Mr. Ewalt had stopped at the Rupp farm and
consulted with his friend Johnny Rupp, a father of eight, of whom Bobby is the third. Together the
two men went to the bunkhouse — a building separate from the farmhouse proper, which is too
small to shelter all the Rupp children. The boys live in the bunkhouse, the girls «at home.» They
found Bobby making his bed. He listened to Mr. Ewalt, asked no questions, and thanked him for
coming. Afterward, he stood outside in the sunshine. The Rupp property is on a rise, an exposed
plateau, from which he could see the harvested, glowing land of River Valley Farm — scenery that
occupied him for perhaps an hour. Those who tried to distract him could not. The dinner bell
sounded, and his mother called to him to come inside — called until finally her husband said, «No.
I’d leave him alone.» Larry, a younger brother, also refused to obey the summoning bell. He
circled around Bobby, helpless to help but wanting to, even though he was told to «go away.»
Later, when his brother stopped standing and started to walk, heading down the road and across
the fields toward Holcomb, Larry pursued him. «Hey, Bobby. Listen. If we’re going somewhere, why don’t we go in the car?» His brother wouldn’t answer. He was walking with purpose, running,
really, but Larry had no difficulty keeping stride. Though only fourteen, he was the taller of the
two, the deeper-chested, the longer-legged, Bobby being, for all his athletic honors, rather less
than medium-size — compact but slender, a finely made boy with an open, homely-handsome
face. «Hey, Bobby. Listen. They won’t let you see her. It won’t do any good.» Bobby turned on
him, and said, «Go back. Go home.» The younger brother fell behind, then followed at a distance.
Despite the pumpkin-season temperature, the day’s arid glitter, both boys were sweating as they
approached a barricade that state troopers had erected at the entrance to River Valley Farm.
Many friends of the Clutter family, and strangers from all over Finney County as well, had
assembled at the site, but none was allowed past the barricade, which, soon after the arrival of
the Rupp brothers, was briefly lifted to permit the exit of four ambulances, the number finally
required to remove the victims, and a car filled with men from the sheriff’s office — men who, even
at that moment, were mentioning the name of Bobby Rupp. For Bobby, as he was to learn before
nightfall, was their principal suspect.
From her parlor window, Susan Kidwell saw the white cortege glide past, and watched until it had
rounded the corner and the paved street’s easily airborne dust had landed again. She was still
contemplating the view when Bobby, shadowed by his large little brother, became a part of it, a
wobbly figure headed her way. She went out on the porch to meet him. She said, «I wanted so
much to tell you.» Bobby began to cry. Larry lingered at the edge of the Teacherage yard,
hunched against a tree. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Bobby cry, and he didn’t want to, so
he lowered his eyes.
Far off, in the town of Olathe, in a hotel room where window shades darkened the midday sun.
Perry lay sleeping, with a gray portable radio murmuring beside him. Except for taking off his
boots, he had not troubled to undress. He had merely fallen face down across the bed, as though
sleep were a weapon that had struck him from behind. The boots, black and silver-buckled, were
soaking in a washbasin filled with warm, vaguely pink-tinted water.
A few miles north, in the pleasant kitchen of a modest farm-house, Dick was consuming a Sunday
dinner. The others at the table — his mother, his father, his younger brother — were not conscious
of anything uncommon in his manner. He had arrived home at noon, kissed his mother, readily
replied to questions his father put concerning his supposed overnight trip to Fort Scott, and sat
down to eat, seeming quite his ordinary self. When the meal was over, the three male members
of the family settled in the parlor to watch a televised basketball game. The broadcast had only
begun when the father was startled to hear Dick snoring; as he remarked to the younger boy, he
never thought he’d live to see the day when Dick would rather sleep than watch basketball. But,
of course, he did not understand how very tired Dick was, did not know that his dozing son had,
among other things, driven over eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours.
II
PERSONS UNKNOWN
That Monday, the sixteenth of November, 1959, was still another fine specimen of pheasant
weather on the high wheat plains of western Kansas — a day gloriously bright-skied, as glittery as
mica. Often, on such days in years past, Andy Erhart had spent long pheasant-hunting afternoons
at River Valley Farm, the home of his good friend Herb Clutter, and often, on these sporting
expeditions, he’d been accompanied by three more of Herb’s closest friends: Dr. J. D.Dale, a
veterinarian; Carl Myers, a dairy owner; and Everett Ogburn, a businessman. Like Erhart, the
superintendent of the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station, all were prominent
citizens of Garden City.
Today this quartet of old hunting companions had once again gathered to make the familiar
journey, but in an unfamiliar spirit and armed with odd, non-sportive equipment — mops and pails,
scrubbing brushes, and a hamper heaped with rags and strong detergents. They were wearing
their oldest clothes. For, feeling it their duty, a Christian task, these men had volunteered to clean
certain of the fourteen rooms in the main house at River Valley Farm: rooms in which four
members of the Clutter family had been murdered by, as their death certificates declared, «a
person or persons unknown.» Erhart and his partners drove in silence. One of them later remarked, «It just shut you up. The
strangeness of it. Going out there, where we’d always had such a welcome.» On the present
occasion a highway patrolman welcomed them. The patrolman, guardian of a barricade that the
authorities had erected at the entrance to the farm, waved them on, and they drove a half mile
more, down the elm-shaded lane leading to the Clutter house. Alfred Stoecklein, the only
employee who actually lived on the property, was waiting to admit them.
They went first to the furnace room in the basement, where the pajama-clad Mr. Clutter had been
found sprawled atop the card board mattress box. Finishing there, they moved on to the playroom
in which Kenyon had been shot to death. The couch, a relic that Kenyon had rescued and
mended and that Nancy had slip-covered and piled with mottoed pillows, was a blood-splashed
ruin; like the mattress box, it would have to be burned. Gradually, as the cleaning party
progressed from the basement to the second-floor bedrooms where Nancy and her mother had
been murdered in their beds, they acquired additional fuel for the impending fire — blood-soiled
bedclothes, mattresses, a bedside rug, a Teddy-bear doll.
Alfred Stoecklein, not usually a talkative man, had much to say as he fetched hot water and
otherwise assisted in the cleaning-up. He wished «folks would stop yappin’ and try to understand»
why he and his wife, though they lived scarcely a hundred yards from the Clutter home, had
heard «nary a nothin'» — not the slightest echo of gun thunder — of the violence taking place.
«Sheriff and all them fellas been out here finger printin’ and scratchin’ around, they got good
sense, they understand how it was. How come we didn’t hear. For one thing, the wind. A west
wind, like it was, would carry the sound t’other way. Another thing, there’s that big milo barn
‘tween this house and our’n. That old barn ‘ud soak up a lotta racket ‘fore it reached us. And did
you ever think of this? Him that done it, he must’ve knowed we wouldn’t hear. Else he wouldn’t
have took the chance — shootin’ off a shotgun four times in the middle of the night! Why, he’d be
crazy. Course, you might say he must be crazy anyhow. To go doing what he did. But my opinion,
him that done it had it figured out to the final T. He knowed. And there’s one thing I know, too. Me
and the Missis, we’ve slept our last night on this place. We’re movin’ out to a house alongside the
highway.»
The men worked from noon to dusk. When the time came to burn what they had collected, they
piled it on a pickup truck with Stoecklein at the wheel, drove deep into the farm’s north field, a flat
place full of color, though a single color — the shimmering tawny yellow of November wheat
stubble. They unloaded the truck and made a pyramid of Nancy’s pillows, the bedclothes, the
mattresses, the playroom couch; Stoecklein sprinkled it with kerosene and struck a match.
Of those present, none had been closer to the Clutter family than Andy Erhart. Gentle, genially
dignified, a scholar with work-calloused hands and sunburned neck, he’d been a classmate of
Herb’s at Kansas State University. «We were friends for thirty years,» he said some time
afterward, and during those decades Erhart had seen his friend evolve from a poorly paid County
Agricultural Agent into one of the region’s most widely known and respected farm ranchers:
«Everything Herb had, he earned — with the help of God. He was a modest man but a proud man
as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family. He made something of his life.» But that life, and
what he’d made of it — how could it happen, Erhart wondered as he watched the bonfire catch.
How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this — smoke,
thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, a state-wide organization with headquarters in Topeka, had
a staff of nineteen experienced detectives scattered through the state, and the