On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He said what was thought to be sperm was more likely Christine's blood or skin cells. In a recent interview, retired Sarasota Lt. Dario Valente recalled speaking with one of Boyer's chief investigators, who told him that while one of the Kansas killers denied the Walker murders, another confessed. And if he didn't push for this, who would? A day after they were sentenced to death, Hickock and Smith answered questions about the Florida murders while strapped to a mid-century lie detector test. It is said that he complained to psychiatrists about homicidal tendencies. In a 2020 email, a spokesperson responded to a question about whether the agency was seeking boot testing this way: "We are not pursuing any of Det. Peering through the windows, there was a very dim light on inside. Either before or after Cliff and the children arrivedits unclear whichthe attacker forced Christine into Jimmies room, where she was raped and shot in the head. Myers felt like he was ricocheting between theories, like a pinball. She had never been able to fully put the case aside. She settled in and smiled. Arriving at the house when Christine was alone, she wouldnt have suspected their real intention. McLeod also fell under suspicion. "You get an arrest occasionally. Baby Debbie, they found in the bathtub, facedown in 4 inches of water, also shot in the head. Both had relatively minor items stolen. After six decades, several police agencies had destroyed or misplaced evidence connected to the Walkers. Three-year-old Jimmie entered the house at the same time as his father and was also shot. One of Cliff's cousins also aroused suspicion after he grew hysterical outside the Walker gate upon learning of the deaths and fainted at the funeral. It was among Florida's oldest unsolved crimes on record, notorious for its brutality, as well as for a pool of suspects that numbered over 600. She was at Myers' home when he spoke with the detective on the phone. Many people at the time thought Christine dressed too provocatively, and because of that, was likely cheating on her husband.(?!?) This line of investigation stopped when police confirmed that he wasnt even in Florida on the day of the Walker murders. Perry Smith, 31, and Richard Hickock, 28, met as petty thieves serving time at the Kansas State Penitentiary. "I put a lot of faith in that," said Ron Albritton, a retired Sarasota detective and distant cousin of Cliff's who oversaw the inquiry through the 1980s and 90s. Or maybe it was a home invasion that, for a second time, ended in slaughter. She said one of her regular customers had got drunk at the bar one night and began crying, saying that he had killed some people in Osprey, Florida, when he was a young man and mentioned the name Walker. She believed he did occasional work about town and was a gun enthusiast. It is therefore believed that Smith and Hickock may have gained entry to the Walker home on the pretense of selling their car. He had initially believed the family had simply slept in, amused as his friend was also known to be a habitual early riser. Smith owned black engineer boots with a Cat's Paw rubber cushion sole, featuring circular pads, a little smaller than a quarter. Reconstructing events, police ascertained that the family had been out running errands and believe that Christine arrived home first, around 4pm on Saturday, December 19. He confessed to everything, even crimes with which he was obviously uninvolved. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. In February of 2018, DNA testing found that Smith did not provide the semen at the Walker crime scene. He dove deep on the murders in 2019, the same year he closed about two-thirds of his 130 cases. 15) Tony von Carruthers: In February of 1994, Tony shot his mother, her teenage associate, and his drug dealer in the Memphis area. Brandon Clark. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement had lost an early semen sample from Christine's underwear. Authorities suspected the pair of murderingthe Walkers as well, but could never secure acharge after Hickock and Smith werecleared by the results of a polygraph test. Her captain, she said, wanted a DNA connection. "The challenges of a case from that long ago you're bound by what was done in 1959," Giasone said. And Pat promised her he would make sure to keep it alive, to fight for a resolution. They are also the main suspects for the massacre of the Walker family in Florida a month after the Clutter murders. Spencer actually got a lot of things right in his confession, so at first listen, authorities thought it must be true. Hickocks former cellmate had worked for the Clutters, telling him that the father, Herb Clutter, kept a large amount of cash on the premises. Police said 77-year-old Glen Samuel McCurley was in custody Tuesday in connection with the 1974 murder of Carla Jan Walker, who was 17-years-old when she was abducted, held captive and sexually . She had time to hang up her purse and start putting the groceries away. He discovered the grisly scene. Christine drove home first that afternoon. He meant that agency officials didn't want to expose their bungling and lack of commitment. Now, Clark was telling Myers, as he had several times before, that his suspicions lay elsewhere. "Do you realize, in December, it's going to be 64 years?". The folks at the gas station told him the Walkers were dead, and they took him to the house where he fell apart. He cried as he told his story. "The morning of the murders all bus drivers were told to avoid that street due to the caution tape scene. But Jimmie didnt die. This was such a young family. On December 19th, 1959, an entire family was found brutally murdered in Florida. He caught a glimpse of Cliffs wife Christines feet on the floor, toes pointed toward the ceiling. The police heard about what had happened by around 5:45 that morning. Writing on true crime, mysteries, politics, history, popular culture, and more. After committing the "In Cold Blood" murder of Herbert Clutter, his wife and two children on Nov. 15, 1959, Smith and Hickock hit the road, hiding out from law enforcement in Mexico and Florida . The conclusions drawn from the existing evidence are astonishing but probable . Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and multiple murder at the Clutter . Wilbur Tooker, a neighbor of the Walkers, was thought to have an obsession with her. What started as a robbery ended in the violent deaths of the mother, father, and two teenaged children. The assailant covered little Debbies face with Jimmies hat and shot her in the head, failing to kill her. Officers found, beneath the car seat, a toddler shirt and a pink jacket that could have matched Christine's dress, as well as an Army gas can and burlap bags that could have come from Cliff's military-style Jeep. "[12], In August 2013, the Sarasota County Sheriff's office announced they were unable to find a match between the DNA of either Perry Smith or Richard Hickock with the samples in the Walker family murder. They were shot one by one. Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders: With Beth Tedrow, Larry Welch, Kevin Bascue, Gwyneth Frack. Myers leaned forward and rested his arms, sun-splotched from decades overseeing orange groves, on the table. This site uses cookies to improve user experience. On November 15, 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock broke into the home of Hetb and Bonnie Clutter in a failed robbery that ended up with the brutal murder. However, its possible that the police already had the killers in custody. Though he is thought to have committed several murders, he was only actually convicted of one. Christmas is usually a time of good cheer, good food, and good times spent with family. However, based on the personal items that were stolen, Katherine Ramsland, of the University of Pennsylvania, finds Smith and Hickock unlikely and instead suspects that the killer knew at least one member of the Walker family. www.dailymail.co.uk. Unlike Sheriff Boyer decades before her, she thought there was something to the men of "In Cold Blood.". He used to live there. As he saw his own health slipping, he felt the weight of that vow. But the killers, who had confessed to the Kansas murders, said they'd never been to Sarasota. Smith and Hickock had recently been released from the Kansas State Penitentiary. He'd lied to Novella before she died in 2021. They had decided to unearth Christine from her grave in the next month. The husband was stabbed, while the wife was raped and shot. Christine had grown up in one of those households. After calling out and making further attempts to ascertain the problem, Daniel looked further around the property. Now the killer turned to Debbie and shot her too. Unfortunately, the results proved inconclusive. However, most unusually, the couples marriage license had been stolen, leading some to suspect that perhaps an old fame of Christines had come to carry out an act of terrible revenge on the young husband and wife. This story is based on more than 8,000 pages of records, most from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, but also the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and archives of the Sarasota Journal, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times. Despite what Capote asserted at the time, subsequent investigations have since revealed holes in Hickock and Smiths alibis, and some experts have asserted that polygraph tests of the era were notoriously unreliable. From grisly serial killers to unsolved mysteries, True Crime Detective is the place. Together, they interviewed hundreds of locals and the investigators working on the case. But like other detectives, he had to handle them alongside other investigations. Since 2004, multiple detectives had sought answers in DNA. Capote personally thought it was unlikely that the two were responsible for the Walker murders. A special was scrawled on the chalkboard: half a barbecue chicken and two sides for $7.95. Capote was obsessed with the case of the . With Hickock and Smith long dead and now reburied, though, its likely their connection to the Walker murders will remain strictly hypothetical. Dick Hickocks body was too degraded to get a sample, which is unfortunate, because if they were the perpetrators, it is most likely that he would have been the rapist. This didnt alarm Christine, and logically, the occupant of that car was then known to her, letting them in before being attacked. ; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may . Don McLeod got up at 5:30am on December 20th, 1959 in Osprey, Florida and headed over to his friend Cliff Walkers place so they could go out together to hunt wild hogs. He told Myers, if he could get the OK, he was still after a true copy of Christine's DNA. Now Myers related to McGath what he'd heard from Clark: Though not a conclusive match, Tooker could not be discounted. Clues found during the investigation included a bloody cowboy boot and a fingerprint on the handle of the bathtub faucet. Unsolved murder of two parents and two children in Osprey, Florida, "Did 'In Cold Blood' murderers kill Florida family, too? Christine, 24, bubbly and spirited, hung back with McLeod's wife. All were shot in the head. The killer put two more bullets in the back of the childs skull. COLD BLOODED: THE CLUTTER FAMILY MURDERS is a docuseries that focuses on the crime that shocked the nation - the 1959 brutal murder of four members of the Clutter family. In mid-September, Myers clenched his jaw as he lifted his wife with a gait belt, transferring her from wheelchair to recliner at their modest home. In 2010, however, over 50 years after the crime, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office took another crack at the Walker family murders case. It's important to keep that in perspective.". Cliff and another ranch hand, Don McLeod, headed off to hunt. Emmett Monroe Spencer was a multi-murderer who was captured some time after the Walker massacre. 1959 murder case. They found nothing. "I always looked at the Walker case as 'Keep looking,' because it's not Hickock and Smith.". But he told police he had seen the Walkers' neighbor, Wilbur Tooker, at their house at least two dozen times. This page was last edited on 9 February 2023, at 12:07 (UTC). The bodies were exhumed on December 18, 2012, but it wasnt until August of 2013 that results were officially announced. Christine had a lot of admirers. Detectives had told the public to look out for suspects with cuts. But she was inactivating the case until new testing or evidence could advance it. A boat crashes at a bridge near Parris Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, on February 24, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach, according to the South Carolina Attorney General in documents . But within weeks, Sheriff Boyer's attention turned - for a while - to two other suspects accused of murdering a family 1,600 miles away in a Kansas farm town of 270 called Holcomb. One assumption is that he was already waiting for her when she got there and that he was the one who was parked in her usual spot. The order of killings of the family members down to the way they were killed. A chilling account of two murders with multiple victims. Determined not to leave any witnesses, Smith cut Herb Clutters throat and then shot him. On Nov. 15, 1959, the Clutter family home was the scene of an unforgettable tragedy. Christmas 1959 was supposed to follow this tradition. McLeod later stated that it was odd . Police hope genealogy sites will help solve more cold cases, Colombia wants to deport "cocaine hippos" to stop them from multiplying, Alex Murdaugh found guilty of murders of wife and son, How a tragic boating crash is connected to the family of Alex Murdaugh, killers made infamous in Truman Capote's true crime classic "In Cold Blood. December 19, 1959 was no doubt a day like any other in Osprey, FL. "Behind every good woman, there's a good man," he said, as he filled her cup. Wilburs alibi doesnt start until after the murders. Richard Eugene "Dick" Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were a team of mass murderers, family annihilators, and robbers responsible for the massacre of the Clutter family after their attempted robbery went astray in 1959. The Wilbur Tooker theory also holds some merit, but theres just no real evidence for it. But the next morning, they vanished. Sixteen stents kept his heart pumping, another five expanded veins in his legs. There in tiny Osprey, on the southern tip of the vast Palmer Ranch, the family's nearest neighbor was half a mile away. The case wasnt a priority, and it would be August of 2013 before the results came in. interactive scene of 1959 walker family murdersgriffin park demolishedgriffin park demolished McGath stopped calling Myers. These polygraph machines were outrageously unreliable and werent administered by experts, but DNA eliminated all suspicion when they tested the semen in 2005 and McLeod didnt match. Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019. Safe house. It sounds like his night could have been too busy to carry out the crimes. In the end, though, the couple drove back, pausing at the ranch barn to pick up cattle feed. Smith, a drifter from Nevada, had been placed in an orphanage at age 13 after his mother, an alcoholic, choked on her vomit. "I think we're closer now than we've ever been.". He then took them to Rose Hill Cemetery and proceeded to bury them all alive. Such killings the extermination of an entire family don't happen every day, but they're not so statistically rare as . Truman Capote devoted several pages of In Cold Blood to the murder of the Walkers, but ultimately, concluded that Hickock and Smith couldnt have been the killers, as they had alibis. This case has possible ties to the famous Clutter family murder that occurred in Kansas . Sign up for The Lineups newsletter and get the creepiest cases delivered straight to your inbox. He and his sister, Novella Cascarella, had spoken with the agency more than 15 years ago about exhuming Christine. At some point the assailant moved her body to the living room and made attempts to clean up the scene. She sifted through thousands of pages, looking for the original DNA test of Christine's underwear that had detected a male suspect - a result detectives had leaned on for years. Yes! [1] Her husband Cliff, 25, then arrived with their 3-year-old son Jimmie and 1-year-old daughter Debbie. The murder is of particular note because it potentially involved the suspects of the murders that inspired the creative non-fiction novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. [6], In December 2012, Sarasota County investigators announced they were seeking an order to exhume Smith's and Hickock's bodies from Mount Muncie Cemetery, in the hopes that mitochondrial DNA extracted from their bones could be matched to semen found at the Walker home. Capt. However, in 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office once again began to look into a possible link, having originally considered them suspects as early as 1960 around the time of their arrest. Out of bullets, he took her to the bathroom, where he had filled the tub. By Leonora Lapeter Anton, Tampa Bay Times, February 6, 2023 / 12:00 PM 1959. No one had documented the wrapping paper, and the minister was long dead. Somehow, they still made the smart decision to store the sample, in hopes of greater technology coming along. "[5] The pair was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 30, 1959, for the Clutter murders, and were executed by hanging on April 14, 1965. Maybe the killer was a relative who bore some grudge against the Walkers or simply wished to engage in his carnal fantasies. We saw the caution tape scene. According to the sheriffs department, the Walkers had been considering buying a car of the exact make and model that Hickock and Smith had stolen. [5], According to Sheriff's records, the Walkers had been considering buying a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, the same kind of stolen car that Smith and Hickock were driving through Florida. Arriving in Miami Beach, the pair was located just four hours away from the Walker family home and checked out of their motel the morning of the killings. The crime, seemingly without motive, would later be chronicled in Truman Capote's seminal book, In Cold Blood. Not long afterward, Cliff also returned home with Jimmie and Debbie. The list goes on. When Don discovered the bodies of the Walker family, he was heartbroken and terrified. Please enter valid email address to continue. Some suspect Stanley Mauck, the man who read the meters for the Walker residence, as he was the same meter reader who serviced the home of another recently murdered family. He said the agency remains committed, however long it takes. It seems almost sure that there was more than one attacker, with forensic evidence discovering a dark-colored hair in the bathroom and a long blonde hair inside Christine Walkers dress. The actual cause of death is unknown, and she could have been shot in the bathtub. Capote had insisted that the pair had an alibi for the time of the killings. "It was them, the 'In Cold Blood' killers," he'd said. But the police stopped investigating him after he passed a polygraph.