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
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