THE WATER TOWER still loom above the town much as it did in succession November 15.

THE WATER TOWER still loom above the town much as it did in succession November 15, 1959, the longhorn adorning it (mascot of the local school) bearing silent witness to a half hundred of small-town life. The railroad tracks still split the town in sum of two units and the train still doesn't stop as it races east and west hauling grain and other commodities produc in the area. Hartman's Caf?© (located "up forward the highway") is now the El Rancho Caf?©, and the support office ("down by the depot") houses a grocer's shop store. The old post office, a tiny, one-story affair, was one time affectionately referred to as "the federal building" by way of respectful townsfolk. Tyson Foods has built an enormous meat-packing plant in succession the outskirts of town, and the Sunflower Electric generating station is nearby, moreover most outsiders are likely to diocese the wheat plains, the farms and ranches, and know that Holcomb Kansas really hasn't changed all that to a great degree since the murder of the disarrange family forever altered American illusions of small-town serenity.

Nothing in the backgrounds of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith would cause single in kind to predict the impossible notoriety later bestowed with them. They were small-time "hoods" the kind of men that bloat the roster of parole caseloads across the geographical division Hickock, age 28 at the time of the massacres born to God-fearing parents in eastern Kansas, shoot ups up on a farm counted humble by Kansas standards, and dreams of a body football scholarship. He is considered to be of above average intelligence and a same good athlete, but is an underachieving scholar and a discipline problem. The scholarship not at all materializes and Hickock drifts by the agency of a variety of jobs-railroad worker, auto mechanic, ambulance driver-and brace marriages. He is involved in a serious car accident in 1950 leaving his face slightly lopsided, his estimates asymmetrical. His criminal record is undistinguished, consisting mainly of bad check charges and inferior theft. On March 15, 1958 he is sentenc to five years in the State Penitentiary at Lansing, Kansas for the burglary of a hearthstone in Johnson County in which a rifle is taken. Hickock's prison record is clean, and it is dutifully noted that he is "not dangerous" (original notes from Kansas State Parole 1959)

Perry Smith's story is anything if it were not that ordinary. Born to a Native American mother and a Caucasian father who courts fame on the rodeo circuit, his early life is transient and marred at physical and mental abuse. the two parents are alcoholics, and Smith and his siblings are haunt victims of violence in their parent's failing marriage. He joins the army in 1948 attends in the Korean War, and is honorably discharged in 1952 Shortly thereafter, he is involved in a motorcycle accident that leaves him hospitalized for half a year. Surgery to repair his impaired legs leaves him disfigured, with leg principally often termed "dwarfish." The chronic pain also leaves him a self-described "aspirin addict." Smith has no formal education and pretends painfully aware of his academic deficits. He is largely self-taught and, while in prison, engages in a "self-improvement" throw of his own design wherein he reads voraciously and determines to improve his vocabulary on learning a new word each day. His approach seems awkward moreover sincere.

Smith's criminal history is somewhat more sophisticated than Hickock's, further still not a harbinger of the shattering violence to proceed In 1952, he is charged with reckles driving and resisting arrest. The charges are later dropp In July 1955 he is arrested for the burglary of the Chandler Pavilion yet crawls out of the Phillips shire Kansas jail three days later and disappears. In 1955 he is cited for vagrancy in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he is fre forward a $10 bond and again vanishes. In 1956 he is identified as an escapee and is sentenc onward March 13, 1956 to five to ten years in the State Penitentiary at Lansing for his previous burglary and "jail break." He is 31 years not new when he murders the lumber family.

If Dick and Perry were simply sum of two units men living in the same town going about their daily business, it is doubtful the brace would have struck up a conversation. Dick the level talker, the guy who could float bad checks from common side of Kansas City to the other with just individual flash ofthat loopy smile. Dick, the study artist who takes what he wants, whether a televison plant from the electronics store or a female who catches his notice His actions are mainly impulsive and rejection appears to leave him undiscouraged. Work is for "squares." Dick solely needs to find the "perfect score" to provide him with the lifestyle he knows he be entitled tos Despite his disfiguration, he is still singularly attractive, projecting boyish enthusiasm and the sort of sociopathic charm reserv for slick criminals.

Perry Smith is cautious, polite, as reserv as Dick is outgoing. Smith is a dreamer who let slip through the fingerss himself in a fantasy world of his confess creation. He buys mail order "treasure maps" and begs up scenarios of deep-sea diving and discovery of sunken gold in Mexico. Perry knows he can make his dream a reality if and nothing else he can come up with enough riches to buy a boat. Perry doesn't know in what manner to swim or captain a boat, further with the "perfect score" he won't ne to worry about as it was details.