Murder: True Crime Stories - SOLVED: The Clutter Family, Pt. 2

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

After the Clutter family was murdered in November, 1959, everyone in Holcomb, Kansas wanted to find out who killed them -- and why. The answer turned out to be more horrific than anyone imagined. Murder: True Crime Stories is part of Crime House Studios. For more, follow us on Instagram @crimehouse. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After the Clutter family was murdered on November 15th, 1959, life in Holcomb, Kansas was forever changed. People who had never hesitated to walk right up to their neighbor's doorsteps now eyed each other with suspicion. By day, once-friendly interactions were short and to the point, and at night doors that had once been unlocked were bolted shut. The people of Holcomb were surrounded by questions, and those questions aided the community like poison. Why would something so awful, so savage happened to a family who everybody loved? Who could have done it? And perhaps worst of all, would it happen again? People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real

ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a Crime House original show powered by Pave Studios. Every Tuesday, I'll explore the story of a notorious murder or murders. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly matters. Today is the second and final episode on the Clutter family and how their murder shook a small town and a nation to its core. Last week, we examined the Clutter family, the horrific scene of their murders, and the beginning of the investigation into what happened.

Today, we're going to look at the other side of this crime and examine the murderers, their trial, and their ultimate fate. And we'll be trying to answer the question that has haunted a small town for generations. Why did they do it? would be honored if you took a moment to rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. Your valuable feedback helps us improve and expand our reach so other true crime fans can find us too. Your support means everything. On November 14th, 1959, the morning before the Clutter family was murdered, two men were preparing to drive 400 miles to the front door of River Valley Farm in Holcomb, Kansas. The story of their journey begins where part one of our story left off, with a prisoner named Floyd Wells and a chance encounter that would change hundreds of lives. Shortly before the Clutters were killed, Wells was serving a three-to-five-year prison sentence

for robbery in Kansas State Penitentiary, when he met a man named Richard Eugene Hickok, known as Dick to his friends. As many criminals do, Hickok had a troubled past, although it hadn't started out that way. Even though Hickok came of age during the hardship of the Great Depression, he and his little brother Walter were able to play sports, go to school, and practice marksmanship. Dick was an incredible shot, and he was fond of showing off a trick where he shot a

can of baby food off the top of his little brother's head. But then in 1950, at the age of 18 or 19, Hickok was in a car accident that came within a hair's breadth of killing him. After the wreck, his eyes were off-center, his smile was crooked, and he became impulsive and irrational in ways he hadn't been before. Following a days-long hospital stay, Hickok's medical bills began piling up, which slowly led him down a path of ever-riskier behavior. He began gambling and passing bad checks to cover his debts. He got married, cheated, and got married again, fathering three children over two divorces before his crimes caught up with him,

and he found himself in the state penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas, for passing bad checks. It was there that he heard the name Clutter for the very first time. While he was in prison, Hickok was cellmates with Floyd Wells. As the two men got to know each other, Wells mentioned that he'd worked as a farmhand at a place called River Valley Farm. Wells had liked Herb Clutter and was impressed by his disciplined work ethic and his generosity. Wells would later recall that Herb was always willing to loan his employees a few bucks if they needed an advance ahead of payday. Based on that, Wells gathered that the Clutters were very rich, and crucially, that River Valley Farm was never short on cash.

And when Wells spent some time in a cell with Dick Hickok in the 1950s, he told Hickok about the farmer, his family, and the safe her Clutter allegedly kept under his desk that contained the modern equivalent of $100,000 in cash. became obsessed with the Clutter family, forcing his cellmate to describe the layout of the house over and over again until he had it completely memorized. Hickok would talk about driving to River Valley Farm and robbing the place blind. Wells figured it was all talk.

Hickok was eventually released, and Wells forgot about him. Hickok was eventually released and Wells forgot about him until the day he heard on the radio that the Clutter family had been murdered. Wells was certain that Dick Hickok was responsible for killing the Clutters and he was certain that another former inmate, a man named Perry Edward Smith, had been in on it too. Perry Smith was born in 1928 in Huntington, Nevada, to violent, unpredictable parents who traveled the rodeo circuit. When Smith was six, his parents separated, and at first he followed his mother to San Francisco. Smith's life in California was just as unstable as his life on the road, if not more so. His mother suddenly seemed no longer interested

in raising her children. Smith and his siblings found themselves in and out of foster care, where he was allegedly subjected to repeated abuse at the hands of the people entrusted with his well-being. Fleeing California, Smith followed his father across the western United States as a teenager, venturing as far afield as Alaska to search for gold. In some ways, it was an obvious improvement, but Smith's father, like his son, was prone to sudden aggressive outbursts and any calm between the two rarely lasted. It seemed like wherever Smith went, violence and instability followed him.

and instability followed him. At the age of 16, Smith enlisted in the military and he went on to serve in the Korean War. Upon his discharge in 1952, around the age of 24, he settled in the Pacific Northwest. But any sense of calm he might have acquired there was shattered by a motorcycle accident that broke his legs in five places. A six-month hospital stay ensued, followed by another six months on crutches and a year of rehab. But even after that, Smith's knees barely worked and the pain in his limbs was often unbearable. Smith was constantly dosing himself with aspirin, and he was particularly fond of the candy-coated variety which he would crunch between his teeth like mints. By the time Smith was sent to the penitentiary in Lansing in 1956 for jailbreak, car theft, and grand larceny, he was permanently disabled. When Hickok first met Smith behind the bars of the Kansas State Penitentiary,

he didn't think too much of the other man. He thought he was too sensitive. But then one day, Smith bragged to him about beating a man to death in Las Vegas, and Hickok's opinion changed. He saw Smith as a natural killer that he could use to his advantage. But perhaps he saw something else too. Both men were scarred, damaged, and unpredictable, Both men were scarred, damaged, and unpredictable, prone to dark thoughts and violent outbursts. Perhaps Hickok saw in Smith a perverse kind of kindred spirit. Maybe that's why, when it was time to put his plan to rob the Clutters in motion, Perry Smith was the man that Hickok called on.

That was how Dick Hickok and Perry Smith wound up in a car together, barreling down the highway with a plan to steal thousands of dollars and not leave a single witness behind. Hey there, Carter Roy here. If you're enjoying the chilling tales of murder true crime stories, then you'll love the Crime House original Mind of a Serial Killer. What sets Mind of a Serial Killer apart is its focus on the twisted psychology of the world's most notorious serial killers. Names like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Night Stalker, featuring expert psychological analysis from licensed clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels. Mind of a Serial Killer will take you into their stories like never before.

So get ready to uncover what drives someone to commit the unimaginable. Mind of a Serial Killer is a crime house original. New episodes drop every Monday. Just search Mind of a Serial Killer and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity? Join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree.

Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Sometime in late November of 1959, Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Alvin Dewey got a phone call from his boss, Logan Sanford. Dewey was leading the investigation into the Clutter family murders, and Sanford was about to help him crack the case right open. He'd just spoken to Floyd Wells, who told Sanford all about Dick Hickok and Perry Smith. As soon as he got off the phone, Dewey tracked down Hickok and Smith's mugshots and learned everything he could about them. Hickok was still living with his parents

in a town a few hundred miles away from Holcomb. Dewey sent one of his investigators over there right away. A few hours later, Agent Harold Nye was sitting in Hickok's parents' living room. The couple told Agent Nye that their son had been a fine boy who'd never dreamed of hurting anyone until he was sent to prison. They claimed that people there had put violent ideas in his head. The Hickocks detested anyone their son knew from his time inside the state penitentiary, particularly that short fellow he'd brought around a few times, the one with a dark complexion and the habit of chewing aspirin-like candy. Agent Nye guided the conversation to the weekend of the 14th when the Clutters were killed. The Hickok said that their son had left town on Saturday and returned the next day, the

15th, ravenously hungry and too tired to stay awake for a basketball game on TV. As the Hickok family talked, Agent Nye's eyes wandered over to a 12-gauge shotgun propped up in the corner of the room. Agent Nye picked it up and Mr. Hickok told him the gun belonged to his son. Returning to the conversation, Nye put the gun back where he'd found it, even though he felt certain that it was a murder weapon. For the next several weeks, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation team led by Agent Dewey quietly pursued Hickok and Smith across North America. The two men were hard to track, and Dewey didn't want them to know he was on their trail. Hickok and Smith had no idea they'd been identified. If they found out, Dewey feared they'd disappear completely, as he told his colleagues,

quote, The safer they feel, the sooner we'll grab them. The safer they feel, the sooner we'll grab them. And so Agent Dewey kept the people of Holcomb in the dark, leaving them to speculate about the case. For the rest of 1959, the Clutter family murder was all the people in town could talk about, and that proved very useful to a new arrival on Holcomb, an author named Truman Capote. Back home in New York, the story of what happened to the Clutters caught Capote's attention, and he traveled halfway across the country to write about it. At first, the people of Holcomb didn't quite know what to make

of Truman Capote. He was five foot four inches and openly gay, with a high, squeaky, and flashy voice. Nancy Clutter's boyfriend, Bobby Rupp, was one of the first people to talk to the author and said that, quote, he was not the kind of person I wanted to spend time with. Capote's companion, on the other hand, made a better first impression. Harper Lee had been a friend of Capote's companion, on the other hand, made a better first impression. Harper Lee had been a friend of Capote's since childhood. She had agreed to accompany him as a sort of research assistant, despite having recently filed the final manuscript for her soon-to-be famous book, To Kill a Mockingbird. to kill a mockingbird. Unlike her big-city companion, Lee could still easily tap into the small-town mannerisms from her childhood spent in Alabama. The people of Holcomb found

Lee a little easier to talk to, and her diplomatic approach netted Capote a number of interviews. In fact, for the only interview Bobby Rupp ever gave to Truman Capote, he remembered Lee asking most of the questions. Working together, the pair eventually worked their way into the town's good graces. They eventually got so popular, Capote bragged to a friend back in New York that he was, quote, practically the mayor. But without a doubt, the writer's most valuable friendship in town was the one he forged with Agent Alvin Dewey. That was how he was able to gain so much insider access into the investigation, and the search for the two men Dewey believed were responsible for killing the

Clutters. And it was how Capote and Lee wound up in the Dewey family living room one late December night when Dewey got a call from the Las Vegas police. They had news about two men who'd been caught driving a stolen car. Earlier that day, Dick Hickok and Perry Smith had been recognized by two police officers outside of a Nevada post office. Smith had been inside retrieving a box he'd mailed himself, which included, among other things, an old pair of boots. When the Kansas agents arrived a few days later, Hickok and Smith still believed they were being held over a stolen car and a string of bad checks. They had no idea the agents suspected them for the Clutter family murders, and the agents wanted to keep it that way. wanted to keep it that way. After splitting the two men up, Agent Harold Nye and Roy Church questioned Dick Hickok for several hours. They let him run through the events of the last several

weeks, months, even years of his life. Hickok prided himself on his excellent recall of even the most minor details, and the agents were happy to let him show off. That is, until he arrived at the end of a particularly long story, and Agent Church lazily put his hands together and said, I guess you know why we're here. you know I were here. In his report, Agent Nye would later write that Hickok had a, quote, intense visible reaction to being accused of killing the Clutters. And Perry Smith was about to receive a similar shock in the interrogation cell just one room over. Smith was in the middle of an interrogation with Agents Alvin Dewey and Clarence Dunst And just like Hickok, Smith was caught completely off guard when Agent Dunst leaned in And told him they knew he'd murdered the Clutters

Neither suspect confessed that day And so both men were sent back to separate cells, where the agents from Kansas were perfectly content to let them stew overnight. Agent Dewey and his team still knew that without a confession, they barely had a case, and in order to get it, they had to reveal the only physical evidence they had collected so far. For almost three hours the next day, Church and Nye circled around their point with Hickok. Once they believed the time was right, they showed the suspect two things. The first was a photograph from the crime scene, showing a set of boot prints in the basement where Herb and

Kenyon Clutter were murdered. The second was the pair of boots that Smith had picked up at the post office the day they were arrested. The police were able to confirm that these boots matched the prints in the basement and they belonged to Dick Hickok. Nye and Church were taking a risk. This was the only card they had to play, showing them that Hickok was a gamble. And it paid off. Hickok and Smith told the investigators everything. They admitted to killing the Clutters

and what happened at River Valley Farm during the early morning hours of November 15th, 1959. And the truth was more horrifying than anyone could imagine. In the first few weeks of January 1960, the residents of Holcomb heard the names Dick Hickok and Perry Smith for the first time when it was announced on the radio that they'd been extradited back to Kansas to stand trial for killing the Clutters. The trial began on March 22nd, 1960. Even though the two men had confessed, there was still the question of whether they'd be given the death penalty. The details that emerged finally helped answer the questions that had been consuming the town

of Holcomb for over four months. Over the course of the trial, the prosecution revealed exactly what happened at River Valley Farm in those early morning hours of November 15, 1959. According to Hickok and Smith's confessions, when the two men arrived at the Clutter's home that night, they entered through a door to Herb's office. It wasn't locked. Hickok was carrying a knife, while Smith held a shotgun. Floyd Wells had been very specific about where the safe was,

at the back of the office behind the desk. A try as the two intruders might, they couldn't find it. There was no safe. There was no $10,000. But even though there would be no big score for Dick Hickok and Perry Smith, they were determined to not leave any witnesses. The first member of the Clutter family to be awoken was Herb, who came to with a flashlight shining in his face. He was led into the office at gunpoint, where he explained, again, that there was no safe and there was no cash.

He offered to give the criminals the money in his wallet and write them a check so long as they left his family in peace. But that wasn't good enough for Dick Hickok and Perry Smith. Herb was led into the basement, where he was hogtied and laid out on the concrete floor while the rest of his family was woken up one by one. His wife Bonnie was bound and gagged and led to the bathroom. His son Kenyon was marched downstairs to join his father, before being bound and laid out on a sofa in a separate room, and Herb's daughter Nancy had her hands and feet tied while she lay in bed in her nightgown. had her hands and feet tied while she lay in bed in her nightgown. A strange thing began to happen though. Once the criminals had control of the family, there were small moments where they

tried to make the clutters more comfortable. They gave Bonnie a chair, they gave Kenyon a pillow, Herb got some cardboard to lie on, and Nancy was tucked into bed. It was almost as if Hickok and Smith's better natures were fighting with their darkest impulses. But tragically, the latter won out. Hickok had always been the talker, the planner, but he wasn't much of a doer, the talker, the planner, but he wasn't much of a doer, especially when it came to violence. That was where Smith came in. Hickok had the knife, but he couldn't bring himself to cut Herb's throat, and when he hesitated, Smith took the knife and went to do it himself. But for all his bravado, Smith didn't want to do it either. But Hickok didn't intervene, and Smith took Herb Clutter's life.

From there, the killers went from room to room. Next was Kenyon, killed where he lay on the sofa. Kenyon, killed where he lay on the sofa. Then it was back upstairs, where Nancy Clutter lay in bed with the covers drawn up to her shoulders. And then finally Bonnie, having been led gently back into her bedroom, was killed in her bed. The two men went back outside into the night. Whatever else transpired, at least one thing had gone according to plan. They hadn't left any witnesses. But in the process, they had left behind a bloody boot print and some tire tracks.

And in the end, that was all the investigators needed to catch them. Once the defense and the prosecution had made their arguments, it only took the jury 40 minutes to make a decision. When the 12 men returned, the verdict was read by the judge. Guilty on all four counts. The sentence? Death. Hickok and Smith spent the next five years appealing the decision. They received early assistance in their efforts from Truman Capote, who became almost friendly with the two men despite writing a book about their crimes.

For years afterward, people would speculate about his relationship with Perry Smith, with some even whispering that it was romantic or sexual in nature. Whatever the case, it's possible that in his quest to write the story of the Clutter Murders, Capote allowed himself to become a part of it. But despite the involvement of a famous author, in the end Hickok and Smith's luck ran out. Both men were escorted to the gallows and hanged on April 14, 1965. Even after the bodies of Hickok and Smith were taken down from the gallows, the events of November 15, 1959 continued to reverberate. To this day, people wonder whether Hickok and Smith were responsible for another crime in Florida,

where a family of four were all shot at close range. That case remains unsolved. Dick Hickok's brother would describe decades later how he was passed over for jobs and shunned by his neighbors just because of his last name. Larry Hendricks, the high school English teacher who discovered the bodies of Herb, Kenyon, Nancy, and Bonnie Clutter, would leave Holcomb for Alaska. And Truman Capote, who captured the story of what happened to the Clutters so beautifully in his book, In Cold Blood, would die years later from complications due to alcoholism. due to alcoholism. People speculated that he drank himself to death because he was haunted by the memory of Perry Smith and how close he'd let himself become to a condemned man. Others would say it was guilt from profiting off the misery of others. Whatever the circumstances were, the story of the Clutters was his last book.

The murders of Herb, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter are a tragic example of how suddenly a violent crime can tear the fabric of a community. The sheer senselessness of it all taught the people of Holcomb, Kansas to never take anything for granted. Herb and Bonnie should have grown old, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Nancy and Kenyon should have gone off to college with a chance to experience the world beyond River Valley Farm. the world beyond River Valley Farm. Instead, the Clutter family lost their lives because two greedy men couldn't control their worst impulses. And the scars left from their deaths will never truly heal.

Thanks so much for listening i'm carter roy and this is murder true crime stories come back next week for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected murder true crime stories is a crime house original powered by pave studios here at Crime House. We want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Murder True Crime Pod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow murder true crime stories wherever you get your podcasts your feedback truly makes a difference we'll be back next tuesday murder true crime stories a crime house original podcast powered by pave studios is executive produced by max cutler

this episode of murder true crime stories was sound designed by Ron Shapiro, written by Greg Benson, edited by Alex Benidon, fact-checked by Catherine Barner, and included production assistance from Kristen Acevedo and Sarah Carroll. Murder, True Crime Stories

is hosted by Carter Roy. You may know a serial killer's crimes. Now, uncover the psychology behind them. Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House original. New episodes drop every Monday. Just search Mind of a Serial Killer and follow wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's

pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts, and get new episodes every Monday.