Hickock admits involvement in the Clutter case

Hickock admits involvement in the Clutter case after investigators confront him with evidence linking him to the crime. The admission gives the long-discussed plan to rob Herbert W. Clutter’s home a public and legal consequence, while Hickock’s accusation against Perry Smith leaves the precise division of responsibility contested.

Background to the confession

The plan had been described before it was carried out. Floyd Wells, who had worked for Herbert W. Clutter on a wheat farm in western Kansas, recalled telling Dick that Clutter was wealthy and that running his operation could cost him ten thousand dollars in a week. Dick questioned Wells about the family, the house’s layout, and whether Clutter kept a safe. Wells remembered a cabinet or safe behind the desk in Clutter’s office, but his recollection was uncertain; Dick treated the information as a basis for a robbery. Wells later said Dick repeatedly described going with Perry Smith to rob the house and kill witnesses. At the time, Wells took the talk for prison boasting rather than a plan that would be carried out.

Evidence and interrogation

The interrogation turned on physical evidence rather than the plan’s earlier circulation as prison talk. Harold Nye asked Dick to look at a photograph made to the scale of footprints found near Herbert W. Clutter’s body, then showed him the boots investigators said had made them. Dick looked and turned away, eventually resting his head in his hands. Nye added that Perry Smith’s boots matched another set of prints, including bloody ones. The paired evidence connected both men to the scene, though it did not by itself settle which of them had fired the weapon.

Roy Church began setting out the formal charges: four counts of first-degree murder, each tied to a member of the family and framed as a deliberate killing during the commission of a felony. Dick interrupted the recitation by blaming Perry, saying that Perry had killed the Clutters and that he could not stop him. The accusation was therefore part of the confession’s first account of responsibility, not a neutral finding by investigators. It implicated Dick in the crime while attempting to place the killings themselves on his partner.

After sobbing out his confession, Dick fainted in the hallway as agents caught him. The account soon reached listeners through a Garden City radio broadcast: Dick had said that he and Perry entered the Clutter home expecting a safe containing at least ten thousand dollars; finding none, they restrained the family and killed them in succession. The report carefully identified this as Dick’s version. Perry had neither confirmed nor denied taking part, and, when told Dick had signed a statement, asked to see it; officers refused. They also declined to say which man had killed the family members. The confession thus changed an investigation into a public account of the crime, but its central allocation of guilt remained disputed.

Perry Smith’s later account

When Alvin Adams Dewey questioned Perry Smith during the return from Las Vegas, Smith presented the plan as something he had joined after Dick’s repeated invitations. A letter reached him while he was in Buhl, Idaho, in September or October; Dick described a sure opportunity but initially withheld its nature. Smith said that he returned to Kansas for a separate personal reason and met Dick at the Kansas City bus station. After Dick’s parents did not want him in their home, the two went to a hotel in Olathe, where Dick explained the proposed robbery. Smith’s account thus supplied a later, fuller version of the partnership’s formation, while also making clear that the invitation had preceded his return.

Smith said Dick had learned about Herbert W. Clutter from Floyd Wells, a former employee, and had drawn a diagram of the house, including its doors, halls, bedrooms, and office. Dick represented that the office contained a wall safe holding large amounts of cash. The projected number of people inside unsettled Smith: he recalled expecting at least four, probably six, and possibly as many as twelve if guests were present. Although he said he wanted the money and hoped to go to Mexico, he also described wanting to avoid violence and proposed wearing masks. Dick rejected that idea, citing his distinctive eye. The difference between Smith’s stated preference and his decision to continue with the plan becomes part of the account’s unresolved moral tension: misgivings appear in the narrative, but they did not stop the journey.

Smith’s recollection also set out the preparations in sequence. The men left Olathe after lunch and drove to Emporia, where they bought rubber gloves and cord; Dick had brought the knife, shotgun, and shells from home. Smith tried to persuade Dick to stop for black stockings, including at a Catholic hospital on the outskirts of Emporia, but Dick refused. They continued to Great Bend, bought tape, and ate dinner before proceeding toward Garden City. These details add practical steps to Wells’s earlier recollection of prison talk, showing how the proposed robbery moved from a repeatedly described scheme into preparation and travel.

Later, speaking with Don Cullivan, Smith made an unequivocal admission that he had killed the Clutters. He said Dick had assisted him by holding a flashlight and collecting the shells, while maintaining that Dick had not fired the shots. Smith also said the plan had originated with Dick. Yet when he tried to explain his own actions, he could not identify a settled motive: he said the family had never harmed him and that his anger at Dick or fear of identification did not account for what he had done. He described feeling no remorse and wishing that he did, while distinguishing regret for his imprisonment from sorrow over the crime. His later statement establishes his claimed role more directly than Dick’s accusation had, but the inability to offer a clear motive leaves the confession’s central psychological question open.

The delayed witness account

Wells’s account did not immediately become part of the investigation. For a week, he monitored radio reports and newspaper coverage while fearing that other prisoners would retaliate if they learned he had spoken to the warden. A report that the Hutchinson News was offering a $1,000 reward for information nearly prompted him to come forward, but it did not overcome his hesitation. Wells also feared that authorities might treat him as an accessory because he had supplied Dick with information that helped direct him to the Clutter home. His delay reveals the risks surrounding the earlier prison conversations: knowledge of the plan did not by itself make disclosure easy, particularly for a witness who believed his own role could be questioned.