On a Monday morning in November 1959, Truman Capote found a three hundred word wire story deep inside the New York Times. A wheat farmer, his wife and two of their children had been found bound and shot in their farmhouse in western Kansas. Nothing had been stolen. Capote went to Kansas with Harper Lee, stayed six years, and wrote the book that made true crime respectable. This episode tells both stories at once: what happened to Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, and what happened to the facts on their way into In Cold Blood. It ends with the two daughters who survived, and the letter they sent to everyone who asked.
IN MEMORY
The Clutters are buried at Valley View Cemetery, Garden City. A shelter at the Kansas State 4-H camp at Rock Springs Ranch, a stained glass window at the First United Methodist Church in Garden City, and the Garden City Co-op building are dedicated to the family. The 1959 murders of Cliff, Christine, Jimmie and Debbie Walker at Osprey, Florida, remain an open investigation with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were convicted of all four murders on 29 March 1960 and hanged on 14 April 1965. The Kansas Supreme Court never determined which man fired which shot; both were guilty as principals. Hickock's signed statement blamed Smith for all four; Smith's first account had Hickock shooting Nancy and Bonnie, and he later asked to take all four himself but signed neither version. The sequence inside the house is taken from the Kansas Supreme Court's 1961 judgment only. Neither man was ever charged over the Walker murders; the 2013 DNA result was inconclusive and the lab work has since been found contaminated. We have named nobody else. Capote's account of the night is attributed to him wherever it appears. The two versions of the last words are as reported by the wire services and by Capote; Phillip Tompkins's 1966 witnesses are the source for the claim that Capote did not hear them. The 1965 wire text was reached through a secondary source. On Bonnie Clutter's health we report only what her family said in 2005 and what Capote wrote. The daughters' letter and interviews are from the Lawrence Journal-World, 2005. As of September 2026 the KBI investigative file has not been released; the Nye notebooks were published in 2019.
SOURCES
State v. Hickock and Smith, 188 Kan. 473 (1961): law.justia.com/cases/kansas/supreme-court/1961/42-068-0.html
Hickock v. Crouse, 334 F.2d 95 (10th Cir. 1964): law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/334/95/108910/
State ex rel. Schmidt v. Nye, Kansas Court of Appeals, 2019: law.justia.com/cases/kansas/court-of-appeals/2019/118666.html
New York Times, 16 Nov 1959, \"Wealthy Farmer, 3 Of Family Slain\" (NYT archive)
George Plimpton, \"The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel\", NYT, 16 Jan 1966 (NYT archive)
Garden City Telegram, 16 Nov 1959 and 4 Jan 1960; AP, 30 Mar 1960 and 8 Apr 1965
Kansas Memory, Hickock and Smith inmate files and execution witness list: kansasmemory.gov/item/208965
Lawrence Journal-World, \"In Cold Blood: A Legacy\", 3 to 5 Apr 2005 (Patrick Smith, Melissa Lee, Van Jensen)
Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal, 8 Feb 2013, and On the Media, 15 Feb 2013
Phillip K. Tompkins, \"In Cold Fact\", Esquire, June 1966; Purdue oral history, 2015
Casey Cep, Furious Hours (2019); Gerald Clarke, Capote (1988); Too Brief a Treat (2004)
Tampa Bay Times / CBS News, 6 Feb 2023, and ABC News, 14 Aug 2013, on the Walker case
SUPPORT
This episode describes the murder of a family including two children, and discusses capital punishment. If you need to talk to someone: New Zealand, call or text 1737. Australia, Lifeline 13 11 14.
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