Richard Eugene Hickock (June 6, 1931 – April 14, 1965) was one of two ex-convicts convicted of murdering four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959, a crime made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.

After finishing high school, Hickock had wanted to attend college, but his family lacked the means to finance his post-secondary education.

Head injuries from a serious automobile accident in 1950 left Hickock disfigured, rendering his face slightly lopsided and his eyes asymmetrical.

He drifted through several manual labor jobs, working as a railroad worker, mechanic, and ambulance driver while simultaneously continuing to write bad checks and commit petty theft.

[4][2] While serving his prison sentence, Hickock met fellow inmates Perry Smith and Floyd Wells, the latter of whom used to work for the Clutter family.

[4] Alvin Dewey, chief investigator in the case, testified at the trial that Hickock insisted in his confession that Smith performed all the killings.

"[8] Smith, in contrast, attempted to speak beyond the room when he addressed the media representatives and declared: "capital punishment is legally and morally wrong.

[10] On December 18, 2012, the killers' bodies were exhumed from Mount Muncie Cemetery, as authorities hoped to solve a 53-year-old cold case using DNA.

[11] After the exhumation, officials in Kansas retrieved bone fragments from Smith and Hickock's corpses to compare their DNA to semen found in Christine Walker's pants.

[12][13][14] In August 2013, the Sarasota County sheriff's office announced they were unable to find a match between the DNA of either Smith or Hickock with the samples in the Walker family murder.

After completing the project, Nations sent the converted manuscript to the publishing company Random House, but they returned and advised they had already commissioned Capote to write about the murders.

Michael Stone, a Columbia University psychiatrist who specialized in studying Smith and Hickock, read the manuscript at the request of the Journal and said on the record, "I don't believe for a minute that they got paid to do it.