OSPREY, Fla. — At the end of 1959, two families of four — one in Kansas, the other in Florida — were brutally murdered. Two men were arrested, charged and executed in the Kansas case, and writer Truman Capote captured the horrific tale in his iconic book “In Cold Blood.”
The Florida murder of two parents and two children was investigated by dozens of detectives over the years, but it remained unsolved. Now, a detective is trying to prove that the men who were executed in Kansas, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were also responsible for the Florida slayings.
“It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” said Sarasota County Sheriff’s detective Kimberly McGath, who began re-investigating the murders of Cliff and Christine Walker and their two young children in 2007.
After Smith and Hickock killed the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan., on Nov. 15, 1959, they fled to Florida in a stolen car. They were spotted at least a dozen times from Tallahassee to Miami. On Dec. 18, the two men checked into a Miami Beach motel and checked out the next day. That day, the Walker family was killed at their home on a ranch in the small community of Osprey about four hours northwest of Miami near Sarasota.
