15) Tony von Carruthers: In February of 1994, Tony shot his mother, her teenage associate, and his drug dealer in the Memphis area. The pair shot and killed Herbert Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and two of their children in . Myers had grown up around people devastated by the family's deaths, relatives who also made trips over the years to the sheriff's office, who visited Christine's and Cliff's graves and held them close. ", But he never went to Kansas to interview Hickock and Smith. [10], The Sheriff's Office admitted that Hickock and Smith had been considered suspects as far back as 1960. Some were also bludgeoned . That motive has to be discounted in the Walker family case. Some families, she knew, played their traumas over and over 50 or 60 years later. Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and multiple murder at the Clutter . 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. 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. Whether they were already in the house or Christine let them in is unknown for sure, but it seems likely the reason the family car was in a different location is that somebody else had parked in the family spot. "Go ahead, dig her up," Myers told him, for a second time. Giasone wasn't sure why previous leaders didn't pursue additional testing 10 years ago. Equally, Smith prevented Hickock from carrying out a rape at the Clutter Farm, whereas Christine was assaulted before her execution. Herbert and Bonnie, and their children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15, died from shotgun blasts to the head. Myers felt like he was ricocheting between theories, like a pinball. The Walker family of Osprey, Florida, included father Cliff (25 years old), mother Christine (24 years old), a son named Jimmie (three years old), and a daughter named Debbie (two . The Clutter murders and subsequent investigation were documented in Truman Capote's true crime novel, In Cold Blood. And the DNA from Christine's underwear, the report concluded, wasn't theirs. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Meanwhile, the head of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation told a reporter that, had he been facing a similar situation, "I'd have had an investigator down here weeks ago.". McGath stopped calling Myers. 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. Homicide detectives often are told to work on older cases when they have time. As it turned out, the tests exposed contamination at the lab. Entering, she wasnt attacked straight away and had enough time to store the groceries before she was ambushed by the assailant or assailants. Myers was 7 when a neighbor burst into his living room to announce what she'd heard on the radio. interactive scene of 1959 walker family murders. [6] The case remains open. Only partial DNA could be retrieved, possibly due to degradations of the DNA samples over the decades or contamination in storage, making the outcome one of uncertainty (neither proving nor disproving the involvement of Smith and Hickock). 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. They were shot one by one. Having McLeod take a few polygraphs was the extent of officials investigation of him in the fifties and sixties. interactive scene of 1959 walker family murders. He kept making unwanted advances, and eventually Christine told her husband about her fear. The Walkers and their two toddlers were murdered on December 19, 1959 in Osprey, Florida. Spencer actually got a lot of things right in his confession, so at first listen, authorities thought it must be true. Near her lay the bodies of Cliff and their three-year-old son Jimmie. The house was dark as McLeod approached, but as he got closer, he saw a light flickering through the window. He said what was thought to be sperm was more likely Christine's blood or skin cells. Last Updated On: November 20th, 2019. Instead, it was parked a cars width to one side, possibly indicating that another car was parked in her usual spot when she arrived. There were still gifts underneath the Christmas tree. He was seeking permission to exhume her from her grave. "And that doesn't work," said Ryan Backmann, who started Project: Cold Case in Jacksonville in 2015 to document unsolved cases and support other families after his father's murder went unsolved. Meanwhile, Tooker was seen as a local pervert, having tried to kiss Christine in the past, and regularly making indecent propositions. McCall underwent three separate polygraph tests, and during each one, the suspect was so nervous that they all ended inconclusively. It seems likely that Debbie also somehow survived. Will genealogy sites help solve cold cases? They likely had been comparing their suspects all these years to Christine herself. The killer put two more bullets in the back of the childs skull. 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 the night of the murders, at least seven men had been fishing at a nearby creek. His sister's murder was never far from his mind. 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. Safe house. Her voice even sounded different. The . To have a theory was one thing; to have proof was another. He said the agency remains committed, however long it takes. In 2019, Clark was able to test the stain again. Florida analysts spent the equivalent of 44 full lab days that first year poring over evidence, making 2,920 fingerprint comparisons and conducting ballistics tests on more than 75 guns. 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. In Florida, several larger departments - including Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami-Dade - have such teams. Knowing they were seen throughout the state looking for work, investigators have theorized that the duo bumped into the Walker family and got talking or simply contacted them, either way under the pretense that they were planning on selling the vehicle. At the time of the murders, the Walkers had been thinking about buying a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, and this was the same car that Smith and Hickock had stolen back in Kansas, using it during their flight across the country. On December 19, 1959, the entire Walker family was brutally murdered in their home in Osprey, Florida. The infamous killers hanged for the murders of a Kansas family may have also been responsible for the deaths of another family in Florida. On December 19th, 1959: The entire Walker Family was shot to death as the suspect left the home, Christine walker was home at the time of the attack to fight off her attackers as police believe that she was raped and shot, her husband; Cliff Walker was also shot as he came home along with their three year old son Jimmie and Debbie, who was two years old was drowned in the family's bathtub. 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. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. On November 15, 1959, Richard Hickock, 28, and Perry Smith, 31, slipped through an unlocked door into Herb and Bonnie Clutter's house and cut the phone lines. Elbert had also previously made advances toward Christine, and family members thought the grief shown was fake, the suspect fainting twice at the funeral. He just wanted someone to write it in a report, to confirm it, to put it to rest. A while later, Cliff and the children were invited to stay at the McLeods for dinner, but he declined, wanting to get home to his wife. When they were arrested, they had a pocket knife similar to the one described as missing from Cliff Walkers body. Perhaps a secret lover had been spurned. But depending on what time he went to dinner, its possible that he was unaccounted for during the time of the massacre. He'd made a promise. The actual cause of death is unknown, and she could have been shot in the bathtub. 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. "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. He'd met Ella, now 68, on the school bus and proposed to her over the lunch table in high school. The Walker family and the utter family. As she organized boxes of witness statements, ballistics reports and crime scene photographs into an 8,000-page digital record, more clues - and gaps - emerged. 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. We saw the caution tape scene. From grisly serial killers to unsolved mysteries, True Crime Detective is the place. The house located in Osprey Florida was rent free for the Walkers in exchange for the hard, honest work Cliff did on the large Palmer Ranch. The other two main suspects that people usually bring up are Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who were hanged for the murder of the Clutter familya crime that occured just weeks before the Walker massacre. At another, the cowboy test drove a Hudson Jet. There is ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that Smith and Hickock may have been responsible for the Walker family murders. The Walkers' wood frame cottage stood plain and white, surrounded by pasture land and hardwood forest. Months later in 2013, McGath was at her desk in Sarasota reading a report on the DNA from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Cliff was shot in the face immediately, followed by Jimmie, the young boy eating a lollipop hed been bought as a treat. But McGath's supervisors shut down her efforts to gather the men's boots from Kansas. They were seen a dozen times on the way. So unfortunately, we can't really tell anything from these DNA results. "Let me say this, Mr. Myers," Clark said. (Staff Photo by BILLY HEFTON . The notes for the planned book ran to 8,000 pages. The floors were soaked with their blood. By Leonora Lapeter Anton, Tampa Bay Times, February 6, 2023 / 12:00 PM Sign up for The Lineups newsletter and get the creepiest cases delivered straight to your inbox. In the early hours of November 15, 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock entered the Clutter family home in Holcomb, Kansas. Murderpedia. He had initially believed the family had simply slept in, amused as his friend was also known to be a habitual early riser. Capt. Still, it's a shame that the DNA test was inconclusive, because "Smith and Hickock did it" wasn't a terrible theory. Christine drove home first that afternoon. 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. He wore paja mas. The day before, the Walker family had driven into nearby Sarasota to run errands. In 2010, however, over 50 years after the crime, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office took another crack at the Walker family murders case. Keep in mind that over 500 suspects have been questioned since 1959. Perry Smith, 31, and Richard Hickock, 28, met as petty thieves serving time at the Kansas State Penitentiary. Why kill the children unless the perpetrator had been recognizable? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkZUtJDbwn8. And in Kansas, authorities had been focused on the Clutters, an agency spokeswoman said, and they have no evidence that officers interrogated the killers about the Walkers. Afterward, he left the bodies in the house and left the scene. In every direction McGath turned, she was met with blunders and blurred results, common problems in cold cases. She had no hard feelings, she said, but wished the sheriff's office had allowed her to keep pursuing the men. My bus unfortunately had no choice but to go on that street. https://t.co/zyzLrUZLRB. 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. The discovery was interesting as it would be unlikely that a stranger to the area would know the shed. After killing four members of the Clutter family in Kansas, 34 days before the Walker murders, Smith and Hickock fled to Florida in a stolen car, and were spotted at least a dozen times between Tallahassee and Miami. Such killings the extermination of an entire family don't happen every day, but they're not so statistically rare as . Theyd only been married for five years. He realized something must be wrong in the house and took the decision to enter, cutting through the screen door. However, for one Florida family, the Christmas season became a nightmare.. 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. Due to the passage of time, only partial samples could be retrieved from the bodies, and these could not be matched to samples taken from the Walker home. Peering through the windows, there was a very dim light on inside. 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. 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. Now Myers related to McGath what he'd heard from Clark: Though not a conclusive match, Tooker could not be discounted. 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. And what appeared to be a bloody fingerprint on the family's faucet apparently did not match either man. These days McGath, 52, works with rescue horses and writes books. 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. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Then she was taken to Jimmies bedroom and raped on the bed before being shot with a .22 firearm. "However," the release said, "DNA testing seems unlikely to provide conclusive evidence one way or the other.". Another is that it might have been someone she knew and voluntarily let in. 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. There was a store, a gas station, a firehouse, a bank, a post office and little all else. 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 .

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