Perry Smith and Don Cullivan's friendship

Perry Smith and Don Cullivan’s friendship grew from a brief Army acquaintance into an unexpected bond during Perry’s imprisonment and trial. Cullivan remembered Perry from their service together years earlier, wrote when he learned of Perry’s predicament, and then traveled to the trial at personal cost to keep the offer of friendship he had made. Perry remained unconvinced by Cullivan’s Catholic faith, but received his attention with gratitude and spoke to him with unusual candor about the crime and his own emotional detachment.

The Army acquaintance

Cullivan’s recollections began in about the fall of 1951, when Perry was assigned to the 761st Engineer Light Equipment Company at Fort Lewis, Washington. They were not close personal friends, and Cullivan knew Perry for only about eight months. Yet when he later saw Perry’s photograph, he recognized him: a short, solidly built soldier with dark hair and a frequent grin. The photograph gave Cullivan’s letter a face Perry could place even though the name initially meant nothing to him.

Cullivan remembered Perry as cheerful and cocky, competent at his Army work, and not much given to complaining. He recalled Perry playing pool in the company day room and being among the outfit’s best truck drivers. One winter field problem left the soldiers driving trucks without heaters. Perry cut a hole in his truck’s floorboards so heat from the engine could enter the cab, accepting the risk of punishment for altering Army property; Cullivan, then new to military life, worried about the rule while Perry grinned and kept warm. The episode remained vivid to Cullivan as a contrast between his own caution and Perry’s willingness to stretch boundaries.

Cullivan also vaguely remembered Perry buying a motorcycle and getting into trouble involving it, though he acknowledged that the details had blurred over time. He took the incident as an early sign of Perry’s wild streak, but distinguished that impression from the Perry he knew at work: capable, outwardly cheerful, and apparently well liked. His recollection was affectionate without pretending they had been intimate friends, a qualification that made the later offer of help all the more striking.

A letter that reopens the connection

In mid-February, while Perry was isolated from most family and acquaintances, a letter arrived postmarked Reading, Massachusetts. Cullivan explained that news reports had first startled him, then continued to occupy his thoughts. He enclosed a photograph from their Army days and recalled specific details of Perry’s service, including the floorboards, the truck, and the pool table. The letter did not claim a closeness the two men had never shared; instead, Cullivan said he remembered Perry more clearly than many soldiers he had met and wanted to help in whatever way he could.

Cullivan connected his decision to write with his religious beliefs and the death of his younger brother, who had died of leukemia at seventeen. His brother’s awareness that he was dying had made Cullivan think about what a person might face near death. He wrote that he had once drifted through life without considering death or an afterlife, but that his brother’s death had changed his understanding. He believed that God loved Perry as well as himself and that, given the limits of human knowledge about God’s will, Perry’s fate might have been his own.

Perry found the religious appeal unpersuasive. He had tried to believe, he indicated, but could not. Nevertheless, the letter thrilled him. He recognized the young soldier in the photograph, read the letter repeatedly, and valued the fact that a sane, respectable man who had once liked him was now offering friendship. He began a reply in great haste. In the confinement of jail, where he longed for contact and felt profoundly alone, Cullivan’s letter supplied a connection grounded not in pity at a distance but in a remembered person and a shared past.

Friendship put to the test

The friendship became a practical commitment when Perry’s lawyer asked Cullivan to appear as a character witness. Cullivan, by then a Harvard-educated engineer, husband, and father of three, traveled from Boston despite the loss of a week of vacation and the strain on money needed for other purposes. He said that his wife did not understand the decision. For him, however, not going would have contradicted the friendship he had offered in his letter; his belief that all souls could be saved also shaped his choice. The trip made his words consequential: he did not merely express concern but placed himself beside Perry in public during the trial.

The Meiers, who also hoped to assist Perry spiritually, helped create an occasion for the two men to meet during a weekend recess. Perry had previously rejected the suggestion that he consult a local priest, saying that religious figures had already had their chance with him. The Sunday dinner arranged in Perry’s cell did not resolve that difference. Instead, it let the friendship take a more intimate, ordinary form: Perry welcomed Cullivan as a guest and took pleasure in preparing to host him.

Perry cleaned the cell, cleared his desk to serve as a dining table, and arranged the meal with a linen cloth, starched napkins, and the Meiers’ china and silver. He appeared more absorbed in the menu and reception than in a trial whose outcome he regarded as predictable. When Cullivan asked to say grace, Perry did not bow his head, but allowed the prayer and then credited the work to the person who had prepared the food. He served his guest and greeted him as someone whose appearance and manner remained familiar. The gesture showed warmth and hospitality without suggesting that Perry had accepted Cullivan’s religious framework.

Candor without conversion

Over dinner, Perry spoke about the years on the road with Dick, their poor meals, and their contrasting attitudes toward theft. He described himself as a thief only when he lacked money, while presenting Dick as someone who would steal even when he could afford to pay. He also recalled Willie-Jay’s idea that crimes could be understood as forms of theft, with murder stealing a person’s life. In this conversation, the friendship gave Perry a listener before whom he could discuss culpability directly rather than speak only through courtroom argument.

Perry told Cullivan that he had killed the victims and described Dick’s participation as holding the flashlight and collecting shells, while maintaining that Dick had not fired the shots. He said the plan had been Dick’s idea, but could not explain why he himself had killed. He rejected several possible explanations: the victims had not harmed him, fear of identification had not stopped him, and anger at Dick was not the answer. He could only speculate that the family had paid for wrongs other people had done to him throughout his life. The account disclosed both his admission of responsibility and the absence of a settled explanation for his actions.

Cullivan sought signs of remorse and hoped Perry might desire divine mercy and forgiveness. Perry said he felt no sorrow for the killings and wished that he did; what troubled him was his own confinement, not the victims’ deaths. He recalled that he and Dick had joked soon afterward and questioned whether they were human. He compared the killing to soldiers’ violence and to the prospect that people in Kansas wanted him killed. The conversation therefore exposed a limit as well as a bond: Cullivan offered friendship and spiritual concern, while Perry trusted him with an unsoftened account that did not turn into repentance. Their connection rested not on agreement or conversion, but on Cullivan’s sustained willingness to remain present and Perry’s willingness to answer him candidly.