Myers asked, five rows of wrinkles amassing above his large blue eyes. Authorities acted on a lead that connected the 1959 murder of the Walker family with an earlierand much more famouscrime: the slaying of the Clutter family, the very case thatinspired Truman Capotes groundbreaking book, In Cold Blood. He dove deep on the murders in 2019, the same year he closed about two-thirds of his 130 cases. "Let me say this, Mr. Myers," Clark said. While police officially believe that Smith and Hickock remain the best suspects in the cold case, its worth noting that the marriage license was eventually returned to the family when a relative included it in items that were given to Cliff Walkers niece. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Some try to blame the attack on Christine. Christines high school majorette uniform was gone, as was Cliffs pocketknife. Despite this, many still believe that Hickock and Smith are the most likely suspects in the slaying. It would be arguably the most significant true-crime work of all time, In Cold Blood. When officers arrived, Herb Clutter, 48, lay sprawled on a mattress in the basement, stabbed, his throat slashed and a shotgun charge fired to his head. Clark, 41, was the latest of a dozen investigators to examine the cold case. She wasnt accosted immediately as she entered her home. Sign up for The Lineups newsletter and get the creepiest cases delivered straight to your inbox. Just a few months after the massacre, bloody clothing from the Walker home was uncovered in a shed not far away. In December of 2012, it was announced that Smith and Hickocks bodies would be exhumed to match their DNA to semen samples taken from Christine back in 1959. The day before, the Walker family had driven into nearby Sarasota to run errands. But I dont know. Out of bullets, he took her to the bathroom, where he had filled the tub. When she was well, Ella had vocally supported his efforts to find answers. His hands were bound and his mouth was taped shut. Still, it's a shame that the DNA test was inconclusive, because "Smith and Hickock did it" wasn't a terrible theory. Why not this family of four, too? Days later, he received a return call. 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. Unfortunately, the results proved inconclusive. Daniel McLeod rose at his ranch and began to set about his day. Don met the deputies at a local grocery and led them to the horrifying scene. For example, in 1994, a woman called the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office and claimed to be a bartender in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Her voice even sounded different. As he saw his own health slipping, he felt the weight of that vow. He told Myers, if he could get the OK, he was still after a true copy of Christine's DNA. Working at the scene, police began to search the home for evidence and soon discovered that items were missing; some of them seem quite bizarre. That had never been clear, McGath replied. A ranch worker for the Palmer Ranch, McLeod started his morning by getting ready, and then travelling to the home of his coworker Cliff Walker. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. The detective persuaded officials to dig up the bodies last December in Kansas, where Smith and Hickock murdered the Clutter family in 1959 one month before the Walker slaying and were . Boyer interviewed suspects in at least five other states. Kansas authorities stated that they would process the DNA samples with active cases taking higher priority, and that results would take "weeks or months. The Wilbur Tooker theory also holds some merit, but theres just no real evidence for it. At the second, the killers took personal things related to Christine, namely her high school majorette uniform and marriage license. One of them had a scratched face. 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. Brandon Clark done, since they'd met a year and a half earlier, to solve the murder of his sister? In 2010, however, over 50 years after the crime, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office took another crack at the Walker family murders case. It was time to give Clark, the Sarasota detective, another nudge. Ozie Youmans, who was married to Cliffs sister, made unwanted advances toward Christine on multiple occasions. At the same time, DNA analysis has become more exact, especially in the past two decades, with testing that once required a million cells now potentially able to identify someone with a single cell, said DNA expert Greg Hampikian, director of the Idaho Innocence Project and a biology professor at Boise State University. DNA has failed to connect two men featured in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood to the 1959 murders of a family of four in Osprey, but relatives still think all the evidence points to notorious killers. The following year, the mother of three would leave the agency to prioritize family. We saw the caution tape scene. There was a bloody and discarded cowboy boot, a cellophane strip from a cigarette wrapper, and a fingerprint on the bathtub faucet. Capote personally thought it was unlikely that the two were responsible for the Walker murders. 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's important to keep that in perspective.". Wilbur Tooker, a neighbor of the Walkers, was thought to have an obsession with her. ; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may . Smith stopped his friend from raping Nancy first but was likely responsible for pulling the trigger on all four killings. Now, Myers asked her, "What I don't get is, how did they get in the house with the dogs sitting there?" Sarasota Sheriff Ross E. Boyer believed he was searching for someone local. 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. [7] Spencer's confession was "determined to be cleverly constructed from real murders written up in newspapers and true-crime novels that he liked to read. [6], A serial killer named Emmett Monroe Spencer confessed to the murders, but the confession was discredited by Sarasota County Sheriff Ross Boyer, who labeled Spencer a pathological liar. She earned praise for securing confessions and for her enthusiasm and empathy. Unlike Sheriff Boyer decades before her, she thought there was something to the men of "In Cold Blood.". No one had documented the wrapping paper, and the minister was long dead. She told him he had already spoken to the murderer, someone with a face scar who "wore glasses. Don McLeod got up at 5:30am on December 20th, 1959 in Osprey, Florida and headed over to his friend Cliff Walker's place so they could go out together to hunt wild hogs. In any case, a family was wiped out in the most terrible circumstance, and the killings remain yet another dark and unsolved stain in Floridas long and inglorious criminal history. Christmas 1959 was supposed to follow this tradition. Cliff was ambushed and killed by gunshot. Sarasota Police sent out county deputies to investigate. Christine lay barefoot, bruised and bloody, her pink flowered dress pulled up, her slips and petticoats in a muddle. They are also the main suspects for the massacre of the Walker family in Florida a month after the Clutter murders. Blood evidence suggests that he wasnt killed by the first bullet and that the assailant continued to shoot at him while he crawled over to be next to his fathers body. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation lab had pulled partial DNA from the men's femurs and teeth. That's when she noticed that the supposed suspect's DNA was remarkably similar to Christine's own incomplete DNA sequence, gathered from her dress. Meanwhile, Tooker was seen as a local pervert, having tried to kiss Christine in the past, and regularly making indecent propositions. . From grisly serial killers to unsolved mysteries, True Crime Detective is the place. Could those dolls have been for Debbie? A blonde hair was found in Christines dress, and neither Smith nor Hickock were blonde. On December 20th, 1959 Don McLeod, a coworker and friend of Cliff Walker, arrived at the Walker home at sunrise to pick up Cliff for hog hunting trip they had planned. Since 2004, multiple detectives had sought answers in DNA. On the night of the murders, at least seven men had been fishing at a nearby creek. A chilling account of two murders with multiple victims. (The Walkers and McLeods were both employed by the wealthy Palmer family, on whose ranch land they both lived.) On December 19, 1959, Christine and Cliff Walker and their two children were murdered at their home in Osprey, Florida. Myers felt like he was ricocheting between theories, like a pinball. Some authorities were positive he was the perpetrator, and throughout the history of this case, he was a favorite suspect for many, although his window of time to commit the crime was small. The Walkers and their two toddlers were murdered on December 19, 1959 in Osprey, Florida. Smith owned black engineer boots with a Cat's Paw rubber cushion sole, featuring circular pads, a little smaller than a quarter. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 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. But they both knew that DNA had so far muddled the picture. Alongside the items missing, there was also a significant amount of evidence left at the scene by the culprit. A neighbor had observed him in the area the afternoon of the murders. This was such a young family. They likely had been comparing their suspects all these years to Christine herself. However, in 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office once again began to . Authorities believe that 24-year-old Christine Walker arrived at the family's farm home around 4pm on Saturday, December 19, 1959, where she was raped, then murdered by gunshot. After killing the Clutter family, Hickock and Smith fled to Florida in a stolen car, where they bought items from a department store in Sarasota, just a few miles away from the Walker home, on the very day that the Walkers were killed. Its hard to ignore the fact that he was connected to another mass murder and confessed to having homicidal thoughts. Authorities acted on a lead that connected the 1959 murder of the Walker family with an earlierand much more famouscrime: the slaying of the Clutter family, the very case that inspired Truman Capote's groundbreaking book, In Cold Blood. Even the worst fears of his imagination couldnt have prepared him for the carnage that greeted him. Described as wild, he was violent and boisterous when drunk, many believing him to be mentally unwell. In her final report in 2013, McGath said she believed there was enough circumstantial evidence to tie Hickock and Smith to the Walker murders. The doubt, the what-ifs, kept at him like a jackhammer. Alex Murdaugh sentenced to life in prison for murders of wife and son, Biden had cancerous skin lesion removed last month, doctor says, White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes kicked out of CPAC, Tom Sizemore, actor known for "Saving Private Ryan" and "Heat," dies at 61, Biden team readies new advisory panel ahead of expected reelection bid, At least 10 dead after winter storm slams South, Midwest, House Democrats unhappy with White House handling of D.C.'s new criminal code. Some fingerprints and shoe prints were found on the property, but even more contamination was revealed when one of the boot prints was proven to have come from a county-issued sheriffs deputy boot. First, he turned on "Gunsmoke" - their daily routine. McLeod later stated that it was odd . Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and multiple murder at the Clutter . Christine was likely still struggling at this point as the first bullet barely grazed her. On Nov. 15, 1959, the Clutter family home was the scene of an unforgettable tragedy. After the slaughter at the Clutter family farm, the duo had stolen a car and began to make their way to Florida, headed for Miami. They were arrested in Las Vegas in late December after the inmate who had told them about the safe tipped off police. The Clutter case bore eerie similarities to the Walker case: both were quadruple homicides, with both parents and two children slaughtered (the Clutters other children escaped the violence because they were not home at the time). Smith and Hickock had recently been released from the Kansas State Penitentiary. Having McLeod take a few polygraphs was the extent of officials investigation of him in the fifties and sixties. "I've got mothers calling me who want to get their sons out of prison. Maybe the killer was a relative who bore some grudge against the Walkers or simply wished to engage in his carnal fantasies. 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. But Jimmie didnt die. Eyewitnesses have placed men matching their description in Sarasota that day. Myers, 71, had pleaded for answers most of his life, sometimes dropping into the sheriff's office when the phone fell quiet. There were still gifts underneath the Christmas tree. Authorities believe that 24-year-old Christine Walker arrived at the family's farm home around 4pm on Saturday, December 19, 1959, where she was raped, then murdered by gunshot. Im going to go over a few of the main suspects, then tell you a little bit about my own personal theory. https://t.co/zyzLrUZLRB. "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. The Clutter family, along with their assailants, have become infamous over the years. But like other detectives, he had to handle them alongside other investigations. He wore paja mas. www.dailymail.co.uk. McGath had also considered Wilbur Tooker, Clark's favored suspect and the Walkers' closest neighbor, the one pushy with Christine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkZUtJDbwn8. And Pat promised her he would make sure to keep it alive, to fight for a resolution. "The morning of the murders all bus drivers were told to avoid that street due to the caution tape scene. 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. 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. Several problems. Not long afterward, Cliff also returned home with Jimmie and Debbie. There is ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that Smith and Hickock may have been responsible for the Walker family murders. In all, hundreds of suspects were interviewed and given polygraphs. Finding out who had murdered Christine had consumed his family for decades, and now, with many of them dead or far-flung, it had fallen on him to keep up the pressure. The slaying of . With the DNA testing in shambles, McGath turned to boot prints. This site uses cookies to improve user experience. She had no hard feelings, she said, but wished the sheriff's office had allowed her to keep pursuing the men. One or two days prior, a man said they had asked to fix his bent fender for money, and a gas station owner said they'd asked about auto paint shops. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkZUtJDbwn8. In 2010, however, over 50 years after the crime, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office took another crack at the Walker family murders case. Cliff and the kids followed a half hour later in his work Jeep. Near her lay the bodies of Cliff and their three-year-old son Jimmie. Cliff and Don went hunting, while Christine and Dons wife Lucy stayed behind with the children. In He went on a killing spree in 1959, confessing after his capture. She found it interesting that a car the Walkers were test-driving resembled the 1956 Chevy Bel Air the men had stolen in Kansas and driven to Florida. "[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. Yet, the test showed that he was highly likely lying when asked if hed withheld information. I am a freelance long-form writer who writes on true crime, politics, history and more. Police are said to have investigated Butchs father, but never even spoke to Butch. And he did move extraordinarily quickly. The best chance to solve a decades-old quadruple murder in Florida ended Tuesday when sheriff's deputies said they could not link DNA to the two killers profiled in the book "In Cold Blood." The . Smith, a drifter from Nevada, had been placed in an orphanage at age 13 after his mother, an alcoholic, choked on her vomit. However, the best suspect at the time was possibly Curtis McCall, a man described as a troublemaker with a history of violence. The order of killings of the family members down to the way they were killed. What started as a robbery ended in the violent deaths of the mother, father, and two teenaged children. He still spoke with the previous detective, who remained convinced Capote's killers were responsible. He realized something must be wrong in the house and took the decision to enter, cutting through the screen door. While a polygraph test appeared to clear them of the Walker murders, at least one expert has asserted that polygraph machines of the early 1960s were notoriously inaccurate. Perry Smith in the army. A family of four was killed in Florida five weeks after the murder of the Kansas family featured in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood.More than six decades later, a brother fights for answers. He told the Sarasota Journal at least four people said they had seen the men, including a saleswoman at W.T. Before she left the agency, McGath said, her supervisors declined her requests to do more genetic testing of the stain. Local gossip was that McCall was engaged in an affair with Christine Walker, and he was known to own a .22-caliber gun. 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. [1] Her husband Cliff, 25, then arrived with their 3-year-old son Jimmie and 1-year-old daughter Debbie. Christine had grown up in one of those households. The notorious "Bloody Benders" were a German immigrant family who owned both a general store and small inn in the early 1870s in Labette County . Now, Clark was telling Myers, as he had several times before, that his suspicions lay elsewhere. He'd had an alibi for most of the evening, she explained. The bodies of the two men executed for the 1959 murders of a Kansas family that became infamous in Truman Capote's true-crime book In Cold Blood were exhumed Tuesday in an effort to solve slayings of a Florida family killed weeks later. Still, Kansas and Florida investigators have contended that there are flaws in the account, with some witnesses standing against the alibi. Within hours, a crush of cars crawled down the shell road just to see where the family had lived. Some thought he was in love with Christine. It doesnt seem like thats what happened to me. I also want to get Early Bird Books newsletter featuring book deals, recommendations, and giveaways. When arrested in Las Vegas, McGath found, Smith was carrying a pocket knife similar to one missing from Cliff's pocket. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. "Go ahead, dig her up," Myers told him, for a second time. After lunch, they went to the McLeods. All were shot in the head. Some were also bludgeoned . Many people at the time thought Christine dressed too provocatively, and because of that, was likely cheating on her husband.(?!?) All four were bound and gagged as the search continued. Truman Capotes wildly popular book In Cold Blood was written about the crime, and is considered the first real true crime novel. At another, the cowboy test drove a Hudson Jet. He told a Sarasota newspaper reporter he relied on Kansas authorities to ask those questions. In the end, though, the couple drove back, pausing at the ranch barn to pick up cattle feed. The name "Dardeen" resonates with the residents of Ina, Southern Illinois, who think back to a gruesome quadruple murder that took place in their sleepy hamlet in the late 1980s. McLeod knocked at the front door, getting increasingly louder as he became more alarmed at the lack of response. No child had been spared. The next morning, McLeod dropped by to go hog hunting with Cliff. December 20, 1959, was seemingly an ordinary morning in Osprey, Florida. Many justice experts recommend prioritizing cases where an arrest can be made. Despite these clues, and despite upward of 500 suspects over the years, the case could not be solved. . He had no criminal record. "The challenges of a case from that long ago you're bound by what was done in 1959," Giasone said. Not to mention this type of slut-shaming and victim-blaming has prevented real justice in our system for generations. The first person worth talking about is Don McLeod, the man who found the bodies. He just wanted someone to write it in a report, to confirm it, to put it to rest. The entire Walker family was dead, all murdered, including the children. ", But he never went to Kansas to interview Hickock and Smith. Their funding has helped to solve about 2,000 violent crimes, including killings by the Golden State Killer and the Boston Strangler. With a little investigation, however, it was determined that so much information had been leaked to the media that any civilian could have that kind of knowledge of the crime. What is the value of solving an older crime versus a newer one? McGath's recommendations at this time.". He discovered the grisly scene. 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. Hopes of solving 1959 quadruple murder cold case are dashed as police fail to connect 'In Cold Blood' killers with slain Florida family. While the killers were still at large, legendary writer Truman Capote learned of the killings and decided to write about the slaughter, traveling to Kansas alongside childhood friend Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mocking Bird. A lieutenant told him that Clark had presented the plan to the sheriff. Even after Christine married, authorities documented instances of half a dozen men propositioning her, patting her on the rear, grabbing her, trying to kiss her, especially when they had been drinking, which was often. The Walkers' wood frame cottage stood plain and white, surrounded by pasture land and hardwood forest. The year before, she had convinced a judge in Kansas to exhume the remains of Hickock and Smith to see if their DNA matched an unknown profile in Christine's underwear. 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. The only information we have about Christines romantic life comes from tabloids, so we should obviously take this with a grain of salt. McLeod also fell under suspicion. Jimmie was shot, and Debbie was shot in addition to being drowned in the bathtub. She had time to hang up her purse and start putting the groceries away. Hickock and Smith confessed to the murders of the Clutter family, for which they were hanged in April of 1965. Months later in 2013, McGath was at her desk in Sarasota reading a report on the DNA from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. The files tell the story of a murder mystery that changed a community and continues today. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock are notorious as the perpetrators of one of the most grisly mass murders of the 20th century: the slaying of four members of the Clutter Family in Kansas in 1959. "It's basically a great mess," McGath said. Cliff was 25. And the DNA from Christine's underwear, the report concluded, wasn't theirs. 15) Tony von Carruthers: In February of 1994, Tony shot his mother, her teenage associate, and his drug dealer in the Memphis area. Sixteen stents kept his heart pumping, another five expanded veins in his legs.
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