Hickock and Smith stand trial in Finney County

The trial of Dick and Perry Smith began on March 22, 1960, in Garden City, turning a still-unresolved investigation into a public contest over evidence, responsibility, and the reliability of competing accounts. Its opening days moved from the selection of a jury to testimony about the discovery of the Clutter family, the physical evidence, and the defendants’ statements; by Friday, the prosecution had completed its case, but the account of the trial here has not yet reached a verdict.

Background and Questions Before Trial

At an earlier press conference, investigator Alvin Dewey had emphasized what was known and what remained uncertain: four people had been killed, the coroner could not establish the order of their deaths, and investigators did not know which family member, if any, had been the primary target. Dewey was still weighing two different reconstructions, one involving a single killer and another involving two. The single-killer version depended on an imagined intruder familiar with the house and its occupants; it was an investigative concept, not an established account. That distinction mattered as the case approached court, where theories would have to be tested against testimony and physical exhibits.

Before the trial, the defense considered asking for a change of venue. Arthur Fleming argued that moving the proceedings elsewhere in Kansas would not escape statewide feeling and that Garden City might offer a reasonable chance of avoiding a death sentence. He pointed to the town’s religious character and to local ministers who opposed capital punishment, including the Clutters’ minister, who had preached against the penalty in connection with the case. The defense’s stated aim, as Fleming described it, was to save the defendants’ lives.

The defense also sought comprehensive psychiatric examinations at Larned State Hospital. The request noted that the area lacked qualified psychiatrists and that an adequate evaluation could take four to eight weeks. Judge Tate instead appointed a commission of three Garden City doctors. After meeting the defendants for about an hour, the doctors reported that neither had a mental disorder. Dr. W. Mitchell Jones, a specialist in criminal psychology who volunteered to examine them, offered a separate possible source of expert testimony if his findings supported it.

Postponement, Auction, and Jury Selection

On March 14, eight days before the scheduled start, the defense asked to postpone the trial. One stated reason was that Dick’s father was too ill to testify. The other concerned the auction of the Clutter estate, advertised in local businesses, banks, restaurants, and the railroad station for March 21, the day before trial. The defense argued that the sale and its newspaper and radio advertisements would repeatedly remind prospective jurors of the victims and the case. Judge Tate denied the motion without comment.

The Garden City Telegram’s editorial on the eve of trial suggested that the case had become one among several multiple-murder stories competing for attention nationally. The courtroom itself, on the third floor of the Finney County Courthouse, could seat about 160 spectators. On the first morning, however, its benches were occupied by the male jury pool rather than ordinary spectators. Jury selection took four hours, much less than the several days many expected. The final group comprised fourteen men, including two alternates, selected from the first forty-four candidates. Seven prospective jurors were removed by defense challenge, three at the prosecution’s request, and twenty more were excused because they opposed capital punishment or had already formed a firm opinion about guilt. The selected men included farmers, a pharmacist, a nursery manager, an airport employee, a well driller, salesmen, a machinist, and a bowling-alley manager. Four acknowledged some acquaintance with Mr. Clutter but said it would not prevent impartial judgment.

The First Witnesses and the Physical Record

When ordinary spectators were admitted the next day, the room remained too small for most people seeking entry. The press and special guests had reserved seats; the surviving Clutter daughters did not attend. Mr. Clutter’s brother, Arthur, sat behind the defendants. When Perry Smith noticed him, he stopped chewing gum, lowered his eyes, and then resumed chewing. Apart from that brief exchange, both defendants presented themselves as detached while the prosecution began calling witnesses.

Nancy Ewalt and Susan Kidwell described entering the Clutter house on November 15 and finding quiet rooms, an empty purse on the kitchen floor, and Nancy Clutter dead in her bedroom. The defense waived cross-examination of these witnesses and of the next three: Clarence Ewalt, Sheriff Earl Robinson, and coroner Robert Fenton. Their testimony filled out the account of the discovery of all four family members; Fenton attributed the deaths to severe injuries to the brain and other vital structures caused by a shotgun.

Chief investigator Richard G. Rohleder then established that he had taken photographs used by the prosecution. His camera had recorded dusty footprints in the Clutter cellar that were not discernible to the unaided eye, and he had photographed the victims. The defense objected that the photographs would prejudice the jury, but Judge Tate admitted them. Seventeen prints were passed among the jurors. Their visible reactions showed the change produced when the crime, previously described in words, appeared before them as a record of the scene. Dick’s father protested the judge’s decision, mistakenly claiming that Tate had been a pallbearer at the funeral; the narration notes that Tate had not attended it.

Floyd Wells and the Conflicting Accounts

The prosecution’s promised mystery witness was Floyd Wells, a former cellmate of Dick. Because Wells remained a prisoner at the Kansas State Penitentiary and might face retaliation, he had been moved to a jail in an adjoining county before testifying. Logan Green elicited that Wells had worked for about a year as a hired hand at River Valley Farm and, roughly ten years later, had described the Clutter farm and family to Dick while the two were imprisoned together. Dick had spoken of going west after parole and possibly seeking work from Mr. Clutter. Wells said that he had told Dick about the family’s wealth and that Dick had described a plan to restrain, rob, and kill the household. On cross-examination, Arthur Fleming focused on Wells’s failure to discourage the plan, raising the question of the informer’s own moral responsibility as well as the information he had supplied.

The prosecution also presented the documentary and material record: four Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory specialists examined blood samples, footprints, cartridge shells, rope, and tape and certified the exhibits. The defense challenged the circumstances of the defendants’ interrogations, alleging that their admissions had been obtained through improper methods. The investigators denied that allegation. Alvin Dewey’s testimony then publicly recounted events from Perry Smith’s confession, including a proposed assault on Nancy that Perry said he had opposed. It also disclosed that Perry wanted to revise two details in his statement: he now claimed that he, rather than Dick, had killed Nancy and her mother, and said he wished to spare Dick’s mother the belief that her son had pulled the trigger.

That proposed correction complicated the competing confessions. Dick had signed a statement in Las Vegas accusing Perry of all four killings. Perry, by contrast, had previously said Dick killed Nancy and her mother; when he later offered to correct his own account, Dewey declined to let him alter the typed statement, noting that the case did not depend on a signed confession from Perry. Separate corroboration included a radio and binoculars stolen from the house and traced by Harold Nye to a pawnshop in Mexico City. Perry’s account also led investigators to the disposal of other evidence: he described burying empty shells, nylon cord, and adhesive tape on the prairie, and described the pair burning clothing and gloves at a roadside rest area.

Completion of the Prosecution’s Case

By Friday, the state had completed its presentation. In addition to the laboratory witnesses, four Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents described their interviews with the prisoners and the confessions eventually made by them. The testimony assembled different kinds of proof rather than relying on one narrative alone: witness accounts of the discovery, photographs, forensic exhibits, property traced to Mexico City, and statements whose details had changed. The trial’s opening phase therefore made the central evidentiary problem visible: what could be independently corroborated, what rested on a defendant’s account, and how the two men’s shifting descriptions assigned responsibility. The available account ends with the prosecution’s case complete, before the defense presentation or the trial’s final outcome.