they call rest areas — where they have open fireplaces. We built a fire and burned stuff. The
gloves we’d worn, and my shirt. Dick said he wished we had an ox to roast; he said he’d never
been so hungry. It was almost noon when we got to Olathe. Dick dropped me at my hotel, and
went on home to have Sunday dinner with his family. Yes, he took the knife with him. The gun,
too.»
K.B.I. agents, dispatched to Hickock’s home, found the knife inside a fishing-tackle box and the
shotgun still casually propped against a kitchen wall. (Hickock’s father, who refused to believe his
»boy» could have taken part in such a «horrible crime,» insisted the gun hadn’t been out of the
house since the first week in November, and therefore could not be the death weapon). As for the
empty cartridge shells, the cord and tape, these were retrieved with the aid of Virgil Pietz, a
county-highway employee, who, working with a road grader in the area pinpointed by Perry
Smith, shaved away the earth inch by inch until the buried articles were uncovered. Thus the last
loose strings were tied, the K.B.I. had now assembled an unshakable case, for tests established
that the shells had been discharged by Hickock’s shotgun, and remnants of cord and tape were of
a piece with the material to bind and silence the victims.
Monday 11 January, Have a lawyer. Mr. Fleming. Old man with red tie.
Informed by the defendants that they were without funds to hire legal counsel, the court, in the
person of Judge Roland H. Tate, appointed as their representatives two local lawyers, Mr. Arthur
Fleming and Mr. Harrison Smith. Fleming, seventy-one, a former mayor of Garden City, a short
man who enlivens an unsensational appearance with rather conspicuous neckwear, resisted the
assignment. «I do not desire to serve,» he told the judge. «But if the court sees fit to appoint me,
then of course I have no choice.» Hickock’s attorney, Harrison Smith, forty-five, six feet tall, a
golfer, an Elk of exalted degree, accepted the task with resigned grace: «Someone has to do it.
And I’ll do my best. Though I doubt that’ll make me too popular around here.»
Friday 15 January. Mrs. Meter playing radio in her kitchen and I heard man say the
county attorney -will seek Death Penalty. «The rich never hang. Only the poor and
friendless.»
In making his announcement, the county attorney, Duane West, an ambitious, portly young man
of twenty-eight who looks forty and sometimes fifty, told newsmen, «If the case goes before a jury,
I will request the jury, upon finding them guilty, to sentence them to the death penalty. If the
defendants waive right to jury trial and enter a plea of guilty before the judge, I will request the
judge to set the death penalty. This was a matter I knew I would be called upon to decide, and my
decision has not been arrived at lightly. I feel that due to the violence of the crime and the
apparent utter lack of mercy shown the victims, the only way the public can be absolutely
protected is to have the death penalty set against these defendants. This is especially true since
in Kansas there is no such thing as life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Persons
sentenced to life imprisonment actually serve, on the average, less then fifteen years.»
Wednesday 20 January. Asked to take lie-detector in regards to this Walker deal.
A case like the Clutter case, crimes of that magnitude, arouse the interest of lawmen everywhere,
particularly those investigators burdened with unsolved but similar crimes, for it is always possible
that the solution to one mystery will solve another. Among the many officers intrigued by events in
Garden City was the sheriff of Sarasota County, Florida, which includes Osprey, a fishing
settlement not far from Tampa, and the scene, slightly more than a month after the Clutter
tragedy, of the quadruple slaying on an isolated cattle ranch which Smith had read about in a
Miami newspaper on Christmas Day. The victims were again four members of a family: a young
couple, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Walker, and their two children, a boy and a girl, all of whom had
been shot in the head with a rifle. Since the Clutter murderers had spent the night of December
19, the date of the murders, in a Tallahassee hotel, Osprey’s sheriff, who had no other leads
whatever, was understandably anxious to have the two men questioned and a polygraph
examination administered. Hickock consented to take the test and so did Smith, who told Kansas
authorities, «I remarked at the time, I said to Dick, I’ll bet whoever did this must be somebody that
read about what happened out here in Kansas. A nut.» The results of the test, to the dismay of
Osprey’s sheriff as well as Alvin Dewey, who does not believe in exceptional coincidences, were
decisively negative. The murderer of the Walker family remains unknown.
Sunday 31 January. Dick’s dad here to visit Dick. Said hello when I saw him go past [the
cell door] but he kept going. Could be he never heard me. Understand from Mrs. At
[Meier] that Mrs. H [Hickock] didn’t come because she felt too bad to. Snowing like a
bitch. Dreamed last night I was up in Alaska with Dad — woke up in a puddle of cold urine!
!!
Mr. Hickock spent three hours with his son. Afterward he walked through the snow to the Garden
City depot, a work-worn old man, stooped and thinned-down by the cancer that would kill him a
few months hence. At the station, while waiting for a homeward-bound train, he spoke to a
reporter: «I seen Dirk uh-huh. We had a long talk. And I can guarantee you it’s not like people say.
Or what’s put in the papers. Those boys didn’t go to that house planning to do violence. My boy
didn’t. He may have had some bad sides, but he’s nowhere near bad as that. Smitty’s the one.
Dick told me he didn’t even know it when Smitty attacked the man [Mr. Clutter], cut his throat.
Dick wasn’t even in the same room. He only run in when he heard them struggling. Dick was
carrying his shotgun, and how he described how Smitty took my shotgun and just blew that man’s
head off,’ And he says, ‘Dad, I ought to have grabbed back the gun and shot Smitty dead. Killed
him ‘fore he killed the rest of that family. If I’d done it I’d be better off than I am now.’ I guess he
would, too. How it is, the way folks feel, he don’t stand no chance, They’ll hang them both. And,»
he added, fatigue and defeat glazing his eyes, «having your boy hang, knowing he will, nothing
worse can happen to a man.»
Neither Perry Smith’s father nor sister wrote him or came to see him. Tex John Smith was
presumed to be prospecting for somewhere in Alaska — though lawmen, despite great effort, been
unable to locate him. The sister had told investigators she was afraid of her brother, and
requested that they please not let him know her present address. (When informed of this, Smith
smiled slightly and said, «I wish she’d been in that house that night. What a sweet scene!»)
Except for the squirrel, except for the Meiers and an occasional consultation with his lawyer, Mr.
Fleming, Perry was very much alone. He missed Dick. Many thoughts of Dick, he wrote one day
in his make shift diary. Since their arrest they had not been allowed to communicate, and that,
freedom aside, was what he most desired — to talk to Dick, be with him again. Dick was not the
«hard rock» he’d once thought him: «pragmatic,» «virile,» «a real brass boy»; he’d proven himself to
be «pretty weak and shallow,» «a coward.» Still, of everyone in all the world, this was the person to
whom he was closest at that moment, for they at least were of the same species, brothers in the
breed of Cain; separated from him, Perry felt «all by myself. Like somebody covered with sores.
Somebody only a big nut would have anything to do with. «But then one mid-February morning
Perry received a letter. It was postmarked Reading, Mass., and it read:
Dear Perry,
I was sorry to hear about the trouble you are in and I decided to write and let you know
that I remember you and would like to help you in any way that I can. In case you don’t
remember my name, Don Cullivan, I’ve enclosed a picture taken at about the time we
met. When I first read about you in the news recently I was startled and then I began to
think back to those days when I knew you. While we were never close personal friends I
can remember you a lot more clearly than most fellows I met in the Army. It must have
been about the fall of 1951 when you were assigned to the 761st Engineer Light
Equipment Company at Fort Lewis, Washington. You were short (I’m not much taller),
solidly built, dark with a heavy shock of black hair and a grin on your face almost all the
time. Since you had lived in Alaska quite a few of the fellows used to call you «Eskimo.»
One of my first recollections of you was at a Company inspection in which all the
footlockers were open for inspection. As I recall it all the footlockers were in order, even
yours, except that the inside cover of your footlocker was plastered with pictures of pin-up
girls. The rest of us were sure you were in for trouble. But the inspecting officer took it in
stride and when it was all over and he let it pass I think we all felt you were a nervy guy. I
remember that you were a fairly good pool player and I can picture you quite clearly in
the Company day room at the pool table. You were one of the best
