When they were arrested, they had a pocket knife similar to the one described as missing from Cliff Walkers body. The taking of these items from the crime scene is suggestive that the killing was directly targeting Christine and the family rather than the tragic results of a home invasion. However, for one Florida family, the Christmas season became a nightmare.. Myers, 71, had pleaded for answers most of his life, sometimes dropping into the sheriff's office when the phone fell quiet. Sunday Favorites: What Really Happened to the Walkers? June 17, 2022 . 2023 The Associated Press. Worrying that the family had succumbed to a gas leak, he broke in with his pocket knife. House where teen violently murdered his mom and sisters features Now, Clark was telling Myers, as he had several times before, that his suspicions lay elsewhere. Baby Debbie, they found in the bathtub, facedown in 4 inches of water, also shot in the head. Mystery Monday: The Walker Family Murders Pandorah's Box "I always looked at the Walker case as 'Keep looking,' because it's not Hickock and Smith.". In a 2014 email to her supervisors, McGath wrote: "It feels like there's been a negative cloud surrounding me in regards to the cold cases." It is therefore believed that Smith and Hickock may have gained entry to the Walker home on the pretense of selling their car. Capt. The house was dark as McLeod approached, but as he got closer, he saw a light flickering through the window. However, in 2012, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office once again began to look into a possible link, having originally considered them suspects as early as 1960 around the time of their arrest. The bodies were exhumed on December 18, 2012, but it wasnt until August of 2013 that results were officially announced. The second one didnt miss. Authorities believe that 24-year-old Christine Walker arrived at the family's farm home around 4pm on Saturday, December 19, 1959, where she was raped, then murdered by gunshot. Cliff, who earned $55 a week managing a herd of deep red cows, wanted to trade in his wife's 1952 Plymouth. Giasone wasn't sure why previous leaders didn't pursue additional testing 10 years ago. Police never identified a motive, and 587 people were suspects at one time or another. "Let me say this, Mr. Myers," Clark said. This line of investigation stopped when police confirmed that he wasnt even in Florida on the day of the Walker murders. They were robbed of all the things we bring children into this world to experience, and thats devastating. All were shot in the head. He ran from the house and jumped into the jeep, as his own truck had a trailer attached and he needed to get to a telephone as fast as possible. Murderpedia. 15) Tony von Carruthers: In February of 1994, Tony shot his mother, her teenage associate, and his drug dealer in the Memphis area. The town is small, comprising just a few thousand people, and residents enjoyed the relative peace that comes alongside that. She sifted through thousands of pages, looking for the original DNA test of Christine's underwear that had detected a male suspect - a result detectives had leaned on for years. June 7, 2021: Margaret "Maggie" Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh found dead at the family hunting lodge. Christine was 24. Murdaugh Trial Timeline: Everything to Know About the Murder Case Homicide detectives often are told to work on older cases when they have time. Clutter Family Murders | Garden City Police Department He took off with Jimmie and Debbie in a jeep that could be used by any of the Palmer Ranch hands. DNA has failed to connect two men featured in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood to the 1959 murders of a family of four in Osprey, but relatives still think all the evidence points to notorious killers. The folks at the gas station told him the Walkers were dead, and they took him to the house where he fell apart. The bodies of the two men executed for the 1959 murders of a Kansas family that became infamous in Truman Capote's true-crime book In Cold Blood were exhumed Tuesday in an effort to solve slayings of a Florida family killed weeks later. 2 men found drugged after leaving NYC gay bars were killed, medical examiner says. When Don discovered the bodies of the Walker family, he was heartbroken and terrified. The first person worth talking about is Don McLeod, the man who found the bodies. Did the same men that killed the Clutter family kill the Walker family Or herself. Instead, it was parked a cars width to one side, possibly indicating that another car was parked in her usual spot when she arrived. At the same time, DNA analysis has become more exact, especially in the past two decades, with testing that once required a million cells now potentially able to identify someone with a single cell, said DNA expert Greg Hampikian, director of the Idaho Innocence Project and a biology professor at Boise State University. In 2010, however, over 50 years after the crime, the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office took another crack at the Walker family murders case. [7] Spencer's confession was "determined to be cleverly constructed from real murders written up in newspapers and true-crime novels that he liked to read. Memories forged 'in cold blood' - Arizona Daily Sun Blood evidence suggests that he wasnt killed by the first bullet and that the assailant continued to shoot at him while he crawled over to be next to his fathers body. Some suspect Stanley Mauck, the man who read the meters for the Walker residence, as he was the same meter reader who serviced the home of another recently murdered family. McGath stopped calling Myers. As daylight broke on Dec. 20, 1959, half a dozen lawmen stood in the living room and stared down in silence. The sheriff had Hickock and Smith's pictures published on the front page of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The pair were among the many suspects given a polygraph which they both passed, being dismissed from the inquiry. The Walkers' marriage certificate, which was reported stolen, had turned up among items given to Cliff Walker's niece by a relative in 2013. On November 15, 1959, Richard Hickock, 28, and Perry Smith, 31, slipped through an unlocked door into Herb and Bonnie Clutter's house and cut the phone lines. McLeod hastily ran from the house and called the police. Hickock and Smith confessed to the murders of the Clutter family, for which they were hanged in April of 1965. In December of 2012, it was announced that Smith and Hickocks bodies would be exhumed to match their DNA to semen samples taken from Christine back in 1959. Reconstructing events, police ascertained that the family had been out running errands and believe that Christine arrived home first, around 4pm on Saturday, December 19. Capt. Perry Edward Smith - Wikipedia Not to mention this type of slut-shaming and victim-blaming has prevented real justice in our system for generations. What does society owe, say, the family of Cliff and Christine Walker? In the end, though, the couple drove back, pausing at the ranch barn to pick up cattle feed. "Go ahead, dig her up," Myers told him, for a second time. However, like all states, we have seen our fair share of bad folks, including these 10 infamous Kansas serial killers and homicides that won't soon be forgotten. [5] The pair checked into a Miami Beach motel, about four hours from Osprey, and checked out on the morning of the Walker murders. At around 3:30 PM on December 19, 24-year-old Christine pulled into the family farm after running a few errands. He still spoke with the previous detective, who remained convinced Capote's killers were responsible. Many people assume that Christine was the main reason the killer was there in the first place. They are also the main suspects for the massacre of the Walker family in Florida a month after the Clutter murders. Murder for the Holidays: The unsolved Walker family murders Due to the passage of time, only partial samples could be retrieved from the bodies, and these could not be matched to samples taken from the Walker home. For example, in 1994, a woman called the Sarasota County Sheriffs Office and claimed to be a bartender in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He'd lied to Novella before she died in 2021. She fought viciously, using her high-heeled shoes and staining them with blood, even making it out of the house before being dragged back inside. Rare photos show the "In Cold Blood" house in Holcomb, Kan., where the Clutter family was murdered was opened to the public in 2006 when the property was put up for sale. After lunch, they went to the McLeods. McLeod also fell under suspicion. To be sure, Clark had told Myers, scientists would have to pinpoint Christine's DNA and remove it from the mixture. Myers was 7 when a neighbor burst into his living room to announce what she'd heard on the radio. Authorities acted on a lead that connected the 1959 murder of the Walker family with an earlierand much more famouscrime: the slaying of the Clutter family, the very case that inspired Truman Capote's groundbreaking book, In Cold Blood. memorial page for Clifford "Cliff" Walker (16 Oct 1934-19 Dec 1959), Find a Grave Memorial ID . The Walkers dwelled amongst country folk, whose women were sorted by their morals and men by their prowess roping cattle or catching hogs. Initial suspects in the case included Daniel McLeod himself, a local by the name of Wilbur Tooker, and a cousin of Cliff by the name of Elbert Walker. As the sun set shortly after 5 p.m. on December 30, 1959, a driver stopped a 1956 Chevrolet . Join Mike and Gibby for this 'Best Of' episode as they discuss the facts of the murders and walk through the various suspects. He learned, too, of the deaths of her husband, Cliff, 3-year-old Jimmie and 23-month-old Debbie. interactive scene of 1959 walker family murders The 1959 murder of Herbert Clutter and his wife and kids in Holcomb, Kansas by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock was, by itself, rather unextraordinary. That motive has to be discounted in the Walker family case. He was photographed outside the house the day the bodies were discovered - with no marks on him, McGath commented. 50 years after Michigan family's massacre in cottage - mlive What started as a robbery ended in the violent deaths of the mother, father, and two teenaged children. . Months later in 2013, McGath was at her desk in Sarasota reading a report on the DNA from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Despite what Capote asserted at the time, subsequent investigations have since revealed holes in Hickock and Smiths alibis, and some experts have asserted that polygraph tests of the era were notoriously unreliable. "Behind every good woman, there's a good man," he said, as he filled her cup. Curtis had apparently been violent in the past. Such killings the extermination of an entire family don't happen every day, but they're not so statistically rare as . Myers wanted to feel that way too. However, based on the personal items that were stolen, Katherine Ramsland, of the University of Pennsylvania, finds Smith and Hickock unlikely and instead suspects that the killer knew at least one member of the Walker family. Cliff and the kids followed a half hour later in his work Jeep. He had initially believed the family had simply slept in, amused as his friend was also known to be a habitual early riser. However, while both Smith and Hickock would be dead and buried by the time Capote released his pioneering book, they were still very much at large on December 19, 1959. But national clearance rates have sunk. On December 19th, 1959: The entire Walker Family was shot to death as the suspect left the home, Christine walker was home at the time of the attack to fight off her attackers as police believe that she was raped and shot, her husband; Cliff Walker was also shot as he came home along with their three year old son Jimmie and Debbie, who was two years old was drowned in the family's bathtub. Alex Murdaugh sentenced to life in prison for murders of wife and son, Biden had cancerous skin lesion removed last month, doctor says, White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes kicked out of CPAC, Tom Sizemore, actor known for "Saving Private Ryan" and "Heat," dies at 61, Biden team readies new advisory panel ahead of expected reelection bid, At least 10 dead after winter storm slams South, Midwest, House Democrats unhappy with White House handling of D.C.'s new criminal code. It is said that he complained to psychiatrists about homicidal tendencies. But cold cases, too, pose a conundrum. A Miami Beach detective discovered that the day before the murders, the pair had checked in at a motel there, paying $18 for a week's stay. Christmas 1959 was supposed to follow this tradition. Out of ammunition, the killer took the baby to the bathroom and drowned her in the bathtub. Boyer interviewed suspects in at least five other states. Both had relatively minor items stolen. Want more true crime? Safe house. 'In Cold Blood' and the Murders Truman Capote Missed It doesnt seem like thats what happened to me. At the time of the murders, the Walkers had been thinking about buying a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, and this was the same car that Smith and Hickock had stolen back in Kansas, using it during their flight across the country. Cliff didnt take the time he would ordinarily take to unload the cattle feed he had bought in town before going inside. The notorious "Bloody Benders" were a German immigrant family who owned both a general store and small inn in the early 1870s in Labette County . Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. By continuing to browse, you accept the use of cookies and other technologies. He claimed that he only saw Christine rarely and the last time he had seen her, she had been with her husband. Behind many closed doors, kerosene lamps and frying pans flew. "This case don't want to be solved," he said. In mid-September, Myers clenched his jaw as he lifted his wife with a gait belt, transferring her from wheelchair to recliner at their modest home.