Dave Hickock never pulled the trigger of a gun or held a knife to murder another person, but he was sentenced to a lifetime of shame, ostracism, guilt, and psychological anguish because of the actions of one man-his brother. On November 15, 1959, Richard Hickock drove to a bus station in Kansas City and picked up Perry Smith, a prison buddy. Together, they drove to Emporia, Kansas, and purchased rubber gloves, nylon cord, and black stockings. Before day's end, four innocent members of the Clutter family in a town across the state of Kansas would have their throats slashed and Richard and his buddy would be arrested and charged with one of the most brutal and infamous murders ever. As the brother of a cold-blooded killer, Dave's life would never be the same. In this compelling narrative told to Linda LeBert-Corbello, Dave shares his journey from the depths of a family tragedy to how he eventually found the kind of inner-peace that accompanies acceptance of the truth and forgiveness. I do not just want to forget and live happily ever after. I want to be forgiven. -David Hickock

In the Shadow of My Brother's Cold Blood

As told to Linda LeBert-Corbello, PhD By David Hickock

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Linda LeBert-Corbello
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-1513-8

Chapter One

A Most Vile Murder

On that dreadful November 14, 1959, a Saturday, Dick informed my parents that he was going with a friend to assist him in finding his sister in Fort Scott. He casually mentioned that his return would be very late. My parents had no reason to doubt that he was going to do exactly that. Dick drove to the bus station in Kansas City and picked up Perry Smith, a prison buddy who had also recently been released from prison. They drove to Emporia, Kansas, and while there visited a variety store to select items they believed they needed for the evening's adventure.

What strange items they purchased for such a supposedly innocent trip! My brother and his friend purchased rubber gloves and a large amount of white nylon cord. They wanted to obtain black stockings to wear over their heads to make sure that they could not be identified, but decided against it because obtaining them proved to be problematic. These initial items would be utilized in a murder of four innocent people in a town across the state of Kansas by midnight.

After the arrests on December 30, 1959, Dick was very straightforward about the murders when Dad and I went to see him. He spoke about the crime in detail at the Garden City County Jail. The first statements Dick said to me regarding the murders were contradictory. His first words to Dad and me are embedded in my mind. He emphatically told us that all they had planned to do was rob the Clutter home. Yet, before he began his story I knew Dick had taken a gun with him and that he had invited a known killer to accompany him on his adventure.

He told us this: "I just wanted to rob that house. You just gotta believe me. An inmate from the prison told me that this Clutter guy in Holcomb had a safe in his house with a large amount of money in it, thousands and thousands of dollars. I brought the gun in case there were problems. I asked Perry Smith to come along because I knew he would pull the trigger if we needed to. Perry had told me he had killed before. Perry liked the idea of the money because he had some wild dreams of what he was going to do to spend the money."

Dick also stated to me more than once, "Dave, I don't know how it all changed so fast. I just wanted to rob the place. Perry actually threatened me. He just went crazy. I thought he would kill me too." These many years later I have come to realize I was listening to the words of a sociopath. The characteristic nature of a sociopath is that he can justify his irrational behavior with convincing words. I wanted to believe his words; that was the only hope I had left.

As I sat in the visiting area of the jail and listened to my brother's contradictory words and jumbled thoughts, I found it difficult to make any sense of what he was saying. I told Dick to slow down and go back slowly over the events of the night. I just did not want to believe my brother could possibly plan such an ordeal. He drew a deep breath and told me the following story, a story that should have erased all doubt.

"We drove to the Clutter home and did not even have to break in. The door was open and we just walked in. At first, I thought it was going to be an easy score just as I had planned. All I figured we had to do was find the safe, take the money, and get out of there. We would not need rope to tie anyone up after all. The problem was that we could not find a safe. We went searching through the house to find the Clutter man. After seeing Mr. Clutter for the first time, I felt a little bad. He was just an ordinary man. He was bent on not telling us where the safe was and he even offered to write us a check. Can you believe that guy, Dave? Write us a check! Once inside the Clutter home and being so frustrated because we could not find a safe, we tied up all members of the family. We tied the mother and daughter in their bedrooms. We took Mr. Clutter and the boy down to the basement and tied them up. Perry was especially good at tying the knots so the Clutters could not undo them. We taped their mouths so no one could scream."

As Dick told me his version of the evening's events my body became frozen with fear. All I could think about was the description I had in my mind about Herb Clutter. According to what the news reports said, this man was, as Dick commented, an ordinary man. He was like most men in that he worked hard and was raising a family in a decent manner. He was extraordinary, as we soon discovered, in that he was widely respected in the Holcomb community. He was a prominent member of the First Methodist Church. He was well known in the field of agriculture and served as a member of some kind of farm board. It seemed that everyone really respected Herb Clutter. Man, I kept thinking, why would anyone want to murder such a nice guy? As Dick talked about that night, I began to realize that my brother might just be a killer. My brother was definitely a part of the most horrendous crime of our day.

Dick continued his story by laying the blame on Perry Smith. He said: "Dave, Perry had used a knife to slash Mr. Clutter's neck. He told me to finish the job. I told him, `Man, I am not doing that to that old man!' Perry went berserk and screamed, `If you do not finish the job on the old man's neck, you will be next to have your neck slashed.' I was afraid not to listen to him."

Dick stated that he complied with the request, but mentioned that he was sure that Mr. Clutter was already dead. As I sat listening to Dick talk, I knew there was something totally insane about this story, but I could not pinpoint what it was. This was my brother was all I could think. I didn't know then that his words portrayed a sociopath's manner of thinking. He actually believed in his own innocence as he related the events of the evening.

In all the descriptions of the brutality of the shootings and the use of the knife to slash Mr. Clutter's neck, Dick claimed his innocence to me and to my parents until the very day he was to hang for his crimes. I wanted to believe him, but I knew deep down that he wasn't a reliable source of information. Dick promised us that he had nothing to do with the actual slayings. However, my family and I came to understand that Dick had masterminded the evil that ensued on November 15, 1959.

My brother had offered an invitation to Perry Smith to join him in what he called a robbery. He had placed a gun in the family car and was the driver of that car to the murder scene. By no means was my brother innocent or less guilty than Perry Smith. He was not just an accomplice. I now know that he was guilty ... just plain guilty. It has taken me all these years to look this monstrous ordeal in the face, and to try to decode all of the messages and decipher where reality and fantasy collide.

When I recount Dick's chilling conclusion to this tale, and even then as I listened to the information that Dick shared, I wondered who this man was that proceeded to share such sordid details. Could he really be my brother? Dick stated that in the brief moments after using the knife on Mr. Clutter, he told Perry that he would like to rape the Clutter daughter. Perry became very upset. In fact, Dick said that he thought that simple remark pushed Perry Smith over the edge. Dick explained that it was at this point that Smith went to the couch in the basement and shot the Clutter son and the father. He ran up the basement stairs, gun in hand, and began fatally shooting the other members of the Clutter family.

Dick told me without any shame of his cowardice. "Dave, I was afraid at that time that Perry was going to kill me, too. I didn't touch the Clutter daughter. After Perry shot everyone, we left, taking less than fifty dollars, a transistor radio, and a pair of binoculars from the Clutter family home. Man, were we feeling let down. We thought we were going to make a big score by robbing Clutter's safe." I could not believe what I was hearing. My brother was worried about "a big score" when he had just participated in the murder of four people.

I remember sitting in that jail and hearing those words and feeling stunned into disbelief. This was my brother. How in the world could he have been with such a weirdo, someone so violently dangerous? Then I would spend a moment or two thinking that maybe Dick was the weirdo. I sat in that jail thinking that my parents had made comments about Perry Smith before the murders. They had met him in a brief encounter and had commented that they did not think he was a good influence on Dick. They thought Perry had a strange way about him. He was just not a likeable guy. At least, this is how my parents perceived him.

Personally, I never met Perry. I did see him later in prison shortly before the execution when visiting my brother. He made a waving motion with his hand to me, but even then I knew there was something strangely sad and evil about him. I wondered if others felt the same way about Dick. I deeply wanted to blame everything that happened on Perry Smith, and because of this, I spent many years in denial.

As I tell this story, it breaks my heart to look this evil in the eye and admit that my brother was the mastermind, the catalyst, and a murderer in this horrifying chain of events. I doubt that there was much truth in the stories my brother told me, but there was much evidence that he was deranged. His justifications were only fragments of the harsh reality and indicative of a sociopath's attempt to provide justification.

Just exactly how gruesome were the murders? Gruesome beyond comprehension, just ghastly. How could a robbery turn into a bizarre event that captivated the attention of an entire nation? What was the real motive behind the events? Why was each family member bound in an inhuman manner? Why was each family member gagged? Why was each family member in a different part of the house? Did my brother and Perry have a need to separate the family members to make sure they could be in control of the situation? Did the family members struggle at all? Did they plead for mercy?

Investigators say there was no evidence that the Clutter family put up a struggle. If so, why not? These details may not seem important, but they are to me because I want to understand my brother. Many other questions remain unanswered. What I hope to do in this book is to answer some of the questions I raised through the choices I made and through my pitiful behavior following the murders that hurt my own family so much. I hope that by telling my story I can provide answers to my family and take a step toward redemption.

Chapter Two

Looking Back To Childhood

When one thinks of Kansas, a typical reaction is to think of Dorothy in the movie Wizard of Oz. While that is a delightful way to view the locale in which I lived as a child, I had nothing magical to return me to my peaceful and normal life after the tragic Clutter murders. The life I knew as serene and quite ordinary ceased to exist after the strange turn of events in 1959. The events left my parents and me utterly shattered in mind, soul, and spirit for the rest of our days. "Normal," "peaceful" and "sane" would be words that would elude all of us for a lifetime.

How does a person's life change so dramatically? I cannot believe even to this day how fast my life changed that winter. We went from being normal folks to people who were considered dangerous, vile, and perhaps evil. I still remember the sick feeling I would get in my stomach when I realized that I was connected to one of the most evil and horrific crimes of the century. I was no angel by any means, but I would never have harmed anyone in the world. It was not in my nature to do so.

After all the publicity surrounding the crime and I was judged guilty by association with my brother, my mind continued to reel from the heartache and pain. I lacked control of the events following the murders. Confused, I could not fully comprehend what was happening. I was constantly at a loss for words, hiding from people and their dreadful reactions to the Hickock name.

Ours was a simple story that began with the typical small town American experience in the 1950s. I had both a mother and father in my home. How they loved one another was evident in the way in which they lived. They were not fancy folk. They were not poor folk. They were not rich folk. They were ordinary in every sense of the word. The relationship they shared was one that focused on family, their sons, and the beautiful pastoral setting of farm life in Kansas. They taught my brother and me the joy of living off the land, the beauty of nature, and the rewards of working and playing hard.

My dad, Walter Samuel Hickock, was a reflection of his own honest red-haired German-speaking mother, who believed in the importance and the strength of family. He was not a particularly religious individual, but he was a dedicated, hard-working mechanic and auto body repair technician who made a decent living for his family. He took great pride in being noted as one of the best auto body repair persons in the business. My mom, Eunice, was an attractive woman. She dedicated her time to being a homemaker and to her efforts in her Christian beliefs. If she could have driven a car, she would have attended her Methodist church every day. She had a great longing for spiritual peace, and she reflected this peace in our lives.

During my parents' early years together, my dad had tried a number of jobs in order to provide for his family. We lived in Kansas City before moving in 1946 to Edgerton, Kansas, a town located forty miles away. The move to Edgerton was a direct result of the realization on my dad's part that he wanted more peace in his life. He thought that perhaps in Edgerton he could find the peace that he had experienced in childhood. I have heard that people often return to their roots. Perhaps this is what my dad was trying to do when he began searching for the perfect country property for his family. He enlisted the assistance of Miles Stephens, a lawyer in Kansas City, who was a man of color with integrity and high respectability, to complete the necessary transactions and paperwork. Dad very seldom needed the assistance of a lawyer. Little did he realize that Miles Stephens would be a source of reference in a future time of great distress.

The property in Edgerton was picturesque and thickly wooded. I will never forget the first time Dad brought us to see our new family place. It seemed like a forest to us. There was no road and a lush stand of trees blocked any kind of passage into the property. On that first trip, I remember the summer beauty of the property. It was as though the sun was shining on our happiness. Both Mom and Dad were pleased to secure their own farmland and embark on a new way of living.

Mom and Dad had birthed four sons: Richard Eugene Hickock, a set of twins that died at birth, and me, Walter David Hickock. Dad believed the land would provide a place of residence as well as income and recreation for the family. The land consisted of forty-four acres without any structures, not even a family dwelling. Before building a home, Dad enlisted our help to clear trees in order to complete a road into the property. We were taught every cost-saving technique in our work at fashioning a homestead. For instance, we recovered stones from the stream that was on the property and hand-carried them to the entrance of the property. After securing a large number of stones, the county workers were asked to crush our stones, so we could have gravel for the road that would lead to our home. They willingly complied and thus we had a graveled passageway to the area in which we were to build.

The memory of our first residence makes me smile as I fondly remember Dad's efforts at "putting a roof over our heads." Upon moving the family to the new homestead, a tent was set up to establish living quarters for the family while the farm home was being built. While that may seem like a strange thing to do today, my dad was an independent man. He wanted to build his own house and live off the land. He definitely accomplished that goal. Living in the tent prior to the actual building of the house was somewhat of an adventure. Curtains formed partitions between our beds. Canvas was put on our bedding to keep it dry. We lived in the tent for about three months or so. It must have been very difficult on my mom since she was a city girl, but I never once heard her complain.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from In the Shadow of My Brother's Cold Bloodby David Hickock Copyright © 2010 by Linda LeBert-Corbello. Excerpted by permission.
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