Attempted break-in and robbery at River Valley Farm

Attempted break-in and robbery at River Valley Farm follows Dick and Perry Smith from a meeting arranged around a promised score to their preparations for entering the Clutter home. They planned for everyone present to be eliminated, but the evidence left the intended robbery unresolved: the household had been searched, yet investigators could not establish whether money had been taken or whether robbery explained the killings.

The Proposed Score

In Olathe, Kansas, Perry waits in the Little Jewel café for Dick, who is late for a meeting that Dick had proposed. Perry expects their business to take them to Mexico. His presence in Kansas is itself a reversal: only four months earlier, he had promised the State Parole Board, and himself, that he would never return. He has come back because he believes Dick has a score for them, and he treats the stay as temporary.

The café scene sets that proposed crime against Perry’s habitual imagining of escape. He studies a well-worn map of Mexico and keeps hundreds of maps covering the United States, Canada, and South America in his hotel room. His possessions—one cardboard suitcase, a guitar, and two heavy boxes of books, maps, songs, poems, and old letters—show how thoroughly he has made travel part of his life. Mexico is not simply a destination in the plan; it is the next imagined departure, following earlier journeys to Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Preparing for the Intrusion

The preparations expose a difference between the partners’ approaches. Perry considers whether their appearance might give them away and asks about black stockings, which he regards as a reliable precaution. Dick objects that stockings would be an unnecessary expense and insists that anyone they encountered would not survive to identify them. His confidence turns the possibility of witnesses into a problem he believes he has already solved. Perry remains uneasy, arguing that events can take an unexpected turn and that a witness might go unnoticed.

They also select cord for restraining the people in the house. Perry examines the stock and tests the rope; his Merchant Marine experience has taught him about rope and knots. He chooses a strong, thin white nylon cord. Even while Dick presents the overall plan as carefully designed, he cannot determine how much cord they need. The practical uncertainty is revealing: the plan’s certainty is rhetorical, not complete. When estimating how many people might be there, Dick counts the adults and children and allows for as many as eight or twelve if guests are present. He nevertheless treats everyone they might encounter as a person to be eliminated.

The Clutter Home and Its Aftermath

The subsequent investigation establishes that the household was entered and that the attack was organized to leave few obvious traces. At the home, investigators found Herbert William Clutter’s billfold open on his bed, its cards spilled as if someone had looked through it for something specific. It contained no money, but investigators knew that Herbert William Clutter rarely carried cash. His glasses remained on a bureau, and Kenyon Clutter’s were also left behind; investigators took their presence as a sign that father and son had not simply gone out of their own accord.

The house was largely undisturbed, but the telephones had been disconnected and their wires cut. Investigators found victims in different parts of the home, bound and gagged; the account emphasizes the apparent care taken to restrain them and the absence of a struggle. The newspaper’s summary of the case also reported that the killer or killers had collected the spent shotgun shells and left without being seen. These details make the attack look deliberate and controlled, while offering investigators few direct clues to the perpetrators or a definite motive.

Robbery as an Unsettled Explanation

Investigators debated whether robbery had prompted the attack. The open, empty billfold and Nancy Clutter’s purse on the kitchen floor suggested that someone might have searched for money. There was almost no cash in the house: investigators found two dollars in an envelope on Nancy’s desk, and knew Herbert William Clutter had cashed a sixty-dollar check the previous day. They reasoned that roughly fifty dollars might otherwise have remained. Yet the amount seemed an inadequate explanation for four killings, and investigators also considered whether money might have been taken to make the crime appear to be a robbery.

The evidence complicated that theory further. Bonnie Clutter had been wearing a gold wedding band and a diamond ring, neither of which had been removed. The household’s limited cash and retained jewelry weakened the idea of a straightforward theft, even as the billfold and purse kept robbery in contention. The investigation therefore distinguished between the unmistakable planning of the attack and the uncertain purpose behind it: the intruders had prepared to silence everyone in the house, but what they hoped to gain, if anything, could not be settled by the scene alone. The attempted robbery remains significant precisely because its apparent clues point in more than one direction.