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Agent Alvin Dewey was working on a bombing case in Wichita when he got a call from Sheriff Earl Robinson regarding the murders. Dewey wrote: “Mrs. Clutter’s recent emotional illness flashed through my mind. ‘Any possibility of murder-suicide, Earl?’ I ventured.”[174] The sheriff’s response, that all victims had been bound hand and foot, excluded that possibility.
Dewey was a seasoned former FBI man and his instinctive response is noteworthy. He maintained his suspicions that the crime was more than a robbery even after hearing Floyd Wells’s story about Hickock and Smith.
County prosecutor Duane West, who did a great deal more in the overall investigation than he has been given credit for, confirmed that “Alvin Dewey didn’t think the testimony of Kansas Penitentiary prisoner Floyd Wells would break the case; he was pursuing a “grudge killing” theory and did not go to Lansing to talk to Wells, sending other Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) agents instead.”[175]
