Tag Archives: Kansas

Truman Capote, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith and In Cold Blood (Volume 5, Episode 6) Part One

On November 14, 1959, two petty criminals, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, crossed Kansas, murdered the Clutter family in the tiny hamlet of Holcomb, Kansas and unwittingly enabled a New York City writer named Truman Capote to achieve immortality for all three of them.

Capote, as he would have dressed while visiting Holcomb and Garden City Kansas

When Truman Capote arrived in Kansas, Smith and Hickock were not yet on law enforcement’s radar.  Capote’s initial intent was to write about the reaction of the town and its inhabitants but he had at least enough self awareness to understand that it would be next to impossible for someone with both his New York and blatantly homosexual persona to ingratiate himself to the appropriate degree.

Harper Lee, 1960, photo taken by Truman Capote

Capote enlisted Harper Lee as his partner in journalism and set about trying to induce the locals, both law enforcement and private citizens, into sharing any valuable insight.  His initial wardrobe of a pillbox style hat, long sheepskin coat and scarf that hung all the way to his feet did him no favors but Harper Lee seems to have helped him win over his most productive source and access to important information.  Alvin Dewey, as a member of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation or KBI, the state agency with jurisdiction over the investigation and a resident of Garden City, was logically designated to coordinate the investigation with other assigned members of the KBI.  Initially repelled by Capote, Dewey eventually was charmed especially by Harper Lee, who also became friendly with Dewey’s wife Marie, and it wasn’t long before Capote and Lee were getting regular invitations to dinner.

Clutter house, 2009, much like it appeared in 1959 

Arriving shortly after midnight on the morning of November 15, a full moon completely illuminated both the Clutter home, and the expansive series of barns, which Smith said excited Hickock, Dick thinking the proprietor of such a spread had to possess a great deal of money.  With no need for headlights, Hickock shut them and the car engine off and parked behind a tree, allowing the two men to appraise the situation.

Hickock mug shot

Richard Eugene “Dick” Hickock was born on June 6, 1931 in Kansas City, Missouri.  His parents, Walter and Eunice, were typically devout, hard working lower middle class Kansas Midwesterners who raised their family on a 44 acre farm in the small town of Edgerton.  Walter Hickock worked as a mechanic by day and farmed his acreage during off hours.  Industrious, he built the farm’s main family residence by himself.  His oldest of two sons, Dick was popular in high school and lettered in several sports but Dick’s parents were unable to provide the financial means to send Dick to college after his graduation in 1949.  Instead, he went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad and pursued another interest, women.  Many surmise that the critical event in Hickock’s life was a serious car accident in 1950, in which he was almost killed, spent days in the hospital and emerged with disfigured facial features and possibly permanent brain damage. Married at age 19 to his 16 year old girlfriend who produced two children, Hickock seems to have undergone a personality change in which he suddenly began gambling, kiting checks and living beyond his means.  He also managed to conceive a child with another woman, prompting a divorce from his first wife.  Saying that he wanted to “do the right thing,” he married the mother of his third child but continued to subsidize menial jobs, mostly as an auto mechanic, with petty crime.  Whether it was for writing bad checks or stealing a rifle from a private residence, Hickock finally caught his first five-year jail sentence in 1956 for “cheating and defrauding.”  He was paroled from Kansas State Penitentiary on August 13, 1959.

Smith mug shot

Perry Edward Smith was born in Huntington, Nevada on October 27, 1928, perhaps appropriately, his birthplace is now a ghost town.  His father John “Tex” Smith and mother Florence “Flo” Buckskin were rodeo riders who performed in small towns across the northern great plains. Described as a full blooded Cherokee by Capote, Flo was in fact Shoshone-Paiute.  In 1929, Smith’s parents moved to Juneau, Alaska, where Tex hustled a living as a bootlegger.  Both parents were alcoholic, Tex violently abusive to both his wife and his four children and frequently absent for lengthy periods of time.  During these absences, Flo engaged in numerous adulterous affairs, eventually precipitating an especially violent beating at the hands of Tex in 1935, behavior that convinced Flo to flee to San Francisco.  Usually in an alcoholic haze, she was unable to care for her children, who were eventually placed in a series of institutions and Catholic orphanages, Perry already arrested by the age of eight.  Subjected to repeated physical abuse, especially at the hands of the nuns he frequently encountered, Smith evolved into an angry and aggressive loner, constantly in conflict with others.  Eventually, his father intervened, removing Perry from San Francisco and taking him throughout Nevada and Alaska, settling in the latter state until Perry’s enlistment at age 16 in the Merchant Marine.  After that, in 1948, he enlisted in the US Army, serving in both Japan and Korea and receiving the Bronze Star for action as a combat engineer during the pivotal Battle of Inchon.  But, despite his honorable discharge, he frequently fought with other soldiers and civilians and spent lengthy periods in the stockade.  He intended to return to Alaska and live with his father but, most likely because of their tempestuous relationship, he moved to Washington State in the summer of 1952 and there he suffered a serious motorcycle accident that almost forced the amputation of both legs and left him with a permanent limp, constant pain and an aspirin addiction.  While in Washington he also fathered an illegitimate son, who was raised by an Army buddy as his own child.  Smith then spent a year convalescing in a hospital before returning to Alaska, where he hoped to reunite with his father.  They built a hunting lodge together in a remote part of the state, called the Trapper’s Den Lodge but had a serious and violent falling out in 1955, when the lodge failed.  Smith drifted across the Midwest and with a partner, broke into an office in Phillipsburg, Kansas where they stole anything of value.  Arrested after a traffic stop, Smith and his accomplice broke out of jail, stole a car and it was New York City before Perry was apprehended by the FBI and taken back to Kansas to face the music.  In 1956, he received five to ten years for the previous burglary and interstate flight.  It is at the Kansas State Penitentiary that he met Dick Hickock, at some point sharing a cell.

Robert Blake in the 1967 film as Perry Smith, an uncanny likeness

The 1967 film reproduction of the book only added to Capote’s celebrity runway.  While some have attributed the author’s downward spiral to the emotional trauma of his involvement with Hickock and Smith, Capote’s thinly concealed eagerness for the two men’s execution and his alcoholism and drug abuse were only enabled by the ability to coast along on his reputation, his great wealth allowing a lifestyle of indulgence and artistic inactivity.

Truman Capote, in front of the motel he frequented in Garden City, Kansas. Next door was one of the few “wet” restaurants in the city.

By the time the two suspects were returned to Garden City, Capote had so ingratiated himself with Alvin Dewey that he was granted a privilege denied to every other journalist covering the Clutter case; interview access to Hickock and Smith.  This would not be the only benefit granted by Dewey but it was extremely significant.  The egotistical, verbose Hickock was an easy subject for Capote who drained him of as much information as possible but Perry Smith was initially wary. Ultimately fascinated by Capote and, insecure about his lack of formal education, that a man of letters would be interested in conversing with him, Smith also established a close relationship.  After getting this exclusive access, Capote then returned to New York with Harper Lee, as there was nothing for him to do but wait for the trial, scheduled for March 22, 1960.

Truman Capote, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith and In Cold Blood (Volume 5, Episode 6) Part Two

On November 14, 1959, two petty criminals, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, crossed Kansas, murdered the Clutter family in the tiny hamlet of Holcomb, Kansas and unwittingly enabled a New York City writer named Truman Capote to achieve immortality for all three of them.

The stolen license plate spotted by Las Vegas police that led to Smith and Hickock’s arrest.

This arrest was most likely the result of the efforts of KBI investigator Harold Nye, who, in the interim after the Wells revelation, had traveled to Las Vegas to question individuals who might have encountered Perry Smith while Smith stayed in the city prior to returning to Kansas.  Nye also met extensively with members of the Las Vegas Police department and impressed upon them that Smith especially was known to frequent the city and that Smith and Hickock’s apprehension was extremely important.  While the attentive Las Vegas patrolmen who spotted the stolen plate and vehicle deserve credit, most likely they were focused as a result of information transmitted throughout the department, the result of Harold Nye’s diligence.

Reproduction of the bloodstain from Smith’s boot and the boot itself, on display with the license plate, Finney County Sheriff’s Department exhibit.

Hickock and Smith, not wanting to drag a lot of miscellaneous items with them when they returned from Mexico and had to resort to hitchhiking, mailed a box to Post Office General Delivery in Las Vegas containing, among other things, the boots they wore the night they killed the Clutters.  Their arrest occurred only a few minutes later and had the police nabbed them sooner these critical items that physically linked them to the murder scene might never have been recovered.

Replacement gravestone, Dick Hickock, Mount Muncie Cemetery, original purchased by Truman Capote was stolen and is now in the custody of Kansas State Historical Society archives but not publicly displayed out of deference to the Clutter family.

Hickock went first although no one was really sure how that was decided, perhaps alphabetically.  He made a brief statement; “I don’t have any hard feelings.  You’re sending me to a better place.” He then thanked the KBI agents for being there and was helped by guards up the thirteen steps of the gallows.  There, while the 23rd Psalm was intoned by the prison chaplain, a hood was placed over his head, a noose tightened around his neck and the long hood. At 12:19 AM he was positioned exactly on the wooden platform and then the hangman, paid six hundred dollars for his effort, pulled a lever opening a small trap door, Hickock falling straight down until the rope snapped taut breaking his neck.  A doctor present for this official purpose took 22 minutes to pronounce Hickock dead, after his heart stopped beating.

Perry Smith grave next to Hickock’s, Mount Muncie Cemetery, also a replacement, original now in the archives of the Kansas Historical Society

Smith was next, driven to the gallows and arriving a little after 1 AM.  In Capote’s book, he is supposed to have issued an apology but his last official words actually were: “I think it is a hell of a thing that a life has to be taken in this manner.  I say this especially because there’s a great deal I could have offered society.  I think capital punishment is legally and morally wrong.  Any apology for what I have done would be meaningless at this time.  I don’t have any animosities toward anyone involved in this matter.  I think that is all.  Then Smith ascended the steps to the gallows, underwent the same process as Hickock, dropped through the trap door at 1:07 AM and was pronounced dead 12 minutes later.

Capote, 1980, four years before his death.

Capote’s fall from grace was so complete that he exiled himself to California and published only fragments and short pieces, Answered Prayers remaining unfinished.  In August of 1984, having not published anything of substance for almost twenty years and while apparently living at the home of his newest best friend Joanne Carson, talk show host Johnny’s second wife, Capote died of liver cancer.  Gore Vidal, who successfully sued Capote over accusations of drunkenness at the White House and also famously claimed that Capote’s voice was audible only to dogs called it a good career move.

Truman Capote, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith and In Cold Blood (Book and Music Information)

The books and journalism used in this podcast included:

“Capote: A Biography,” by Gerald Clarke

“Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career,” by George Plimpton

“And Every Word Is True,” by Gary MacAvoy

“In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote

Also journalism about “In Cold Blood,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal by Kevin Helliker, chiefly, “Capote Classic, ‘In Cold Blood,’ Tainted by Long Lost Files,” published on February 8, 2013.

The intro in both Parts One and Two was “Three Wise People,” by Jammy Jams.  The outro in Part One was “Blue Mood,” by Robert Munziger and the outro in Part Two was “Cruiser,” by Magic In The Other