'In Cold Blood' DNA testing inconclusive, so far

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) DNA testing so far has been inconclusive on whether two men executed in Kansas for the 1959 killings that inspired the book "In Cold Blood" can also be linked to the unsolved slayings of a Florida family weeks later, a senior investigator said Wednesday.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation will continue testing material collected from the remains of convicted murderers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, Deputy Director Kyle Smith said. Investigators believe the men fled to Florida after killing the Clutter family in a gruesome case later documented by Truman Capote in his genre-forming classic.

"The analysis is not completed," Kyle Smith told The Associated Press. "We are still trying."

In Florida, the Sarasota County sheriff's office says it remains optimistic that it can resolve questions about the killings of four family members, just days before Christmas 1959. A detective there began investigating the case again in 2007.

"Hopefully, science will be able to give us the answers," spokeswoman Wendy Rose said.

The KBI initially projected it would have definitive results from the DNA early this month, but the agency now has no timetable for when the testing will be complete.

"Justice never rests," Smith said.

Hickock and Perry Smith were hanged in 1965 in Kansas for the killings of Herb Clutter, his wife and two of their children in the family's farmhouse outside the southwest Kansas town of Holcomb.

The hunt for the killers mesmerized the nation and drew journalists from across the U.S. to the small farming town. Capote's book takes readers through the killings, Hickock's and Perry Smith's trial and their execution. It is celebrated because it reads like a novel; scholars have long debated its accuracy.

Attention quickly turned to Hickock and Perry Smith when, only weeks after the Kansas slayings, a Florida family was killed. Cliff Walker and his wife, Christine, along with their two small children, were killed in their home in Osprey, Fla., south of Sarasota. The case was never solved.

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'In Cold Blood' DNA testing inconclusive, so far