The Walker Family Murders Pt. Two

Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the Walker family murders. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up and what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, the Walker family murders took place in the small town of Osprey, Florida, in December of nineteen fifty nine, just a few days before Christmas. The two parents were named Cliff and Christine Walker, and they had a three year old son named Jimmy and

his twenty three month old daughter named Debbie. And what happened is that on one day they were visiting like a friend of theirs named the Mclouds, who worked as a rancher on a different property, and Christine drove back to the house first in the family car, while Cliff left the residence in his jeep with the two children because he had to pick up some feed. And it

seems like they arrived within twenty to thirty minutes of each other. But when the mcclouds went to the residence the following day, they found out that they had all been murdered. They'd been shot several times and Christine had been sexually assaulted, and a few items had been stolen from the home, but it did not appear that robbery was the primary motive, and that this was a personal crime, possibly from someone who had a thing for Christine. They looked

over a number of different suspects. One of them was a sixty five year old man named Wilburt took Her, who had been a letch towards Christine in the past, had inappropriately touched her and tried to kiss her while visiting her home on a couple of prior occasions. There was a cousin named of Cliffs named Curtis McCall, who was rumored to have had an affair once with Christine,

but this can never be conclusively proven. But in the past decade, the most promising suspects have been Perry Smith and Richard Hickcock, who were responsible for the Clutter family murders, which took place in Kansas in November of nineteen fifty nine and where the subject of the true crime book in Cold Blood.

Smith and Hiccock were executed in nineteen sixty five, and thus far they've been unable to find any conclusive evidence to tie them to the murders, though it's believed that the two men were in Florida while they were on the run as wanted fugitives on the date that the murders took place. They have made attempts to exhume the bodies of both men for DNA testing, but the results have

only been inconclusive. But it turns out that they've recently discovered that Christine's DNA has actually mixed up with the Killers DNA, which was found in seamen in Christine's underwear, So it seems likely that cross contamination has occurred, and they were doing new testing to see if they can separate Christine's DNA with the Killers DNA so they can do some proper testing because a lot of suspects who have

been ruled out in other years, it's possible that this is completely meaningless because the DNA was contaminated. So it's been sixty five years and they're still actively investigating it, but thus far they've been unable to conclusively link the crime to

any of the known suspects. So I mentioned in our last episode that I originally covered this case on the Trail went cold in December of twenty nineteen, but in recent years, cold case investigators have come to the disappointing conclusion that a DNA sample taken from seamen found on Christine Walker's underwear wound up being contaminated and contained traces of Christine's own DNA. So while DNA testing has been used to rule out a number of suspects over the years, those results may now

be meaningless. And that includes the testing which has been performed on the remains of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who are the most high profile suspects in this case. As you might recall, only a week and a half after the Walker family murders took place, Smith and Hickock were captured for committing the Clutter family murders and eventually executed for the crime. So if you believe they

were the guilty parties in this case, then justice ultimately prevailed. I first became familiar with the Walker murders in twenty twelve when a number of articles came out about the attempts to link this crime to Smith and Hickock. I mean, even though In Cold Blood is one of the most famous true crime books ever written, Truman Capoti only spents a few paragraphs talking about the Walker murders. So even if you've read the book, it's easy to forget this case

was even mentioned. Of course, whenever a cold case has some sort of link to another famous crime, it's very tempting to try and link them together. But this connection is pretty compelling. If Smith and Hickcock were not involved, then it would be one hell of a coincidence if the murderers of a family from Kansas just happened to be in the same county in Florida on the

exact same date that an entirely different family was murdered under similar circumstances. I definitely think there are interesting arguments both for and against the theory that Smith and Hiccock were the perpetrators, but I'll talk more about that later on. The idea that the DNA is mixed really throws a rent in this whole case, because it really does call into question all of the people who had been interviewed

and ruled out earlier in the investigation. Remember, five hundred and eighty seven people upwards towards six hundred people were suspects in this case at one point, and they were working off information that wasn't accurate. You had a mixed DNA sample, you had a fingerprint, that really ended up being a palm print. There were a lot of other issues, like was Christine assaulted or not, and so I believe a lot of those challenges put this case into a

perspective where it's very difficult to get to the truth. And obviously they wouldn't have been thinking about DNA testing back in nineteen fifty nine and when they finally started using that as an option. I know that a couple of the suspects were tested and ruled out, but we have other suspects who are who have been dead a long time or their current whereabouts are unknown, and we don't even know if they're still alive. So not everyone has been tested, so

there are just so many unanswered questions. Well, Smith and Hincock are compelling suspects. They were strangers just passing through the area, but some details of the crime suggest that the perpetrator knew the Walker family personally and may have had an infatuation with Christine. One particularly odd detail is that Jimmy's cowboy hat was apparently put on Debbie's head before the killer shot her, almost as if he

couldn't bear to look directly at her face. While he did this, The two murdered children were only three years and twenty three months old, respectively, so they were not going to be reliable witnesses if they were left alive. But if they knew the shooter and could potentially recognize him, he may have felt the need to kill them to avoid being identified. Believe that when the killer showed up at the Walker residence that day, they may not have originally

planned on killing anyone. He may have intended to make advances towards Christine. I can believe that when the killer showed up at the Walker residence that day, they may not have originally planned on killing anyone. He may have intended to make advances towards Christine, but when she resisted him and fought him off,

things turned violent. Interestingly enough, while the murder weapon was never found, at least two friends of the Walker family seemed to recall at least two friends of the Walker family seemed to recall that Christine kept a twenty two caliber pistol on a shelf inside the closet in Jimmy's bedroom. If this is true, then maybe it was Christine who grabbed the gun in an attempt to defend herself before the killer took it away from her. This would explain why the

first shot, which grays Christine's head, took place in the bedroom. But if the killer did not even bring their own gun, then this supports the idea that this crime was not premeditated and there doesn't seem to be a lot of planning that did go into it other than just showing up. Because you do have the clothes of Christine and her husband. The bloody clothes are found in a shed about a mile away from the house, so the killer was

using things in the home to clean up. There was a quilt used in the house to clean up Christine's body, and so it does seem like he's just reaching and grabbing things in the home to use, including that hat that

he puts over the baby's face before shooting her and then drowning her. So it is very possible that this person was there for Christine and ended up having to you know, felt cornered and felt trapped, became enraged something that triggered him to go from trying to make an advance to then murdering an entire family.

Yeah, the evidence showed that the killer made an attempt to clean up the blood, so perhaps He was originally intending to take Christine's body away from the scene in order to dispose of it, but since Cliff and the children arrived home, he wound up killing them too. If Smith and Hickock were the perpetrators, it seems very odd that they would attempt to clean up the

murder scene, given that they were just passing through the area. However, if the killer was a local resident, they may have felt more compelled to cover their tracks. We know that Christine returned home about twenty to thirty minutes before Cliff and the two children, who likely walked in during or after the attack on her. It seemed significant that the family car was not parked outside the house in its usual spot, which implies that someone else had already arrived

and was waiting there when Christine returned home. The fact that the groceries were put away implies that Christine likely invited the perpetrator into the house and was going about a regular household business before she was attacked. Quite a bit of gossip about Christine circulated throughout the community following the murders, as she had caught the eye of a number of local men, and there were rumors she may have

been conducted a secret affair, though that was never conclusively proven. But it's very plausible that the killer's infatuation with Christine may have been the motive for this crime. I think they had to know this family. Again, Remember they're out on this again. They're out on this several thousands of acres of property

and they live two and a half miles down a dirt road. I just feel like between Christine's outfit going missing that was hidden in her wooden trunk, the baby's face being covered, Christine being raped, someone pulling into the house, and Christine not being scared enough to just shoot them on site or anything like that. She's putting groceries away most likely with this person talking to her. It seems like it's someone very personal to the family, both in Christine's

behavior and in the behavior of the killer themselves. They knew the area. It seems like they had an emotional connection to the individuals that they killed, and that they knew that those children were going to be able to identify them

because they were so intimately close to them. Okay, can I set up like an alternate scenario with Smith and Hickcock, for sure, say they meet the family, the Walker family, and they're out somewhere, say at a diner, at a convenience store, at the used car lot, and they set up a time to go back to the Walker residents meet them and you know, trade cars. They get the address, they find out where this is. They get directions either from the Walkers themselves or from somebody else locally.

This could explain why, if they did indeed do this, they'd been seen with the Walkers, so that may explain why they wanted to have the cleaning up of the blood of the crime scene. Okay, so they go in and they meet Christine, and Christine allows them in. You know, they put away the groceries, and at that point Hiccock would take Christine and

sexually assault her. And maybe this time Smith can't stop him. Because they've been on the run for a month, they're a lot more desperate than they were prior, so I'm sure that he could be acting like a feral animal at this point. The I mean, already, what they'd done to the

Clutters was absolutely abhorrent. It was cold blooded, it was it was disgusting, and it insults everything that is human in all of us to think that somebody is capable of just so flippantly annihilating an entire family like they were nothing. But if Christine is being sexually assaulted, it's hard for me to believe that somebody like took her would be allowed in while she puts away her groceries.

But these two, if they were putting it on that they wanted to trade vehicles, she might see them as non threatening, and then she might say, oh, yeah, like, my husband will be home in this amount of time casually before she's attacked. So they might have an idea of how long they have and maybe they thought that they could just attack her and leave. But then Cliff came back. And if you got two people, if Hickock is sexually assaulting Christine, you could have Smith by the door waiting

for Cliff and the children to arrive. And I could see that maybe Hiccock has killed the others and he told Smith, well, you have to kill

Debbie. He already seems like the more sympathetic of the two. I could see a scenario where it didn't matter if you knew a twenty three month old young girl, you may still have a problem with killing her, and so putting the cowboy hat over her face could have made it easier for him, given that he seems to be the one with slightly more compassion, given that we know that he wouldn't allow Hickock to rape the sixteen year old girl at

the scene with the Clutter family murders, So maybe it's just a scenario where he just isn't okay with killing a small child. So that's also true. Yeah, all that's very possible. I mean, they killed two teenagers in the Clutter family, but they were fifteen and sixteen, and that's still a far cry from killing a three year old and a twenty three month old.

So I could think that even hardened killers like them might have an issue with it, which is why they went to the trouble of covering Debbie's face with the cowboy hat. About the drum major erette costume. They could have just been going through chess and looking for things that could have been of value and maybe just say Hiccock, for example, could have spotted that and maybe he

wanted to take it as some sort of trophy. That is true, like it's not going to have a lot of value for selling it, but if he wanted a memento of the crime, I could see him holding on to it, though we have to mention that it was never found, so if he took it as a memento, he did not have it on him when

he was arrested. So now we're going to talk about potential suspects. One of the biggest criticisms about the original investigation is it some suspects, including Perry Smith and Richard Hiccock, were initially ruled out strictly because they passed lie detector tests. Of course, nowadays we all know the polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, but law enforcement put a lot more stock into their result sixty five years ago.

Now, some of the people who passed polygraphs, including Don McLoud and Cliff's cousin Albert Walker, voluntarily submitted to DNA testing decades later and were excluded. Though since the DNA evidence was contaminated, I guess we could no longer say with one hundred percent certainty that they didn't do it. But there are other potential suspects who have never had their DNA taken, either because they are

dead or their current whereabouts are unknown. It took several decades for DNA samples to be taken from the descendants of Wilbert took her, who was the Walker's nearest neighbor, and passed away a few years after the crime took place. On the surface, he does seem like a compelling suspect, since he seemed obsessed with Christine and even showed up at the walker residence on more than one

occasion and tried to kiss Christine when her husband wasn't there. It's interesting that some of the Walker's clothing, which the killer likely used to wipe blood off themselves, was found in a shed about a mile from the residence. This suggests that they may have been familiar with the area, and since took her lived nearby, he may have known the shed was an ideal place to dispose

of evidence. He's by far my favorite suspect at this point. I feel like he wanted Christine, and Christine was saying no, and the husband was aggressive and already had threatened him and pulled him aside and said, don't you dare come to our house. So if he had tried to make another attempt and knew that the husband was coming home, it's possible that he was armed and ready, like he's waiting to go ahead and execute the husband when he

comes back in after he had already taken what he wanted. The only thing that would be surprising about that is that Tooker doesn't seem like the kind of person that would make her comfortable enough to be putting the groceries up and things like that nature where she seems so comfortable with the person who had come into

her home. Yeah, now I'm going to talk about the reasons why Tucker doesn't seem like a promising suspect, even though there are some things that point towards him, because in a way, the fact that Tooker had a prior history of lecturous advances towards Christine almost makes them a more unlikely suspect. Like you just said, since Christine had enough time to enter the house and put away the groceries, she probably invited the killer inside and was comfortable enough having

him around while she did this. But the last time took Her was there, he tried to kiss Christine, and this made Cliff so angry that he warned took Her not to come around the house again. So I have by doubts that Christine would have willingly invited him inside. I know Tooker's whereabouts could not be accounted for between four and five pm that afternoon, before he went

out to dinner with a friend. But I'm not sure the lack of alibi is all that troubling when you consider that Tooker's whereabouts after five o'clock are pretty well accounted for. Remember, the Walker residence was located in a pretty remote area, and Cliff and the children are believed to have gotten home at around

four thirty or so. Sarasota was located about ten miles away, So what Tooker really have had enough time to murder the family, clean himself off, meet up with his friend, and then spend the rest of the night having dinner and playing violin at a concert as if nothing happened. As tempting as a maybe to think that Tooker was the perpetrator, I just don't think he

quite fits. However, I will add the disclaimer that recent DNA testing could not rule out took Her as a contributor, though since this testing was performed with contaminated evidence, I'm not sure if these results have much significance that's true to me. It either says that you can discard it completely or that there's a question mark because he could have been the contributor. So it's impossible to

know that right now. I do agree it would be quite odd to be able to go and perform and to be around friends with no consequence and no affect that shows that something happened, But it really depends on his mental health

and his level of psychopathy and narcissism and things like that. Where if he was entitled to Christine and he wanted her, and he got what he wanted and eliminated all the consequences for that, I mean, there are killers that we know commit an act and go straight home to their families and have dinner and tuck their kids into bed. So I think it's possible without knowing his background and personality, though it is nearly impossible to be able to say is

it him or not? I just think the timeline is way too tight. Yeah, you think he couldn't have gotten cleaned up and at the places in time to kill that many people within such a short period of time and then

just like smoothly slide into dinner and this violin thing. It just seems like a really short window of time for one man to have done that, and also an elderly man as well, like he was sixty five, and just like he would not have been traveling quickly from the crime scene, because if we're to believe that that happened, he would have been midway through sexually assaulting Christine. And then Cliff and the kids come home, so he then has

to deal with all that. And it seems like Cliff was surprised when he came in the door. So is this sixty five year old man going to be jumping through the home running to the door, surprising him, and then he has to kill He basically shoots Cliff, shoots Jimmy, and then takes Debbie to the bathtub and then you know, drowns or puts the cowboy hat over her face. And then at some point he'd tried to clean up blood.

We don't know when, if this was before or after he'd killed Cliff and Jimmy and little Debbie, or if it was prior to and he was going to dispose of the body, We cannot be sure, but I just think that that and then he goes and he stops by a shed and then disposes of clothing evidence there. You'd think he'd then have to go home get cleaned up and then go meet his friend. I just personally for me, that timeline is way too tight. A potential suspect who died before he could

be DNA tested was Stanley Mouk, the Walker's meter reader. There really isn't anything to link mouth to this crime other than the fact that he seemed to have major psychological problems and talked about having urges to kill his own family. And he also had to be the meter reader at a residence in Sarasota where another brutal, unsolved murder took place four months earlier. On our last episode, we talked about the death of Chandler Stephans aka the Sarasota Mummy murder,

and this case is incredibly baffling in its own right. As you might recall, the killer hogtied Stephans, wrapped a heece of tape around his head and proceeded to torture him for hours before cutting his throat. The night before he was killed, there was an incident where Stephans woke up in the middle of the night to discover that his sofa had been set on fire. And I'm

sure this was done by the same person who later murdered him. What's truly bizarre is that the house belonged to Stephan's stepmother and he had only been living there for forty eight hours before he was murdered. Prior to this, Stephans had not lived in Sarasota for years, and only a small handful of people even knew he would be staying at that house, and they were all eliminated

as suspects. There have never been any any solid suspects in this crime, and the only thing which links Stanley Mouth to it is that he happened to be the house's meter reader. But unless Mauk just happened to be reading the meter during the forty eight hour period Stephen's was staying at the house, I'm

not sure how he would have even known someone was there. I don't know how well acquainted Malk was with the Walker family, but theoretically, if he went to their house to read their meter and was there when Christina arrived home,

she may have been comfortable enough with Mout to invite him inside. But the circumstances of the Walker murders and Stephan's death are a lot different, as Stephan's murder was a prolonged, premeditated crime, which seemed to be planned at least one day in advance and took place in the middle of the night, whereas the Walker murderers were quick, sloppy and took place during the daytime. I'm inclined to think that crimes are not connected at all, but there's really

no evidence to prove or disprove Mauk's involvement. I guess the only way to know for sure would be if Mouk's remains were ever zoomed for DNA testing. One of the things about him for me is that he is openly talking about having these urges to kill his family, and he has these clear mental health issues. Would someone like that be able to keep it under control and not mention, not say something about hurting the family, or if he was responsible

for the other mummy murder, being able to keep all that quiet. I mean, he's saying things that he knows are problematic and troublesome, and it's almost like a cry for help. Would he not also then say I have hurt somebody or I fear that I could hurt other people. Many people have not I mean, this is not like a you know, everyday occurrence, but there's a lot of people who struggle with feelings of violence and anger and

rage and un unconceivable ideas that they don't normally think they would have. But that's part of mental health issues. He talks about it. Nothing's been said about these murders. I just think at some point he would slip up trying to get help with his mental health. Yeah, that's a good point. If he's willing to openly say that he's willing to murder his own wife and children, that I think if he did a crime like that for real,

he would never be able to keep it under wraps. And he did not die until nineteen ninety seven, so if he was guilty, he would have had to have stayed silent about it for at least thirty eight years. And

that just does not seem to fit his personality. He's already struggling and already saying, I have these thoughts, like clearly it was something he wanted help with, and to think he could have that kind of intense mental health distress and then be able to kill and keep it under wraps and not go completely out of his mind, I just I don't think that would be possible,

giving his fragile mental state, already. I think you're right. It seems like a bit of a red herring just because there's two murders associated with him, because he was the meter reader. But so many things would have had to fall into place for him to been there on those days, and especially

the Mummy murder, Stephan's murder. I think his wife would have noticed if he was away in the middle of the night and he was gone for hours, because he was tortured for hours while those slits for his nose were cut out, and finally his throat was slit, I would think his absence would have been noted, because you're not reading meters in the middle of the night,

Yeah, exactly. The other interesting potential suspect was Curtis McCall, who was rumored to be conducting an affair with Christine, but it sounds like there was no evidence to back this claim up besides gossip and hearsay. I'm not sure investigators even heard about these rumors until Curtis's cousin came forward and told them years later. There's nothing to really implicate Curtis aside from the fact that he

had a violent temper, seemed very nervous and on edge. Following the murders, and once owned a twenty two caliber gun, which he claimed to have sold to someone he could not remember. It's interesting how when he took a polygraph, the only question where Curtis showed signs of deception was have you withheld any information about the Walker murders? But again, this is an early nineteen sixties polygraph test we're talking about, so I'm not sure how much stock you

can put into that. It could mean that Curtis was telling the truth when he said he had no involvement in the murders but still withheld details about his relationship with Christine. The theory that the entire family was killed by a man Christine had an affair with is a compelling one, but since it involves hating the reputation of a married murder victim, you always hate to push these theories

forward without proof. Christine allegedly been asking some questions to her friends about how to terminate a pregnancy, which I'm sure led to gossip about her being pregnant. But let's also not forget that she suffered through two miscarriages that year. So an alternate explanation is that Cliff wanted her to get pregnant again, and Christine just could not bear the prospect of potentially suffering through a third miscarriage.

Whatever the case, we know that Christine was not pregnant at the time she was murdered, so this whole angle might not mean anything. When a series of articles were published about this case in the Sarasota Herald Tribune in December of two thousand and five, they said that Curtis McCall's current whereabouts ron known, so he's never been subject to DNA testing and I'm not even sure he's still

alive today. On our last episode, we discussed an anonymous phone call made in nineteen ninety four by a woman claiming to be a bartender in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, who said that an elderly customer of hers made an emotional confession to the Walker murders. If her story is true, some people have wondered if that man might have been Curtis McCall. But once again, even though Curtis might be a compelling suspect, there really isn't any strong evidence to prove or

disprove his involvement. I think if you give any credence to the elderly late or to the lady who says she had an elderly customer confide in her and that she wanted to tell the police, but she'd have to call them back. I really feel it's someone's conscience. Weane on them saying, Okay, I know information about this case and I want to tell it, but either I'm afraid to be harmed by the person at the root of it, or I love them so much I don't necessarily want them to go to prison or

to death row for this murder or for these murders. And so to me, her trepidation sounds like she knows much more if her facts are actually true than what she wanted to share, and the fact that she hung up, it's just it's bizarre. I think she either knew the killer and it wasn't some random person in her bar, or she's fabricating it. But again, like you said on the last episode, Florida to Pennsylvania, that's a big

jump to know this crime back in nineteen ninety four. Well, if by chance, the woman is telling the truth, and I think that would rule out the possibility of Smith and Hiccock being the killers, because they had been executed and dead for three decades at that point, so there really wouldn't be any reason for her to withhold information which incriminated them. So now we finally have to address the likelihood of Perry Smith and Richard Hiccock being the perpetrators,

and there is a pretty compelling case for that. On the surface. For decades, it seems like no one really looked at them that seriously as suspects, largely due to the fact that In Cold Blood gave off the incorrect impression that the two men had alibis. As iconic as the book might be, it contained a lot of factual errors, particularly when it came to Smith and

Hickock's movements while they were on the run. Plus another reason they were initially discounted as suspects was because their fingerprints did not match the prints found on the bathtub faucet at the Walker residence. But as the years have gone by, it seems more likely that it was actually a palm print. We have numerous eyewitness sightings placing the two men in the area of Florida around the time of the murders, and while eyewitnesses can be mistaken, some of these sightings are

pretty credible. I think the most interesting sighting is from the gas station owner outside Arcadia, who said that Smith and Hickock stopped by and asked for directions on December twentieth. Not only did he identify the two men, but he accurately described the nineteen fifty six Chevrolet bel Air they were driving and even got two of the digits on their license plate correct. And he also said that

the man matching Hickock's description had a badly scratched up face. It was obvious that Christine Walker put up a major fight against the person who attacked her, and since both of her high heeled shoes had blood on them, she likely used them as a weapon to defend herself. If Hiccock was a perpetrator, then this would explain the scratches on his face. This one is really confusing

for me. I get that there are links to these men, and it is really disturbing to have that gas station owner talk about Smith and Hitcock stopping by and asking for directions. The car is a unique aspect as well, because the family was looking at that kind of model in particular that day, looking at used cars. But man, I guess they would have had to get the address from the family, because if not, they're just so far

out, they're so remote, they're so isolated. No one's driving by in desperation saying, hey, let's drive on to this thousands of acres of property and find someone to rob, and let's pick the farmhouse that's a workhands house and not the main home that might have more money and more valuable goods. It really would have had to be like you guys said earlier, where they

had met in public that day and made arrangements later in the afternoon. But I don't know as a husband, especially back in the sixties, I don't think if I knew I was meeting someone for a car at four and I was over at another friend's house and it's three point fifty, my wife, sure as heck is not going home by herself and maybe meeting up with these

two guys. I'm going to make sure I'm with her. I'm going to make sure that, because there's these strange men coming to our house that seemed very pleasant earlier in the day, that I'm the first one at the home as the husband, right, that we all go into the house together, or that I go alone while she hangs out at the friend's house. So I just think it would have been better precautions in place if the husband thought that they were driving home to meet two men. I don't think Christine would

have gone home first by herself to be solo. Do you think people in their twenties are always so forward thinking, though, especially not back in nineteen fifty nine either, Like this was like a small town that wasn't known for violent crimes. So if by chance they met these two young men earlier that

day, they probably thought, Hey, they seem like friendly guys. They seem like harmless and maybe we're just not thinking about the possibility that if I let my wife drive home first and be alone with them, that it could lead to murder and sexual assault. I just think at the age of twenty five, I wasn't really thinking that like these things could potentially happen to me.

And if I had a partner at the time, I could see that, like you just set up that scenario, Robin, had we met them in public, I couldn't necessarily think that that person would think, oh, there's a situation where you know, I'm going to put my partner in danger. I just think that what Cliff was twenty five or twenty six, twenty five, twenty five. I just think he's so young that he hasn't been you know, the world hasn't shown him necessarily all of the awful things out

there. I mean, he did have to deal with the creepy neighbor coming and trying to kiss Christine, but he might not have seen Smith and Hickock as that type of danger, because they may have come off as like, Hey, these are two guys that seem really nice, and they're going to come and do this trade, and this is going to help us out. And if Christine meets them ahead of me, it's not a big deal because I'm following right behind her. Well, let's do a recap of this theory.

One of the biggest arguments against Smith and Haycock is that the evidence suggested that Christin knewer killer and invited him into the house while she performed tasks like putting her groceries away. But would she really have done this for two strangers, especially when her husband wasn't home yet. Well. In twenty sixteen, true crime writer J. T. Hunt published a book about the Walker murderers titled In Colder Blood and presented a fairly plausible theory about how Smith and Hiccock

might have wound up at the house. We mentioned our last episode that Cliff visited some used car lots because he was looking to trade in the family car for a newer model, and one of the vehicles that caught his eye was in nineteen fifty six Chevrolet, the same model which Smith and Hiccock were driving at that time. If the two men somehow crossed paths with the Walkers that day and showed Cliff their Chevy bel Air, they may have arranged a meeting

to trade vehicles at the Walker residence. When Cliff and the children were at the McLeod residence later that afternoon, God and Lucy McLeod asked if they wanted to stay for a little while longer, but Cliff specifically said that they needed to get going because it was almost four o'clock. So could this mean that Cliff had a scheduled meet up with Smith and Hiccock. Given that the Walker's residence was in a very remote location at the end of a dirt road,

it seems doubtful that the duel could have stumbled upon placed by accident. But if they had a pre arranged meeting and Christina met both men earlier that day. They may have been already parked at the house when Christine arrived home, and she was comfortable en up with them to invite them inside to wait for Cliff. That is very possible, especially if she noticed the car and the make and model. Okay, we met them earlier. We're actually looking at

this car. We're going to make a trade with them. And so she said, well, come on in, My husband will be back, like you guys said earlier, in thirty minutes, which gives them this kind of window of saying, we have thirty minutes to do whatever we want with Christine. There is a possibility that that's what happened, for sure, because if it was committed today, I think that the hypervigilance that you described, Ashley, that like we would all feel now, is something that most couples would

have in place. You wouldn't just send your wife ahead to meet with two strange men. But it isn't the true crime riddled world that we have today with the Internet and all of this access to information. It was sixty five years ago. Yeah, And even though the Clutter family murders was a pretty big crime, and Smith and Hiccock were wanted fugitives. It's not like today

where you can circulate information immediately and their faces would be plastered everywhere. So I think it's likely that Christine had no idea that the Clutter family murders had even occurred, and never would have suspected that these were wanted murderers. Now, there were two separate unidentified hairs found at the murder scene which were inconsistent with anyone from the family, which would make sense if there were two killers.

One of the hairs was dark and theoretically could have matched Smith, and the blonde hair found inside Christine's death could have belonged to Hiccock. When DNA testing was performed on the Seman evidence many decades later, Smith was excluded, but the results on Hiccock were inconclusive. Of course, we have no idea if those DNA results are valid, but that's still a very important detail.

Even though Smith had had no qualms about murdering an entire family, he had a major revulsion about rape and was so adamant about stopping Hiccock from raping Nancy Clutter that the two men nearly broke out into a fight. But perhaps this time around. Smith couldn't stop Hiccock from raping Christine, and while we cannot conclusively prove this, the semen and the blonde hair could belong to Hiccock.

Another detail which may point to two killers is that, even though most of the shots were fired from a twenty two caliber weapon, a thirty two caliber slug was found near Christine's body. I find that detail strange as it's always been theorized that the reason the killer drowned Debbie in the bathtub was because they ran out of bullets in their twenty two. But if they also had a thirty two caliber weapon, why not use that to shoot Debbie and finish the

job. Two separate guns might suggest two killers, but then again, it's possible that the twenty two actually belonged to Christine and she grabbed it out of the bedroom closet. The one thing which could lean away from Smith and Hincock being the perpetrators is the fact that the crime seemed more personal in nature.

When the duo murdered the Clutter family, the motive was robbery, and they were under the mistaken impression that the Clutters had a safe of money inside their house, and only elected to kill the family because they didn't want to leave them alive as witnesses. The Walker family were far from wealthy, so they

seemed like pretty unlikely targets for robbery. Only a handful of items were stolen from the Walker home, but even if the family didn't have much, it's surprising that Smith and Hiccock wouldn't have taken whatever they could get their hands on, as they were living day to day while on the run as wanted fugitives,

and you did anything they could find to survive. I think back then too, you would be able to hawk a bunch of things so much easier right than you can today because there's not any kind of tracking and are able to report it or anything like that. And so if they did rob this farmhouse of a ranch hand in hopes of getting ahead in their criminal pursuit, I just I feel like they would have gone to a place that had more

valuable things. And then, like you said, let's say they did pick the Walkers, why not completely clear that house out and take several things. Surely there was some jewelry, Surely there was some other stuff in the house that could have been sold or given away and made trades with so it doesn't seem like they walked away with much other than a pack of cigarettes a big partner of cigarettes. Now, it seems like there's been some confusion about the

disappearance of the Walker's marriage certificate. For years, everyone believed that the certificate was stolen from the wall in the living room, which would lend credence to the idea that the killer was someone who was infatuated by Christine and became angry about her marrying someone else. But in the aforementioned book in Colder Blood, it's mentioned that Cliff's niece contacted investigators in twenty twelve because the marriage certificate suddenly

turned up and some items given to her by a relative. I really wish I could find other sources which provide additional clarification about this, because I'd really like to know how this relative got the certificate to begin with. I'm not trying to say they were personally involved in the murders, but perhaps they wound up perceiving the certificate on a previous occasion and everyone mistakenly assumed that the killer

stole it. Regardless, it seems like the one item which has still never been accounted for is Christine's missing drum majorrette uniform from her high school days, which is undoubtedly the weirdest detail of this case. If Christine was murdered by a stranger, then perhaps I can see them taking the uniform as some sort

of souvenir or memento of their crime. But this uniform was kept in a plastic bag inside a chest, so unless they happened to come across it during a random search of the house, how would a stranger have even known it was there. I really don't see why Smith and Hickhock would elect to steal a random item like that either. If they wanted to keep the uniform as

a memento of some sort, what actually happened into it. I know that when they were arrested they had a pocket knife on them, which matched the ones stolen from Cliff, but there was no mention of the drum major Ette's uniform, and that does not sound like a typical item you would pawn off if you need money. I guess. The other possibility is that, like the marriage certificate, the uniform somehow went missing from the home before the crime

took place and it is never turned up. But otherwise I think it's the strongest piece of evidence to indicate that this crime was motivated by the killer's obsession with Christine. Without the missing uniform, I would be much more inclined to believe that Smith and Hickock were the perpetrators. But part of me still believes that this was some sort of crime of passion in which Christine was the primary

target and her husband and children were collateral damage. I think that from this get go, when you described the case to me, it was very clear that there was something about Christine that this killer wanted, that there had been a desire to be her part. There had been a feeling that he had been let on, and he was resentful of the fact that Christine had a

husband and children. In my mind, he takes time to sexually abuse and assault Christine, and then he quickly kills the husband to eliminate the threat. And then there's a struggle in some ways with the daughter to cover her face and shoot her, but with the son, almost this kind of reaction of fear where the baby's crawling after being shot towards his dad and so he has to quickly shoot him again. So I feel like there is something more personal.

I went for Christine, I had to eliminate the threat of her husband, and then I had to stop the two kids from recognizing me. There just seems something so directly personal about it. At the end of his original Trail and Cold episode, Robin found it very frustrating that there wasn't enough usable DNA on Richard Hikok's remains to conclusively determine if he was the source of the

seamen founding Christine's underwear. But the frustration level has only increased now that we know there was a cross contamination and Christine's own DNA was likely mixed with the DNA of the killer, which essentially meant that the evidence has gone right back to square one. Well, I personally do not believe that John McLeod and Albert Walker were strong suspects. The fact that they were supposedly ruled out by DNA testing two decades ago no longer means anything. Now we cannot even discount

the possibility that Perry Smith could have been the source of the seamen. So I'm hoping that the recent exhumation of Cliff In Christine's bodies will lead to the recovery of some usable DNA evidence which could potentially be linked to a suspect, even if they are already deceased. Personally, I'm on the fence over the

idea of Smith and Hickock being the perpetrators. I do think the fact that two home invasion murders of two separate families took place in entirely different states within one month of each other, and the same two people just happened to be in the area when the second crime took place, it's just too much of a coincidence to ignore. But I still have the nagging feeling that it might only be a coincidence and the real perpetrator was someone much closer to the family

who lived in the area. Even though all the previous DNA testing was unreliable, it was worth noting that wilburd took her was the one suspect who could not be conclusively discounted as the contributor, so perhaps more advanced testing will answer the question about his involvement once and for all. In the meantime, if you happen to have any information about the Walker family murders, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case. I feel like

it's one that's personal in nature. I think that that baby looked at that killer in the face and they knew each other, and he had to cover her face to shoot her. I think the child crawling towards his dad, there was this immediate gut reaction of like, oh my gosh, I have to just end his life because I've already injured him, and the husband was

a threat, so that was a quick elimination. But Christine to me, seemed like this target of an obsession of some sort and an entitlement to who she was and to her body, so I'm leaning more towards that direction.

It is tragic to think about the fact that any human being is capable not of just killing an individual, but is able to kill an individual and sexually assault her, kill her husband, and then look at two children who are barely able to communicate with adults and say, there's such a threat to me right now, I need to eliminate them as well. And to be able to go on for decades and decades and not have any kind of moral conscious

to say I did that blows my mind. It was a three year old at a nearly two year old that were also killed at that scene, and so the whole thing carries such a heavy horrific weight to it that this is one of the more difficult cases we've discussed. It's an old case, but it's one that seems so relevant, and you have a whole family who is

annihilated and no one knows why. I'm praying that scientific technology allows them to be able to break apart Christine's DNA from the killer's DNA and through genetic genealogy. This is one of those old cases where they can just say we know what happened, right, and to be able to give a period and a punctuation mark to the end of this story. Most likely these people are deceased.

Most likely nothing's going to come of a justice point of view, but to know who it was would be something that would really change kind of the history of this case. This is one of the hardest cases that I think we've covered, and I think it's just because you get this really visceral reaction from three year old Jimmy being shot in the face several times while crawling towards his father, and little Debbie her fate being her end being in this bathtub

and being shot in the face with this cowboy hat covering it. It's just so sad and so tragic because they didn't have to die, they were too young to be able to testify and all. While I agree with everything that you said, Ash, you make a really compelling case for it being personal. I'm fifty to fifty. I could go either way. I think there's a lot of evidence that two people were at this murder scene from the way that the perpetrator felt comfortable, and that isn't to say that both things can't

be true. There could have been two people there and they're just suspects that were close that haven't been identified. I mean, there could be people who weren't even on the radar were assuming that the investigation was so thorough and that they have all of these people on this list and they've just had to go

through them and check d Ena against it. There's a possibility it could have been people that were close to the Walkers, close to the family, that just weren't on that list, and there could have been multiple people that did it. Just those two hairs that were there. The fact that the person felt comfortable sexually assaulting Christine when they likely knew that Cliff was going to be coming home with those children just leads me to believe that there's a strong likelihood

that there are two people involved. Whether it's Smith and Hiccock, I really have no idea. The only thing that my gut tells me for sure is that there's multiple people involved, and I think Ashley make a strong case for it being somebody close to the family. But I just I'm scratching my head on this one. Yeah, me too. This is one where I fully

admit to changing my mind all the time. I mean, all family annihilation murders are horrific, but this one is particularly bad because of the young age of the two children and the brutal fashion that they were murdered, and also

the fact that it has remained unslved for nearly sixty five years. And when I first learned about this case, I was fully convinced that Smith and Hiccock were the perpetrators, because they had done a crime like this just one month, or they could be placed in the area at that time, and like Jules said, there was a lot pointing to this crime being committed by two

people. I do think there is a good chance that they were the killers, but I still harken back to the fact that there's just seemed to be something a lot more personal about this crime, that whoever did this was someone who knew Christine personally and had an infatuation with her and felt that they had to kill Cliff and the children because they felt they could be recognized because they

happened to live in the area. But we also were talking about the idea of there being two perpetrators is that we've gone over a number of different suspects like Curtis McCall and Wilbur Tucker, and if they were responsible, who would their accomplices have been. We don't have any other scenarios involving two suspects,

which is why I often leaned back to Smith and Hickock. But there really just isn't a lot about this crime which makes sense, And the only way it's going to be solved is with DNA testing, which really hopes that they can separate the killer's DNA from Christine's DNA, because that gives them more options.

They could submit it into a ancestry website for the purposes of genetic genealogy and maybe it will wind up get it being a familial match to someone who has never even popped up on the radar as a suspect to begin with. So yeah, I think there's one hundred percent chance whoever did this is now dead and it will never be arrested or prosecuted for this crime. But if

genetic genealogy is successful, then they could identify a suspect. And I am glad that, in spite of the age of the case, that investigators are still working on this and it'll be great if we can give an update announcing that they have identified the perpetrator sometime in the future. Robin, do you

want to tell us a little bit about the trailment Cold Patreon. Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars tier to your two We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went

Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier free the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode.

And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The

Path Went Chili. We've got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour so they're not very but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those. So we hope you'll check out those patreons will link them in the show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciate it.

You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy