he paid out more than $10,000 that day.[154]
Of course, Herb Clutter had no safe. He also never made a practice of paying out large amounts in cash for purchases, but relied on bank checks for nearly all transactions, even those for just a few dollars. In 1949, $10,000 was the equivalent of around $100,000 today, so the very thought of Clutter having such an amount of cash on hand is inconceivable. On that score alone, it’s difficult to imagine Wells having credibility.
Wayne Owens pushed back rigorously on Wells to verify everything, especially the safe. In an “Off the Record Supplement” that Owens appended to Wells’s signed statement, he noted:
Figure 35. Agent Owens pushed Wells hard on the safe
Author’s archives
––––––––
“Off the Record Supplement” to signed
Statement by William Floyd Wells.
William Floyd Wells won’t “back up an inch” on his statement regarding the SAFE which he said was in the “den” or “office” which was located in the basement of the old Clutter Farm Home.
In the statement which I took this morning, same being signed by Wells and witnessed by Warden Hand and his Deputy, Sherman Crouse (no notary was available for a sworn statement but most people don't think the “oath” of a convict in a statement is worth any or much more than his witnessed signature), every opportunity was given to Wells to “Wiggle Out” of his statement about the safe – Even suggested that perhaps he was mistaken and that the money was locked in Mr. Clutter's Desk but he wouldn't change his mind. He got insistent as hell when I suggested that he could be mistaken about the safe and he said, “Now Vic [Vic Irsik, a hand on Cutter’s farm] knows that safe was there and if it isn't there now he probably helped move it out as he (Vic) was going to move into the house after the Clutters moved into their new house.”
Wells also provided the KBI with a meticulously detailed description of Clutter’s safe—the safe that never existed:
Figure 36. Wells describes “the safe” in precise detail
Author's archives
Wells continued by further describing the safe—he said it was a real safe; it was big, black, heavy and it had a dial on it and that it wasn't just a metal strongbox locked with a key like valuable papers are kept in just for fire protection. Wells said that he isn't sure but he believed the safe had wheels at each corner and if it doesn't have wheels at each corner it has heavy iron legs under it. He said that he bet that if the safe isn't in the same location at this time you could tell exactly where it was located and be sure a safe had been there because as heavy as it was there would be markings on the floor where it stood and that the floor would be marked up by moving the safe and moving it out (if it has been moved out) because it was really heavy.[155]
As noted, Wells worked only seven months at River Valley Farm, until January 1949, when he was 20 years old. Yet what stands out here is the extraordinarily personal access which he claims Herb Clutter had granted him. That a prominent and successful man, one hardly known for boasting, might disclose to a young and relatively unknown farm hand such extraordinary financial details would be foolish and irrational. And Mr. Clutter was anything but foolish and irrational.
Longtime River Valley Farm hands Vic Irsik and Alfred Stoecklein, both of whom worked for Clutter at the time Wells left and were still there up until the murders, remembered hardly anything of Wells.[156] And that was the last time anyone had seen him on the farm.
In a 1960 interview with reporter Ted Blankenship of the Hutchinson News, Wells denied ever telling Hickock about a safe, and that he knew “nothing at all” about the new home:
Wells said he told Hickock that the Clutters had a safe when he worked for the family, but they were building a new home when he left their employ. He said he told Hickock that he knew of no safe in the new home. He said that he knew nothing at all about the new home.[157]
In interviews with town locals, the Garden City Telegram also confirmed that Wells had never seen the Clutter’s new home: “[Wells] worked for Clutter in 1948. That was when the Clutters lived northwest of Holcomb, and before they constructed the fine, new home in which they were slain.”[158]
This admission, and official records contradicting it, presents fundamental problems, both factually in terms of the known story and, as a consequence, legally as it pertained to Wells being the key witness at the trial.
If Wells had never seen “the fine, new home in which they were slain,” then the pivotal question persists: Who drew the map that Wells gave Hickock at KSP? And who provided Wells with such intimate details as the room in which each family member slept, and that Herb Clutter had his own bedroom apart from Bonnie, downstairs next to his office?
Given this crucial new fact, it’s highly probable that someone else familiar with the home’s layout and the family’s habits provided Wells with a diagram of the new house or described it to him in such detail that he could later render it himself for Hickock. That “someone” had to be close enough to the family to possess such intimate information, in turn suggesting it was someone in the local community.
The interview and signed statement Floyd Wells gave to the KBI under oath—later perjuring himself by contradicting it in court—is among the most inexplicable problems of the Clutter murder investigation. Having this fresh and verifiable perspective, Floyd Wells was a significantly more central character than previously assumed.
