DNA results in Walker murders expected in days

Published: Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 2:26 p.m. Last Modified: Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 5:32 p.m.

Or it could send detectives back to the drawing board.

Last December, the bodies of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, murderers profiled in Truman Capote's nonfiction work "In Cold Blood," were exhumed from a graveyard in Kansas to extract their DNA.

The men were executed for the November 1959 murder of the Clutter family of four, who were shot to death in their remote farmhouse in Holcomb, Kan.

For the past four months, people here have waited with growing impatience to see if the killers' DNA will match that taken from the Walker family's equally gruesome crime scene, found by an unwitting friend in their remote ranch house just one month after the Clutter murders.

So far, no one knows who shot ranch hand Cliff Walker, 25, the quiet type; his wife, Christine, 24, known for her sweet disposition and high spirits; Jimmie, 3, the spitting image of his dad; and curly-top Debbie, not quite 2. All died of their wounds but Debbie, who was held under water in the family bathtub until she drowned.

Christine Walker also was beaten and raped by her killer, who left traces of DNA on her underwear.

Technicians for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation are working to glean viable DNA from the bones and possibly the teeth of the men at the request of Sarasota County cold-case detectives.

"This will give us the resolution we've been looking for or will give us the direction we need to go next," said Wendy Rose, spokeswoman for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.

So far, KBI technicians have one partial DNA profile, but hope to get full profiles of Hickock and Smith, whose names still evoke images of the most heinous of sociopaths. "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote's literary masterwork, and a 1967, black-and-white movie thriller of the same name, sealed their ignominious legacy.

The rest is here:
DNA results in Walker murders expected in days