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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski. Hiring is challenging, but there's one place you can go where hiring is simple, fast and smart, a place where growing busy connect to
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western Kansas. But what if robbery was not the motive at all, but something more sinister? And why would the Kansas Bureau of Investigation press the Attorney General to launch a ruthless four year legal battle to prevent fresh details of the state's most famous crime from being made public
so many years after the case had been solved. Based on stunning new details discovered in the personal journals and archives of former KBI director Harold Nye and corroborated by letters written by Richard Hiccock, one of the killers on death Row, and Every Word Is True meticulously lays out a vivid and startling new view of the investigation, one that will keep readers on the edge of their seats
as they pick up work body left off. Even readers new to the story will find themselves drawn into a spellbinding forensic investigation that reads like a thriller, adding new perspectives to the classic tale of an iconic American crime sixty years after news of the nineteen fifty nine Clutter murders took the world stage. And Every Word Is True pulls back the curtain for a suspenseful encore to the true story of In Cold Blood. Book that here featuring
this evening is and every Word Is True. Newfound evidence reveals Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is not the end of the story. With my special guest author Gary McAvoy. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Gary McAvoy, Thanks Dan, thanks for having me a pleasure to be here.
Thank you very much. The pleasure will be allmine and our audiences.
This is an.
Incredible case and a credible and investigation that you've undertaken with this and every word is true now as you writ in this book, this book is a result of over six years of research which included I'm going to ask you what that research included specifically, but this was dedicated to the career and memory of Harold R. Nie
Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Now, Truman Capoti claimed that In Cold Blood is a completely factual account and every word is true, and your book includes a Ford by Ronald R. Nie. Now tell us about you say this book was based on stunning new details discovered in the personal journals and archives of former KBI Director at Harold Nie. Tell us a little bit about this forward by Ronald R. Nie, about his father and about these personal journals he discovered. Tell us about that.
First sure Dan Well Harold and I was a career law enforcement officer from his early twenties. In fact, he joined the KBI when he was around twenty three, and his entire life, through all his law enforcement positions, he had maintained reporter's notebooks, those thin notebooks that slipped easily into your pocket. And he'd had some hundreds of these that he'd collected over his career, and he kept them in banker's boxes up in the attic of his home.
And ron who grew up under his roof, of course, always knew they were there, but was told never to open the boxes, never to look inside them. Well, when his dad passed in two thousand and three, his mother decided to clean up all the stuff that her husband had been collecting, and he was a major collector, and had the boxes shredded. Fourteen of the boxes anyway, but there was one box left in Harold's office that she missed.
That box ended up in the trash some days later, and when Ron came by to help his mother clean out the house, he looked in the trash and saw that saw two books that Truman Capodi had given Harold and I some years ago, both of them signed first editions. One was in Cold Blood, the other was selected writings by Capodi, and another folder containing various documents, official case reports and Harold's two of Harold's notebooks that he had compiled on the Clutter murder case.
Right now, with this, with this discovery, he has these boxes. Ronald, being Harold's son, tell us a little bit about more about Harold and especially for our audience that doesn't know the role that we just spoke about briefly in the introduction, But who was Harold ny to this Clutter investigation, to the nineteen fifty nine November murders. Who was Harold ny to that? Before we talk about what Ron learned from looking through those journals and through that information, what did
he know at that time? And then tell us the circumstances that you were to be introduced to Ronald.
Sure, yeah, Harold was one of four principal investigators, along with Alvin Dewey Clarence dun Sinroy Church, who handled the
Clutter murder case. There were about eighteen investigators overall, and Harold was the lead field investigator, while Alvin Dewey was the case coordinator with an office at the Sheriff's office in Garden City where the crime took plaks and Harold did all the interviews, the majority of interviews with townspeople, the families of each of the killers once they were identified, and traveled down to Mexico and across the country wherever
he needed to be taken for these interviews. And what was the second part of your question, Well, what was.
As Ronald would discover? I mean, he knew he was his father was a dedicated cop and real hard nosed and there was this room where these journals were. But what did he find out about by cursory look at those journals? Information did he find out?
Well, actually, ron didn't actually look at the journals. He just knew that there was some value to them. And he was actually in a position with his ex wife who needed medical attention, and there are medical expenses that ron opted to take care of were mounting and he needed to find some way of income. And he knew that these books and letters by Truman Capoti had likely had some value to them, and so he turned to me, being referred to me by Christie's auction House in New York.
I had been a dealer of literary manuscripts and first edition books for some twenty five years now, and Ron approached me in twenty twelve believing that these letters and had some value to them, and so we decided amount special auction for the materials, which included both the two books, two great letters that Truman had written Harold n. I, and then a passel of other documents that Harold had
collected in his casework. When the Kansas Bureau of Investigation or the KBI heard about pending sale, they issued a cease and desist, which soon turned into a lawsuit and that prevented the sale and publication of the materials. Ultimately, after a grueling four years in court, we ultimately won
and asked how the book came to be. But in reading these materials, since I had to compile a through the discovery process in court, I had to compile everything that was in the nine archives, and as I began reading these materials, I realized that this was a much different story I was reading from the primary source documents than the story that the Truman the PODi had told an in Cold Blood.
You write in a book that at that time, in your role in your occupation, that you weren't a true crime fan at all, and that if the Kansas Bureau of Investigation hadn't launched this lawsuit preventing this auction, then you wouldn't have looked at these materials very carefully at all, because there would have been no reasons for the auction. Now,
what was the reason? What was the reason you talk about in the book in more detail and very very interesting and vivid that Ron gets a call first from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and then you get a call from the same person. What is the premise, what's the reason why they want this information and their reasoning for this information to not be auctioned?
That was never really clear to either of us. Their claim was that these were confidential investigation documents that held confidential material which was never disclosed, which never described rather and that there were privacy issues involved. But the actual reason why they were so obsessed about securing these was never made clear to either of us.
Now with this you say, this is a legal battle, but in this ensuing time you take a look at this material very carefully, and hence, as you mentioned, this is the genesis of this book. But it doesn't come right away. Tell us about this whole discovery. You said you went back and it had been since nineteen sixty six since you had read Truman Capodi's In Cold Blood, so you started there. What are the other things that you looked at, read and basically part of an investigation
of sorts. What did you do in this research?
Oh gosh, yeah, Well, first I re read Capote's book In Cold Blood so that the material was fresh to me. Then I watched the nineteen sixty seventh film of the
same name. There was also Canadian production. I basically absorbed everything I could about the case, and that included Gerald Clark's fine biography called Capodi, George Plimpton's book on Capote's friends and Acquaintances and Detractors, several other books of scholarship about Capodi and In Cold Blood in particular, and basically became more or less early an expert on the Clutter
murder case. And then I dug into the material itself, and that's where I started making rational compare risons as to what I was reading versus what I had read with these other materials, and distinctive differences came out that made it clear to me that that could be the reason why Kansas wanted this material so desperately.
You knew something was we'll say a foul here, but I wanted to know just me personally reading this at that time when you looked at this, were you aware of the existing criticism of Capodi and the book in true crib And.
Oh sure, yeah. For years many people had poked holes in cold blood, And in fact, the first one to do it was doctor Philip Tompkins from the University of Colorado back in nineteen sixty six, just a month a couple months after the book came out, and he actually made a nine day trip to Kansas to verify many of the points that Capodi had made and discovered that some of the salient points were, let's say, less than accurate.
But there's a long history of many people identifying issues with Capodi's veracity, so it's not really a lot.
Of news.
When you start looking at this material again. The journals themselves, the notebooks themselves, you write were especially important or interesting. Tell us about some of the very first discoveries that you made that you thought when you got the information and all those sources that you had looked at. What was the first interesting, we'll say, blatant contradiction from in Cold Blood.
Well, there's one scene in Cold Blood, and the readers of the book and viewers of the film in particular will remember this where Harold and I is alone at the Hickcock farm interviewing Hitcock's father, Walter, and he spots the murder weapons, a shotgun and a knife, a savage twelve gage shotgun and a hunting knife, and while his hand is shaking, this is how the scene is described. He does nothing at the time Capodi reports this is
happening five days before it actually happened. And then I was and at that point I was accompanied by several other agents with a formal search warrant. It's a pretty important detail to have gotten wrong, but it surely made for a dramatic scene in the book and the movie.
In this research you also Ronald talks about the relationship his father had with Capodi and a couple of the events that he had witnessed himself. Tell us about Harold NY's relationship with Capodi, Well, it was during a.
Time where homosexuality was not as accepted as it was today, and Capodi made no attempts to tone his effeminacy down, not that he was expected to, but he was entering the heartland, midwestern town that had never seen anyone so splashy as he was. And Harold and I in particular was not a fan of Capodi's theatrics. Let's say so, I think that that was he'd already prejudged him at
that point. But uh, capodis his job was also to get as much information as he could about an ongoing investigation, and Harold and I held firm of the policies and protocols of investigative work and would not give them anything. That's not the case without the Dewey. But that's that's for another that's for another time.
You you will underestimate, I'm sorry, go ahead, you really What we've skipped over a little bit, though, is that the incredible efforts that you you Again, this is very vivid where you say Harold was suspicious and definitely.
Not.
He didn't like his theatrics and the and the flamboyants, but and he also didn't like that he was always being pressed for details on the investigation. He knew that's what was going on. But he took them out tonight clubs, and he offered to take him to his famous black or be invited to his famous black white masked ball.
That was rud elbows with celebrities. And I think when you mentioned Alan Dewey, maybe we should talk about Alan Dewey because the difference in the In Cold Blood is Dewey's role in the book and Harold Nye's role in the book. And as you're right where Ronald is witnessed to say that when Harold received a copy of In Cold Blood, what was his reaction?
He threw it across the room. He claims he read just I guess about a third of it, threw it across the room, calling it a fiction. He also when he went he and his wife Joyce went to the film see the film as on our guests, he walked out after fifteen minutes saying it. We don't know what he said, but he was not happy with the treatment of the clutters.
What was the relationship with the Clutters and Harold and I.
They didn't know each other. The Clutters were members of or rather they lived in Garden City and Harold and his family lived in Topeka where the KBI headquarters was, so they did not know each other. Dewey was very close to the Clutters, Alvin Dewey, he was They were both part of the same Methodist church group and both Sunday School so they were very close.
Which leads me to my next question. Let's talk about Herb Clutter because in this book and in this investigation, in an your research, you find out that Herb Clutter, I mean very simple story that Truman Capodi tries to does portray in Cole Blood, that this innocent family is killed for less than fifty dollars. It's a senseless couple
of psycho paths and case closed. Tell us about Herbert Clutter and his importance in the community, and also some of the things that you found out about Herbert Clutter.
Well up until his death in nineteen fifty nine. Herb Clutter was a very prominent farmer in western Kansas, indeed a pillar of this community. He was very successful at a time when many others were losing their farms to a variety of economic factors. Clutter was also politically powerful, having been appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to the Federal
Farm Credit Board. He was also founder of the National and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and various local organizations in the local farming co op in Garden City, as well as a prominent leader in his Methodist church group. And a little bit more about the family. Clutter and his wife, Bonnie had four children, two of whom still
lived at home, both in their mid teens. Missus Clutter had been suffering from severe postpartum depression for many years following the birth of their last child, Kenyon, and even up until her death she was virtually bedridden, with their daughter Nancy, and the housekeeper name isssus Helm taking care of most of the household duties while mother was frequently away at a psychiatric clinic in Wichita.
So Herbert was an upstanding citizen, but he was very much important, very important, especially in that you write that he was instrumental and importan in writing policy or affecting policy, was.
An important in it.
And you also talk about the time and It's always has to be referenced in here that we just come out of McCarthyism, and so socialism was not seen any kind of well, social engineering, but any kind of intervention by government was not seen by everybody as benevolent or not agreed upon by everybody at that time.
Right, Yeah, it's he was. Clutter was very policy oriented in setting farming was His approach to farming was to ensure we are parody pricing for weed farmers. And he had one major opponent in government, and that was the Secretary of Agriculture at the time, a man named Ezra Taft Benson. Benson was a virulent anti socialis and he viewed government pricing parody as a form of socialism that would not stand. So he had at least one prominent enemy in government.
Were there any instances that from witnesses around that time, an investigation from Harold Nye that would indicate any kind of animosity or enemies in his business dealings in the community of Garden City, Oh sure, Yeah.
In Harold NIC's notebooks he records many, I mean at least a dozen episodes of threats against HERB. Clutter for various infractions in his business dealings in the community, contracts, broken payments not made, promises not kept. So there were people who had lived really threatened Herb Clutter and let it be known around town that there were there were threats.
So as as as clean and squeaky clean as Campodi may have made the Herbert Clutter, he had his dark sides, at least in at least in the business community.
You also write to and not to, you know, to again say things that can't be backed up or substantiated. But you talk about the relationship, the friendship with Dewey and mister Clutter and the Clutters, and then the idea and the investigation by Herald that because of missus Clutter's illness, they hadn't been well, hadn't slept together for many maybe a decade. So in the book there is some speculation that there could have been a possible affair. Was there
anything to that? And I mentioned Dewey is that would he wanted would he wanted to protect his friend's reputation with working with rum Mcampodi.
To your first point, yes, that we do have evidence in the official reports that mister Clutter was very likely having an affair with the wife.
Of his.
Is the executor to the Clutter estate, a man named Kenneth Lyon, and his Kenneth Lyon was also the former business partner of her Clutter. And it was because of Missus Clutter's condition lasting so long many in the town, including the Clutter's own physician and psychiatrists, believed that Clutter and mister Missus Clutter had not had intimate relations for
at least ten years. So Herb in his early forties was a vibrant power man, and it's believed it's it was no one around town, and he probably had his fun. In fact, then I found those exact words and Harper Lee's notes and the Truman Capodi archives in New York Public Library that he had his fun on the side and Bonnie probably knew it.
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Right now with us too. When we talked about Alan Dewey and his role in this with Timmy coopode, tell us what that role was in terms of the writing of this book.
Because Harold and I didn't well, exacerbated by the fact that Harold and I didn't get along with CAPI, Capodia did find a compliant ally in Altan Dewey and his wife Marie, and the two of them, the three of them became quite close swelled forth include Harper Lee, and that friendship lasted for many, many years, and the Dewey's being so close with Capodi were the beneficiaries of his generosity, which many have looked at as a reward for Dewey
having exposed much of the collect the investigation details to Capodi, which made the book so so richly infused with detail.
You say that talk about Dewey and his wife benefiting from the largess, but we're talking about you talk about the job that she got in Hollywood and just the money at that time. The money at that time, you say, was the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars today, I guess tell us a little bit more about.
That, sure, yeah, Marine Dewey landed a plumb roll with Columbia Pictures during the production of the nineteen sixty seven film In Cold Blood, as simply as a titled Technical Consultants, for which she was paid the equivalent of around seventy thousand dollars. Today. Compodies sold that whole script for fifteen thousand dollars. At the time, so her reward was it was significant.
Right now, in reading through this we also talk about a person named mister Roberts. We also talk about Floyd Wells. So let's talk about Floyd Wells and his relationship to Harold Nye and of course his relationship to the Hiccock and the Clutter case. Inevitable.
Sure, Floyd Wells was an inmate at the Kansas State Penitentiary and for this round of incarceration he was busted for stealing lawnmowers for a lawn cutting business he wanted to start. Now. When Perry Smith was parolled from the Kansas State Penitentiary, this was in well mid nineteen fifty nine, Wells was assigned to Dick Hickcock's cell. Hiccock was in
prison at the time for grand larceny. The two of them, Wells and Hiccock got to talking about Wells having worked for a rich farmer in the western Kansas some ten years earlier, a man by the name of her Clutter, And he told Hiccock that Clutter had a safe containing ten thousand dollars most of the time, often more at harvest time. Attracted to that kind of score, Hitcock made plans to rob the Clutters when he got out of prison about a month later, and he told Wells he
would cut him in for a share of the score. Ultimately, as we know, there was no safe. There was no ten thousand dollars, and when Smith and Hitcock hit the clutterhouse on November fifteenth, nineteen fifty nine, they murdered the entire family after finding less than fifteen dollars, not fifty dollars. I'm sorry now. Hiccock claimed that Floyd Wells had given him a diagram of the Clutter home, showing all the
rooms and where each family member slept. But the fact is, and by this is by Wells's own admission in court and other official documents, Wells had never even been in the new house. The Clutters were still building when he
left their employment in nineteen forty nine. Now, when he first informed the KBI that he knew who killed the Clutters, Wells was soon interviewed by a KBI agent named Wayne Owens, And in that interview, Owens pushed really hard on Wells about the safe, but Wells described it in such rich detail the agent was evinced there was a safe, Yet Wells later lied in court about it, claiming he'd never given Haycock any maps or diagrams, nor did he even
tell him about it. Safe. Now, obviously the KBI knew he was committing perjury, yet they allowed Wells with testimony to stand.
Now interestingly too, is that the map outlined where these people were in this what was described as a new house. That Wells wouldn't even have knew about the new house but didn't know any details and couldn't have possibly made a map.
Correct?
What were to make of that? And then let's talk about this mister Roberts and what you found out about supposedly this mister Roberts.
Sure, yeah, the uh. Within mere hours after the murders, the night Marshall in Cimarron, which is the famed cowboy town just twenty five miles southeast of the scene of the crime in Holcombe. That night, Marshall reported three suspicious men entering the Western Cafe at around three am, and, though it wasn't realized at the time because the clutter bodies yet to be discovered, descriptions of two of the men bore uncanny resemblances to Smith and Hickcock, and the
presence of a third man. There is the real mystery, since Hitcock, in letters he'd sent to a reporter while he was on death row, revealed that the killers were to meet someone by the name of Roberts. That's all we know Roberts. After the murders, at that point, Hitcock was supposed to collect five thousand dollars, which was apparently a second payment against a deposit he had already spent.
We don't know who Roberts is. I spent years trying to track that name down, and the only place I found in the name was in two motel registers, guest registers, both in Garden City, and both the name of d. Roberts was listed as a guest again in two separate motels, and they both checked out the day before the murderers, which I just find remarkably suspicious.
Yes, absolutely, Now we also want to talk about again Alvin Dewey and the secret tapes of Hickcock and Smith talking.
Tell us more about that would and I love to hear those during our discovery. During our trial, the are litigation, rather, my attorney had two attorneys, one here in Seattle, one in Kansas, and our Kansas attorney met with the KBI in the bowels of their building in order to pursue discovery on our behalf, and he found an audio tape in the in the their clutter files that was apparently a recording of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, taken without
their knowledge. Now, as far as I know, nobody knows what's on that tape, at least nobody here. I certainly don't, and it's something that I was going to certainly ask for in our discovery requests. But that's at that point the state decided, knowing that we can have anything we asked for, decided to drop the second half of the lawsuit, and that kind of scotched our plan get a hold of that tape. So it's still there, and i'd love to have them release that.
Part of this too, is that you did the diligent, good work of good, really good journalism, and you have to get things corroborated. You can't have an idea but it's not corroborated as I think you quote, exceptional exceptional ideas or notions have to have exceptional evidence of those notions assertions. So a miscor yes, let's talk about in that corroborating certain.
Facts.
In this case, you had the privilege of being able to understand or look at information from a person named Starling mac Nations and his deal with Dick Hincock while he was on death row. Tell us about this fascinating deal and its results.
Yeah, a man with a memorable name of Starling mac Nations was a reporter for the Witchita Eagle, and he met Hiccock while he was on death row interviewing other inmates for a piece he was doing for the Witchta Eagle. When he met Hitcock, the two of them ultimately decided to collaborate on a book about Hiccock's side of the story, a book that would be titled High Road to Hell, and a book that was never published no publisher. No publisher wanted a publish it since Random House already had
Compodies in Cold Blood under contract. For the next year and a half, Hiccock and Nations exchanged correspondence, with Hiccock providing some two hundred handwritten pages of effusively detailed stories about the crimes and the killer's cross country road trip and Mexican journey, and pretty detailed correspondence, all of which the majority of which has been corroborated by the official
investigation records. But there's a lot of added material in there too, which is really when I read those and compare them to herald nized notepoots and finding some basis for corroboration, that's what really launched the concept for this book.
Now you also write again fascinating and I hate to beat up on Truman Capote, but this is a part of the official story, and this is a part of taking apart the myth and also looking at some really hard facts that Kansas Bureau of Investigation had good reason to want this information not to come out. And that was the nagging question for you. Why would they go to such extraordinary levels lengths this effort to be able to suppress this information, and that spurned you on certainly.
Now we also talk about how Truman Capodi was able to get the kinds of interviews and correspondence and all of the information he got, and these interviews with Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Despite you just mentioned about mac nations, tell us about the rules that had changed and what Truman had to do to overcome those rules about this kind of thing.
Are the rules about what now?
Well, we're talking about just before Truman would attempt to be able to interview these inmates. There was rules up at that penitentiary that prevented that.
Right, I've got it now. Yeah, The director of Prisons, Colonel Guy rex Road, had a in force that well, it actually began with Hickcock and Smith in their incarcerations. So many there were the brass ring of front page sensationalism, and every journalist wanted to get an interview with Hickcock
and Smith. The demands became so overwhelming that that Colonel rex Road, the director of prisons, invoked a policy that nobody could nobody can see the prisoners, and at this point they were scheduled for execution, which put off for some time with various appeals. But as it turns out to Capode's law firm in Garden City was very powerfully connected and they managed to get Colonel rex Road to waive the policy of no visits for Capodi, which upset Starling Magnations to no end since he also had a
horse in the race. But Capodi apparently paid ten thousand dollars to one of the politicians in order to get that kind of access.
As you read book, what kind of Yeah, there was, everybody's seen the movie. But what did that incredible access entail.
Well, that Capodi could go into the prison and sit with Hickcock and Smith for as long as he wanted, which he did he apparently had. He claims, I don't have any basis for this other than his own words that he claimed he had hundreds of visits with them, which just seemed sony.
Really Yeah, So when we took when you take the information and you're corroborating this information about this meeting, and you do as you include in the book, you do have make or put together other information that corroborates that there was certainly enough time for there to be a meeting. When you talk about that, the two people would described Smith and Hitcock, we're talking about a noticeable scar on
his face. Another person they said they looked like they had something wrong with their leg was certainly Perry Smith had a motorcycle accident. So these kinds of descriptions are not just a vague descriptions are very very specific and compelling.
Basically not at all. So tell us, tell us more of the compelling information that came to you to your research to support the idea that this was not what Truman Capoti had said, this simple robbery gone awry, but something more akin to a coordinated assassination.
Okay, this now, this is really my hypothesis that there are probably one of two reasons Herbert Clutter was targeted to die, and that was either his local, his local and or national political affiliations where he was already known to be going up against the government at least government policy. And secondly this relationship he is believed to have had with his executor's wife. That these are two these formed I think two substantial reasons that someone might want to
bump them off. Does that Does that answer the question, Dan?
I think so. But you also include that you look at information just previous to Curber Clutters and his family's murder, and you talk about life insurance, and you talk about his smoking habit from a guy that would have never considered smoking. Tell us a little bit more about that information and how that sort of supports your theory, Sir.
Herb Clutter was a strict disciplinarian and as a Methodist, he didn't allow anyone who worked for him to smoke or drink. And yet in the final weeks of his life,
he was known to be smoking cigarettes. His daughter Nancy would would plan them, and he was his whole attitude was anxious as surly in those in his final days and on the actual day of his demise, that he had purchased a long planned life insurance policy which provided which paid out double indemnity if they were murdered, and not less than ten hours after he signed the document, they were murdered.
Now with the Truman Capodi version and then the KBI trying to not trying to try it well, attempting to stop the publication of this book or this information coming out. Again, you have a theory that there's a reason for that, and you talk about the official in cold Blood. There's at the headquarters in Topeka, the KBI headquarters, there's a big display with all of the paraphernalia, the ropes, guns, boots, all the things were discovered. And then prominently there's a
copy of In Cold Blood. So tell us what your theory is in terms of again that, why why you think that the KBI wants to preserve the story that is contained in Cold Blood?
The Clutter case, was there the standard of excellence for the KBI. They they hang their hat on it as there as the case that makes the KBI, And in the KBI headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, there's a display, a glass enclosed display that features the actual murder weapons, the hunting knife, the Savage twelve cage pump action shotgun, various photos of the Clutter farm, and prominently above the Savage shotgun, a copy of In Cold Blood. So there, the state's coming after us as hard as it did on the
basis of protecting the survivor families. Privacy just seems disingenuous when they're the ones promoting one false story of the investigation for so long as they have over fifty years now, and putting on display the actual murders of execution, the weapons of execution.
Right your fight for the truth here. It didn't end with the court case. Let's talk about the resolution of the court case. Obviously this book is out, but tell us how that came to be. What was the validation in court? What was your vindication? I should say, tell us about that about the court decision.
What they said, Well, our litigation had two prongs to us. The first was were we able to publish the materials? And the second ones who owns the materials. The court ruled in November of twenty fourteen that the court's prior restraint was incorrect, that it should not have that the court should not have allowed the lawsuit to occur in
the first place. Now, as many people know, in Florida, while Perry Smith and Dick Kincock were on the lamb, they were worn through Florida, and during the time they were there, in about Tallahassee, there was a family called the Walkers who were murdered in a very similar style to the Clutters. And to this day, Florida authorities still believe that that's the case is connected. In the Tikock
and Smith are the prime subject, the prime suspects. What happened in our case is that Florida, during the time we were being sued, Florida asked Kansas to exhume the bodies of Hickock and Smith for DNA testing. So the state of Kansas refused to offer to honor our discovery requests and put off anything to dealing with our case for a year while they quote unquote reopened the case
due to the exhumation process. Well, our court and its final ruling said that the state's position of Florida investigation somehow reopens the file was on persuasive that at best, information provided to Florida authorities cannot reopen a case when the killers have been captured, tried, convicted, and executed. So by affirming our first, first amountent rights to publish, the court handed us a major victory in the main battle. And that just left the second prong, which was Dewey
who owns the material. The state claimed that because Herbert Clutter was a state employee, that his notebooks were state property. As we were going through that second prong of the case of the litigation, that's when the state dropped its lawsuit because they knew that we would be able to ask for anything at that point. Right right.
In the Pursuit of Truth February twenty fifteen, you write that you tried to obtain the original nineteen sixty transcript and you went to Finney County. Tell us what their response was in a little bit about this search for this transcript.
Well, as your listeners might imagine, public documents are just that public. You can go into any any courthouse in the land and asked for the transcript of most any trial unless it's been put under seal save grand jury in the Clutter case. It's Kansas's most prominent case. And yet when we tried this over months and then years, tried to get the original transcript of the Hiccock Smith murder trial from March nineteen sixty and it was simply unavailable.
They said, if you want it, you have to call the main judge, the chief judge himself, and I couldn't get through to the judge personally, which I thought was an odd I mean, why call the chief judges? This is to be something in the clear candles. So I put it a backburner until sometime later. We tried again. Some months later, they said, we don't have a transcript in our archives, but you have to call this law
firm in Garden City and del De'll help you. The law firm said that one of their stenographers was a collector of such things and she's now retired in Arizona, and we could get hurt. They gave us her how to contact her, and we couldn't reach her for months. It was just a Keystone Cops comedy trying to track that down. We never did. We never did get it, though we ultimately reached one of her relatives, Peruson's relatives, who says, sure, you can buy a coffee from us
for six hundred dollars. So it had become a commercial commodity at that.
Point, and you didn't want to purchase it.
I didn't need to. My research was done by that point. I'd worked around it. There were many in the appellate courts and cases. There were very clean summaries of the original trial. All the pelic courses do have those summaries, so I was able to reconstruct the original trial through those. I just found it odd that we couldn't get that original transcript.
You talk about too that how fascinating it was to be able to be able to read Dick Hickcock's letters to Macnations and the kind of information and just the kind of ah, I have to believe it for the reader to read some of the quotes from what Dick Kickock said about the murders and life in general. Could you share just a little bit of that.
Well, Hickcock was had what's called an idetic memory, which is as close to photographic memories what you can get. He remembered specific details everything he said in interrogation was had I had blown blown away the minds of the investigators and Truman Capodi in Harper League or they when they were speaking with them. But the letters he had written were extremely effusive in their descriptions of the crime, the Clutter's murders, of their trips across the country, of
their sojourns down through Mexico. And I mean the two hundred some pages, all in beautiful hand handwriting, true Palmer method cursive.
Yeah, but in that as well, it's supportive and corroborative evidence to your theory that this was not what Truman Capodi and the KBI and and those movies portrayed, was it.
Well, let me read. Let me in fact, if I might let me read one portion of what the hiccock had written here, that might help. I gently pushed the door open and entered the house. It was dark. The only light visible was coming in around the blinds at the windows. I turned the light on in the kitchen, and the sudden beam of light was frightening. I shut it off. It was really dark. Then we moved forward as quickly as possible. But no matter how hard I tried,
I couldn't stop the floor from squeaking. They hear it, I thought, I know they do. I've got to hurry. I don't know why. It is hard to explain, but I felt a measure of mixed emotions. I felt excitement, a thrill. I was going to kill a person, maybe more than one. Could I do it? Maybe I'll back out. What if they're not home? I hope they're not. But I can't take I can't back out. I've taken the money, I've spent some of it. Times I thought I know
too much. What would my partner think if I backed out? I mean, who's going to write that when they're already on death row? He has nothing to lose at this point and no reason, nothing to gain by making up lies.
Yeah, certainly, certainly I was.
Going to pull a person, so one person was for sure.
You cite in the book another reporter interview about other murders potentially tell us about that as you write.
Which report interview.
There was an interview later that you include at the end of the book where you talk about that there was a couple other murders planned. It was the killers had written or said in that interview.
Right. Uh, this was Capodi's interview with the with Hickcock and Smith that they were supposedly plan had two other murderers planned, one with the banker in a small town and the other I can'tra call at the moment. But the banker I always wonder if that one they were talking about was Quinby Kenneth Lyon, because he was a banker in the Farewell somewhat small town at the time.
Yes, and then again for those.
If that was, it would nicely tie things together.
Yes, with the affair with his wife, Yes, sir, right now with us as well. You talk about the KBI wanting to keep this official version of this again, why do you think it's so important to them to be able to maintain this story.
Well, it's the it would it would dim the shine on their star, that imagine. Going on sixty years now, this has been the shining example of the KBIS uh dramatic crime solving abilities and it really was great detective work at the time. I don't I don't take that away from them at all, thanks to the large part due to Harold n Who's who just a few short months afterwards, was promoted to assistant director of the KBIS. As a consequence of this work, with the Clutter case.
But I I find it hard to believe that people alive to this day are still carrying some kind of called the conspiracy theory that would want us not to publish anything from that era. I have no idea why they fought so hard as they did, since completely mystifying to me.
M hm. It's this book has been dedicated to Harold Nye, and we didn't go into just his character and really his character in this investigation when you talked about he was appointed director shortly after his ad adherents in law, though you write that didn't make them any friends, so
he was out of there pretty quickly. But his work as the as the investigator in this and as there's so much stuff that we didn't go into in this book, like one of the investigators working with Nye just handed his stuff Alan Dewey, who Alan Dewey then handled handed it to Truman Capodi.
Right, we'll talk about.
But we also didn't mention Wells's Floyd Wells's sentence was he was looking at five to ten and he was soon after released and so there was a whole again, as this detailed book you talk about the fate of Floyd Wells after all of this as well.
The governor at the time, William Avery, would not at this point it was a Docking governor. Docking would not commute Floyd Wells's sentence. But we believe that there had to be some kind of pro bono or rather quid pro quo accusing my Land, some quid pro quo for the testimony that Floyd Wells had provided on behalf of the KBI. He had a five to ten year sentence of which he had served only a year or so, and at the earliest you would he wouldn't have gotten
out for at least three years served. But the way, the way around that they found was to move him from Kansas State Penitentiary to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory, whose parole terms were much more of the Indians when you can be out in ten months including a time served, which Floyd Wells has already done in PSP. So that was a sweetheart deal he got, in addition to a thousand dollars reward from the Hutchinson News for breaking the case.
As you say, there's so much, not just in this book, but there's just so much to this, this whole investigation and to my research that it's by the mind blowing how many facets there are, how many avenues you can go down and keep walking for a long time.
What I found fascinating and absolutely the most vivid, I think, and crucial scene in the book is that the idea that the mother was, you know, Ronald's mother was after her husband died, she knew all this stuff was in the attic, and she said, all his stuff was there, fifty years of stuff, and she wanted it out of there because she was a little apprehensive, it seemed, so she wanted that stuff out of there, and just fortuitously there was that box, and Ronald came over and there
it was, and he rescued it. And then all of these things that have happened. But the reason Harold kept all those details, details and documents that an investigator should have kept, and then he kept it all those years in case anything ever happened. He hung on to this case.
It really bothered him. He never believed that this was the scenario that today they were murdered the way Truman Capoti depicted, and that's why he was very angry, and he kept all those notes, and then Ronald needed to sell them so again fate intervened, I think, and got the hard working, dedicated cop that Harold R. Nigh was to be able to have this fine work to disputes the official again, the official story that maybe shouldn't be official.
It is very interesting how fate intervened every step of the way, and today we have this book and every word is true. Very interesting.
I think it is if it is Harold wanted to write his own book, Dan for some years, and he wanted wanted Ron to help him, but he just couldn't run gets.
Pretty yes, well yeah, well I think it's been achieved. I think, you know, like I say, it's a circuitous route. But here we are and this incredible book and every word is true. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about and every word is true. Newfound evidence reveals Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is not the end of the story. Gary, For those of people might want to find out a little bit more about this,
Do you have a Facebook page website? Tell us if how they might think you look more information?
Thanks Dan, Yes, it's my website is Gary McAvoy dot com. Uh, and I'm on Facebook called In Cold Truth. Ah.
Great, name again. Thank you very much, brilliant book and every word is true. I want to thank you very much. You have a great evening. Thank you Gary McAvoy.
Good night, Thank you Dan. Pleasure to be here. Good night, good night.
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