Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of (17 page)

Throughout the proceedings, Hicks remained utterly unmoved, even during the most heart-wrenching moments of the trial. These occurred on the third day, when Smith and Oliver Watts’ mother tearfully identified various articles of her sons’ clothing, and Catherine Dickerson, Oliver’s lovely seventeen-year-old girlfriend, was asked to compare a lock of his hair she kept as a love token with some blood-clotted strands found on the deck of the doomed sloop. Even when the jury returned its inevitable guilty verdict and he was sentenced to be hanged, Hicks “maintained a show of cold indifference.”

W
ITH DEATH LOOMING
, Hicks—out of either genuine remorse or financial calculation—agreed to publish a detailed confession, all proceeds to go to his otherwise penniless wife. With the aid of an anonymous ghostwriter, he churned out a memoir whose title accurately reflects both its prurient tone and extravagantly lurid contents:
The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert W. Hicks, the Pirate and Murderer, Containing the History of His Life (Written by Himself) from Childhood up to the Time of His Arrest. With a Full Account of His Piracies, Murders, Mutinies, High-Way Robberies, Etc. Comprising the Particulars of Nearly
ONE HUNDRED MURDERS
!
Describing himself as a person whose sole ambition, from earliest youth, was to get rich without working “and then give free rein to the passions and desires which governed me,” Hicks recounts an adolescence spent in and out of prison for a variety of crimes. Following a stint in solitary confinement—during which he “swore vengeance against the whole human race”—he embarked on a career of seafaring villainy. During the next few years, he and his fellow brigands roamed the seas from the Marquesas to Cape St. Lucas, robbing and butchering natives, instigating mutinies, and in general “living a wild, guerilla life, plundering all who promised anything like booty and never hesitating to take the lives of such as resisted us or were likely to betray us. We spared neither age nor sex. How many times during this period I dyed my hands in human blood, I do not know. No prayers, no entreaties moved us; it seemed as if my heart was dead to every human feeling and was a stranger to pity and every soft emotion.”

Hicks’ life of unbridled lawlessness took him from the California gold fields—where he squandered his ill-gotten gains in barrooms, brothels, and gambling dens—to Rio de Janeiro, “where we robbed all worth robbing and murdered all who resisted us.” Making his way to New York City, he married in 1857, though his new life of domesticity did nothing to curtail his criminal activities. Shipping out on various commercial vessels, he managed to commit a string of onboard robberies, always keeping “a sharp lookout” for particularly vulnerable vessels.

Hearing of the E. A. Johnson and its impending voyage, Hicks saw at once that it was “easy prey.” The ship was reportedly carrying “something over a thousand dollars” in cash to exchange for a cargo of oysters, and “the entire crew consisted of but two boys,” along with Captain Burr. So amiable a fellow was Burr that even the stony-hearted Hicks could not help but like him. His “kindly feelings” toward the man, however, did not alter his savage resolve. “I engaged myself to him solely for the cruel purpose of taking his life, the lives of the two young men, and making myself master of the money I supposed he had on board.”

In graphic detail, Hicks proceeds to describe the massacre he perpetrated on his three unsuspecting victims. Oliver Watts, the younger of the two brothers, was first. The eighteen-year-old was on nighttime lookout at the bow when Hicks, concealing an axe behind his back, approached him. “Look,” said Hicks, pointing into the darkness. “Ain’t that Barnegat Lighthouse over there?” When Watts turned to look, Hicks split the back of his skull with the axe blade. The boy dropped heavily to the deck.

At the sound, Oliver’s brother, who had been resting below, emerged from the companionway.

“What’s the matter?” Smith asked.

“Nothing,” said Hicks, then brought the axe down on Smith’s neck. “It was like chopping a small tree,” he later confessed. “His whole head came off. The rest of him took a few steps, spouting like a fountain. Then it sagged down as the head rolled along the deck.”

Hurrying down into the darkened cabin, Hicks set upon Captain Burr, who lay resting on his bunk. Grappling desperately with his assailant, Burr managed to knock him to the floor and get his hands around his throat, but Hicks was too strong for him. Throwing Burr off with a savage shove, Hicks leapt to his feet and brought the axe down on the captain’s skull. “The blow took away half of his head,” Hicks wrote. “Half of his eye was on the blade, a piece of his nose, some beard.”

Exhausted from the struggle, Hicks made his way up on deck for some air. He was
startled to see Oliver Watts—fearfully wounded but still alive—staggering to his feet. Rushing at the boy, Hicks bludgeoned him with the blunt end of the axe, then dragged him to the rail and heaved him over the side. Reflexively, the dying boy grabbed on to the rail and held on so fiercely that Hicks was unable to pry his fingers free. With a vicious curse, Hicks chopped off Watts’ hand at the wrist, sending him tumbling into the water.

Retreating to the cabin, Hicks refreshed himself with several tankards of ale before disposing of the other two corpses. In the darkness, he had some trouble locating the decapitated head of Smith Watts, which had rolled into the shadows. At length, he found it and tossed it overboard, along with the murder weapon. By then, dawn was approaching and, through the fog, Hicks could make out the coastline of Staten Island. Collecting his booty in a large canvas sack, he lowered the small lifeboat and rowed for shore.

H
ICKS’ OPEN-AIR HANGING
on Friday, July 13, 1860, was a gala event, generating nearly as much excitement as the big Independence Day celebrations nine days earlier. All that was missing were the fireworks.

As the perpetrator of a federal crime, Hicks had to be executed on federal property. Bedloe’s Island, future site of the Statue of Liberty, was the logical choice. The gallows was erected atop a grassy terrace on the northeast side of the little island—“a place,” as the
New York Times
reported, “which was selected for the purpose of giving as many persons as possible an opportunity to witness the spectacle.” A week before the designated day, ads began to appear in the city papers, offering holiday excursions to the hanging:

Between the sightseeing vessels, steamships, barges, oyster sloops, shallops, and pleasure craft, a virtual armada turned out for the grand occasion. According to the reporter from the Times, “not less than 10,000 persons” showed up “in costumes almost as variegated as a carnival. White shirts, red shirts, blue shirts, blue jackets, red jackets, green jackets, and every steamer, vessel, and yacht decorated with lively colored flags, while the uproar was incessant—cries of, ‘Down in front!’ ‘Get out of the way!’ rising from hundreds of throats at the same time.” Fashionably dressed women, perched on cushioned rowboat seats, shielded “their complexions from the sun with their parasols, while from beneath the fringes and tassels” they strained for a better look at the gallows.

Hicks, having been awakened from an untroubled sleep at around 4:00 a.m., devoured a last meal of bacon, eggs, bread, and tea before dressing himself in the handsome new garb that had been provided for the occasion: a blue cottonade coat ornamented with gilt buttons and needlework anchors, blue pants, white shirt, and a pair of light pumps. The outfit was a considerable improvement over the threadbare suit he had been arrested in and had worn throughout most of his imprisonment. That suit, however, was no longer in his possession. It had been purchased by P. T. Barnum.

Eager to cash in on the public’s fevered fascination with the mass murderer, Barnum—in his cheerfully shameless way—showed up at the Tombs not long before Hicks’ execution and, for $25 in cash, two boxes of fine Havanas, and a new suit of clothes, purchased Hicks’ apparel. Though Hicks was pleased with the cigars, he complained that the suit was “shoddy” and persuaded his jailer to supply him with a spiffier set of duds for the big day. “I feel like an admiral,” Hicks said, beaming, when he put on the blue cottonade suit on the morning of his hanging.

Escorted to a waiting carriage, Hicks was driven to the pier at the foot of Canal Street, where an estimated one thousand men, women, and children besieged the vehicle, breaking the windows and tearing away the curtains for a glimpse of the killer, who, unfazed by the commotion, gazed out at the mob with a “derisive smile.” Hustled aboard a chartered steamboat, he was sequestered in the ladies’ cabin, while the other passengers crowded into the refreshment saloon. “The day was warm,” wrote the correspondent for the Times, “and lager beer proved an excellent and cooling beverage.”

Arrived at the island, Hicks was marched to the scaffold, which was surrounded
by two hundred U.S. marines assigned to hold back the crowd. Wearing a look of utter indifference, he stood calmly while the hangman adjusted the noose around his neck. Asked if he had any last words, he shook his head and said, “Hang me quick—make haste.” An instant later, the trap was sprung. “He died very easily,” the Times reported the following day, “the third cervical vertebra being at once broken.” He was allowed to dangle for thirty minutes, affording the flotilla of boisterous, beer-fueled spectators plenty of time to ogle his corpse.

Not everyone, of course, was able to attend the carnivalesque execution. For those thousands of New Yorkers deprived of the chance to get a firsthand view of the infamous killer, P. T. Barnum offered the next best thing. In the age before the advent of the modern mass media, the “Great Showman” provided antebellum Americans with the sort of vicarious thrills that later audiences would derive from radio crime melodramas, gangster movies, and TV cop shows “ripped from the headlines.” Within days of the hanging, newspaper advertisements for Barnum’s American Museum began trumpeting the latest additions to this emporium of wonder. In addition to such living curiosities as Samson the Learned Seal, Crowley the Man-Horse, and the Amazing Murray Midgets, viewers could marvel at a “Life-Size Wax Figure of A. W. Hicks, attired in the very clothes worn by him when he butchered his victims with an ax! Acknowledged by all to be a wonderful likeness of the infamous pirate!” The gruesome display instantly became—and for many years remained—one of the museum’s biggest attractions.