San Francisco appears in the narrative as both a point of family rupture in Perry Smith’s childhood and, years later, the home of his sister Barbara Johnson. The city connects an early separation from his mother with the investigation that eventually reached his remaining family.

A Childhood Departure

When Perry was six, his parents’ life on the rodeo circuit had ended. After his mother, Florence Buckskin, left his father and took the children, Perry repeatedly ran away in hopes of finding his father. The account places his mother’s departure for San Francisco within this family break, but does not locate the later institutions where Perry was sent in the city.

A Sister’s Home

Years later, Barbara Johnson lived with her family in a recently developed community in the hills north of San Francisco. Their conventional ranch house stood on a sloping street; a fenced garden behind it held a doghouse, sandbox, and swings for the children. The passage presents this domestic setting as Barbara’s home, linking the city to Perry’s sister and the family life she had established there.

The Inquiry Reaches San Francisco

On December 18, 1959, Barbara was preparing to receive neighborhood guests when Harold Nye and a San Francisco police inspector arrived instead. They told her that Kansas authorities had inquired about Perry, who had stopped reporting to his parole officer, and asked whether she knew where he was. The scene turns the city from a distant marker of the family’s past into a practical point in the search for Perry: investigators came to the sister whose address they could find, seeking information about a brother whose whereabouts were unknown.