Josephine Meier

Josephine Meier is the undersheriff’s wife whose work and hospitality bring domestic care into the Finney County Jail. In the winter of 1960, she feeds and tends prisoners, comforts Perry Smith when the crowd outside frightens him, and later helps arrange a private Sunday dinner with his friend Donald Cullivan. Her kindness is neither ignorance of the crime nor a denial of its victims: her husband, Wendle Meier, insists on the horror of what he saw, leaving Josephine to hold compassion and judgment together.

Life in the Sheriff’s Residence

The Sheriff’s Residence occupies the fourth floor of the Finney County Courthouse and Jail, where the institution’s steel doors and cells meet the comfort of an occupied apartment. In January 1960, Sheriff Earl Robinson did not live there; the residence was home to Josephine and Wendle Meier, married for more than twenty years. Their adult daughter, their only child, was married and living in Kansas City, so the couple ordinarily lived alone—except, as Josephine understood it, for whoever happened to occupy the women’s cell.

Josephine’s daily routine makes that exception part of her household rather than a distant institutional duty. She began at five in the morning with a chapter of the Bible and went to bed at ten at night. Between those hours she cooked and sewed for prisoners, darned and laundered their clothes, cared for her husband, and maintained the five-room apartment. Its plump hassocks, soft chairs, and cream-colored lace curtains give the residence a comfortable, lived-in character that contrasts with the jail beside it. The women’s cell is an isolated unit, but it adjoins the kitchen. Josephine welcomed the company of its occupants while doing kitchen work, and she regarded many of them as people who had simply met with trouble.

The Arrest and Josephine’s Care of Perry Smith

Perry Smith’s confinement in the women’s cell was unusual: as far as Josephine knew, he was the first man placed there. The sheriff wanted him and Dick kept apart until after trial. When the two men arrived, several hundred people had gathered on the Square to see those who had killed the Clutter family. Josephine watched from her kitchen window. She worried that the crowd might attack the prisoners, but the late hour, bitter cold, and darkness had sent many people home. Those who remained were silent and stared as the men were brought in.

Dick appeared first, dressed in light summer trousers and an old cloth shirt despite the cold. Josephine thought he looked ill, pale as a ghost. Perry came after him. Although prisoners ordinarily ate only breakfast and the main meal, Josephine prepared a separate supper of hot soup, coffee, sandwiches, and pie so that the new arrivals would not go to bed hungry. Perry stood with his back to her, looking through the cell window toward trees, the Square, and the rooftops. When she returned about an hour later, the food remained untouched and he was still at the window.

Josephine tried to draw him into conversation without forcing him. She told him the vegetable soup was homemade and asked whether there was a dish he especially liked that she might prepare the next day. Perry turned toward her suspiciously, as if he thought she might be mocking him. He explained that seeing the crowd had reminded him of a movie scene in which a man thrown from a balcony was torn apart by a mob. He feared that the onlookers might do the same to him, and said the fear had made his stomach hurt. Josephine reassured him that no one would harm him. After they talked, he named Spanish rice as a favorite; she promised to make it, and he smiled.

Her first impression of Perry as not the worst young man she had seen did not settle the question of his character. That night she told Wendle what she thought. He had been among the first people at the Clutter home after the bodies were discovered, and he challenged her to judge Perry and Dick in light of that scene. His account of the dead family left Josephine awake, wondering whether either prisoner was troubled by the thought of the four graves. The exchange makes her sympathy provisional and morally unsettled: she responds to the frightened man in her cell, while her husband insists that the crime cannot be measured by that encounter alone.

Care During Confinement

As the months passed, snow fell on many days and the branches of an elm brushed the women’s-cell window. Josephine lent Perry old issues of Good Housekeeping and McCall’s, though he found them boring. The magazines and her meals belong to the same pattern of modest, practical attention: she tried to make a long confinement more bearable without changing its conditions. His eventual companionship with a squirrel named Red offered another way to pass the hours, but Josephine’s own contribution was the ordinary provision of food and reading material.

Her care did not depend on believing Perry innocent or harmless. She had already heard Wendle’s account of the crime, and her concerns about the prisoners’ safety at the courthouse coexisted with awareness of what they had done. The narrative places her hospitality in the space between those facts, giving neither fear of the accused nor sympathy for them the last word.

Faith, Friendship, and the Sunday Dinner

Josephine and Wendle were deeply Catholic and wanted to assist in the salvation of Perry’s soul. Josephine suggested that he consult Father Goubeaux, a local priest, but Perry refused, saying that priests and nuns had already had their chance with him and that he still bore the scars. The refusal did not end her efforts to connect him with spiritual support. During a weekend recess in the trial, the Meiers invited Donald Cullivan to have Sunday dinner with Perry in his cell.

The invitation gave Perry a chance to host the friend who had come from Boston to serve as a character witness. He took pleasure in planning the meal, a substantial dinner of stuffed wild goose, gravy, creamed potatoes, green beans, aspic salad, biscuits, milk, cherry tarts, cheese, and coffee. He cleaned the cell and prepared the desk as a dining table; Josephine contributed a linen tablecloth, starched napkins, and her best china and silver. The care extended beyond putting food within reach: she helped transform a prison cell, for a meal, into a setting where friendship could be received and returned.

Josephine’s role is defined by this sustained, tangible care, but the book does not make it a simple absolution. Her meals, conversation, reading material, and hospitality meet Perry as a person in confinement; Wendle’s testimony keeps the four victims present in the same moral frame. Between the kitchen adjoining the cell and the remembered graves, Josephine’s acts show the difficulty of offering human attention without forgetting the crime.