Perry Smith and Dick Hickock’s criminal partnership

Perry Smith and Dick’s criminal partnership joined Dick’s schemes and improvisational confidence to Perry’s willingness to become his partner, first for a promised score and then for a hoped-for escape to Mexico. The alliance brought them money, stolen and pawnable goods, and a shared flight, but it did not make them equal in temperament or understanding. Their conversations reveal a partnership that could operate together while leaving each man alone with a different account of the crime and its consequences.

Formation in Prison and the Clutter Plan

Dick and Perry’s connection began before they met. In 1959, Dick shared a cell at the Kansas State Penitentiary with Floyd Wells, who had worked for Herbert William Clutter. Dick spoke of Perry as a former cellmate and potential partner in a major score. When Wells described his work on a wealthy western Kansas farm, Dick pressed him for information about the family, the house, and whether Herbert William Clutter kept money in a safe. Wells later recalled that Dick repeatedly described a plan to rob the household and kill witnesses. At the time, Wells took the talk for prison boasting, but Dick’s questions supplied the knowledge on which the later plan would build.

After Perry had left prison, Dick wrote to him while Perry was in Buhl, Idaho, urging him to return to Kansas for what he called a sure opportunity. Perry said the letter did not explain the nature of the proposed score; he nevertheless returned, and Dick met him at the bus station in Kansas City. Dick’s parents did not want Perry in their home, so the two went to a hotel in Olathe, Kansas. There, Dick explained what Wells had told him and drew a diagram of the Clutter family home, marking its doors, halls, bedrooms, and supposed safe. The plan was not founded on Perry’s prior knowledge of the family; it came to him through Dick’s account of Wells’s information.

Their discussions also exposed a difference in how each approached violence. Dick anticipated that there might be four or more people in the house, possibly as many as twelve, and insisted they should be prepared. Perry said he wanted the money and the chance to go to Mexico, but hoped they could avoid violence by concealing their identities. He argued for masks and, on the way toward Holcomb, wanted to stop for black stockings. Dick rejected the idea, citing the risk that his bad eye could identify him. In Emporia they obtained rubber gloves and cord; Dick had brought the knife and shotgun from home, and they later acquired tape in Great Bend. Perry’s recollection presents the partnership as an agreement made amid disagreement: he went along with Dick’s confidence in the plan, while still imagining a less violent way to carry it out.

Division of Roles and the Forged-Check Spree

The pair’s practical cooperation was clearest in their forged-check shopping. Dick led the performance in a Kansas City clothing store, inventing a wedding and honeymoon story while Perry followed his instructions and tried on clothes. Perry had never passed a check before and felt nervous; Dick told him to remain beside him and respond naturally. Dick’s easy patter persuaded the clerk to accept a check and provide cash beyond the purchase price. Perry later regarded Dick as remarkably skilled at persuading people, even though he had doubted that this particular excuse would work.

They repeated the scheme across several kinds of businesses. They pawned rings for $150, took a gold wristwatch from a jewelry store, obtained a motion-picture camera, and continued through clothing stores. Dick described cameras and television sets as easy to sell or pawn, and they acquired several television sets as well. By sundown they had cash and a car full of goods. For Perry, the haul made Mexico seem close and a new life imaginable; he praised Dick’s performance. Dick, however, appeared subdued rather than triumphant.

At a bar, Dick explained that the checks would eventually reach his parents, who might try to make them good. He worried about his father’s age, illness, and lack of money, and about leaving his parents behind while he went to Mexico or elsewhere. Perry sympathized and proposed that they could earn money in Mexico and repay the checks later. The exchange shows a strain inside their partnership: their shared plan had immediate consequences for Dick’s family, and Perry’s assurance did not answer Dick’s expressed uncertainty about whether the promise of future earnings was realistic.

Flight and a Growing Divide

On November 21, Dick drove the old Chevrolet out of Kansas with Perry beside him. The car was crowded with luggage, two television sets, Perry’s Gibson Guitar, a cardboard suitcase, a Zenith Portable Radio, root-beer syrup, and boxes of books, manuscripts, and keepsakes. Dick had complained about the boxes, while Perry had insisted on bringing the belongings he valued. Their overloaded car carried both the proceeds of their recent activity and the unequal priorities of its passengers: Perry’s personal possessions mattered enough to take up space, even as Dick resented the burden.

After crossing into Oklahoma around midnight, Perry felt relieved to be leaving Kansas and believed he had nothing and no one to leave behind. Dick, by contrast, was leaving three sons, his parents, and a brother without telling them his plans or saying goodbye. The contrast made their flight more than a shared journey. Perry treated departure as a break with an empty past; Dick’s own account of what he left behind complicated the escape he had helped arrange.

In Mexico, Perry raised the crime directly, saying that something must be wrong with them for having done it. Dick resisted the discussion and insisted that he was normal. He regarded Perry as disturbed, recalling behavior he had seen when they shared a cell, including Perry’s childishness, distress in sleep, and sudden, concealed anger. Dick admitted that he had once believed he could control Perry’s moods, but had become uncertain of him and thought he ought to be afraid. This judgment did not dissolve the partnership; it showed that Dick’s confidence in Perry as an accomplice coexisted with apprehension about the man he had recruited.

Perry, for his part, said he had never believed himself capable of such an act and could not accept that they might simply get away with it. He returned to the question of whether something would eventually happen to them. Dick ordered him to stop talking, then drove away from their roadside stop. The exchange reveals their opposing methods of living with the crime: Perry voiced fear and disbelief, while Dick tried to silence the subject. Yet the narrative also indicates that the doubt Perry expressed was not entirely his alone; Dick, too, experienced moments of wondering whether they could truly escape consequences.

Recollection and Unequal Responsibility

After the men were captured, Perry recounted how the partnership had formed and what each had contributed. He said he had trusted Dick’s practical manner and wanted the money, while also hoping to avoid violence. In his later conversation with Don Cullivan, Perry stated that Dick had helped him during the killings, held the flashlight, and picked up shells, but had not fired the shots. Perry also said the idea had been Dick’s. His account thus separated the two men’s actions without absolving either: Dick had devised the venture and assisted at the scene, while Perry acknowledged that he had killed the family.

Perry could not give Cullivan a settled explanation for his own motive. He rejected the idea that the Clutters had personally harmed him, and said his anger at Dick or fear of being identified did not explain the killings. He wondered whether the Clutters had simply been made to pay for other injuries in his life, but presented that possibility as speculation, not a clear answer. His account of the partnership therefore ends in unresolved asymmetry: Dick’s original scheme, Perry’s consent, and each man’s part in the crime can be described, while Perry’s reason for carrying out the killings remains uncertain. Their cooperation had made the plan possible; it could not give them a shared or satisfying explanation of what they had done.