SARASOTA, Fla., Aug. 13 (UPI) -- DNA from the infamous "In Cold Blood" killers failed to tie them to the unsolved 1959 slayings of a Florida family, the victims' relatives learned Tuesday.
The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office said investigators couldn't match the genetic material taken from the exhumed bodies of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock to the killings of Cliff and Christine Walker of Osprey and their two young children, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.
The genetic testing proved inconclusive because only partial DNA profiles were taken from the bodies exhumed in Kansas and the Walker samples had deteriorated. No further testing was slated, the newspaper said.
Hickock and Smith became possible suspects in the Walker case after it was learned they had been in Florida about the time the family was killed.
The pair were convicted and executed for the murders of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959, a case that became widely known because of the 1966 book "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote that was turned into a movie in 1967.
