Mrs. Hickock

Mrs. Hickock, Dick’s mother, is portrayed through the strain of the Clutter case on a parent whose affection for her son survives without becoming an excuse for his actions. At the trial she listens as hidden details emerge, and her reactions make the family cost of those revelations visible: she remains loyal to Dick, grieves for the victims, and ultimately speaks of pity for Perry Smith as well.

Identity and Family Background

Mrs. Hickock’s account of Dick’s childhood presents an intimate family life that contrasts with the criminal case being tried. She remembers herself as a girl who loved dancing and recalls teaching Dick the foxtrot. She and a boy once dreamed of going on the stage in vaudeville, though the plan remained a childhood fantasy. After that boy left, she married Walter Hickock, who did not share her enthusiasm for dancing. In her recollection, Dick was a sweet and good-natured child, even if he did not take naturally to dance.

These memories are not offered as a defense of Dick’s conduct. They show instead what his mother knew through years of family life: the boy she remembered and the man described in court belonged to the same history, but could not be reduced to the same image. Her memories give substance to the painful question she asks herself—whether something in her parenting had gone wrong—without supplying an answer. She says she cannot identify what she might have done differently.

Absence and Presence at the Trial

Mrs. Hickock did not visit Dick on one snowy Sunday when he was in jail. Perry Smith’s diary records that she had not come because she felt too ill; he had heard this from Josephine Meier. The brief report conveys a distance imposed by distress and illness, rather than indifference. Later, during the trial, Mrs. Hickock is present beside Walter Hickock, sitting quietly with a rumpled handkerchief in her hands. Whenever she can catch Dick’s eye, she nods and attempts a smile, a small gesture of continued allegiance amid the public proceedings.

That composure breaks when Alvin Dewey testifies that Perry had told investigators he alone shot the four members of the Clutter family. Perry had first blamed Dick for some of the killings, then said he wanted to correct the account partly because he was sorry for Dick’s mother and thought it might comfort her to know Dick had not pulled the trigger. Hearing Dewey disclose this, Mrs. Hickock begins to cry. The information is double-edged: Perry’s account offers her some relief about Dick’s role in the killings, while revealing that he had concealed and then revised the truth with her in mind. A reporter leads her from the courtroom to a private room, where she can recover enough to speak.

Her Account of Blame and Grief

In conversation after leaving the courtroom, Mrs. Hickock describes the kindness shown to her and Walter by neighbors and strangers, including letters of sympathy and small acts of consideration. Yet that kindness does not remove her sense of being judged. She worries that people may silently blame her for the way she raised Dick, and says that trying to remember whether she did something wrong gives her headaches. Her account places a parent’s private self-questioning alongside the trial’s public effort to assign responsibility, without suggesting that the two are equivalent.

She refuses to forget the Clutter family or to make excuses for Dick. She says she prays for the victims every night, and also prays for her son. Her distinction is central to her portrayal: love persists, but it does not erase the dead or deny Dick’s part in what happened. She also revises her feelings toward Perry. She had hated him, but now says she feels pity for him, and imagines that Mrs. Clutter, as she had been described to her, might have felt pity too. That thought does not absolve Perry; it extends the moral circle of her grief beyond her own family.

Narrative Role and Significance

Mrs. Hickock’s importance lies in the contrast between the trial’s account of criminal responsibility and the continuing relationships that responsibility cannot simply cancel. Perry’s decision to change his story partly out of consideration for her gives her a place in the history of the confession, even though she is not a participant in the crime or the investigation. At trial, Dewey’s testimony makes that private consideration public, and her tears register its emotional consequence without settling the disputed facts by themselves.

Her memories of Dick’s childhood, her self-doubt, her prayers for the victims and her son, and her changed response to Perry form a portrait of maternal attachment under pressure. She neither converts affection into exoneration nor treats condemnation as the only possible response. The book lets her hold these positions together: she can acknowledge Dick’s responsibility, remember the child she raised, and feel compassion for Perry while mourning the Clutter family. Her account gives the case a domestic measure of its consequences, showing how the truth told in court reaches beyond defendants and evidence into the lives of those who love them.