Dick Hickock and Perry Smith’s partnership

Dick and Perry Smith’s partnership turned a prison acquaintance into a criminal alliance and ultimately into a source of mutual danger. Dick supplied the proposal to rob the Clutter home and repeatedly framed the plan as a profitable score; Perry joined him, hoping for money and a chance to leave for Mexico, while resisting the prospect of violence. Their shared venture depended on trust only in a limited, practical sense: each relied on the other to act, yet both came to regard his partner as a possible witness who had to be silenced.

From Prison Talk to Reunion

Dick spoke about Perry before the two reunited. Floyd Wells, who had shared a cell with Dick for about a month in June and part of July, recalled that Dick described Perry as a former cellmate and a dependable partner for a major score. Wells had never met Perry. In the same conversations, Dick discussed other schemes, including posing as an Air Force officer, but his repeated references to Perry gave the partnership an imagined future before it became an actual one.

Wells’s account also reveals how the Clutter plan took shape. When Wells described his year working for Mr. Clutter on a large wheat farm in western Kansas, Dick questioned him about the family, the house, its layout, and whether Mr. Clutter kept a safe. Wells remembered a cabinet or safe near the desk in the office and told Dick that Mr. Clutter was wealthy. Dick then described a plan for himself and Perry to rob the household and kill those who could identify them. Wells took the talk for prison boasting rather than a firm intention, but Dick’s interest in the details connected their prospective partnership to information Wells had supplied.

The plan was revived after Perry received letters from Dick while he was in Buhl, Idaho. Dick called the proposed robbery a sure opportunity and urged Perry to return to Kansas, without initially explaining what the score involved. Perry later said he had another, personal reason for going back, but that it was unrelated to the scheme. Dick met him at the bus station in Kansas City. At Dick’s parents’ farm, Perry sensed that Dick’s mother did not want a former prisoner in her home; the two soon moved to a hotel in Olathe, where Dick explained his proposal.

A Shared Plan, Unequal Aims

Dick’s account to Perry rested on Wells’s information: a wealthy farmer, a house Dick believed he could map, and a wall safe said to contain substantial cash. He drew Perry a diagram of the house and described its doors, halls, and bedrooms. He also represented the robbery as straightforward, though the number of people they might encounter was uncertain. Perry later recalled that Dick expected at least four people, perhaps six, and wanted them prepared for as many as twelve if guests were present. The scale of that possibility troubled Perry, even as he allowed himself to be drawn into the plan.

Their disagreement over disguises exposed a deeper difference. Perry hoped they could avoid violence by covering their faces with black silk stockings. Dick argued that a stocking would not conceal his distinctive eye. On the journey west, they argued about the idea again. They bought rubber gloves and cord in Emporia, while the knife, shotgun, and shells had come from Dick’s home; later they obtained tape in Great Bend. Perry even persuaded Dick to stop at a Catholic hospital, believing the nuns might sell them stockings, but Dick only pretended to ask. The practical preparations proceeded alongside an unresolved dispute about whether the robbery could be carried out without killing witnesses.

Perry described himself as having faith in Dick, whom he considered practical, and admitted that he wanted the money. He also said he hoped they could avoid violence. That combination made their alliance more than simple agreement: Perry relied on Dick’s confidence and joined his objective, yet his account preserves reservations about the plan’s human cost. Dick’s insistence on eliminating witnesses, by contrast, made the partnership depend on a rule that could eventually turn against either man.

Dependence and the Break in Trust

After the murders, Perry recalled that, as they prepared to leave the house, he thought Dick himself was a witness under the no-witnesses rule. He said he considered shooting Dick and escaping alone to Mexico, but did not act. The episode reverses the partnership’s original logic: the rule Dick had pressed as protection against identification made each accomplice a potential threat to the other. In Perry’s telling, the prospect of turning on Dick arose before their escape was complete, not only after the police began questioning them.

Their dependence continued on the road, but Dick also planned an exit from it. In Las Vegas, while Perry collected a package he had mailed from Mexico, Dick was preparing to impersonate an Air Force officer named Tracy Hand and pass worthless checks at casinos. His scheme included leaving Perry without warning. He was weary of Perry’s complaints, pain, superstitions, and manner, and imagined that disappearing would let him start over. The plan shows how little permanence their partnership offered: Dick intended to use their criminal association when it suited him, then abandon it when he believed a solo scheme could bring money and freedom.

Confessions and Competing Accounts

When the men were arrested and held separately, each wanted to know what the other had told investigators. Perry feared that Dick had confessed; Dick, who recognized that the supposed witness could be Floyd Wells, worried that Perry might also expose them. Dick thought Wells would be too frightened to speak, but regarded Perry as the more immediate danger. Their former reliance on one another had become a contest over which account would determine the case.

The accounts also differed over who had killed the four members of the Clutter family. Dick’s signed confession blamed Perry for all four deaths. Perry initially said that Dick had killed the two women, a claim that shaped the principal discrepancy between their versions. Later, when Perry refused to sign a typed, seventy-eight-page statement, he offered to correct two details. He then accepted responsibility for shooting the entire family, explaining that he had blamed Dick because he resented him for panicking. Perry said he changed the account partly out of consideration for Dick’s mother, whom he regarded as kind, and wanted her to know that Dick had not fired the shots. Alvin Dewey remained unsure whether Perry’s revised account was reliable; the authorities already had enough evidence, in his view, without a signed confession from Perry.

Later, speaking with Don Cullivan, Perry again said that he had killed the family, while describing Dick as the person who had proposed the robbery and assisted during it. He did not offer a settled motive for the killings. He rejected the idea that the Clutters had personally wronged him and struggled to explain why they had become the people who paid for the violence. The partnership thus ended not in a shared explanation but in competing claims, resentment, and Perry’s eventual acceptance of the act he had first attributed in part to Dick. Their association had begun with Dick’s confidence that Perry would join him; it concluded with each man’s account carrying consequences for the other.