In Cold Blood.....

On the evening of November 15, 1959, two animals named Perry Smith and Rickard Hickock, with knowledge given to them by a man named Floyd Wells, broke into the home of the Clutter family, in Holcomb, Kansas, just outside Garden City, and in a very secluded and rural section of an already rural state.
Wells, who had shared a cell with one of the other two, had worked for Herbert Clutter at his farm prior to being locked up. He told Smith and Hickock that Mr. Clutter kept a large amount of cash on hand in a safe in his house. Looking for the quick and easy score, Smith and Hickock drove all night to reach the Clutter home, driving down the long driveway surrounded by Japanese maples. When they reached the house, four of the six family members were at home. Herb, his wife Bonnie, and their high school aged children Kenyon, 15 and Nancy, 16, were all at home. What wasn’t there was cash. Herb Clutter did business by check and kept less than 50 dollars at home.
Hickock and Smith tied up the family. When constant pressure on Herb Clutter to tell where the safe was didn’t get results (since he had no safe—the information was wrong) Perry Smith cut his throat and then shot him in the head with a shotgun. The other three members of the family were killed with shotgun blasts to the head.
The two killers were quickly captured through the good work of a police photographer, whose crime scene photos were so good that they revealed a bloody shoe print not visible to the eye. They were rounded up and eventually went to trial, where they were found guilty and were sentenced to die by hanging, sentence carried out in 1965.
When the news of the murders hit the press, writer Truman Capote, still just getting started in his career, took the assignment of going to Kansas to write about the murders and the trial. He interviewed both killers, and formed a very controversial relationship with Perry Smith, although this is still speculation to this day.
His book on the case, In Cold Blood, was the first nonfiction novel to gain mass publication, and was released the year after the executions.
The case had always fascinated me. I read the book, a masterpiece of suspense that saves the gory details until the end. I saw the movie with Robert Blake, and wondered how evil could just come to the heartland like that. The Clutters were an exemplary family—self made and well respected around town, with no enemies. How something so random, and yet so pointedly evil, could happen to nice people still mystifies me.
Ive always had an interest in visiting crime scenes, especially famous houses, and also the graves of noted people, not just crime victims. Ive been to Jon Benet Ramsey’s grave, in a nice little cemetery in Marietta, Georgia. Ive been to Ty Cobb’s crypt in Royston, Georga, Shoeless Joe Jackson’s grave in Greenville, South Carolina and more, including the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Massachussetts. Just something I like to do.
So, when I saw rthat I was going to be right next to Holcomb, Kansas, I knew I had to see the house, and the graves of the Clutter family. I did my research and found out that the Clutters are buried not in Holcomb, but in Garden City, a few miles east and where I am staying for two days.
I decided that since I am in resting mode, I’d make the short trip to the Valley View Cemetery, where the Clutters are resting for eternity. I walked up to the entrance, a beautiful cemetery it is, and looked at the acres and acres of headstones and knew that I would be all day trying to find the family’s markers.
I went to the office, where a lovely man named Rusty Richardson took the care and time to give me a detailed description of where the graves were located and how to get there. He also took the time to draw me a diagram of Holcomb, with the location of the Clutter’s house, and also a small park that was dedicated to their memory in recent years. It seems that the killers got all of the attention and for decades the victims, good people, have all but been forgotten. I am hoping to help to keep their memories alive a bit here, as I write this.
I found the gravesight. Three stones, one for Herbert and Bonnie, and flanking their stone on either side smaller stones for Kenyon and Nancy. Terribly sad. Terribly senseless.
I walked around. Not far from the Clutters, by coincidence, was the grave of a policeman named Dewey, who solved the murders. Now he is feet away from the people whose deaths he helped avenge. Life is funny like that sometimes.
It was a heavy day. As I cross the country, trying to make sense of life, mine and in general, and I meet all the damned fine people I have met...the Don and Donna Laymans, the Bill McKenzies, the Jody Thomases and the Jodi Cochrans, Suzy from the Hilltop Rest area, Cricket, Terri Pribeck and all the others, it occurs to me that all it takes is a wrong turn or a chance encounter with a desperate man and I could be just a memory for others to come and pity as they gaze at my stone, in a cemetery somewhere.
When my time comes though, I want to be cremated. There is a special spot in Dingle, Ireland, where a statue of a dolphin sits near the sea wall, and where the wind blows hard and constant. I want my ashes to be tossed in the air, where they will mix with the sea air, and where there are no thoughts of Perry Smith or Richard Hickock, destroyers of human life, and where my molecules will just blow in the wind for my eternity.