The Garden City Telegram
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Case inspired some to take legal, law enforcement jobs
Published 11/14/2009 in Local News
By KATHY HANKS
The Hutchinson News
Gene Thomeczek was a freshman at Garden City Community College, contemplating his future in 1959.
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Thomeczek
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Telegram photo Members of the Clutter investigation team, shown here in this 1960 photo, were from left: KBI agent Al Dewey, Finney County Attorney Duane West, Finney County Sheriff Earl Robinson and Clarence Duntz.
Craig Kershner was a 16-year-old, living at home in Manhattan, with no definitive plans for a career.
But both were among the impressionable youth who heard the shocking news coming from Holcomb on Nov. 15, 1959, that not only had Herb and Bonnie Clutter been murdered, but also their children, Nancy and Kenyon.
Future in FBI
While today he can't recall what happened first that year, the Clutter murders' or the FBI recruiter coming on campus, Thomeczek believes both had an influence on his long career as a federal agent.
After listening to the recruiter, Thomeczek said, "I thought, wouldn't that be a great job making $6,000 or $7,000 a year."
At the time, he was working for $1 a day as a handy man.
"The recruiter talked about the history of the FBI and cases worked. To a farm boy from western Kansas, it was something you heard about, but never thought about," Thomeczek said.
The weekend the Clutters were murdered, Thomeczek was visiting his family home in Kendall, about 50 miles west of Garden City.
Residents in his community, as well as others across the region, were fearful.
"Initially no one knew who had committed the murders," Thomeczek said. Even in Kendall, the fear was running high.
"My dad was the same kind of successful farmer as Mr. Clutter. Gosh, that could have been us. Everybody was thinking that," he said.
By Dec. 30, 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock had been arrested in Las Vegas and confessed to the murders by the time they arrived back in Kansas. The trial began in March 1960.
Out of curiosity, Thomeczek was one of the spectators who arrived early enough to get a seat in the crowded Finney County Courthouse.
On that particular day, he remembers an FBI agent from the Washington, D.C., lab testifying about the tape they had used to bind the victims' hands and mouth.
"They were pretty well trained on making it simple for the jury," Thomeczek said. "He testified about the origin of the tape, where it was manufactured and how they could match it up. It was technical, but fairly simple and apparently the jury understood."
The next day, Thomeczek was back in class. But, again an agent was on campus trying to recruit agents and clerks for the FBI. He picked up a 10-page application.
"I had kept my nose clean and hadn't been in any trouble and thought 'Gosh, I would qualify on that respect. It's just a matter if I could do the job,' " he said.
Haunting murder
The fact that Craig Kerhsner became a rural county attorney 50 miles northeast of Garden City is more happenstance than destiny.
His Clutter connection was his father, who went to grade school with then Bonnie Fox in Pawnee County, and his mother, who lived in Larned, and went on a double date with Herb and Bonnie very early on, Kershner said. When the Kershners moved to Garden City for several years, they visited their old acquaintances.
That was back in the early 1950s, and Kershner, the same age as Nancy Clutter, had several encounters playing with Nancy and Kenyon in the orchard at the Clutters' River Valley Farm.
But by Nov. 15, 1959, the Kershners were living in Manhattan, horrified like so many to hear of a family of four being murdered in their home. Later, in college, he met one of the Clutters' neighbors, who shared with him how fearful the community was after the murders.
By 1974, Kershner was the Lane County attorney and had his own murder trial to contend with.
Because of the magnitude of the crime, the KBI sent out Al Dewey, who had led the Clutter investigation. It was an opportunity to get to know the personable Dewey.
"I felt some comfort in their presence," Kershner said of Dewey and his co-worker, Don Burns, both special agents with the KBI. "They were well trained and knew how to conduct an investigation, while maintaining a sense of humor."
Dewey didn't mind visiting. From their conversations, Kershner learned more about the one-time FBI agent and former Finney County sheriff, who joined the KBI in 1955.
Having known the Clutter family, Dewey had a personal interest in the case, Kershner said, and attended the execution of Smith and Hickok for closure.
Kershner didn't know back in 1959 he would go on to become a county attorney for 37 years in a rural community. But, perhaps that twist of fate, and his connection to the area, keeps the murder nudging at him.
"What are the odds you can connect the dots and this thing would play out the way it did," Kershner wondered. "That's the remarkable thing about it."
In recent years, the now retired Kershner revisited the case with a curious friend. After reviewing the investigative evidence at the Finney County Law Enforcement Center, and visiting the crime scene, they decided to go to Valley View Cemetery.
Kershner stood at the Clutter graves, and then suddenly noticed its nearness to Judge Roland Tate, who presided over the murder case, and Al Dewey and his wife, Marie.
"It seemed remarkable that they were buried in close proximity," Kershner said. "It's like it all has come full circle."
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