Perry Edward Smith (October 27, 1928 – April 14, 1965) was one of two career criminals convicted of murdering the four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, United States, on November 15, 1959, a crime that was made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.

After Flo died from choking on her own vomit when he was 13, he and his siblings were placed in a Catholic orphanage, where nuns abused[6] him physically and emotionally for his lifelong problem of chronic bed wetting, a result of malnutrition.

[9] During his stint in the Army, Smith spent weeks at a time in the stockade for public carousing and fighting with Korean civilians and other soldiers.

[2][9] Perry Smith was sentenced to 5–10 years for burglary and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution after robbing the Chandler Sales Barn in Phillipsburg, Kansas and escaping from jail.

[2] Perry Smith and Dick Hickock only ended up with about $50 in cash, a pair of binoculars, and a Zenith transistor radio that belonged to Kenyon Clutter.

[11] After six weeks at large, mostly spent idly roaming the country, Smith and Hickock were captured in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 30, 1959, following an extensive manhunt which extended into Mexico.

He read extensively, and during his time on death row, wrote poems and painted pictures for other inmates from photos of their family members.

[2] Nearly 50 years after the executions, the bodies of the killers were exhumed from Mount Muncie Cemetery in Lansing, as authorities hoped to solve a 53-year-old cold case using DNA.

Smith and Hickock had originally been questioned about the December 19, 1959, shooting murder in Osprey, Florida of Cliff and Christine Walker and their two young children.

[14] On December 19, 2012, officials in Kansas exhumed the bodies of Smith and Hickock and retrieved bone fragments to compare their DNA to semen found in the pants of Christine Walker.

[15][16][17] In August 2013, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office announced they were unable to find a match between the DNA of Smith or Hickock and the samples in the Walker family murder.

Orville Peck's 2019 album Pony includes the song "Kansas (Remembers me Now)", written from the point of view of Perry Smith being questioned after the Clutter murders.