Perry Edward Smith

Perry Edward Smith is portrayed as a restless, physically disabled drifter whose longing for friendship and belief in his own ability to read people coexist with distrust, uncontrolled anger, and fantasies of escape. He helped plan the robbery that led to the deaths of Herbert William Clutter, Bonnie Clutter, Nancy Clutter, and Kenyon Clutter, and ultimately acknowledged that he had killed all four. Yet the book resists a simple account of either motive or remorse: Smith repeatedly revises how he understands his past and the crime, while others try to interpret him through their own moral, personal, or professional frameworks.

Identity and Background

Smith’s early life is presented through memories that contrast a brief, admired family life with later upheaval. As a young child, he traveled the rodeo circuit with his parents, Florence Buckskin and Tex John Smith, both performers. He remembered the spectacle of his mother riding horses and his father performing with lassos, and took pride in their skill. The family’s itinerant life was materially difficult, but in his recollection it was happier than what followed. When illness forced his parents to leave rodeo work, they settled near Reno. His parents’ relationship deteriorated, his mother began drinking, and when Smith was six she left for San Francisco with the children.

His father later described the family’s separation in a typed account intended to support Smith’s bid for parole. Smith kept this document among the possessions he considered too important to risk losing, and had read it many times. It recalled his mother leaving during the Depression, the children’s distress, and Smith’s unusual attachment to his father: after the move, he ran away from his mother to his father’s lawyer, though his father returned him. The account also portrayed his father as strict about conduct and cleanliness, and as someone who believed Smith could be trusted by a friend. Its promise of future support and a new start after prison affected Smith strongly, but reading it brought not simple comfort: self-pity, love, and resentment competed, with resentment eventually prevailing.

The family’s later history deepened Smith’s sense that misfortune was inherited or inescapable. His mother died after years of alcoholism; his sister Fern died after falling from a San Francisco hotel window, a death Smith tried to understand as accidental; and his brother Jimmy died by suicide after his wife had also died by suicide. Barbara Johnson, the younger sister, was the sibling who established a conventional family life. These losses informed Smith’s painful speculation that something might be wrong with him from birth, though the narrative does not make that speculation a settled explanation for his actions.

Dick’s recollections of sharing a cell with Smith at Kansas State Penitentiary add another view of his behavior. Dick remembered bedwetting, crying in sleep, thumb-sucking, and long periods spent studying treasure guides. He also described Smith as capable of sudden fury that was difficult to read from his calm outward manner. Dick had once believed he could manage those changes in mood, but came to feel uncertain and wary of Smith. The contrast between Smith’s small, childlike appearance and the danger Dick associated with his temper recurs in other people’s observations of him.

Partnership, Flight, and the Weight of the Past

Smith’s partnership with Dick offered companionship and a practical route out of poverty, but it also depended on an uneven division of confidence. In Kansas City, Dick initiated a forged-check scheme at a clothing store and coached Smith to act as a prospective groom shopping for a wedding. Dick invented a story about a wealthy fiancée and a honeymoon at Miami Beach; the clerk accepted the performance and supplied a blank check. Smith was nervous and had never passed a check before, while Dick handled the deception. The episode established Dick as the improviser and Smith as a more hesitant partner, although Smith admired Dick’s ability to persuade people.

After the killings, the two men fled to Mexico. They crossed at Laredo and spent their first night in San Luis Potosí before traveling toward Mexico City. At a roadside picnic, Smith raised the question of whether something was wrong with them because of what they had done. Dick resisted revisiting the crime and insisted that he considered himself normal, treating Smith as the disturbed one. His judgment drew partly on their time in prison together, but it also reflected his fear that Smith’s concealed anger could turn against him. The conversation makes their alliance seem less secure than their shared flight suggested: Dick wanted the past set aside, while Smith could not consistently keep it there.

Smith’s memories returned as involuntary fragments: images of a blue flash, a toy bear’s glass eyes, and sounds associated with the night of the killings. He remembered pleading voices, footsteps, a rolling coin, and breathing. These recollections connect the Mexico conversation to the later account he gave investigators, without making his repeated return to the crime equivalent to a clear confession of remorse. Smith could be disturbed by what he remembered and still struggle to say what he felt about having done it.

His account of a previous assault also complicated Dick’s claim that Smith alone was abnormal. Smith told Dick that, while living in a Las Vegas boarding house, he had befriended a transient named King, who lent him money and sometimes shared beer with him. Smith said he had no prior reason to hurt King and had not formed a definite plan before striking him with a bicycle chain during a drive into the desert. He left King there and never learned whether anyone found him. Smith had disclosed the episode to Dick in hopes of gaining his respect and proving himself tough; in retrospect, he recognized that the story had helped shape Dick’s fear of him. The episode offered evidence of violence separate from the Clutter case, but Smith himself presented it as something he could not adequately explain.

Money and the practical failure of the escape further strained the partnership. In Mexico City, Dick sold the car, but the proceeds were mostly gone within three days. He found that work as a mechanic paid too little to sustain them and announced that they had to return to the United States, rejecting Smith’s hopes of finding buried treasure. Dick borrowed from a wealthy fiancée to buy bus tickets as far as Barstow, California. Smith could theoretically have stayed behind, but the thought of leaving Dick made him physically uneasy. He believed that as long as they remained together, whatever was destined to happen might not happen. Their return journey brought them to the Mojave Desert, where they tried to hitchhike and considered robbing and killing a lone motorist. They had reduced their possessions to a single suitcase, while Smith’s keepsakes remained a persistent concern.

Arrest, Confession, and Changing Accounts

The investigation reached Smith and Dick through Floyd Wells, a former employee of Herbert William Clutter who heard a news report about the family’s deaths while imprisoned. Wells knew the family and knew who had killed them. After Smith and Dick were arrested in Las Vegas, investigators from Kansas confronted them in separate interrogation rooms at the Las Vegas City Jail. Smith’s physical presence made an impression on the detectives: his short legs left his small feet short of the floor, and his appearance suggested a childlike figure. That impression stood in sharp contrast to the crime they were investigating.

In questioning, Alvin Dewey and Clarence Duntz gradually narrowed Smith’s account to the critical weekend. Duntz told him directly that he had been in Herbert William Clutter’s home and had killed everyone inside. Smith then began describing Dick’s invitation to return to Kansas for a supposedly certain opportunity. According to Smith, Dick had learned about the wealthy wheat grower from a former cellmate, drew him a diagram of the house, and claimed that Herbert William Clutter kept substantial cash in a wall safe. Smith said he had another, private reason for returning to Kansas, but did not identify it as part of the robbery plan.

Smith’s description of the killings changed as he spoke. At first he described himself as reluctant to harm Herbert William Clutter, whom he remembered as a gentle man, and said he had believed the family would be safe. He then stopped and corrected the shape of his own account: after the family had been restrained, he and Dick had discussed whether to leave them alive. Smith said he had challenged Dick and taken the knife without intending to carry through, hoping instead to force Dick to reveal what he was willing to do. He described the encounter turning into a crisis and said he eventually used the shotgun, while Dick assisted by holding the flashlight and collecting evidence. This account assigned Smith the killings but preserved his claim that the plan and the decision to enter the house originated with Dick.

The division of responsibility remained contentious. Dick’s signed confession accused Smith of carrying out all four killings. Smith initially accused Dick of killing Nancy and Bonnie Clutter, a version Dewey understood as an attempt to punish Dick for cowardice. Smith later refused to sign a seventy-eight-page statement unless he could correct two details. He then accepted responsibility for shooting the entire family, saying he had lied because he wanted to damage Dick’s standing. He also said he wanted Dick’s parents, particularly his mother, to know that Dick had not pulled the trigger. Smith did not absolve Dick: in his account, Dick had devised the robbery, participated in the events, and helped afterward. Investigators, who had other evidence, did not rely on Smith’s signed statement to establish the case.

Relationships and Interpretations

Smith’s need for friendship sits beside his suspicion that others will reject or betray him. He told Don Cullivan that Cullivan’s letters and decision to sign himself as a friend had mattered more to him than any religious comfort. Smith recalled only a few people as friends, including Joe James, a logger he had known near Bellingham, Washington. He had sent word to Joe about his predicament and hoped Joe would visit, though he did not know whether the promise would be kept. Smith’s question to Cullivan about whether he liked him shows how directly he sought reassurance, even while resisting the expectations that came with it.

His relationship with Dick was more volatile. Smith admired Dick’s social ease and initially wanted his respect, but resented his boasting and later described him as a coward. During the interrogation, Smith learned that Dick had feared him because of the story about King, and reacted with bitter amusement. Smith said he had nearly shot Dick at one point, a revelation that recast their partnership as a mutual relationship of suspicion rather than simple loyalty. Yet he also cared about the effect his account would have on Dick’s parents, and revised his statement partly out of consideration for them. Affection, resentment, and self-presentation remain intertwined rather than resolving into a single motive.

Smith’s own explanation of the Clutter killings was uncertain. He told Cullivan that he did not know why he had done it, and rejected the idea that the Clutter family had personally wronged him. He said he had known them only briefly and suggested that they may have borne the cost of injuries inflicted by other people. He also said he felt no immediate remorse and wished he could feel it. His comparison of killing with wartime violence challenged the selective moral boundaries he saw in the society demanding his death. This was not presented as proof that he felt nothing: his statements show a man able to describe self-pity, shame, anger, and attachment, but unable to convert them into a consistent account of guilt.

The legal and psychiatric interpretations likewise remained in tension. Dr. W. Mitchell Jones considered Smith severely mentally ill, describing a suspicious outlook, sensitivity to perceived insults, poorly controlled rage, and difficulty organizing thought. At the same time, Jones’s assessment described Smith as oriented, alert, and above average in intelligence, without confusion. Joseph Satten argued that the first killing could be understood as occurring during a mental eclipse, with Herbert William Clutter standing in for figures from Smith’s past, such as his father or an authority figure. That interpretation was a professional theory, not an established account of Smith’s motive. Smith’s own statements—that he had not wanted to harm Herbert William Clutter and that the family had not hurt him—echoed part of the theory while leaving its central explanation unresolved.

Prison, Execution, and Narrative Significance

Smith’s account of himself continued to shift in prison. His father’s biography remained a touchstone, but its promise of care and a future outside prison also revived painful memories and resentment. Smith’s attachment to objects and recollections was similarly pronounced: as he prepared to leave Mexico, he sorted through letters, photographs, clippings, poems, and other keepsakes, deciding which could travel with him and which might be left in the care of a bartender he trusted. His papers included his father’s account of childhood, linking his physical bundle of possessions to the competing versions of his past that he carried with him.

During his final three years on death row, Smith painted self-portraits and pictures of children, often using photographs provided by inmates. At his execution, he recognized Dewey, stopped chewing gum, and greeted him with a grin and wink; when asked whether he had anything to say, he became sober. Smith said he opposed capital punishment on moral and legal grounds, faltered while trying to speak about what he might have contributed, and apologized for what he had done. He also acknowledged that an apology could not undo the act. Afterward, he handed his gum to the chaplain before the sentence was carried out.

Dewey’s response to Smith’s death differed from his response to Dick’s. He regarded Dick as an empty small-time criminal, but could not disregard what he saw as Smith’s wounded, exiled quality. The final image returns to Smith’s small feet, dangling as they had in the interrogation room. That visual recurrence binds the accused man, the prisoner, and the condemned man together without making the childlike appearance an excuse for the crime. Smith’s narrative role rests on this unresolved conjunction: he was capable of calculated participation, sudden violence, attachment, and a final apology, but neither his own explanations nor the judgments of others produce a single, conclusive account of why he killed.