HIGH SEAS PSYCHO
New York’s last pirate killed many before they strung him up
were moving, perhaps to Rhode Island.
The police tailed the family to rented rooms in Providence. Hicks had $100 cash on him and a watch belonging to Capt. George Burr, the sloop’s slain skipper.
Hicks was accused of hacking up Burr and two other crew members, then tossing their corpses overboard. The lack of bodies made a murder conviction difficult, however. Since this happened at sea, prosecutors could charge piracy.
That made it a federal crime and a capital offense. The trial was brief. One witness swore he had seen Hicks hire on as the E.A. Johnson’s new first mate. Others identified some of his possessions as belonging to the dead sailors. Hicks never took the stand.
The jury took all of seven minutes to convict. The judge, calling his crimes “inhuman and revolting,” sentenced Hicks to death. The prisoner was led away to await public execution.
He had already found fame.
The silent killer with the coal-black eyes fascinated New Yorkers. A phrenologist studied the bumps on Hicks’ head and pronounced him prone to excitability. P.T. Barnum took a cast of his face, to help construct a wax statue for his museum of oddities.
Meanwhile, the fledgling New York Times landed a Death Row interview in which Hicks revealed that there were actually five aboard the ship that night. “The devil was the fifth personage,” he explained. “He possessed me.”
Hicks said he had taken the job because the oyster trade was a cash-only business, meaning there would be money onboard. A few hours after they set sail, he went after the crew with an ax, decapitating one of them. Then he threw the bodies into the sea.
It was a sensational confession, but it annoyed Hicks that the Times would be the only one to profit by it. So the murderer found a publisher willing to pay for his whole story. Send someone to take it down, he said. There was a lot the public still didn’t know. Such as the 97 other murders he had committed.
Hicks had always been hungry for excitement, he admitted. At 15, he ran away from his father’s farm in Rhode Island, looking for adventure. He was soon arrested for stealing two pieces of luggage and sent to the penitentiary.