The Kidnap Years: Read online

  On Christmas Eve, the pair robbed a drugstore. During the heist, a police officer wandered in. There was a shootout, and the proprietor was fatally wounded. The police officer was wounded in the abdomen.

  Hickman and Hunt stayed out of sight for a while, but eventually, they needed money. They got jobs as messengers at a local bank—fatefully, the bank where Perry Parker worked. Then, on May 24, 1927, the body of Hunt’s grandfather was found beneath a bridge in Pasadena. The day before, he had withdrawn a large sum of money from his bank. The money was not found with the body, but five purported suicide notes were.

  Under normal circumstances, the murder might have overshadowed all other events. But Charles Lindbergh had landed in Paris just three days earlier, and for a moment in time, his triumph dominated the news.

  Los Angeles detectives were instantly suspicious of the “suicide.” In their experience, one note was usually sufficient for someone about to commit suicide. Besides, the five notes found with Hunt’s grandfather appeared to have been written by two different people.

  In the autumn of 1927, after losing his bank messenger job and being placed on probation for the check forgeries, Hickman returned to Kansas City and got a job as an usher in a movie theater. But he spent too much time watching the screen and not enough time ushering, so he was fired. Then, he apparently got the urge to travel…and to kill.

  He stole a car from a traveling salesman and drove to Chicago. Then he is believed to have moved on to Milwaukee, where on October 11, a young girl was strangled by a man fitting Hickman’s description. On to Michigan and thence to Philadelphia. On October 29, a gas station attendant in Chester, Pennsylvania, was shot to death during a robbery by a man answering Hickman’s description.

  Then the intellectual side of Hickman’s personality—or former personality—is believed to have resurfaced. He is believed to have driven to Gettysburg to tour the Civil War battlefield.

  After more frenetic travel in the East, he drove to Ohio, robbing three stores in the space of a half hour. After several more robberies, he was back in Kansas City, there to abandon the car he’d stolen from the traveling salesman and ponder what to do next.

  On the night of November 7, just as Dr. Herbert Mantz of Kansas City was starting his new gray Chrysler coupe, Hickman emerged from the dark, pointed a pistol at the doctor, and took his car. Eleven days later, having driven back to California, he robbed a drugstore, getting away with $30. Then he settled into the Bellevue Arms Apartments.

  On November 23, Hickman drove to San Diego to see the sights. He picked up a young couple who needed a ride to Los Angeles. On the way, it became clear that Hickman and the young man had similar interests: they planned to meet three days hence to do some stickups.

  Hickman and his new accomplice robbed a drugstore on November 27 and two more on December 5. The accomplice asked Hickman why he stole sleeping pills and chloroform as well as money. Because I have an idea to make some real money, Hickman explained: kidnapping a child for ransom.

  In the days after the murder of Marion Parker, Hickman was so loathed that several men who bore a resemblance to him were set upon and beaten by mobs before they could prove that they were not Hickman.

  The real Hickman had driven a stolen car to Seattle, where he bought gasoline. The station attendant thought he recognized him and called police. Quickly, it was determined that the twenty-dollar bill Hickman spent for gas was from the ransom. Acting on a hunch that Hickman might head south again, the police staked out a stretch of highway leading from Washington State into Oregon.

  He was spotted three days before Christmas near the little town of Echo in northeastern Oregon. The police found about a thousand dollars of the ransom money, along with a sawed-off shotgun and an automatic pistol, in the car he was driving. Hickman was jailed in nearby Pendleton, Oregon, for the time being.

  The article on the arrest of William Edward Hickman was displayed on the front page of the New York Times on Friday, December 23, 1927.

  The editors of the Times thought their readers deserved something more cheerful on page 1 for the start of the Christmas weekend. “A flying mother joined her more famous flying son here today,” an article from Mexico City began.31

  The article, in the center at the top of the front page, told of Mrs. Evangeline Lindbergh’s flight to Mexico City to meet her son, Charles, who was visiting the capital for a few days, and Ambassador Dwight Morrow, his father-in-law.

  In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, Charles went up in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, to greet the aircraft carrying his mother, but because of clouds, they didn’t see each other until both were on the ground. A luncheon was held in their honor, and Colonel Lindbergh was unusually effusive. “I have never spent a more enjoyable time,” he said. “I wish to thank you all for the reception you have given me here today, and I assure you that it is one of those which I shall never forget.”

  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 promine
nt 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 roll. Natty in a new black suit, he was led from his cell by a priest and the prison warden shortly before ten in the morning. Walking was hard, since his ankles were chained and his arms bound to his sides, but he had two big guards for support. And he only had to walk about forty feet to the gallows in a room nearby. On the way, he mumbled in response to the prayers offered by the priest.

  Alas, the child killer had overestimated his newfound manliness. His legs buckled on the ninth step of the gallows, and he had to be dragged the final four steps to the top. As the black hood was placed over his head and the noose was adjusted, Hickman started to collapse again. Eager to get things over with, the hangman signaled for the trap door to be sprung. Because Hickman was slumping over, he bumped against the gallows instead of falling neatly through the opening. Without a clean drop that would have broken his neck and brought instant death, Hickman jerked and twitched as he strangled at the end of the rope.

  A dozen or so officials and reporters watched. A few of the witnesses toppled off their wooden chairs in a faint. After fifteen minutes, a prison doctor climbed a stepladder, put a stethoscope to the chest of the condemned, and pronounced him dead. (Perry Parker did not watch the execution, though he could have. He had had enough of death.)

  William Edward Hickman was gone from this world at the age of twenty, not much pitied for having endured a slow death and not greatly mourned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A CASE LIKE NO OTHER

  Hopewell, New Jersey

  Early March 1932

  Cars full of sightseers clogged the previously little-traveled road past the Lindbergh estate. Thousands of investigators from various police agencies joined the hunt for the child and his abductor. Motorists with small children in their cars were pulled over and checked.

  Lindbergh let it be known he was ready to pay a ransom once he was given delivery instructions. Anne Lindbergh pleaded on the radio for her baby’s return. She gave details of his diet and feeding schedule in the hope that the kidnapper or kidnappers would hear and heed.

  On Friday, March 4, the Lindberghs received a second note with the same circle symbols as the first. In the same fractured English, the note said that because the police had been called, the ransom was being raised to $70,000, and that it might be necessary for the baby to be kept for a longer time.

  Various people, cranks and otherwise, offered to help find the infant. Al Capone, newly ensconced in federal prison for income tax evasion, said he was sure he knew the gang responsible for the abduction and that he could negotiate with the culprits and obtain the release of the child. Of course, Capone added, he would have to be let out of prison to offer his help. (His offer was declined.)

  Without consulting the police, Lindbergh himself managed to contact some underworld figures. Talk to people in your line of work, he asked them. Find out what happened to my son.

  Somehow, a Norfolk, Virginia, man convinced a prominent clergyman and a retired navy admiral that he knew the child’s abductors. Word of the Norfolk man’s claims reached Lindbergh, who asked the man to negotiate for the release of the child. The Norfolk man knew nothing; there were no negotiations.

  Reporters swarmed around the Lindbergh property in Hopewell. Scores of newspapermen took over a garage on the estate, sometimes literally rubbing shoulders with investigators. Showing remarkable restraint, Lindbergh asked the horde of reporters if they could thin their ranks, at least temporarily, to relieve the strain on the telephone and telegraph lines in the region. For days, telephone operators in Hopewell screened calls to the property, putting them through only when they were satisfied that the callers were well-meaning and not deranged.

  The police assigned to the case deferred to Lindbergh. He was allowed to take over some avenues of the probe—to interfere, really—in a way an ordinary man would not have been.

  From the start, it was clear to Colonel Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, the first superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, that he had a problem. Schwarzkopf was thirty-six at the time and hardly a pushover. He had graduated early from West Point in 1917 and had seen combat in the Great War, where he had endured a mustard gas attack that caused him to have respiratory problems for the rest of his life.

  Due to his leadership ability and his fluency in German (he was the son of German immigrants), he rose quickly in the army. In 1921, having attained the rank of colonel, he accepted an offer from Governor Edward I. Edwards of New Jersey to head the newly formed state police force, which he divided into two troops. The northern troop would ride motorcycles and combat gambling, narcotics trafficking, whiskey running, and other mob-related activities, especially in the suburbs of New York City. The southern troop would be on horseback and go after the many moonshine rings that flourished in the woods and hills where the Garden State was still lightly developed.

  Schwarzkopf personally trained the first contingent of twenty-five troopers, so at the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping, he was used to being in command. Yet even he found himself overwhelmed by Lindbergh’s controlling personality and even more by his fame.

  Amid this circus atmosphere, investigators tried to be sensible and methodical. The workmen who had built the Lindberghs’ house were questioned and their backgrounds checked. All were cleared. For a time, a boyfriend of nursemaid Betty Gow was under suspicion. He, too, was cleared eventually.

  There were early clues that seemed promising. A waitress in Pennington, New Jersey, called the state police to say that on the Friday before the kidnapping, she served three men who asked for directions to the Lindbergh estate. The three men were tracked down. They were newsreel photographers who had been at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for a celebration honoring George Washington. They had simply decided to film the Lindbergh property as long as
they were in the area.

  As for the chisel found on the ground, it was the kind of tool that could be found in countless garages and basements. A man familiar with lumber studied the ladder pieces found beneath the window. He detected nothing remarkable but, as would be revealed later, he didn’t look closely enough.

  Politicians in New Jersey and elsewhere said that kidnapping should be punishable by death, as it already was under state law in Illinois and Missouri where, of course, kidnappings were becoming alarmingly frequent.

  Under state law in New Jersey at the time, kidnapping by itself was only a misdemeanor, a fact that suddenly seemed startling and that would call for prosecutors to engage in some legal gymnastics later on. For the moment, Lindbergh asked that there be no change in New Jersey law. Not until his son was returned safely, he said. Some police officials argued that the death penalty would just encourage kidnappers to kill their victims. After all, what would the kidnappers have to lose? On March 8, a week after the infant was taken away, Major Charles Schoeffel, deputy superintendent of the state police, announced vaguely that there had been “progress.”35 The next day, his boss was more reassuring. “We have every reason to believe that the baby is alive and well,” Colonel Schwarzkopf said on March 9.36 His remarks seemed to suggest that negotiations for the child’s return were underway.

  Within a week of the abduction, there was a report—false, as it turned out—that the president of Princeton University, Dr. John Grier Hibben, was acting as a liaison between the Lindberghs and whoever had stolen their son.

  Meanwhile, the kidnapping was generating a volume of newspaper coverage more commonly devoted to wars or assassinations of heads of state. For eleven straight days, an article about the kidnapping was in the upper right corner of page 1 of the New York Times.