Sheriff Hefner’s killing is a remembered 1920 murder that gives the later Clutter investigation a local history of violence. In Sadie Truitt’s account, the sheriff rode out to question Walter Tunif, a ranch worker suspected of criminal activity; Tunif killed him, fled, and was killed by a posse the next morning. The episode is presented not as a mystery to solve but as a grim precedent preserved in community memory.

Background and Recollection

As the Clutter case unsettles Holcomb, the narrative notes that the Clutters were not the first people murdered in Finney County or even in Holcomb. Older residents still remembered the so-called Hefner Slaying, more than forty years earlier. Sadie Truitt, a septuagenarian mail messenger regarded as an authority on the affair, recounts it as a story familiar to the small community. Her account carries the marks of oral history: a specific date and place, a chain of reported suspicions, and a rapid sequence of violence and pursuit handed down as local memory.

The Killing and Pursuit

The killing took place on August 3, 1920. Tunif was working at the Finnup ranch and had a car that was later discovered to be stolen; he was also an AWOL soldier from Fort Bliss, Texas. Suspicions had gathered around him. The sheriff rode to the ranch to put straightforward questions to him, and Tunif shot him. He escaped east along the river on one of the Finnup horses. Word spread, and men from the surrounding area formed a posse. By the following morning they had caught Tunif, whom the posse killed.

Place in the Narrative

The episode compresses a whole cycle of suspicion, pursuit, and communal retaliation into a brief remembered account. Its swift ending contrasts with the uncertainty surrounding the Clutter murders, which remain the immediate concern of the investigation. By placing the older killing within the history of Holcomb and Finney County, the narrative shows that the community’s fear has a past, even as the Clutter case presents a new crime whose perpetrators and circumstances are not yet known.