Hickock and Smith Executed in Kansas

Apr. 14, 1965 - Richard Eugene Hickock (right) and Perry Edward Smith (left), partners in crime, died on the gallows at Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing early today for one of the bloodiest murders in Kansas Criminal annals.

It was almost 5½ years since their conviction of slaying Herbert Wesley Clutter, a wheat farmer, his wife, teenaged daughter, and son at the Clutter home west of Garden City, Kan., the night of Nov. 14, 1959.

Hickock had heard in prison that Mr. Clutter often handled $10,000 a day and kept big sums of money in the house on his farm in Holcomb. He and Smith got less than $50 in their raid on the Clutters, plus a radio and a pair of binoculars they pawned in Mexico City.

It was their fifth date with the executioner. Four others were reprieved.

Gov. William Avery, U.S. Dist. Judge George Templar of Topeka, and Associate Justice Byron White of the U.S. Supreme Court all turned down requests yesterday for a final stay of execution.

The two convicts requested a last meal of spiced shrimp, French fries, garlic bread, ice cream, and strawberries with whipped cream.

Hickock, when asked if he had any last words, requested to address the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents who had worked on his case and now were present as witnesses to his execution. Hickock told them he had “no hard feelings” toward them, shook each agent’s hand, and said, “Goodbye.”

Smith, addressing the media representatives in the room, declared: “Capital punishment is legally and morally wrong.”

The trap was sprung on Hickock at 12:19 a.m. in the corner of a dingy warehouse at the Penitentiary, and the 33-year-old instigator of the plot to rob and kill was pronounced dead at 12:41 a.m. Smith, his 36-year-old partner from Elko, Nev., was hung at 1:02 a.m. and pronounced dead at 1:19 a.m.

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