The Walkers' marriage certificate, which was reported stolen, had turned up among items given to Cliff Walker's niece by a relative in 2013. Read on to learn about the Walker Family Murders, who were found brutally murdered in their home on December 20, 1959. Christine asked Lucy if she could use their telephone. . She earned praise for securing confessions and for her enthusiasm and empathy. If you nenjoyed this story, please consider purchasing my book: Nordic Noir: 14 Unsolved True Crime Cases available now at Amazon. His sister's murder was never far from his mind. Myers asked, five rows of wrinkles amassing above his large blue eyes. . On a couch in an adjoining room was 15-year-old Kenyon Neal Clutter, bound, gagged and shot in the head. The order of killings of the family members down to the way they were killed. The list goes on. 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. In 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office began investigating possible links between the Walker family murders and Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickock, who had been convicted and executed for the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. 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. Hickocks former cellmate had worked for the Clutters, telling him that the father, Herb Clutter, kept a large amount of cash on the premises. The Walker family was laid to rest in Arcadia, Florida on December 22, 1959. In 2019, Clark was able to test the stain again. Boyer interviewed suspects in at least five other states. There is ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that Smith and Hickock may have been responsible for the Walker family murders. And if he didn't push for this, who would? Before she left the agency, McGath said, her supervisors declined her requests to do more genetic testing of the stain. Learn more about the murder scene by using the interactive graphic below. 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. Determined not to leave any witnesses, Smith cut Herb Clutters throat and then shot him. Im going to go over a few of the main suspects, then tell you a little bit about my own personal theory. Indeed, the Walker family killings are given several pages in In Cold Blood, the author dismissing any connection. McLeod also fell under suspicion. They werent valuable items: Cliffs pocket knife, his cigarettes, and most strangely, Christines beloved drum majorette uniform she was saving in a chest so her daughter Debbie could wear it one day. But I dont know. So, with that being said, I lean toward Stanley Mauck, the meter-reader. Clues found during the investigation included a bloody cowboy boot and a fingerprint on the handle of the bathtub faucet. The discovery was interesting as it would be unlikely that a stranger to the area would know the shed. Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders: With Beth Tedrow, Larry Welch, Kevin Bascue, Gwyneth Frack. (The Walkers and McLeods were both employed by the wealthy Palmer family, on whose ranch land they both lived.) 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. A similar circular print had been found in blood near Christine's body and at the Kansas scene. Maybe the killer was a relative who bore some grudge against the Walkers or simply wished to engage in his carnal fantasies. 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. Behind many closed doors, kerosene lamps and frying pans flew. Tooker had apparently gone out to dinner, then went to perform in the violin section of the West Coast Symphony Orchestra. First, he turned on "Gunsmoke" - their daily routine. Some thought he was in love with Christine. She wasnt accosted immediately as she entered her home. Cliffs cousin Elbert Walker came into town for no reason the day after the murders. In every direction McGath turned, she was met with blunders and blurred results, common problems in cold cases. What started as a robbery ended in the violent deaths of the mother, father, and two teenaged children. It seems likely that Debbie also somehow survived. Giasone wasn't sure why previous leaders didn't pursue additional testing 10 years ago. Capote's book detailing the Kansas crime would come out in 1966. Join Mike and Gibby for this 'Best Of' episode as they discuss the facts of the murders and walk through the various suspects. The case is unsolved as of February 2023. On December 19th, 1959, an entire family was found brutally murdered in Florida. 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. A lieutenant told him that Clark had presented the plan to the sheriff. 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. Elbert knew where the house was. One witness said that the taller of the two men "had a scratched-up face. Cliff and Jimmie were slumped in the corner, and upstairs, Debbie lay in a blood-filled bath. There was a bloody and discarded cowboy boot, a cellophane strip from a cigarette wrapper, and a fingerprint on the bathtub faucet. High among them: The killers made infamous in Truman Capote's true crime classic "In Cold Blood.". The public looked at Smith and Hickock as serious suspects for the Walker case, and their whereabouts at the time suggest that their involvement isnt impossible. Myers, 71, had pleaded for answers most of his life, sometimes dropping into the sheriff's office when the phone fell quiet. Worrying that the family had succumbed to a gas leak, he broke in . She settled in and smiled. A Miami Beach detective discovered that the day before the murders, the pair had checked in at a motel there, paying $18 for a week's stay. It was cold, but not expressly so, and he was headed to meet his friend and co-worker Cliff Walker to go hog hunting. Now her strokes had robbed her of articulation. "Do you realize, in December, it's going to be 64 years?". [2] Jimmie and Debbie were then murdered. The assailant covered little Debbies face with Jimmies hat and shot her in the head, failing to kill her. Theyd only been married for five years. The bodies were exhumed on December 18, 2012, but it wasnt until August of 2013 that results were officially announced. The following year, the mother of three would leave the agency to prioritize family. Could the two men behind the infamous Clutter family murders have killed the Walkers as well? They were arrested in Las Vegas in late December after the inmate who had told them about the safe tipped off police. Her captain, she said, wanted a DNA connection. Courtesy of Las Vegas Review-Journal Archive. "I'm interested foremost in the living cases, where there is a danger to the public or when someone is wrongfully convicted or where a victim is wanting to find an answer," said Hampikian, the DNA expert. But Myers observed that letting the case languish, passing it from one detective to another and failing to exhume Christine 15 years ago to obtain her DNA, as he and his sister had asked, had cost the agency more money and delayed the results. Just days before Christmas 1959, the Walker family was murdered in their small Sarasota County home, a case that became one of Sarasota's most notorious unsolved crimes. In Florida, several larger departments - including Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami-Dade - have such teams. In a 2014 email to her supervisors, McGath wrote: "It feels like there's been a negative cloud surrounding me in regards to the cold cases." This was a very odd thing to do. He caught a glimpse of Cliffs wife Christines feet on the floor, toes pointed toward the ceiling. But cold cases, too, pose a conundrum. Sadly, it never came. Months later in 2013, McGath was at her desk in Sarasota reading a report on the DNA from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. 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 . We saw the caution tape scene. 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. 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 detective picked up almost immediately, and Myers told him he wanted an update. Cliff Walker wanted to trade in the family car for a 1956 Chevrolet, a two-tone . He said what was thought to be sperm was more likely Christine's blood or skin cells. His hands were bound and his mouth was taped shut. 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. Their funding has helped to solve about 2,000 violent crimes, including killings by the Golden State Killer and the Boston Strangler. After the murder, rumors flew around that Christine was having an affair with Curtis McCall. Many justice experts recommend prioritizing cases where an arrest can be made. There in tiny Osprey, on the southern tip of the vast Palmer Ranch, the family's nearest neighbor was half a mile away. The Clutter murders were the topic of Truman Capote's 1965 best-selling true crime book In Cold Blood. McGath stopped calling Myers. Detectives had told the public to look out for suspects with cuts. It was hard to imagine, McGath often told Myers, in their sometimes meandering phone calls, that anyone wouldn't classify the men as suspects. interactive scene of 1959 walker family murders Comments: accident in st charles il yesterday 0 what year was the class of 2033 born th human allergic reaction to skunk spray kawai digital piano 250 By 2020, the rate was 54% - meaning more cases grow cold. Yes! An agency spokesperson declined to comment. how many kids does jason statham have . Meanwhile, Tooker was seen as a local pervert, having tried to kiss Christine in the past, and regularly making indecent propositions. McLeod passed a polygraph and was quickly eliminated in any case. ", But he never went to Kansas to interview Hickock and Smith. In the early hours of November 15, 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock entered the Clutter family home in Holcomb, Kansas. Perry Smith, left, and Richard Hickock were arrested in Las Vegas in connection with the November 15, 1959, murders of four members of the Clutter family in rural Kansas. But the killers, who had confessed to the Kansas murders, said they'd never been to Sarasota. They were seen a dozen times on the way. To have a theory was one thing; to have proof was another. Christine left a few minutes before 3:30, but Cliff had some chores to finish with Don. Neither of their children ever got an opportunity to go to school or play on a sports team, or kiss a person they loved. Arriving at the house when Christine was alone, she wouldnt have suspected their real intention. And he did move extraordinarily quickly. It did not match the semen at the scene. Ozie Youmans, who was married to Cliffs sister, made unwanted advances toward Christine on multiple occasions. 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. The infamous killers hanged for the murders of a Kansas family may have also been responsible for the deaths of another family in Florida. Somehow, they still made the smart decision to store the sample, in hopes of greater technology coming along. The house was dark as McLeod approached, but as he got closer, he saw a light flickering through the window. 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.". Six decades later, one morning last June, Pat Myers hobbled into the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office and sank into a seat across from a detective in a crisp white shirt. 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. [11] Hickock's and Smith's bodies were exhumed and DNA extracted. 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. The pair were among the many suspects given a polygraph which they both passed, being dismissed from the inquiry. More than half a dozen cuttings came from Christine's underwear alone, with multiple partial DNA samples detected, as well as a stain containing a single sperm cell. A cemetery posted a personal ad for a goose whose mate died. 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. All rights reserved. They listened as a fellow inmate bragged about a farmer who kept lots of cash in a safe. The actual cause of death is unknown, and she could have been shot in the bathtub. 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. 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. It doesnt seem like thats what happened to me. It sounds like his night could have been too busy to carry out the crimes. Kansas authorities stated that they would process the DNA samples with active cases taking higher priority, and that results would take "weeks or months. "[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. Here are 10 revelations from the series: 1. Christine, his half-sister, was dead - beaten, raped and shot with two different handguns. The sheriff had Hickock and Smith's pictures published on the front page of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Perry Edward Smith (October 27, 1928 - April 14, 1965) was one of two career criminals convicted of murdering the four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, United States, on November 15, 1959, a crime that was made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. Twenty-four-year-old Christine Walker was raped before being shot to death, while Christines husband Cliff, 25, and their children, three-year-old Jimmie and one-year-old Debbie, were all shot to death. He told a Sarasota newspaper reporter he relied on Kansas authorities to ask those questions. When she was well, Ella had vocally supported his efforts to find answers.