Rope and tape used to bind the victims

Rope and tape used to bind the victims are both practical tools in Dick and Perry Smith’s plan and material evidence in the investigation of the Clutter family murders. The account follows them from their purchase during the journey toward Holcomb, through Perry’s description of how they were used inside the house, to their recovery from the prairie. Their course makes the materials more than a detail of the crime: what the men tried to discard became part of the evidence that established how the family had been restrained and linked the attack to them.

Acquisition and Intended Use

On the journey toward Holcomb, Dick and Perry stopped in Emporia, Kansas, where they bought rubber gloves and a roll of cord. Dick had brought the knife, shotgun, and shells from home. The cord was therefore part of a collection of supplies assembled for the planned robbery, rather than an item they found at the Clutter house. Perry recalled that he had wanted them to wear black stockings over their heads, partly to conceal their identities; the argument over that idea continued on the drive. Their attempt to obtain stockings at a Catholic hospital failed, and they did not stop again until Great Bend, where they bought tape.

The distinction between the two materials matters to the sequence of events. The cord was available before the men reached the farm, while the tape was acquired later in the journey. Perry’s account places both within the preparations for the crime, but describes them serving different stages of the restraint: he used cord to tie family members, and tape was applied afterward. The items were thus carried into the house as part of the men’s equipment, then became evidence of what they had done there.

Use Inside the Clutter House

Perry described Dick’s insistence on searching the whole house for a safe after it became clear that the family said truthfully there was none. According to Perry, Dick wanted the family tied up while they searched and proposed killing them afterward. Perry’s account of the restraints sits within this larger plan: control of the household was meant to give the intruders time to look for money and prevent the family from interfering.

Perry recounted that he tied Herbert Clutter’s feet and secured his hands to them. Herbert asked that Bonnie be left alone, explaining that she had been ill and had only recently begun to improve. Perry then brought Kenyon downstairs. He first tied the boy’s hands to an overhead pipe, but reconsidered that arrangement because Kenyon might be able to help his father, or his father might free him. Perry moved him to the playroom, tied his feet to the couch and his hands, and looped cord around his neck. When Kenyon asked him not to put the knife on a freshly varnished cedar chest, Perry moved on; before leaving, he placed a pillow under the boy’s head after he began coughing. These details come from Perry’s later account, not from an independent view of the scene, and show how he described adjusting the restraints as he moved between family members.

Perry also said that Bonnie and Nancy were tied in their bedrooms before the taping began. He described starting with Bonnie, with Dick helping him wrap tape around her head. Perry said that he did not want to leave Dick alone with Nancy, and that he stopped him from approaching her while she was in the bedroom. He then tied Nancy’s feet and hands and tucked the covers around her. In Perry’s telling, the tape was not applied to Nancy. The episode places the materials in a tense contrast: the cord was used to secure the family, while the later taping of Bonnie occurred amid Perry’s stated effort to keep Dick away from Nancy.

Disposal and Recovery

After leaving the house, the men drove east. Perry later said that he and Dick went about eight miles onto the prairie, where he washed blood from the gun barrel with water taken from a tank. He then used Dick’s hunting knife to scrape a hole in the ground and buried the empty shells, leftover nylon cord, and adhesive tape. Near dawn, they stopped at a roadside rest area with open fireplaces and burned the gloves they had worn and Perry’s shirt. The account distinguishes these acts of disposal: clothing and gloves were burned, while the cord, tape, and shells were concealed in the ground.

The burial did not remove the materials from the investigation. Perry’s description gave investigators a location to search. With the help of Virgil Pietz, a county-highway employee operating a road grader, agents shaved away the earth inch by inch until the shells, cord, and tape were recovered. The methodical search turned Perry’s recollection into recoverable physical evidence, and the location he identified could be checked against the objects found there.

Evidentiary Significance

The recovered cord and tape formed part of a larger evidentiary chain. Tests established that the shells found with them had been fired by Dick’s shotgun. Investigators also determined that the remaining cord and tape were of the same materials as those used to bind and silence the family. The connection did not rest on Perry’s account alone: the account directed agents to objects that could be recovered and examined, while the recovered materials corroborated the described use of restraints.

The objects’ movement—from purchase, to use, to attempted concealment, and finally to recovery—gives them a clear narrative and investigative function. At first they are supplies in a plan that includes gloves, weapons, and a search for money; inside the house they become instruments for restraining the family; afterward they are buried alongside the spent shells. Their recovery helped close the gap between a confession describing events and physical evidence tying the men and their equipment to the crime. The cord and tape that had been intended to control what happened in the house instead became traces through which investigators could reconstruct it.