A woman was found dead in Yosemite. 30 years later, she’s been linked to a cult and a serial killer
One of Yosemite’s most unsettling cold cases just got a little closer to resolution — but it remains a mystery whether Patricia Hicks met her end at the hands of a serial killer, a fugitive cult leader or something else entirely.
In 1983, a family visiting Summit Meadow made a horrific discovery. While the kids enjoyed the glade, one stumbled upon a human hand and forearm. When investigators arrived, they guessed the arm had frozen during the winter and recently thawed. Despite extensive searching, no other body parts were found until 1988, when a skull with no jawbone was discovered nearby. Investigators combed missing persons reports and waited for someone to come forward with a tale of a long-lost relative, but no one did. Over the decades, forensic anthropologists attempted several re-creations of the woman’s face based on genetic markers and skull shape. But still, the Summit Meadow Jane Doe was an enigma.
It took the work of two generations of Yosemite investigators to finally match a name to the remains, the ABC News docuseries “Wild Crime” revealed late last month. For the first time, Yosemite park officials publicly announced the Jane Doe is Patricia Hicks, a woman with ties to a Merced cult leader who disappeared in the 1980s.
Hicks was born in the early 1950s in Washington. According to a 1971 article in the Spokane Daily Chronicle reviewed by SFGATE, her father was a cabinet maker and her mother a manager at ValuMart. When Hicks was a junior in high school, her brother, Edwin Hicks Jr., 23, took his own life while working aboard a Coast Guard vessel. Friends interviewed for “Wild Crime” say the event was deeply traumatic for Patricia, who adored her older brother.
After graduating, Hicks married a classmate, but the marriage didn’t last. In the 1980s, Hicks moved alone to Merced to join up with Donald Eugene Gibson.
Gibson is one of the stranger figures in Merced
County criminal history. He seems to have emerged from nowhere, suddenly gathering a small coterie of followers by the late 1970s. He worked as a bookkeeper and sometimes as a yoga teacher for the Merced parks and recreation department, and he preyed on vulnerable people. “When I was around him, I was in Donald’s reality,” one former follower would later testify against him.
In 1981, Gibson stood trial for sexually assaulting several teenage boys. Prosecutors alleged he dosed his victims with LSD before the assaults. Prosecutors told the Merced Sun-star that the sexual acts “between the minors and the defendant meant they would become a part of the deity and it would relieve their sins.”
Gibson was found guilty of four counts of sexually molesting minors but, inexplicably, was allowed to go free on bond while awaiting sentencing. He failed to appear for his next three court appearances, and his attorney admitted to the judge that he hadn’t been able to contact Gibson. A deputy district attorney told local media that they’d received tips that Gibson fled to Mexico. To this day, it appears Gibson has never resurfaced; requests for comment from the Merced County Sheriff’s Office were not returned.
National Park Service investigators believe Hicks was an acolyte of Gibson’s and, after his conviction and disappearance, decided to pack up and head to Yosemite. According to a friend interviewed by “Wild Crime,” Hicks hopped on the bus from Merced to Yosemite around 1982 and was never seen again. She was just 27 years old.
Because of the state of the remains, it’s not clear when Hicks died, although detectives think it was likely between fall 1981 and spring 1983. Incredibly, it’s possible she encountered one of the most infamous serial killers of the 20th century during that time.
NPS investigators have long believed Henry Lee Lucas killed the Summit Meadow victim. Starting in 1983, Lucas created his own fantasy world of rape and murder, confessing to hundreds of killings across
the nation. Many now believe Lucas quickly figured out he received star treatment when he was confessing to crimes. He’d get cigarettes and good food, and he was taken on trips outside prison to his supposed crime scenes. Although police often said Lucas knew details only the killer could know, they made foolish mistakes, like showing him crime scene photos or asking leading questions until Lucas stumbled onto the right answer. In the end, only three of the hundreds of murders Lucas confessed to have been definitively tied to him.
While Lucas was in the midst of his confession spree, Yosemite investigators interviewed him several times. Although he couldn’t remember the name of Yosemite National Park, he told them he had picked up a young female hitchhiker some
where between Fresno and the park. He claimed they drank beer, ate fried chicken he’d packed in aluminum foil and then engaged in consensual sex. He said he killed her afterward.
When investigators went back to the Summit Meadow area, they were able to locate a possible campsite that matched Lucas’ description, down to the chicken bones and crushed beer cans. In 2020, the NPS Investigative Services Branch said this evidence pointed to Lucas, who had “information about this murder that had not been made public and could only be known by the person who committed the crime.”
This information, however, isn’t proof of a murder. At best, it’s circumstantial evidence that Lucas camped in the park sometime in the 1980s. Nothing directly links Lucas and Hicks. Lucas could not recall the name of the woman he had picked up, and he described her only as having straight blonde or light brown hair and “silver rings on both hands.”
Given how little of Hicks’ remains were recovered — and how often hikers can get into trouble in a wilderness like a national park — it’s not clear why investigators are sure she was murdered. Repeated requests to the NPS Investigative Services Branch were acknowledged, but no comment was provided to SFGATE about this and other questions.
Her identification, like many others in recent years, was a breakthrough of forensic genealogy. Using a DNA profile developed from the remains, genetic genealogists were able to create her family tree, finding DNA matches that drew them closer and closer to a living relative. Once the pool of potential matches was narrowed down, a DNA test with a relative in 2021 confirmed the remains belonged to Hicks. Given Hicks’ involvement with a cult and move from Washington to California, she may have never been officially reported missing; her mother’s 1983 obituary lists Hicks as a surviving daughter.
Although her identification is a major breakthrough, loved ones are no closer to understanding how Hicks’ body ended up in Summit Meadow. Lucas died in prison in 2001, and Gibson, if he is alive, would be in his early 70s.
Anyone with information about Hicks’ disappearance or death is asked to contact the NPS Investigative Services Branch at 202-379-4761 or send an email to nps_isb@nps.gov.