ONE SIN IN 1959

 Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were on a mission when they drove into the driveway of the Clutter family in the early morning hours of November 15, 1959. The two had planned this trip for a while and their greed had driven them to this particular house on this particular night in Holcomb, Kansas. There was a safe in this house which contained $10,000 ($89,425 in today's money) and they were, come what may, going to steal it. As they sat in the darkness, they made a vow: they would kill any eyewitnesses. 

They left the car and proceeded into the house in which Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon were asleep, little knowing that what was about to happen would both shock and outrage a nation. 

Smith and Hickock rummage through the house, searching for the safe with all that money; after all, they're in the house of a wealthy, church-going farmer. The safe must be hidden somewhere but they can't find it. They go in and wake the family, demanding to know where it is. Herb tells them that he doesn't have a safe, "Please, take the money in my billfold, it's got $50." ($485 in today's money)

That's not good enough; Smith and Hickock  keep asking where the safe is. Their mission has failed, but they will keep their vow. Herb and his son are taken to the basement and tied up. One of the men takes a knife and slits Herb's throat, but it's not a deep enough cut for him to die and he's making gurgling sounds that are irritating, so he aims the 12-gauge Savage Model 300 shotgun he had brought and shoots Herb in the face. One dead.

Perry Smith places a pillow under Kenyon's head, the shotgun to his face and fires. Two dead. Upstairs, Bonnie and Nancy are gunned down in their beds, the mother shot in the face. Nancy was the last of the Clutters to die that night. They had taped their mouths, except for Nancy’s. This gave her the chance, in her horror, to get them to stop. According to Smith’s account, with the gun aimed at her, Nancy pleaded “Oh, no! Oh, please. No! No! No! No! Don’t! Oh please don’t. Please!” before the twelve-gauge shot blasted into her head as she turned away.(Four dead)

Smith and Hickock flee the scene. Six weeks later, having run out of money in Mexico, they're caught, tried, and later hanged by the neck until dead on April 14, 1965. On the gallows, they ask Smith if he has any last words and he spends them begging for his life, relating all the good he will do if spared. 

But there's no pity for Smith or Hickock, the executioner pulls the lever, first for Hickock, then for Smith. There are no tears among the law officers present who saw what they had done to the Clutters for $50 and a portable radio they later pawned in Mexico. 

That horrendous massacre in Holcomb, Kansas, seared itself into the American psyche because of a book that Truman Capote wrote about that night. He called it, "In Cold Blood." 

But what triggered that trip to Kansas? That massacre happened because a while earlier, while Hickock was in jail, Jeff Wells, his cell mate, spent time doing what inmates do--telling stories. Wells had worked on the Clutter farm and he confided to Hickock about the wealthy farmer who lived there and of the safe with $10,000 inside that house. He told him that the Clutters lived in Holcomb, Kansas, and he told him the location of the house in that rural community. 

But what Hickok didn't know was that the story of the safe was a lie; there was no safe, no $10,000 in that house. He had made it all up. It was a story told to pass the time. What could be the harm in that?

That one sin in 1959: a father, a mother, and two children shotgunned to death. Two men hanged and a nation traumatized by the randomness of it all. 

Sin is nothing to trifle with. We never know the havoc and the heartache one "small" sin can bring.