Nevada serves as more than a place-name in Perry Smith’s history: near Reno, his parents’ touring life gave way to family separation, while Las Vegas became the setting of an assault he later described to Dick. Years afterward, investigators searching for the two men followed a lead through Reno, where the state’s records and pawnshops offered little but a trace of recognition.

Family Life Near Reno

After illness forced Tex John Smith and Flo Buckskin to leave the rodeo circuit, they settled near Reno. Their life there was a sharp turn from the public performance Perry remembered: his parents had once ridden and performed before cheering crowds, but at home they fought, and Flo began drinking. When Perry was six, she left for San Francisco with the children, while Tex remained behind. Nevada thus marks the beginning of a family rupture that shaped Perry’s childhood before his later years of wandering with his father.

The Las Vegas Assault

In a later recollection told to Dick, Perry described living in the attic of a dilapidated Las Vegas boarding house, a former brothel, where he shared the space with a transient named King. Perry said that they sometimes drank beer together and that King had once lent him ten dollars. On a hot night, Perry invited him for a drive in an old car he had rebuilt and painted silver, which he called the Silver Ghost. They drove into the desert, where they drank more beer. When King got out, Perry followed with a bicycle chain he had kept under the seat and struck him across the face, breaking his glasses; Perry continued hitting him and left him there. He said he had not decided to do it until the moment he did, felt nothing afterward, and never learned whether anyone found King.

Perry’s account places Nevada within the history he used to explain himself to Dick. He presented the disclosure as a test of trust and as an effort to gain Dick’s respect; in telling it, he also described an earlier act of violence that he had concealed from others. The desert drive is therefore both a specific Nevada episode and a revelation about the gulf between Perry’s wish to be trusted and the violence he admitted committing.

Reno in the Search for the Fugitives

During the investigation, Harold Nye went to Reno with photographs, fingerprints, and warrants for Perry Smith and Dick. At 9:00 a.m., he briefed Bill Driscoll, chief criminal investigator for the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, and stops were placed on both men and their automobile. At 10:30 a.m., Nye and Sergeant Abe Feroah checked Reno police files. Neither man appeared in the felony-registration files, and a search of pawnshop-ticket records produced no information about the missing radio.

Investigators nevertheless circulated photographs of the men among the city’s pawnshops and checked the shops in person. Their inquiries yielded a limited result: shopkeepers recognized Perry as someone familiar but could provide no further information. That afternoon, Nye went looking for Tex John Smith. At a Reno post office, a clerk told him that Tex had left Nevada the previous August and that his mail was being forwarded to the vicinity of Circle City, Alaska. Reno therefore became a temporary investigative waypoint: it supplied no registration or pawn record that solved the search, but it directed Nye toward the next lead in the pursuit of Perry’s father.