The same with stealing. It seems to be an impulse. One thing I never told you about the
Clutter deal is this. Before I ever went to their house I knew there would be a girl there. I
think the main reason I went there was not to rob them but to rape the girl. Because I
thought a lot about it. That is one reason why I never wanted to turn back when we
started to. Even when I saw there was no safe. I did make some advances toward the
Clutter girl when I was there. But Perry never gave me a chance. I hope no one finds this
out but you, as I haven’t even told my lawyer. There were other things I should have told
you, but I’m afraid of my people finding them out. Because I am more ashamed of them
(these things I did) than hanging…. I have had sickness. I think caused from the car
wreck I had. Spells of passing out, and sometimes I would hemorrhage at the nose and
left ear. I had one at some people’s house by the name of Crist — they live south of my
parents. Not long ago I had a piece of glass work out of my head. It came out the corner
of my eye. My dad helped me to get it out. … I figure I should tell you the things that led to
my divorce, and things that caused me to go to prison. It started the early part of 1957.
My wife and I were living in an apartment in Kansas City. I had quit my job at the automobile company, and went into the garage business for myself. I was renting the garage
from a woman who had a daughter-in-law named Margaret. I met this girl one day while I
was at work, and we went to have a cup of coffee. Her husband was away in the Marine
Corps. To make a long story short, I started going out with her. My wife sued for divorce. I
began thinking I never really loved my wife. Because if I had, I wouldn’t have done all the
things I’d done. So I never fought the divorce. I started drinking, and was drunk for almost
a month. I neglected my business, spent more money than I earned, wrote bad checks,
and in the end became a thief. For this last I was sent to the penitentiary. . . . My lawyer
said I should be truthful with you as you can help me. And I need help, as you know.
The next day, Wednesday, was the proper start of the trial; it was also the first time ordinary
spectators were admitted into the courtroom, an area too small to accommodate more than a
modest percentage of those who applied at the door. The best seats had been reserved for
twenty members of the press, and for such special personages as Hickock’s parents and Donald
Cullivan (who, at the request of Perry Smith’s lawyer, had traveled from Massachusetts to appear
as a character witness in behalf of his former Army friend). It had been rumored that the two
surviving Clutter daughters would be present; they were not, nor did they attend any subsequent
session. The family was represented by Mr. Clutter’s younger brother, Arthur, who had driven a
hundred miles to be there. He told newsmen: «I just want to get a good look at them [Smith and
Hickock]. I just want to see what kind of animals they are. The way I feel, I could tear them apart.»
He took a seat directly behind the defendants, and fixed them with a gaze of unique persistence,
as though he planned to paint their portraits from memory. Presently, and it was as if Arthur
Clutter had willed him to do it, Perry Smith turned and looked at him — and recognized a face very
like the face of the man he had killed: the same mild eyes, narrow lips, firm chin. Perry, who was
chewing gum, stopped chewing; he lowered his eyes, a minute elapsed, then slowly his jaws
began to move again. Except for this moment, Smith, and Hickock too, affected a courtroom
attitude that was simultaneously uninterested and disinterested; they chewed gum and tapped
their feet with languid impatience as the state summoned its first witness.
Nancy Ewalt. And after Nancy, Susan Kidwell. The young girls described what they saw upon
entering the Clutter house on Sunday, November 15: the quiet rooms, an empty purse on a
kitchen floor, sunshine in a bedroom, and their schoolmate, Nancy Clutter, surrounded by her
own blood. The defense waived cross-examination, a policy they pursued with the next three
witnesses (Nancy Ewalt’s father, Clarence, and Sheriff Earl Robinson, and the county coroner,
Dr. Robert Fenton), each of whom added to the narrative of events that sunny November
morning: the discovery, finally, of all four victims, and accounts of how they looked, and, from Dr.
Fenton, a clinical diagnosis of why — «Severe traumas to brain and vital cranial structures inflicted
by a shotgun.»
Then Richard G. Rohleder took the stand.
Rohleder is Chief Investigator of the Garden City Police Department. His hobby is photography,
and he is good at it. It was Rohleder who took the pictures that, when developed, revealed
Hickock’s dusty footprints in the Clutter cellar, prints the camera could discern, though not the
human eye. And it was he who had photographed the corpses, those death-scene images Alvin
Dewey had continuously pondered while the murders were still unsolved. The point of Rohleder’s
testimony was to establish the fact of his having made these pictures, which the prosecution
proposed to put into evidence. But Hickock’s attorney objected: «The sole reason the pictures are
being introduced is to prejudice and inflame the minds of the jurors.» Judge Tate overruled the
objection and allowed the photographs into evidence, which meant they must be shown to the
jury.
While this was being done, Hickock’s father, addressing a journalist seated near him, said, «The
judge up there! I never seen a man so prejudiced. Just no sense having a trial. Not with him in
charge. Why, that man was a pallbearer at the funeral!» (Actually, Tate was but slightly
acquainted with the victims, and was not present at their funeral in any capacity.) But Mr.
Hickock’s was the only voice raised in an exceedingly silent courtroom. Altogether, there were
seventeen prints, and as they were passed from hand to hand, the jurors’ expressions reflected
the impact the pictures made: one man’s cheeks reddened, as if he had been slapped, and a few,
after the first distressing glance, obviously had no heart for the task; it was as though the
photographs had pried open their mind’s eye, and forced them to at last really see the true and
pitiful thing that had happened to a neighbor and his wife and children. It amazed them, it made
them angry, and several of them — the pharmacist, the manager of the bowling alley — stared at the
defendants with total contempt.
The elder Mr. Hickock, wearily wagging his head, again and again murmured, «No sense. Just no
sense having a trial.»
As the day’s final witness, the prosecution had promised to pro-duce a «mystery man.» It was the
man who had supplied the information that led to the arrest of the accused: Floyd Wells,
Hickock’s former cellmate. Because he was still serving a sentence at Kansas State Penitentiary,
and therefore was in danger of retaliation from other inmates, Wells had never been publicly
identified as the informer. Now, in order that he might safely testify at the trial, he had been
removed from the prison and lodged in a small jail in an adjacent county. Nevertheless, Wells’
passage across the courtroom toward the witness stand was oddly stealthy — as though he
expected to encounter an assassin along the way — and, as he walked past Hickock, Hickock’s
lips writhed as he whispered a few atrocious words. Wells pretended not to notice; but like a
horse that has heard the hum of a rattlesnake, he shied away from the betrayed man’s venomous
vicinity. Taking the stand, he stared straight ahead, a somewhat chinless little farm boyish fellow
wearing a very decent dark-blue suit which the State of Kansas had bought for the occasion — the
state being concerned that its most important witness should look respectable, and consequently
trustworthy.
Wells’ testimony, perfected by pre-trial rehearsal, was as tidy as his appearance. Encouraged by
the sympathetic promptings of Logan Green, the witness acknowledged that he had once, for
approximately a year, worked as a hired hand at River Valley Farm; he went on to say that some
ten years later, following his conviction on a burglary charge, he had become friendly with another
imprisoned burglar, Richard Hickock, and had described to him the Clutter farm and family.
«Now,» Green asked, «during your conversations with Mr. Hickock what was said about Mr. Clutter
by either of you?»
«Well, we talked quite a bit about Mr. Clutter. Hickock said he was about to be paroled, and he
was going to go West looking for a job; he might stop to see Mr. Clutter to get a job. I was telling
him how wealthy Mr. Clutter was.»
«Did that seem to interest Mr. Hickock?»
«Well, he wanted to know if Mr. Clutter had a safe around there.»
«Mr. Wells, did you think at the time there was a safe in the Clutter house?»
«Well, it has been so long since I worked out there. I thought there was a safe. I knew there was a
cabinet of some kind. . . .The next thing I knew he [Hickock] was talking about robbing Mr.
Clutter.»
«Did he tell you anything about how he was going to commit the robbery?»
«He told me if he done anything like that he wouldn’t leave no witnesses.»
«Did he actually say what he was going to do with the witnesses?»
«Yes. He told me he would probably tie them up and then rob them and then kill them.»
Having established premeditation of great degree, Green left the witness to
