Original subtitles

Al: On November the 15th, 1959,

a father, a mother,

and their two teenage children were murdered.

**

Edwards: Who could have any reason to kill them?

All the potential leads just did not pan out.

Al: When we developed the photographs,

we were able to see a boot print

that one could not observe with the naked eye.

They knew that there was a potential of a second suspect.

Man: "I came out of prison embittered, ruthless,

and emotionally unstable."

Man #2: "I'll wait till they catch me, if they do."

**

**

Man: The Hickock investigation

took us to Kansas City,

where we learned that Hickock had passed a hot check

for $192 at Elko Camera Shop back on November 21st.

He had been working at Sand's Paint Shop in Olathe,

and we interviewed Bob Sands, owner of the paint shop.

He told us that Hickock had been working for him,

but didn't show up after November 20th.

When he last seen him, Hickock said, "See you in the morning."

On the 9th, we put out an arrest warrant for Richard E. Hickock

for bad checks.

We also obtained a search warrant

for the Hickock family farm.

Troutner: The Hickock family,

the parents Walter and Eunice,

were very liked and respected in Edgerton.

But pretty early after the Hickocks moved here,

people started finding out about Dick.

Being a petty thief, being a charming con man.

Hickock was someone who could fool you into thinking

that he was a fine, upstanding citizen,

and then when you had your back turned,

commit any number of crimes.

Troutner: There was a point when Mr. Hickock,

the dad, would give a horse to a family or a store owner

kind of payback for what Dick had took from them.

Crable: "We are sorry our kid stole from you, have a horse.

Lets forget that this ever happened."

And, so, that became [Laughs]

kind of a running gag in town.

You knew how much trouble Hickock was in

by the number of horses that were on his father's land.

Welch: The KBI visited Hickock's parents

and developed the alleged itinerary

of Hickock and Smith

that particular weekend.

Man: Mrs. Hickock told us that her son Richard and Perry Smith

had made a trip to Fort Scott, Kansas,

on Saturday, November 14th,

and that they were to locate a sister of Smith's.

Mrs. Hickock told us that Richard had not returned home

until just before lunch on November 15th.

She claimed that she had not seen Richard since that morning.

We told Mrs. Hickock that we'd like to search the premises.

We found a bloody shirt in the drawer.

Then we found something else in the closet.

That's where Nye spots the shotgun

that Hickock had purchased on credit in Olathe.

I think every third Kansan had a 12-gauge shotgun probably.

That wouldn't be surprising,

but Nye later said that he actually felt excitement

when he picked that shotgun up

and really felt they were on the right trail.

**

Man: Outside Kansas City,

we interviewed Hickock's second ex-wife,

Margaret Edna Sanders.

She described Richard Hickock as having a violent temper

that was easily aroused.

He drinks liquor, usually screwdrivers, and a lot of beer,

smokes Marlboro or Pall Mall cigarettes,

likes to dance, and is a lover of music.

The next day, we interviewed Dick's first ex-wife, Carol.

She said that since he's got out of the penitentiary,

Hickock usually called the house at least once a week.

The last contact she had with him was on November 19th,

two days before he was last spotted in the area.

Man #2: "I was born June 6, 1931, in Kansas City.

We were always what you'd call semi-poor --

never down and out, but always on the verge of it.

Dad was a hard worker, and done his best to provide for us.

He was always strict.

My mother was always neat, and we had clean clothes aplenty.

Hammon: I thought he was good-looking.

He didn't look like an ordinary high school guy.

Troutner: He had a way with the ladies, and men, too.

Just kind of winning them over, getting their friendship,

their trust.

LeBert-Corbello: He excelled at whatever he did --

basketball, girlfriends...

It wasn't until after the wreck

that he started changing.

[Thunder rumbling]

Man: "He was working with me.

I run a body and fender shop in Gardner, Kansas,

for Rourke Motor Company, and he was my helper."

The dad sent Dick to Olathe for some car parts.

Man: "Water on the highway

caused him to lose control of his car.

He was ejected from the car."

Troutner: He landed face down in this ditch of water,

and a passerby that had been behind him stopped

and ran over and pulled him out of the ditch.

He probably would've drowned.

He suffered a dislocated jaw,

and something happened where an eye

was askew from the other one.

He had serious major head injuries from that car wreck.

You look at his eyes, they are not in line.

they're like...

His personality was a little different.

It wasn't the happy-go-lucky guy like he used to be.

Man: "I was fired, and in the condition I was in,

couldn't find another job,

but I had met a girl and fallen in love.

In July of '51, we were married.

All hell broke loose from her dad

until he learned she was pregnant,

but still he never wished me good luck."

LeBert-Corbello: Carol married Dick at about 16 years old,

and she absolutely adored him.

Dick was really good to his wife,

and, especially, his little boys.

Woman: "Dick was an excellent father.

I loved watching him play with our boys.

But he was a womanizer.

Although he loved me, he loved any other woman he could."

Man: "In the early part of 1957, I met this girl by the name

of Margaret Sanders at work.

To make a long story short,

we became real intimate in our relations.

He fathered another child with her.

At this point in his life, Hickock is pretty destitute

and hopeless.

He's tried playing the role

of father and good husband.

He's failed at that.

He's with the mistress,

and things are looking very bleak.

Man: "I started drinking real heavy after that,

and was drunk for almost a month.

The first time in my life that I had ever done that.

I started neglecting my businesses,

spending more money than I was earning, writing bad checks,

and in the end, becoming a thief."

Crable: Hickock had stolen some firearms,

and he tried to sell them at a pawn shop

in downtown Kansas City.

Man: "Dick was arrested.

He was sentenced to Lansing Penitentiary

for 5 years."

LeBert-Corbello: It was enough time for him

to stew over the fact that he was poor,

and he wanted a quick way to get rich,

to get the big score.

**

Tedrow: It seemed like for a while, time just went pretty slow.

Every day not knowing what was going on,

every day something new you would hear.

Was it true? Was it not?

Frack: That's why you're better if you don't think about it.

You couldn't do anything about it until we found out

who did it.

Tedrow: There was some feeling like,

"Will anybody ever have to pay for this?"

**

Man: "After we crossed back into the States,

we took a bus and hitchhiked to Barstow.

We had to lighten our load for hitchhiking,

so we mailed most of our belongings

general delivery to Las Vegas.

We'd pick them up COD later.

Our only purpose for returning to the U.S.

was to pull a score big enough to finance a trip to Brazil

where they couldn't extradite us back to the States

if they ever caught on to who pulled the Clutter deal.

We hitchhiked east,

made it to Iowa where we stole a car parked in a yard.

Finally ended up back in Kansas City, my hometown.

**

I started on one of the most cautious check-passing sprees

that part of the country had ever seen.

We were hotter than a pistol because of the checks

we passed before.

I cashed over $500 worth of checks.

How I managed to do it without getting busted,

I can't imagine."

[Telephone rings]

Man: While agents Nye, Church, and myself

were at the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office,

a call came in from the Furniture Mart located

at 3206 Brown Avenue in Kansas City

that a bogus check had been used the night before to purchase

a new Olympic television set.

Went to the furniture mart where employees

positively identified Hickock.

While we were at the Furniture Mart,

the subjects attempted to cash another check

at Walt's Service Station in Kansas City.

The son of the station owner recognized Hickock.

They had gone to school together.

He refused to cash the check,

stating that he had a drawer full of them.

We cruised the Kansas City area in search for the car

or subjects with negative results.

**

Man: On December 18th,

we interviewed Mrs. Dorothy Marchant,

the sister of Perry Edward Smith.

Mrs. Marchant told us that she was afraid of Perry Smith,

and that she had very little to do with him.

She considered he was a lot like his father.

They both did not respect the rights of others,

nor did they care how they lived.

Mrs. Marchant told us that when they were young,

they suffered severe hardships.

Man: "My father was a farmer, trapper,

and quite a famous Bronco rider in rodeos

during his younger days.

Our family was my brother James, my sister Fern,

my sister Dorothy, and myself.

My mother was also a country girl

and later became a lady champion Bronco rider.

She was an Indian.

Her maiden name was Buckskin."

His mom was a rodeo star.

The rodeo culture got woven into their life.

Perry's dad was Irish, and his mom was full-blood Indian.

I guess that's why he got along with my dad, Joe,

because they were both half-breeds.

Man: "At some point our family moved to Juneau

where my father was making hooch, a bootlegger.

I believe it was during this period my mother

became acquainted with alcohol.

I remember my mother was entertaining some sailors

while my father was away.

When he came home, my father threw the sailors out

after a violent struggle and proceeded to beat my mother.

I was scared.

Mom ended up taking us kids to San Francisco.

She ran off with dad's truck, leaving him behind in jail,

where she had him put.

In Frisco, I run as free and wild as a coyote.

My mother was always drunk,

never in a fit condition to properly provide

and care for us.

There was no rule or discipline

or anyone to show me right from wrong.

I had stole so many things from so many stores,

I lost track of which was first.

I was sent away to school.

I wet the bed every night.

This was very humiliating, but I couldn't control myself.

I was severely beaten by the cottage mistress."

Back in those days, you wouldn't want to believe

that the nuns were so mean, but they were that mean,

they were that strict. They were punishing.

Man: "One evening, she hit me with her flashlight.

I still carry the scar on my penis.

She almost severed it completely off.

She was later discharged,

but this never changed my mind

about what I wished I could have done to her

and all the people who made fun of me."

Man: "Mrs. Marchant told us that she was afraid of Perry Smith,

and in the event the Kansas officers talked to him,

she requested that he not be advised of her present address.

Ms. Marchant also told us that she had never lived

in Fort Scott, Kansas."

That was the alibi that they had come up with,

and of course, that was all a ruse.

That wasn't true at all.

[Indistinct chatter]

Man: "It was agreed that the county would conduct

a daily press conference."

Uh, I have no comment in regards to that.

"Handling the news people who were arriving

was a matter to deal with.

One morning, the sheriff's secretary interrupted my gloom.

She ushered in a woman and a short, small man

wrapped in a long scarf.

'Mr. Dewey, I am Truman Capote,

and this is my friend Nelle Harper Lee.

She is a writer, too.'"

[Laughs]

Just right on in.

[Indistinct chatter]

Clarke: Truman had been a famous writer since the 1940s.

He had written short stories, which were widely read.

And because of his demeanor

and his way of doing things, he became rather famous.

He was in the newspaper columns, the gossip columns all the time.

Not making a whole lot of money, but he became very well known.

Man: [Capote-style accent] "Then, one morning

in November 1959,

while flicking through The New York Times,

I encountered on a deep inside page this headline,

'Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain.'

I thought about it all that November day

and part of the next."

Clarke: The killers had not been caught,

but Truman didn't care about that.

What he cared about was the effect

these killings would have on this little town,

because he knew little towns, he'd grown up in little towns,

he spent much of his life in a little town in the South.

He was a little nervous about going to Kansas.

Truman looked for someone to go along with him,

and he talked to a friend of his.

Um, he talked to, um, Harper Lee,

who had just written a novel called "To Kill a Mockingbird,"

but it had not been published.

Truman and Harper Lee had been neighbors

in Monroeville, Alabama.

She was a year younger, but she was sort of the boss.

Truman was too soft for the boys,

and Nelle was too hard for the girls.

She was very assertive.

Man: [Capote-style accent] "She is a gifted woman,

courageous, and with a warmth

that instantly kindles most people.

Feeling at loose ends, she said she would accompany me

in the role of assistant researchist.

It was twilight when we arrived."

**

Man: "That day was the first time

I set eyes on Truman Capote.

He said, 'What I'm here for is to do a very special story

on the family.

It doesn't make any difference to me

if the case is even solved.'

Well, he could've talked all day without saying that.

It made one hell of a difference to me."

Clarke: He was right to be nervous,

because when he went out there,

they looked on Truman as if he had just arrived on a spaceship

from Mars.

It didn't go very well.

They didn't want to divulge details to strangers.

So they shut them down.

A number of people just turned on their heels,

and said, "I don't want to talk about it".

Well, when he came in,

he was such a little fella, I thought,

"Well, who's this little kid coming in?"

[Laughs]

But some don't think they should let him in Garden City.

"Why didn't they keep him out?"

**

Edwards: "We were all looking forward to several days

at Herbert's this Thanksgiving.

Herbert and Bonnie had planned

for the Clutter family Thanksgiving dinner

to be at their home near Holcomb.

We had already received the invitation

in the mail before this happened."

Woman: "Dear family, it is time we had

a family reunion long enough to really get acquainted again.

We were all so excited, and they were so --

Herbert was so excited.

He's going to have us all out there.

Woman: "Activities will include gabbing, games of all kinds,

hunting, horseback riding, after-dinner naps,

eating, TV, football games."

So she had it very well organized.

[Laughs]

"We will have good bed space

for 17 adults, and floor space

for all the kids and a baby bed available."

Edwards: "There had not been a big Thanksgiving gathering

since Grandma Clutter died in 1954."

And I know it would have been a great time,

and, boy, did somebody ruin it.

Woman: Yeah, they had a family reunion,

just not the way they planned it.

Here's something from Truman Capote

asking to show around the farm.

That was the only request they've ever had.

Shields: Truman asked permission to walk around the house,

and got permission for Nelle and Truman

to come on the property and come into the house.

Edwards: There was Capote standing in front of the house,

and I just felt so angry, like he had no business there,

and it seemed like a real invasion.

**

Shields: The house seemed haunted.

All that was missing were the people.

And the rooms had been, of course,

cleaned after the murder scene,

but they really had a sense of entering into the inner sanctum.

Woman: That was very disappointing,

very disappointing.

I understand people have to make their living,

but it's sad that it has to come off of somebody else's tragedy,

and I can remember them saying at the time,

"I wish we had just torn the house down,"

because that's not the way you want to remember your home.

[Wind whistling]

-Do you remember that picture? -I know.

-What year is that? -1950.

1950.

I looked pretty good in those days.

Too bad time changes things.

Cullivan: When I was in the army

back about the time of the Korean war,

I was training,

and we had a fellow who joined us

and he was almost finished with his service.

We were bunkmates.

His name was Perry Edward Smith

and he was an excellent equipment operator.

He always had a smile on his face,

but he never talked about his family.

His mother abandoned the family,

she died of an alcoholic overdose.

The brother committed suicide.

The sister, she probably also committed suicide.

He did also have one sister who was living in California

and had a real life.

He joined the army,

and this was at the time of the height of the Korean war,

but he never saw much action.

He started drinking heavily and carousing,

getting into fights.

Man: "I had many violent bursts of anger.

I was in Korea 15 months

and finished my army service in Fort Lewis, Washington."

Cullivan: Around Christmastime,

I decided I was going to take home leave,

and I had a very nice leather jacket,

and Perry asked me if he could borrow this jacket

because he had rented a motorcycle.

When I came back, Perry was gone, my jacket was gone.

**

[Crashing]

[Monitor beeping]

He had slid on some sandy patch

and really messed up his legs.

He was lucky that they weren't amputated, they were so bad.

Man: "I spent about a year in the hospital.

Shattered left leg, broken hip, broken left arm."

He used to take aspirin, 2 or 3 at a time, not with water,

he would chew them to kill the pain.

Man: "After my accident,

I stayed with a friend till spring."

Perry Smith was kind of a unique part of our family.

I wasn't even born yet when my parents first met him.

I was born Jewell Perry William James,

and Perry was my dad's friend, so I was named after him.

When I was about 5, Perry showed up.

Most children have a fear of strangers,

but even before I'd seen him, I had this...

"Something's not right."

I closed my eyes, I covered my ears,

I wouldn't look at him, I wouldn't listen to him.

Something about him scared me.

Since I was named after him,

I guess I was supposed to be his friend.

And, so that summer, he had bought a Model A Ford.

We all loaded on it.

We picked dandelions out of a field,

and Perry and my dad made dandelion wine.

It seemed to me that he was pretty happy

with the people here, you know.

I think probably if he stayed here,

he would have been, he'd probably be alive yet, you know?

But he left.

You know, and we never heard from him again.

We found out later he was in communications

with a colleague that was in prison with him.

Bascue: Both of them ended up at the same prison

and developed some type of a friendship.

During that friendship,

Dick Hickock had come up with a plan

that he was going to rob the Clutter family of their money,

and that he wasn't going to leave any witnesses.

But he didn't have, uh, the nerve himself to carry it out.

And that's why he had enlisted the help of Perry Smith.

Man: "Perry had told Hickock that prior to 1955,

he had killed a black man by clubbing him to death."

Bascue: It's possible that this story was developed

to make him look a little bit tougher

so people would leave him alone in prison,

and Dick Hickock believed the story.

LeBert-Corbello: Dick thought that he would be

a good accomplice because in case they needed

to kill someone, he knew Perry would do it,

and he wouldn't have to do that.

Crable: They both very much were dreamers.

That had started in that period when they were incarcerated.

They had been feeding each other's fantasies.

It was gonna be this big score

and then they was going to head to Mexico and start a new life.

LeBert-Corbello: He connected with Perry Smith,

and the two together were a fatal combination.

There are three things that Dick often said after leaving prison.

He said that he was going to get a big score,

that his family would have no more money worries,

and he said, "There will be no witnesses."

**

Man: "After the check spree in Kansas,

we drove on to Florida,

got to Miami Beach on the 21st and spent Christmas there.

Everything we got with the checks was sold in Florida

for about a fourth of what I paid for it.

On the 26th, we left Miami and drove all over creation,

went to Jacksonville where I worked half a day

digging a ditch,

then to South Carolina, New Orleans,

Shreveport, Dallas, and Fort Worth.

In Fort Worth, we picked up a hitchhiker and his son

and drove them home to Corpus.

We picked up $2 worth of soda bottles

on the side of the road on the way there.

Then we went to El Paso,

then to Phoenix, where we slept in the car,

and finally, just before New Year's,

we decided we'd head back to Vegas."

[Wind whistling]

**

Man: "By Christmas day, we had been working

on the Wells lead for almost three weeks,

but it wasn't gelling.

Smith and Hickock were out there somewhere

and we weren't finding them.

It wasn't the best Christmas we ever had at our house.

Our boys were 9 and 12,

but I didn't have much enthusiasm

for fooling with their toys."

Paul: Mom was in many respects a single parent much of the time.

Doing this investigation, Dad was gone a lot,

and I always felt that she gave up a lot for him.

**

[Birds chirping]

**

**

**

**

**

Edwards: "I don't remember being depressed

until Nancy and Kenyon were killed.

Even worse than the grief was the chaos

that entered my mind and my spirit.

There was no longer any point in planning,

no reason to expect fairness or justice,

no reason to expect anything good

just because you worked hard and were good to others.

I don't know exactly when I stopped going to church,

I raged at God for a while.

Raged at him for letting that happen

when they had done nothing to deserve it.

What kind of God would let something that terrible happen?

If that was what God was like, well, I could do without him."

Man: "At Christmas there was no big gathering

at my parents' home.

I began distancing myself from them.

It had become the only way I could manage the pain

I felt for them.

My pitiful parents,

conscientious, law-abiding citizens,

shocked that their son was a wanted man.

My first wife and I did manage to share our presents

with my children.

As they sat with the lights flickering

on our Christmas tree,

I decided to tell them that Uncle Dick

had done something wrong.

As I struggled to find the words,

I looked at their young and innocent faces

and wondered how hard it's going to be for them to be Hickocks

in the state on Kansas.

**

I came to know so many people there that I wouldn't have known

under any other circumstance in my life

and came to like them a great deal

and made many, many friends there.

Truman started off on hugely the wrong foot,

but they eventually became friends.

Once Harper and Truman became friends with the Deweys,

Truman was up on the investigation.

Shields: As a result of perseverance,

Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote

were well into Al Dewey's graces.

He trusted them, he liked them,

they were invited over to the Deweys to have dinner,

during which a critical phone call came.

**

Bascue: Law enforcement in Las Vegas had received

an attempt-to-locate from Kansas

for these two subjects, Smith and Hickock,

and they were given a vehicle description and tag number.

Man: "It was early evening when two local officers on patrol

happened to spot a black 1956 Chevy

outside the post office

with plates that matched the dispatch from Kansas."

Bascue: Smith and Hickock had just stopped

and picked up the belongings

that they had shipped from Mexico to Las Vegas.

Man: "Officers searched the car, and in the trunk,

found a box from Mexico."

[Police radio chatter]

[Telephone rings]

Paul: That evening,

Truman and Nelle were having dinner with us.

A phone call came from Las Vegas

where Dad is informed that Hickock and Smith

had been caught.

Welch: The Las Vegas Police Department

said "Happy New Year and Merry Christmas and everything else,

we've got these two guys in custody."

Shields: Al was in a celebratory mood.

They had 'em.

He got out a big map,

put it on the dining room table,

and showed the route that they would take

out there to Las Vegas.

And Truman wanted to go out to Las Vegas

with Al Dewey to bring them back,

but Al said, "Not this time, not this time."

Man: "I asked the officer on the phone

if they had found anything, like boots.

He said yes.

Turns out the box they found in the trunk contained two,

one with a cat's paw sole design

and the other one with diamond tread.

Both were similar to the tracks found on the cardboard box

at the murder scene."

They sent those boots and other materials

to "General delivery, Las Vegas, Perry Smith."

Thank God they did that.

Paul: If the Las Vegas police had grabbed them earlier,

that really critical piece of evidence

wouldn't have been found. It was purely happenstance.

Purely happenstance.

Man: "It was at that point that I told them to keep the men

in maximum security until we arrived."

**

**

[Indistinct chatter]

**

[Sirens wailing]

**

Bascue: It was around the end of December of 1959,

and Smith and Hickock were arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Here we have mug shots of both Smith and Hickock.

Hickock on the left and Perry Smith on the right,

and then there's a picture of the bloody boot print

that law enforcement took,

and the boot here is one of Perry Smith's boots

that he wore on the night that the Clutters were murdered.

Those boots, well, you count on good luck

falling your way sometimes,

and that's what happened in the Clutter case.

**

One of the strategies if you have multiple defendants

is identifying the person that's most likely

to engage in a conversation.

And by golly, it had to be Hickock.

Exactly.

Hickock's personality was he thought he could do

a snow job basically.

He felt more comfortable trying to engage conversation

to learn more about what the agents knew.

**

Man: "I first saw Dick Hickock

in jail inside the Las Vegas Police Department.

Agent Church and myself took him to the interrogation room."

They go into the evening first day as I recall,

and Hickock, of course, he's his usual,

boastful, braggadocio self,

but that evening,

Nye and Church kind of play with Hickock.

"We started off by going over these checks

that he had passed in the Kansas City area --

what was obtained through these checks,

where it was disposed of,

and then we go into his particular activities,

along with Perry Edward Smith,

over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of November 1959.

We asked him about the murder of the Clutter family

in Holcomb, Kansas."

Bascue: To help them get the confessions,

they had to have evidence available to them to show that,

"Listen, we got you guys,

so it'd be in your best interest to talk to us."

And one of the things that they talked about was the boot print.

You know, "We have your boots.

Is there any reason why your boot prints

should be at the scene if you've never been there before?"

**

[Static]

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

[Feedback]

On the other side, Smith was not really giving up anything.

Mnh-mnh.

He was very cagey.

"Don't discuss anything,

the less information out there, the better off I am."

Definitely more adept at avoiding answering questions

in a criminal setting than Hickock.

Man: "I first talked to Perry Smith on January 2, 1960.

This is at the police department at Las Vegas.

I talked to him from 2:00 in the afternoon

until 5:00 in the afternoon.

He denied any knowledge of the Clutter murders."

At that time, of course, Hickock was giving

basically a full confession.

**

**

**

**

**

**

**

[Feedback]

**

Reporter: Charges in the slaying of the Herbert Clutter family

in Holcomb were filed after a dramatic confession

was made in Las Vegas

by Kansas State Penitentiary parolee Richard Eugene Hickock,

age 28, who was charged with 4 counts of murder.

Hickock made his statement,

then collapsed into the arms of law man.

The confession also implicated parolee Perry Edward Smith.

Smith, questioned separately,

declined to confirm that he participated in the slayings.

Both men will be returned here later this week.

**

**

They took two vehicles, and each suspect

was transported separately.

It was, in essence, strategy.

So, you know, one can't learn from the other

as to what's going on.

Man #1: "Hickock and Mr. Church were in the lead car.

Myself, Perry, and Mr. Duntz were following.

Before we were even out of the city limits,

I told Perry Smith that Hickock

had given other agents a statement.

Perry could see Hickock in the car ahead,

and Hickock was talking."

Perry Smith had taken offense to what was told to law enforcement

by Hickock.

Man #1: "Perry said to us,

'Isn't he tough? Look at him talk.'

Then he said, 'Hickock had told me if we were ever caught

that we weren't going to say a word,

but there he is just talking his head off.'"

**

Perry Smith, you know, was on the trip home

when he started discussing the actual case

with Agent Dewey.

"With a sudden burst of anger, he said,

'Now I'm going to tell you what happened.'"

The meltdown starts.

[Chuckles]

**

Man #2: "I got this letter from Dick while I was in Buhl, Idaho.

He said he had what he called some setup that was a cinch.

**

I never would have left if it hadn't been for this

so-called invitation from Dick

to come down to Kansas City."

[Whistle blowing]

Man #1: "Smith said he came to Kansas City by bus

from Las Vegas on November 11th."

Man #2: "Dick met me in the bus station.

He told me all about this 'cinch.'"

Man #1: "Smith said that he stayed overnight

on November 13th at the home of Dick's parents

in the small town of Edgerton.

**

The next morning, they had put new tires on Hickock's car

and shortly after lunch, they left Olathe for Holcomb."

**

Man #2: "We had Dick's shotgun

and a hunting jacket full of shells

and extra shells.

All this in the trunk of the car.

**

We bought some cord in Emporia.

In the store, Dick asked how much we would need.

I told him, 'I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.'

And Dick said to the clerk,

'Well, hell, give it all to us.'"

Man #1: "Smith said it was enough

to tie up 12 to 14 people.

**

**

**

It was before midnight when they pulled into a service station

inside the Garden City limits.

From there, it was a short stretch to Holcomb."

**

Man #2: "It was discussed if we was ever been seen

or identified.

Dick said then that member of the family had to go."

**

Man #1: "I asked Perry what he meant by the word 'go.'

He said he meant to kill them."

**

Very envious -- I am very envious of their ability

to get the confessions from the two suspects.

But it would be equivalent of winning

an $80 million lottery.

Thomas: I agree. I think just the feeling to know

pretty much assured in your mind that you've got the people

that's responsible would have been very rewarding.

**

Welch: But the case is not over yet.

You haven't yet convicted the guilty, lying,

thieving S.O.B., but that will come.

**

**

**