The heart of the Lone Eagle soared on wings of joy as the year of his epic triumph was coming to an end.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SANE OR INSANE?
Pendleton, Oregon
Early 1928
“Kidnappings and savage murders are the worst of America’s crimes and everything should be done to prevent anyone interfering in any way with the liberty and life of American citizens,” a letter to newspapers across the country declared. “Young men and college students should consider the Parker case as a typical crime of the worst that can happen when a young man gradually loses interest in family, friends, and his own honesty.”32
The author of this sage advice for young people knew what he was talking about. His name was William Edward Hickman.
“I put my own life in a mess and the way out is dark,” he wrote as he awaited trial. “Think it over, see my mistake. Be honest and upright. Respect the law. If you do these things you will be happier in the end and you will have gained much more from your life.”
How had Hickman become a monster? He had been born prematurely. Was there a problem—oxygen deprivation, say—as he came into the world? He came from a broken home, but so do many children. Regardless of his early problems, he was clearly intelligent enough to have made his way in the world by honest means.
Psychiatrists who examined Hickman found him lucid and clearheaded, quite able to understand what he had done. They declared, in essence, that he was not insane. Just evil.
In his brief jail stay in Oregon, Hickman was interviewed by an editor and reporter for the Pendleton East Oregonian newspaper. He told them he had indeed traveled to Chicago at one point, but he denied killing the young woman in Milwaukee in October, so that crime remained unsolved, at least officially.
Most importantly, Hickman claimed that he had had a partner in the kidnapping and murder of Marion Parker and that the partner had done the actual killing. Investigators soon debunked that claim.
Hickman had trouble sleeping in the Oregon jail, as he was taunted by other prisoners. Then as now, many criminals, even the most incorrigible, despise men who prey on children. No doubt, Hickman was relieved when Los Angeles police officers arrived to take him back to California on a train. It was Christmas Eve.
On the train, Hickman wrote a confession of sorts. He also talked freely, the words trickling out of his mouth like drops of sewage. He insisted he had not violated Marion sexually. He said they had enjoyed going to the movies together. He conceded that she had become anxious and tearful and wanted to go home. He said he strangled her by surprise to spare her fear beforehand.
Yes, Hickman conceded, he had acted alone in abducting, killing, and dismembering the twelve-year-old. (Later, he recalled that, while he was cutting up her body in his bathtub, he became hungry. So he took a break to snack on crackers and sardines.)
“I would like to say I have had no bad personal habits,” the killer wrote on the train. “I have never been drunk or taken any intoxicating drinks. I do not gamble.”33
Hickman’s mother retained a prominent Kansas City lawyer, Jerome K. Walsh, to defend her son. Walsh was joined by a Los Angeles lawyer, Richard Cantillon.
During the trial in early 1928, the lawyers tried what was a novel defense at the time: Hickman pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Basically, the lawyers’ assertion went like this: Hickman must be insane, because no sane person would do something as horrible as he had done. Therefore, Hickman’s life should be spared.
The jurors heard from Hickman’s parents about their boy’s troubled childhood. The jurors did not hear from Hickman himself, since his lawyers persuaded him that testifying on his own behalf would not be wise.
Of course, no one knows what the jurors said to one another during deliberations, but they must have focused on the basic weakness in the defense position. Taken to its logical conclusion, the lawyers’ argument seemed to be the more horrible the crime, the more likely that the criminal is insane, and therefore he should not be punished as a sane person would be.
After deliberating for only forty-three minutes, the jurors convicted Hickman of murder. On Saturday, February 11, the judge decreed that he should hang on April 27—a date with death that no one expected Hickman to keep, since his lawyers were planning appeals.
By this time, the killing of the druggist during the robbery that Hickman and Welby Hunt committed on Christmas Eve 1926 had been all but forgotten. But the law had to take its course. Soon after the trial in the Parker case, Hickman and Hunt were convicted of murder in the drugstore heist. The verdict didn’t really matter as far as Hickman was concerned; he could only hang once. And Hunt would not hang at all, since he was only sixteen at the time of the crime. He was sentenced to life in prison.
As he languished on death row in San Quentin prison, Hickman explored his spiritual self. He pronounced himself a convert to Catholicism. He discovered new depths of compassion in his personality, writing a letter to the widow of the slain druggist in which he addressed her as “Dear friend” and apologized for causing her “any past grief.”34
Hickman told his guards he would meet his fate—and his maker—like a man. His rendezvous with death was now set for Friday, October 19, 1928.
That morning, he breakfasted on eggs, prunes, coffee, and a
