Case Atlas🎲

← All cases

Clutter family murders

Also known as: In Cold Blood murders, Richard Hickock, Perry Smith

Active
1959–1959
Region
Holcomb, Kansas, USA
States
KS, NV
Kind
Mass
Status
Executed
Victims
4

Early on November 15, 1959, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15, were killed in their farmhouse outside Holcomb in western Kansas by Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, two recently paroled ex-convicts acting on a false tip that Herb Clutter kept a safe full of cash. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation traced the pair through a boot print, a stolen car and a tip from a prison inmate, and they were arrested in Las Vegas six weeks later. Convicted in Garden City and sentenced to death, they were hanged in 1965. Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" (1966) made the case world-famous.

Ask the Atlas about this case →

Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Timeline of locations

  1. November 15, 1959
    Clutter farmhouse, Holcomb (Crime scene, approximate area)

    All four were killed in the family's farmhouse just outside Holcomb. There was no safe; Herb Clutter paid his bills by check.

  2. December 30, 1959
    Arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada (Arrest, approximate area)

    Hickock and Smith were arrested in Las Vegas about six weeks after the murders.

  3. January 6, 1960
    Finney County Courthouse, Garden City (Court / trial)

    The two were held and tried in Garden City, convicted of four counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death in March 1960.

  4. April 14, 1965
    Kansas State Penitentiary (Lansing Correctional Facility) (Prison)

    Hickock and Smith were hanged at the state penitentiary near Lansing on April 14, 1965.

Watch, listen, read

Watch

  • In Cold Blood (film, 1967, Richard Brooks (Columbia Pictures))

Read

  • In Cold Blood (1966, Truman Capote (Random House))

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.