Perry Edward Smith

Perry Edward Smith (October 27, 1928 – April 14, 1965) was one of two career criminals convicted of murdering the four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, United States, on November 15, 1959, a crime that was made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.

Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and multiple murder at the Clutter family farmhouse.

Perry Edward Smith was born in Huntington, Nevada, a now-abandoned community in Elko County.

His parents, Florence Julia "Flo" Buckskin and John "Tex" Smith, were rodeo performers.

Sources conflict on whether Smith was of mixed Dutch and Shoshone ancestry (from his father's and mother's side, respectively) or Irish–Cherokee.

The family moved to Juneau, Alaska in 1929, where the elder Smith distilled bootleg whisky for a living.

Smith's father abused his wife and four children, and in 1935 his wife left him, taking the children with her to San Francisco, California.

Smith and his siblings were raised initially with their alcoholic mother, Flo.

After Flo died from choking on her own vomit when he was 13, he and his siblings were placed in a Catholic orphanage, where nuns allegedly abused him physically and emotionally for his lifelong problem of chronic bed wetting, a result of malnutrition.

He was also placed in a Salvation Army orphanage, where one of the caretakers allegedly tried to drown him.

In his adolescence, Smith reunited with his father, Tex, and together they lived an itinerant existence across much of the western United States.

Smith also spent time in different juvenile detention homes after joining a street gang and becoming involved in petty crime.

He joined the United States Army in 1948, where he served in the Korean War.

During his stint in the Army, Smith spent weeks at a time in the stockade for public carousing and fighting with Korean civilians and other soldiers.

In spite of his record, Smith received an honorable discharge in 1952 and was last stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Smith stayed with an Army friend for a time in the Tacoma area, where he was employed as a car painter.

With one of his first paychecks, Smith bought a motorcycle.

While riding, he lost control of the bike due to adverse weather conditions.

Smith nearly died in the accident and spent six months in a Bellingham hospital.

Because of the severe injuries, his legs were permanently disabled and he suffered chronic leg pains for the rest of his life.

To help control the pain, Smith consumed an excessive amount of aspirin.

Perry Smith was sentenced to 5-10 years for burglary and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution after robbing the Chandler Sales Barn in Phillipsburg, Kansas and escaping from jail.

Smith was on the run for over a year before eventually being caught in New York City and rejailed.

He served his sentence from 3/13/56 until 7/6/59 at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas, which is where he first met Richard Hickock.

Smith was eventually paroled, and the pair later resumed their acquaintance upon Hickock's release in November 1959.

Hickock allegedly wrote to Smith, imploring him to violate his parole by returning to Kansas to assist Hickock with a robbery he had been planning.

Smith claimed that his return was initially motivated not by meeting with Hickock, but by the chance to reunite with another former inmate, Willie-Jay, with whom he had developed an especially close bond while in prison; Smith soon discovered, however, that he had arrived in the Kansas City area just a few hours after Willie-Jay had left for the east coast.

Smith met with Hickock, and almost immediately the two set to work out Hickock's plan.

Driving west to Holcomb, they entered the Clutter home through an unlocked door late in the evening of November 14, 1959, whereupon they bound, gagged, and then murdered the four family members present: Herbert Clutter and his wife Bonnie, and their children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15.

Hickock later testified that he had gotten the idea to rob the Clutters after being told by former cellmate Floyd Wells, who had worked as a farmhand for the Clutters, that there was a safe in the family's house containing $10,000.

When they invaded the house, however, they discovered that there was no such safe.

Perry Smith and Dick Hickock only ended up with about $50 in cash, a pair of binoculars, and a Zenith transistor radio that belonged to Kenyon Clutter.

After six weeks at large, mostly spent idly roaming the country, Smith and Hickock were captured in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 30, 1959, following an extensive manhunt which extended into Mexico.

Smith admitted to cutting the throat of the father, Herbert Clutter, as well as shooting both Herbert and Kenyon Clutter in the head with a shotgun at close range.

Records show a dispute as to which of the two shot the women, Bonnie and Nancy Clutter.

Alvin Dewey, chief investigator of the Clutter family murders, testified at the trial that Hickock insisted in his confession that Smith performed all four killings; Smith, however, first confessed that Hickock killed the women, but refused to sign his confession, and later claimed to have shot them himself.

Although Smith's revised confession coincided with Hickock's initial statement, both Smith and Hickock refused to testify in court, leading to a lack of an official record detailing who killed the women.

In the mid-1960s, Tex moved to Cold Springs, Nevada, where he lived to the age of 92 before dying by suicide, distraught over poor health.

Two of Smith's siblings committed suicide as young adults, and the remaining sister eliminated any contact with him.

At age 16, Smith joined the United States Merchant Marine.