Richard Hickock
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Richard (Dick) Eugene Hickock (June 6, 1931 in Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas – April 14, 1965) was one of two ex-convicts who murdered the four members of the Herb Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959, a crime made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. Along with Perry Smith, Hickock initiated the home invasion of the Clutter family farmhouse.
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[edit] Biography
Along with Perry Smith, he murdered the Clutter Family: father Herbert Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their two children, 16-year-old Nancy and 15-year-old Kenyon. Novelist Truman Capote chronicled their crime in his book, "In Cold Blood" (1966).
Born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised on a local farm, Hickock came from a good, stable family. Following high school, he obtained work on the Santa Fe railroad, and shortly afterwards, married Carol Bryan. Together they had three sons. To earn more money, he became a mechanic for the Mark Buick Company. A 1950 car accident left him with a dislocated jaw that disfigured his face and left him unemployed. While still married, he fathered a child with another girl, Margaret Edna, and his wife promptly divorced him when she found out. Because he was unemployed, he wrote multiple bad checks and was given five years in Lansing Prison for fraud and burglary.
While in jail, he met Smith and the two became friends. Another inmate, Floyd Wells, told them about the Herb Clutter family, who supposedly kept a large sum of money in a safe at their isolated house near Holcomb, Kansas. Following their release from prison, on the evening of November 15, 1959, Smith and Hickock entered the Clutter house and at gunpoint demanded the money from the family safe. When informed that there was no money and no safe in the house, the two men tied up each person in separate rooms of the house for later questioning: Herb and Kenyon in the basement, Bonnie in her bedroom, and Nancy in her bedroom. They then shot the tied-up Clutters, one at a time. Perry would later confess to doing most of the killing. The murders were discovered the next morning, a Sunday, when family friends came over to the Clutter house to join them in going to church. When prison buddy Floyd Wells remembered Hickock telling him of his plans to kill the Clutters for their money he promptly informed the prison warden. Smith and Hickock were quickly found in a stolen car in Las Vegas and returned to Kansas for trial.
[edit] The murders
Hickock was captured in Las Vegas, Nevada in early January 1960. According to Capote, who interviewed Hickock and Smith extensively from the time they were returned to Kansas until their execution, Hickock enlisted Smith in the robbery because he did not want to leave witnesses, but thought himself incapable of killing. Hickock was impressed by Smith's (fabricated) story of killing a black man on impulse and thought he had found someone to do the dirty work for him.
Hickock first implicated Smith as responsible for all four murders, while Smith only admitted to cutting the throat of the father, Herbert Clutter, and to shooting both Herbert and Kenyon Clutter in the head with a shotgun at close range. Smith initially implicated Hickock as responsible for the murders of the women, Bonnie and Nancy Clutter. Alvin Dewey, the chief investigator of the murders, testified that Hickock insisted in his confession that Smith performed all the killings, while Smith first claimed Hickock killed the women, but later claimed to have shot them himself. Although Smith's revised confession coincided with Hickock's initial statement, Smith refused to testify in court (Hickock did the same) leading to a lack of an official record of who killed the women aside from Dewey's testimony outlining Hickock's confession, Smith's confession, and Smith's subsequent revision.
Hickock and Smith were executed by hanging on April 14, 1965 in Lansing, Kansas, after several appeals.
[edit] Film portrayals
Hickock was portrayed by Scott Wilson in the 1967 film version of In Cold Blood, by Anthony Edwards in the 1996 miniseries adaptation of the original film, by Mark Pellegrino in 2005's Capote and by Lee Pace in 2006's Infamous.
