Richard Eugene Hickock (1931 - 1965)

Born 6 Jun 1931 in Kansas City, Wyandotte, Kansas, United States

Ancestors

Died 14 Apr 1965 at age 33 in Lansing, Leavenworth, Kansas, United States

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Biography

Early Life

Richard Eugene Hickock was born in Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas to farm worker parents, Walter Samuel Hickock 1901–1960, and Laura Oletha "Eunice" Hutsell 1901–1989.

He was a popular student with great intelligence and was an athlete at Olathe High School before head injuries from a serious automobile accident in 1950 left him disfigured, and resulted in his face being slightly lopsided and his eyes asymmetrical. Although he had wanted to attend college, his family lacked the means to provide this, so he went to work as a mechanic.

Census

1952, Kansas City, Kansas. ^[1]

Military

In jan 1953 Richard E Hickock enlisted into the Marine Corps. He was a Pvt. Enlisted Volunteer Reserve 9Th Mcrd, 1212 N Lake Shore Drive Chicago Ill ^[2]

An inmate photograph (1965) of Richard Hickock copied from his Kansas State Prison inmate file. Hickock and his accomplice, Perry Smith, were convicted of first degree murder for the brutal 1959 killings of Herb and Bonnie Clutter, their daughter, Nancy, and son, Kenyon, in Holcomb, Kansas. The murders inspired the true-crime novel "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. ^[3]

Richard was one of two ex-convicts who murdered four members of the Herbert 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 took part in the home invasion of the Clutter family farmhouse.

Richard Hickock was born in Kansas City, Kansas to farmworker parents. He was a popular student and athlete at Olathe High School before head injuries from a serious automobile accident in 1950 left him disfigured. Although he had wanted to attend college, his family lacked the means to provide this, so he went to work as a mechanic. He married, fathering three sons, then became involved in an extramarital affair, eventually ending his marriage to marry his mistress, which also ended in divorce. He turned to petty crimes, such as cheating and using fraudulent checks, to help make ends meet, and eventually landed in prison, where he met Smith and hatched his plan for robbery and murder.

He was also allegedly an ephebophile; according to Truman Capote in his account of the Clutter murders, In Cold Blood, having been prevented by his partner in crime, Smith, from raping 16-year-old Nancy Clutter during the crime in the Clutter home.

Hickock later testified that he and Smith had gotten the idea to rob the Clutters after Hickock was told, by former cellmate Floyd Wells, who had earlier worked as a farmhand for the Clutters, that there was a safe in the family's house containing $10,000 ($75,000 in today's dollars). When they invaded the house, however, they discovered that there was no such safe. The pair then murdered all four members of the family. Alvin Dewey, chief investigator in the case, testified at the trial that Hickock insisted in his confession that Smith performed all the killings; Smith, however, first claimed Hickock killed the women, but later claimed to have shot them himself. Both refused to testify.

Along with Smith, Hickock was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 30, 1959 for the Clutter family murders, for which they were both tried and found guilty. They both talked extensively to Capote when he was researching In Cold Blood.

Hickock and Smith were executed by hanging on April 14, 1965.

The bodies of the killers were exhumed December 18, 2012 from Mount Muncie Cemetery in Lansing, as authorities hope to solve a 53-year-old cold case using DNA. The two were questioned about the December 19, 1959 shooting murder in Osprey, Florida of Cliff and Christine Walker and their two young children. Smith and Hickock had fled to Florida after the Clutter murders. A polygraph administered at the time of their arrest in the Clutter case cleared them of the murder, but by modern polygraph standards, their test results are no longer considered valid. On December 19, 2012, officials in Kansas exhumed the bodies of Smith and Hickock and retrieved bone fragments in order to attempt to compare their DNA to semen found in the pants of Christine Walker.

Hickock was portrayed by Scott Wilson in the 1967 film adaptation of In Cold Blood, by Anthony Edwards in the 1996 TV miniseries adaptation, Mark Pellegrino in the 2005 film Capote, and by Lee Pace in the 2006 film Infamous.

Sources

1. ↑ Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, Kansas; Collection Name: Population Schedules and Statistical Rolls: Cities (1919-1961); Reel Number: 31984_254747
2. ↑ Muster Rolls of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1798-1892. Microfilm Publication T1118, 123 rolls. ARC ID: 922159. Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, Record Group 127; National Archives in Washington, D.C.
3. ↑ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/508836457871980268/

• http://www.crimearchives.net/1959_clutter/html/bios.html

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VR2G-WW5 : 26 July 2019), Richard Hickock in household of Walter S Hickock, Ward 3, Kansas City, Kansas City, Wyandotte, Kansas, United States; citing enumeration...

• Find A Grave, database and images (accessed 25 November 2019), memorial page for Richard Eugene Hickock (6 Jun 1931–14 Apr 1965), Find A Grave: Memorial #23006, citing Mount Muncie Cemetery, Lansing, Leavenworth County, Kansas, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave .

• Wikidata: Item Q371398