Original subtitles

Reporter: In Holcomb, Kansas, just west of Garden City,

this is the house in which the Herbert Clutter family lived,

and the house in which they were murdered.

Edwards: How could I tell my mother

that her brother and his family were dead?

This can't be real.

Man: It was quickly turned over

to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Man #2: The key evidence were boot marks in the blood.

Investigator: We were able to see a boot print

that one could not observe with the naked eye.

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

Man #3: We didn't know who did it or why.

Everybody was on edge.

Tedrow: It truly made a different community.

There was fear for the first time.

Craig: The murders would have been

the only subject people were talking about.

This was national news.

Man #5: Eventually, they got a huge break in the case.

Man #6: When Dick got out of prison,

he was going to get with his buddy, Perry Smith,

and go rob the Clutters.

Man #7: "After the Clutter deal, nobody will be able to say

Dick Hickock never did anything worthwhile."

Once you get beyond 72 hours, it goes advantage criminal,

and in this case, six days had passed.

Law enforcement in Las Vegas

had received an attempt to locate from the KBI.

The car did have the boots that Perry Smith was wearing

on the night of the murders.

Man #8: The case is not over yet.

You haven't yet convicted

the guilty, lying, thieving SOB.

That will come.

**

**

[Whirring]

[Police radio chatter]

**

I remember a sense of relief

when we knew that the two men had been arrested...

[Police radio chatter]

...and that there was not a doubt that

they had done it.

**

Shields: While the men are coming back from Las Vegas,

there was a tremendous feeling of suspense

in Garden City.

**

West: I have no idea or what time I do not know

because I don't know what Mr. Dewey has planned.

I don't know how -- what the thing --

how far along it is as far as he's concerned.

[Sighs heavily]

Tedrow: The day that they brought the people back,

my husband was a reporter for the newspaper.

[Police sirens wail]

And he said it was just eerie,

the feeling of the crowd.

Penick: There was a mob mentality.

The community wanted to hang him,

but law enforcement -- they did maintain peace.

Shields: There was almost a parade feel

in that the courthouse lawn

was filled with adolescents chasing and teasing,

with people who knew the Clutters,

with just curious people, as well.

Welch: They were all around the courthouse,

all trying to see what

Perry Smith and Richard Hickock looked like.

Shields: For hours, they'd been anticipating "the killers."

They wanted to see evil incarnate.

But it turned out all they saw were two sort of roustabouts.

**

Don: It was Sunday morning, early 1960,

and as was my custom,

I was sitting in the living room reading Time magazine.

And I came across this article

about this murder in Kansas,

and it didn't mean that much to me,

but then I saw two tiny pictures,

and I was taken aback.

I mean, I was shocked when I saw one of them was Perry Smith,

my Army buddy.

I could not believe it.

How could he end up like this?

And I said, I've got to write him a letter.

And I wrote the letter.

Shortly after that,

I had a telephone call from his lawyer

who asked me if I could come out

and be a character witness for Perry Smith.

I felt this is a man who really needed help

and maybe this is something

I could do and should do.

Lorraine: I wasn't terribly happy that he was going.

He and this man had murdered that whole family,

and I could not imagine telling people about it,

and they'd think he was kind of crazy

to do something like that.

It wasn't something that most people would find

acceptable... or difficult --

certainly difficult to understand.

That's for sure. Mm.

And so I flew out to Garden City to see Perry.

**

**

Man: You keep them separated?

That's right.

**

It was about 7:00 in the morning in Garden City,

and I was met by Perry's lawyer,

and we drove to the courthouse.

Brought me up and told me that

I could talk to Perry,

so he unlocked the door, and I went inside,

and he locked it behind me

so the two of us were locked together.

We then sat down,

and we started to talk,

and he told me exactly, step-by-step,

what had happened.

He said they drove to this place far away.

You know, Kansas is a big state.

It's a long drive because they were driving for hours

before they got there.

Man: "I had never heard of this little town of Holcomb.

I was unfamiliar with the area.

Dick kept mumbling to himself,

and he was saying, this is supposed to be here,

this is supposed to be here.

And, all of a sudden, he brightened up and he said,

'This is it.

This is it.'"

**

"I was getting a little chit in my blood, as they say,

so I was determined to talk Dick out of it.

Then he shut the lights off.

He said, 'This guy ain't got money?

Just look at the set up.

I know damn well he's got a safe in there.'

I could see right away...

he had his mind set."

[Train whistle blares in distance]

Nye: Dick...

**

Don: The Clutters did not

lock their doors at night.

They trusted their neighbors.

They didn't expect evil

to come to their door.

[Floorboards creak]

**

**

There was nothing,

but Perry said they found

Mr. Clutter downstairs...

**

...and he said, "We asked him for the money,"

and he said "There's no money in this house,"

but Dick, he didn't believe it.

**

Man: "I thought Dick was going to hit him.

Dick said, 'Bullshit.

You got a safe in this house.

I know it.'"

Bascue: Dick Hickock was just insistent that

the money existed and that Mr. Clutter was lying.

And at that point, I still think that Perry Smith did not think

that there was going to be any violence

that was going to occur that evening.

**

Man: "Mr. Clutter --

he had such an honest look on his face.

I knew he was telling the truth about the safe.

I looked at Dick.

Dick says to me,

'Better take care of that phone.'"

**

**

"I pointed upstairs and asked who was up there.

He said his wife and children were up there."

**

**

**

"Mr. Clutter said, 'Honey, don't be scared.

These two men -- they want some money.'

The missus said, 'My husband told you the truth.

We have no safe here.'

Dick asked Mrs. Clutter where her purse was.

**

I think Dick found a few dollars.

From there, we went to the boy's room."

**

**

**

**

[Door creaking]

"The daughter was already awake.

She asks, 'What do you fellows want?'

Dick told her it's none of her business.

At the time, I was thoroughly disgusted,

especially with Dick's attitude.

Dick was still persistent that there was a safe."

**

**

**

**

And then Perry said we decided to separate them.

Man: "I was the one that tied them up.

We had to go one by one."

Don: So they put Mrs. C.

over to her bedroom

and tied her up,

and then took the girl...

and tied her up in her room

and then he took the boy --

and notice, he never used their names.

It was always Mrs. C. or Mr. C.

or the girl or the boy.

Never the names, even though he knew them.

They took Mr. Clutter and his son

down into the cellar,

in separate rooms.

[Duct tape rips]

**

He said he continued to ask Mr. Clutter about money,

and he said, "There's no money in this house.

If there was, I would give it to you."

So then Perry said,

he looked over at Dick and said,

"What do we do now?"

**

Man: "Dick said, 'Like I said before,

if we are identified,

you know what it means.

I'm in favor of getting rid of them.'"

**

Bascue: That night at the Clutter home,

Dick Hickock, his sole reason

for enlisting the help of Perry Smith

is that he thought Perry Smith was a killer.

If something like that needed to happen,

he had the guy who could do it.

But the fact is that neither one of them

had the ability to carry out a murder by themselves.

You know, people ask a lot,

"Do you think Hickock would have killed them had he done it alone?"

I don't think he'd have entered the house if he was alone.

I think it took the second person

to give him the courage to be there.

Bascue: And so I think

when you put these two individuals together,

it created an atmosphere where their minds went

to a different place, and, for whatever reason,

their interactions caused them

to kill four innocent people.

**

Man: "We were standing there,

debating about who was going to start it.

So I told him, 'Well, I'll do it.'

I had this big hunting knife."

Don: Perry said that Dick was not contributing at all.

Perry was really getting furious at this point.

He said he was so angry at the situation --

fruitless --

and he said he had the knife,

and he said he shoved the knife

right into the throat of Mr. Clutter.

He said almost like it was -- "I was doing it to Dick."

**

**

**

He said, "Now it's your turn.

You do your part."

So he handed the knife to Dick,

and Dick stuck the knife in his throat,

and Perry told me, he said,

"I think he probably just put it in the same hole I did

because it continued that way."

Man: "So I says...

'Dick, the man is suffering.'"

[Shotgun cocks]

"I raised the shotgun

and pulled the trigger."

**

And he said, "One thing I will always remember --

his expression,"

pitch black, just the flashlights were on,

and he said, "As I pulled the trigger,"

he said, "There was a flash of blue light,

and I could see his head split apart."

My God. My God.

How horrible.

**

Man: "I walked up to the boy.

I couldn't see the boy's head too well,

but I aimed the gun to where

I thought his head was... [Shotgun cocks]

...and shot him."

**

[Shotgun cocks]

**

[Shotgun cocks]

**

Man: "To me, it seemed like we was in the house

just about an hour.

It seemed like that."

**

When we finished talking, I remember he snickered,

and he immediately said, "Oh."

He said, "It's a terrible thing to be laughing about this."

He said, "But I had no feelings of anything.

No feelings for them."

**

And I found that most shocking of all.

[Sighs heavily]

It was hard to take.

It was hard to take.

**

The guilt about the murder was established both

by admissions and by physical evidence.

So the attorneys who were representing them

could only hope to keep them from being executed.

So they decided the insanity defense

would be the only way they could think to go.

And so that's how I got involved.

**

So the deputy took me up

and locked me in the cell with Hickock.

**

Dick Hickock was sociopathic,

but there was some real remorse

about having done the crime

and having gotten caught, certainly.

He said, you know,

if somebody had done that to my family,

I'd go after them and kill them, blah, blah, blah.

**

Troutner: The reaction from the community of Edgarton

after it was discovered that

Richard Hickock was involved in the killing of the Clutters

was one of total shock, surprise, disbelief.

They all knew Richard as

a petty thief, a liar, a con man,

but I don't think anybody here really ever thought that

he would do something that terrible.

But he was a complex person

with a lot of sides to him.

Jones: He was impulsive,

and a lot of the impulsivity seems to have developed

after he had the automobile accident

when he was 19 years old.

[Police radio chatter, sirens wail]

Troutner: The accident --

this terrible car accident he was in was in 1950,

and there are friends and family that later swore that --

that he changed then because he had a terrible brain injury

and the doctors didn't really take care of it

or weren't aware of it or ignored it.

LeBert-Corbello: His first wife, Carol --

she said after that accident in the car,

that he -- he changed.

He changed into someone that she did not recognize.

Man: "I, myself, had a little sickness.

I think this was caused from the car wreck that I had.

I had spells of passing out,

and sometimes I would hemorrhage out the nose and left ear.

Between the first and last one,

I believe I've had about 10 of these."

Jones: So, an unanswered question is,

did he have some slight degree of actual physical brain damage?

**

Jones: Perry Smith --

when I got in the cell with him,

he was very interested in talking.

He told me, he said, "Well...

I've always wanted to talk to a psychiatrist,"

because he was interested in his mind,

and he was interested in what in the world made him tick.

And many times, he said, "There's something wrong with me

or I wouldn't have killed those people."

Smith, he had a strong paranoid mind-set,

and he had a fantasy life that bordered on delusion.

Of course, the delusions and hallucinations

are indicative

of a psychotic mind state,

and he was deeply bitter

about some of his early experiences.

James: When I was about 5,

Perry was my dad's friend.

I remember he was so messed up,

emotionally and psychologically.

I think it had a lot to do with his anger

towards his father and mother.

Jones: And was given to sudden, uncontrolled rages

in which he'd attack people, including family members.

He'd fought with his father many times.

James: You've got a real traumatized individual

that can quickly turn violent.

Jones: To get additional background information,

you can ask a patient to write

an autobiographical statement,

particularly if you're pressed for time,

which I was, and needed some background.

So they did that.

Man: "Dear Mr. Jones,

please find enclosed somewhat of an autobiography.

I was constantly in trouble.

I got into many fights at school

and was expelled.

I blamed many people for my lack of education.

This only added to the many other

hatreds and bitterness I held for others."

Jones: Those autobiographical statements

which was very helpful, very complete, very honest.

In fact, in Hickock's autobiography,

he talked about

his attraction to younger girls.

**

Man: "One afternoon,

I went to the store or someplace,

and an 8- or 12-year-old girl wanted to go with me.

I don't know why I did it.

I asked her if she knew where babies come from,

and I tried to show her.

I won't go into detail with the rest of the times.

There was one, I believe,

as recently as a few months ago."

Troutner: Dick -- he liked teenage girls

and Carol, for instance,

his first wife, was only 16 when she had the boys.

And he got another girl pregnant while he was married to Carol.

So, yeah, even around in Edgarton,

he had an attraction for young girls.

Jones: Dick was ashamed of that and hadn't told anybody that.

In fact, he told me that night in Holcomb,

he had designs on the teenage girl in the house.

**

Man: "One thing I never told you

about this Clutter deal is this --

before I ever went to their house,

I knew there would be a girl there.

I think that's the main reason I went there.

**

It was not to rob them,

but to rape the girl.

**

I thought a lot about it.

It's the one reason why I never wanted to turn back,

even when I saw there was no safe.

I did make some advances toward the Clutter girl

when I was there.

I would've gone through with it,

but Perry never gave me the chance."

Smith had become enraged at Hickock.

Man: "Dick mentioned the possibility --

how do I put this -- the rape of Nancy.

He said that night,

'I sure would like to bust that little girl's box out,

the way she's built.'

He says, 'After I do it, you can do it.'

And I said, 'Jesus Christ, Dick.

Nothing like that. That's out.

That's completely out.'

In fact, I was ready to fight him.

This is where all hell broke out."

Jones: Perry Smith's rages were partly fueled

by the bitterness and paranoid quality

to his thinking they already had

and partly, just by loss of control --

you know, that once he lost control,

there was no stopping him.

**

[Creaking]

[Footsteps]

[Shotgun cocks]

[Gunshot]

[Footsteps]

[Door creaking]

[Shotgun cocks]

[Gunshot]

[Door creaking]

[Shotgun cocks]

[Gunshot]

[Footsteps]

[Door creaking]

[Shotgun cocks]

[Gunshot]

**

Man: "There were other things I should have told you,

'cause I'm more ashamed of these things I did

than hanging or going to the penitentiary.

My lawyer said I should be truthful with you

as you can help me...

and I need help, as you know."

**

Man: "...would like to speak with you again.

There's much I haven't said that may interest you.

Or that should be known."

**

Craig: People in Holcomb still don't like to talk about this.

Have you experienced that any?

They don't want to talk about it.

They don't think it's something

that needs to be discussed a lot,

but I grew up here, in the courthouse,

and having this case in the background

of where I lived was normal,

something that I've always accepted.

My name's Jon Craig.

My dad was sheriff here for almost 30 years,

and we moved into the courthouse

in the spring of '64.

So, yes, I knew all about it by the time I was in 4th grade,

all of the people that were involved,

I knew most of them growing up.

The courtroom looks like it did.

This trial would have been the only subject

people were talking about.

You probably wouldn't have been able to go anywhere here

and talk about anything else, but also remember,

Garden City was flooded with reporters

when that trial happened.

People were going to know all about it.

This was national news.

[Tapping]

**

Shields: Al Dewey offered

Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee

the opportunity to interview the men separately,

and they were going to get, in essence,

an audience with the killers.

Dick came in,

bummed a couple of smokes off Nelle Harper Lee,

and just waxed lyrical about good-old Dick Hickock --

what a regular guy he was

and how he liked smokes and steak,

and Dick just had the world on a string.

Perry, on the other hand,

was very wary of what was going on

and was not willing to be put on display.

**

Clarke: At one point, Perry said to him,

you know, I could...

I could kill you.

I could kill you right now, if I wanted to.

Of course, he didn't kill Truman

and he was -- he was fascinated by Truman.

Truman, of course, was very short

and Perry was short --

only an inch taller.

Shields: And Truman found that vastly endearing,

that this very, very dangerous man

was not a big man,

but someone who was, in essence, too small for the world.

Clarke: When Truman saw Perry,

he saw himself.

The trouble was, for Truman,

was that Perry was a killer.

He was a man who had murdered people.

**

Jones: The case, by that time,

had really become well known.

You know, this is a couple months

after the guys were caught.

So there was tremendous public interest for the trial.

[Camera lenses clicking]

Welch: There were a couple hundred people

in the county courthouse.

Emotions were high, and the people there --

they felt that justice would be two guilty verdicts.

**

Don: As we approached the courtroom,

there were a lot of people who just couldn't get in

because the place was absolutely packed.

There was not an empty seat anywhere,

and there were people standing on both sides.

Perry's lawyer brought me right up to the bailiff

and said, "This is a friend of Perry Smith's.

Let him sit beside him."

He took me in,

and we sat beside each other

for the whole trial.

**

Man: "Mass murder was the theme of the trial.

The county attorney read

eight charges of murder in the first degree.

He read the names of each victim...

**

...twice --

one for each of the two accused.

Hickock chewed gum vigorously during the reading.

Smith, face blank,

looked straight ahead.

Frack: I got a lot of gray hairs that year,

'cause it does affect your system,

And of course we went to the trial every day.

I went to the restroom

and Hickock's mother and sister were in there,

and of course they were just as upset as anybody was.

We saw those guys sit up there,

and my dad, this nice man,

but he said, "I could pull that rope,"

'cause they did it.

Well, they were just so guilty, you know,

that really the only thing was,

were they going to get hung?

**

Man: "If it pleases the court,

I, Duane E. West, county attorney,

come here and give the court to understand

the magnitude of this crime

we believe warrants the maximum penalty

for both of these defendants."

**

Don: Prosecution spent something like four days,

and they were, really, clearly, dragging it out because

it was their moment in the sun, so to speak,

and they already had written confessions

from both of them,

so it was overkill.

Reporter: Spectators filled the seats of the courtroom early

as they have all through the sensational trial.

Man: "Our trial was more like a circus than anything else."

West: I have answered that question before.

I have no idea.

I didn't have an opportunity

to visit with these fellows at all.

Man: "I never did think much

of the Finney County attorney.

He kept pointing his finger at me

and telling the jury how no good I was.

My mom was crying.

It was worse on her than anybody.

Every time he pointed that finger at me,

I wanted to hit him."

**

Calihan: It was a funny feeling

to be in the same room with murderers.

I don't think they were sorry.

They didn't act like they were sorry.

That bothered me.

James: I'm not sure that Perry Smith was really

what they would call a sociopath,

but his actions branded him as a sociopath.

He had to really be able to disconnect

with what you'd done.

It had to be unreal to you,

and it had to have no social impact

upon you as a person...

**

...cold-hearted killer.

Reporter: In Garden City,

I hear no one, not even the accused themselves,

suggest that they are innocent.

The question will be, how guilty?

Guilty enough to hang?

What can the defense do?

Jones: In cases like this,

what the defense attorney does

is present testimony that convinces the jury

that these men were guilty but insane

so that there's some mitigation of punishment.

You know, Perry Smith's borderline psychotic mind state,

and with Hickock -- you had his head injury.

So these are what I would think of as mitigating factors.

So I went in and took the stand

and before I even testified, the judge said,

"Doctor, you can only answer one question.

Yes or no to the question,

did this person know right from wrong

at the time they committed the crime?"

I answered "Yes" for Hickock.

For Smith, he said, "Have you reached an opinion?"

and I said "No."

Then the defense attorney jumped up and said the doctor

didn't have an opinion, and the judge dismissed me.

There will be a five-minute recess.

Don: When I was called to the witness stand,

I started off by saying that I had known Perry.

We had served in the United States Army

and that he was a very likable fellow,

and that's about as far as I got.

"Objection!"

It was objected to as not pertaining to the case.

Hardly a moment went by and the judge said "Sustained.

The witness may sit down."

And I was dismissed.

I was quite shocked, frankly, when he said that,

but what else are you going to do?

**

Man: "On March 28th, a week after the trial began,

the defense pleaded for life in prison.

It was no contest.

Logan Greene, a small man,

became a giant before the jury."

Jones: Logan Greene, yes. Logan Greene --

The state hired him to help with the prosecution

because it was such an important case.

In fact, attorneys from all over Kansas

came to hear Logan Greene's performance

because he was that good.

Greene: "I say to you gentlemen,

these were not ordinary murders.

Four of your fellow citizens,

without an enemy in the world,

have been brutally slain

as a pen of slaughtered hogs.

These were cold, calculated,

pre-meditated, useless murders for money,

and how cheaply those lives were bought

at $80 worth of loot.

That is $20 a piece for each of these lives."

It took the jury less than a half an hour

to come to a complete decision.

All hands voting for death by hanging.

[Indistinct chatter]

I was able to see him one last time.

Perry had this big grin on his face,

said, "Well...

I guess I better start my neck-stretching exercises."

And the grin disappeared,

his head dropped

and mine dropped.

We reached.

We were holding each other's hands through the grate.

And then I think we both cried at that point

and said goodbye.

And then I went downstairs

and caught my bus.

That was the last time I saw Perry Smith.

**

We were so happy the verdicts,

and we all wanted them to be hung...

because death wouldn't have been bad enough

for what they did.

**

Man: This is a state prison.

This is where it begins.

Collins: There's very few pictures

of the old death house.

They always said it looked like the shape of a coffin.

You know, this right here, but that's the old death row.

My name is Jerry Collins,

and I worked at the death row at the Kansas State Penitentiary

from 1963 to 1965.

Hours is midnight to 8:00, and I was very young.

I was 23 at the time.

Of course, I had read about Hickock and Smith,

and it was kind of a shock when I first saw them.

I said here, I'd been reading about them all the time,

and there they are.

Didn't look like a couple monsters to me,

but...

that was a horrible, horrible thing they did

out there in Holcomb.

After they arrived in 1960,

they had an execution date set up within 90 days.

**

The date of Friday, May 13, 1960,

was given as the date of execution --

Friday the 13th, oddly enough.

**

Collins: When I worked death row,

we got to know Hickock and Smith

and get to visiting with them

and didn't think about crimes they committed.

We got close to them, joking and laughing,

and then when it comes down to the executions,

"Oh, we hate to see these guys executed,"

like they's friends, and that somewhat affected me.

Jones: Even though the date for the execution was set,

once you're sentenced to death anywhere,

the appeal process goes on and on and on.

**

Troutner: They had several stays of execution.

Basically Dick did a lot of letter writing in prison

to officials, politicians, judges.

Collins: There was so many stays of executions,

we didn't think Richard Hickock and Perry Smith would hang.

Frack: We had that fear that they wouldn't be, you know?

But I guess we were just glad they were caught,

and they weren't going to go anywhere.

**

LeBert-Corbello: The Hickock family went

into a desperate shift of survival

because it was so notorious a crime.

Everyone knew about it,

and you were just ordinary people

in the midst of this storm

of hatred and judgment,

and that's when the spiraling of their whole life was downward.

David: I can tell you that our lives were never the same.

We died a little every day

as we tried to survive the aftermath.

Crable: The family wasn't seen in public much any longer,

that they really tried to maintain a low profile,

and that there was a great deal of shame that they felt.

These were two very good people.

Walt and Eunice Hickock were

these salt-of-the-earth Edgarton residents,

but they never really fully recovered

from that stigma.

Troutner: Mr. Hickock -- Dick's father was very sick.

He had cancer,

and he actually died in June of 1960,

which was a few months after the trial.

LeBert-Corbello: He could not fight.

You know, I think he gave up in his fight

because he was just so burdened and so hurt

by what his son had done.

**

**

**

**