Wrapping up Hickman

With this piece, I'll conclude my series of posts on William Edward Hickman, the brutal child killer who caught Ayn Rand's fancy back in 1928. This information, like that in my last posts, is taken from the true-crime book Stolen Away, by Michael Newton, a detailed study of the Hickman case.

One correction: I was mistaken in saying that Hickman's trial was the first use of the insanity defense in United States. In fact, insanity was used as defense by Clarence Darrow when he represented the notorious thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in 1926, and had been used in other cases as well. Darrow managed to save his clients' lives. Hickman's lawyer was not so successful.

Another correction: The drugstore proprietor killed in a shootout during one of Hickman's holdups was apparently hit by Hickman's accomplice, not by Hickman himself. Under California law, however, Hickman and his accomplice were regarded as equally guilty of the murder. Hickman gave up his accomplice shortly after his arrest. Apparently he'd never heard of loyalty among thieves.

Hickman claimed that twelve-year-old Marian Parker was never nervous or upset during her time with him. The coroner in the case, who by coincidence was a neighbor of the Parker family, felt otherwise. Marian's stomach was empty and constricted, indicating that she hadn't eaten in many hours, if not days. "She was a very nervous child," the coroner said, drawing a picture of a scared, anxious victim too terrified to keep her food down.

Despite Rand's romanticized view of Hickman as an uncompromising and unrepentant criminal, he actually tried desperately to save his own neck. He shammed insanity by pitching a fake epileptic fit. He made a couple of halfhearted suicide attempts that were probably intended to garner pity rather than to actually end his life. Later he wrote several long tracts trying to win public sympathy, first by casting himself as insane, then by claiming that some great social good could be accomplished by keeping him alive as an object of scientific study, and finally by announcing his conversion to Christianity.

Clearly he saw himself as a likable figure. In a letter to his mother after his arrest, he wrote,"In spite of everything people can't help but sympathize with me ..." The truth was that almost no one sympathized with Hickman. He was probably the most hated man in America in 1928. The Los Angeles police chief stated publicly that Hickman was "a yellow cur," and with few exceptions -- Ayn Rand among them -- no one disagreed.

In one of his written statements Hickman tried to present himself as a serious thinker, a disaffected youth, and at the same time a clean-cut, wholesome, perfectly ordinary young man. "I am very sensitive and have a strong sense of pride. I have not been able to find a real practical value in religion or enough satisfaction that it is based on absolute reason. My deep thought on this subject and my apparent disappointment with my conclusion have shaken my sense of morality ... I think that if I want something no matter what means I have to use to secure it, I am justified in getting it .... I would like to say that I have no bad personal habits. I have never been drunk or taken any intoxicating drinks. I do not gamble. I have never been in any corrupt conduct with the female sex."

As further evidence of his upstanding moral character, Hickman later said, "I have smoked cigarettes, but never inhaled them." (Remind you of anyone? Hickman, by the way, grew up in Arkansas.)

Hickman regarded himself as a "master mind," as he put it. He seems to have had a peculiar fascination with the word master. In a casual conversation after his arrest, he used the word three times in quick succession. "The little girl's father made the mistake," he said. "He trusted me. That was silly of him. He should have telephoned the police the minute he knew she was kidnapped, in spite of my note warning him not to, because no crook plays fair, and I am a master crook." Asked why he had killed the girl, he replied, "It was this dual force, I think, the impulse to harm anyone I cared for, and a desire to execute a master crime, that made me kill her." Asked if he felt anything about the girl's parents, he said, "I felt no pity for the father. I felt no remorse at all. I just felt I was executing a master stroke."

In fact, Hickman was anything but a criminal mastermind. He was able to stay at large for only a few days, and if not for some careless police work, he would have been arrested the day after Marian Parker's murder. Hickman had stuffed her eviscerated torso with a towel clearly marked with the name of the hotel where he was staying. The LAPD descended on the hotel and searched it, but apparently either overlooked Hickman's room or gave it such a cursory inspection that the evidence of his crime was not found. Once on the run, Hickman called attention to himself by freely spending the $20 bills that had been paid as ransom. He should have known that the nationwide publicity made spending the bills dangerous, especially since bills of that denomination were not too common in those days. His stupidity led directly to his arrest.

Even in Los Angeles County jail, Hickman made idiotic blunders. At one point he attempted to pass a note to a fellow convict. Intercepted by a guard, it put an end to any chance of a successful insanity defense. In the note Hickman had written, "All of the depositions [i.e., his written statements] aren't enough to prove me insane. I've got to throw a fit in court and I intend to throw a laughing, screaming, diving act before the prosecution finishes their case -- maybe in front of old man Parker [the victim's father] himself.

"Then to bewilder the jury, before the case is ended, I'll get up and ask the judge if I can say something without my attorney butting in. Then I'll get up and give all that crap about me wanting to do some good by living [the content of another of his written statements] ...

"For God's sake, tear this thing up, because it would ruin me if it got out ...

"[signed] William Edward Hickman alias 'The Fox'

"Ha! Ha! Ha!

"P.S. You know and I know that I'm not insane however."

Before long the jury knew it, too.

Hickman's most sustained effort to win public sympathy was a long harangue written in an oratorical style, arguing that some mysterious Providence -- which he did not identify with God -- had led him to a life of crime in order to bring about fundamental social changes in America. "Consider society," he pleads at one point, evidently oblivious to the irony of a heinous killer making such an appeal. "I believe I had the makings of a genius," he informs us a little later, before begging, "Listen to my inspired logic." In her journal, Ayn Rand blamed Hickman's criminality on the emptiness and decadence of society. Hickman propounded the same position: "In adverse [or] abnormal American social environments today, there is a tendency for certain unfortunate American youth to become enemies of their own society and to be classified as criminals only because society does not understand them and they do not understand society. These disappointed, dissatisfied, careless young men are the most dangerous faction in the United States today. This army of young criminals is steadily increasing. It is the product of society's own degeneration and weaknesses."

The credo that so impressed Ayn Rand -- "I am like the state: what is good for me is right" -- was apparently a paraphrase, not a direct quotation. The source of the credo seems to be this part of Hickman's written statement: "Everything that I did, I think was right. I did not try to distinguish between right and wrong, because in the custom of various nations, things that were considered right once are now considered wrong. If doing a thing serves my purpose, then it is right, just as it is with a nation."

In his offhand remarks Hickman explained his motivation in simpler language. Was he sorry he hadn't worked at an honest job instead of becoming a kidnapper? "Why work a year for $1500 when I could get it in a few days?" he asked rhetorically. What about violating a person's rights? "Any man has the right to hold up another man if he wants to. Even if the holdup results in murder, it is all right." Did he ever feel compassion for his victims? "No. I figured that what I wanted I had a right to get any way I could." Did his conscience ever trouble him? "My conscience -- I don't feel that I have a conscience." This last statement is probably truthful. The classic sociopath has no conscience.

In his summation the prosecutor nailed the defendant perfectly. He pointed out that the "learned alienists" hired by the defense claimed Hickman "has no feelings, that he has no emotions," then added, "Well, that is partially true, as far as the outside world is concerned. As far as society is concerned he has very little emotions. But as far as he himself is concerned, his emotions are very keen. He has the keen characteristics of a hardened criminal. One of the distinctive features of a man who has been schooled in crime is the keen appreciation of his own rights and his utter disregard for the rights of everyone else."

The jury deliberated only 43 minutes before delivering a verdict of guilty. Appeals were attempted, without success. In those days the wheels of justice turned fast, and Hickman spent just a few months on death row before being led to the gallows on October 19, 1928. He was reported as appearing calm at first, but when he started to climb the gallows platform, his legs gave out, and he had to be hauled up the rest of the way by the guards flanking him. When the noose was put around his neck, he began to faint, and he may have been unconscious when the trap door opened. His swoon actually prolonged his death; the gentle fall meant that his neck did not break, and he dangled, choking slowly, while three spectators passed out in horror.

In an interview with a doctor some months earlier, Hickman had boasted, "I'm not afraid of death."

"Nor of what comes after?" he was asked.

"I don't think there is anything after."

"You have some surprises coming to you,"the doctor said.

You know, I think he did.

Comments

[Philip Duval]

This is as lucid a description of Hickman as had ever been made perhaps since his 1927 trial. I read volumes about him in the local papers and at times it appeared than Ayn Rand wasn't the only one mesmerized by this strangely charasmatic monster. But isn't that a characteristic of the breed? He obviously read some of the more radical philosphers with which Hickman aped their conscienceless and icy pronouncements. The crime of killing Marian Parker was also calculated as a means to get on the world stage and trumpet his distorted views and personal philosphy as well as his daring exploits, mainly robberieds and hold ups. As indicated before Leopold and Loeb had a profound influence on him as he mixed his own brand of the "superman" credo the L and L had demonstated so well. His envy of their wealth and social station surely figured into it as well. His crime put him in his own mind as an equal to Leopold and Loeb as fellow master criminals and woman haters. And the sensation loving society of his time mixed elements of glamour, danger, and down-home sentimentality. Again, mamy were fascinated by Hickman's horrible spree as well as I was when a student of 21 years old. Unfortuately the cycle would turn again several years later with the similar Lindhberg baby abductiona and murder, with Hauptman, a similarly incrutable and rather good looking suspect at the center of it.