The Kansas trial of Smith and Hickock turned an investigation marked by uncertainty and competing accounts into a public examination of evidence. In a modest courtroom in Garden City, the prosecution assembled physical exhibits, testimony from the informant Floyd Wells, and the confessions described by investigators. The proceedings disclosed not only the defendants’ connection to the killings but also key differences between their accounts, including Perry Smith’s later admission that he had shot all four members of the Clutter family.

Setting and selection of the jury

On the eve of trial, the Garden City Telegram noted that the case had become only one among several mass-murder stories competing for national attention. The editorial’s observation set the local proceedings against a wider news cycle: although the killings had deeply marked the community, readers elsewhere could already have forgotten them. The courtroom itself was small and unpretentious, with dull white walls, dark wood, and seating for about 160 spectators.

The first session, on Tuesday, March 22, began with jury selection. The benches held an all-male pool of Finney County residents, and the process was expected to take days. Instead, selection concluded in four hours. The fourteen men chosen, including two alternates, came from the first forty-four candidates. Seven were removed through defense challenges, three at the prosecution’s request, and another twenty were excused because they opposed capital punishment or had already formed a firm opinion about the defendants’ guilt.

The resulting jury included farmers, a pharmacist, a nursery manager, an airport employee, a well driller, salesmen, a machinist, and the manager of a bowling alley. All were family men and affiliated with local churches. Four said they had known Mr. Clutter, though not closely, and believed that acquaintance would not prevent an impartial verdict. The airport employee, N. L. Dunnan, said that he ordinarily opposed capital punishment but not in this case; despite concern that this answer indicated a settled view, he was accepted. The selection process thus made impartiality an explicit question before the jurors had heard the evidence.

The opening witnesses and physical evidence

Ordinary spectators were admitted the following day, when the trial proper began. The press and designated visitors had reserved seats; the surviving Clutter daughters did not attend. The family was represented by Arthur Clutter, who sat behind the defendants. When Perry Smith turned and saw him, the resemblance to the man Smith had killed visibly interrupted his otherwise detached courtroom manner. Smith and Dick otherwise chewed gum and tapped their feet as the prosecution began calling witnesses.

Nancy Ewalt and Susan Kidwell described entering the Clutter home on November 15 and finding Nancy Clutter dead. Their testimony, followed by accounts from Clarence Ewalt, Sheriff Earl Robinson, and coroner Dr. Robert Fenton, established the discovery of all four family members and the nature of their deaths. The defense waived cross-examination of these early witnesses. The proceedings moved from the girls’ account of what they had encountered to the coroner’s clinical explanation of the fatal injuries.

Chief Investigator Richard G. Rohleder testified about photographs he had taken, including images that revealed Dick’s dusty footprints in the cellar even though the marks could not be discerned by the unaided eye. The prosecution sought to introduce seventeen photographs, including images of the victims. Dick’s attorney objected that the pictures would prejudice the jury; Judge Tate overruled the objection, and the exhibits were passed from juror to juror. The scene made visible the human consequences behind the investigative record, while also provoking a dispute about the effect of photographic evidence on the jury.

The informant and the case against the defendants

The prosecution’s final witness on the first day was Floyd Wells, whose information had led authorities to the accused. Wells had formerly worked as a hired hand at River Valley Farm and later became Dick’s fellow prisoner after both men were convicted of burglary. He had told Dick about the Clutter farm and family. Because Wells remained imprisoned and faced a risk of retaliation, he had not been publicly identified as the informer; for the trial, he was moved to a jail in an adjacent county. His cautious passage through the courtroom and Dick’s hostile reaction made plain that the testimony connected a former cellmate to the case in a deeply personal way.

By Friday, the prosecution had presented its case. Four specialists from the Federal Bureau of Investigation certified the validity of physical evidence, including blood samples, footprints, cartridge shells, rope, and tape. Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents also recounted their interviews with the defendants and the confessions that followed. The defense argued that the admissions had been obtained through coercive interrogation in oppressive rooms. The investigators denied the allegation, which the narrative identifies as untrue. The competing claims made the conditions under which the confessions were obtained part of the courtroom dispute, rather than leaving the statements to stand without challenge.

Confessions, contradictions, and disclosures

Alvin Dewey’s testimony gave the prosecution’s case its most consequential account of the confessions. As he recounted what Smith had told investigators, he disclosed that Dick had expressed an intention to assault Nancy Clutter and that Smith said he had opposed it. The revelation startled Dick, who had not known that Smith had reported the episode to police. Dewey also described Smith’s request to correct two details in his earlier statement: Smith now said that he, not Dick, had killed Nancy and her mother, and that he wanted Dick’s mother to know her son had not fired the fatal shots. Smith attributed his earlier version to a desire to make Dick appear cowardly, and his later correction to consideration for Dick’s parents. The testimony therefore exposed both the change in Smith’s account and the personal loyalties he invoked to explain it.

That account had a longer history of contradiction. Before the arrest, Smith had told Dick a story about attacking a man named King with a bicycle chain in the desert. In the later ride with investigators, when Dewey repeated Dick’s claim that Smith had killed a man in Las Vegas, Smith reacted with surprise and denied doing so. The account of King’s existence was partly true, but the book states that Smith had never attacked him. This false boast, and Dick’s later use of it, complicated the image of Smith as a reliable narrator of his own violence and showed how a story first told to impress a partner could return as supposed evidence.

Smith’s refusal to sign a seventy-eight-page statement further demonstrated that a confession was not a single, uncontested document. He told Dewey that it was accurate except for two details and wanted to revise his account of who had killed the Clutters. Dewey declined to let him alter the statement, explaining that the state could rely on the oral confession and other evidence. Investigators also recovered a radio and binoculars taken from the house and later traced to a pawnshop in Mexico City. Smith’s statement disclosed where he and Dick had buried spent shells and leftover cord and tape, and described burning gloves and a shirt during their flight. Together, the recovered property, physical traces, informant testimony, and changing admissions gave the prosecution several different kinds of evidence rather than a case dependent on one confession alone.