FLORIDA — A decades-old quadruple murder in Florida will remain a mystery. The Sarasota County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office says DNA testing can’t link convicted killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock to the murders of a young Florida ranch family in December 1959, about a month after Smith and Hickock murdered a western Kansas farm family. The quadruple murders of the Herb Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan., the trial and the execution of Smith and Hickock were recounted in Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood.’ Before they were captured, Smith and Hickock stole a car and drove to Florida and were seen in the same area at about same time that Cliff and Christine Walker and their two young children were killed. At the request of Florida authorities, Kansas exhumed Smith and Hickock’s bodies last December and collected DNA samples. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office says the DNA evidence from the murderers was too old and contaminated to make a match. The Department’s web site says they’re still the most likely suspects in the Florida murders. The book ‘In Cold Blood,’ briefly mentions the Flordia murders and Capote relates that Smith said that “a lunatic” had copied the Kansas killings.
Updated 8/14/13 @ 11:10 pm
