Not Just Evil: Murder, Hollywood, and California's First Insanity Plea

by David Wilson

  As if this were not prejudicial enough, the doctor continued to express his opinion in general about Mr. Hickman’s state of mind:

  It is a most difficult matter for society to protect itself from degenerates. Their perversions are generally hidden. They crop up occasionally in some of the appalling crimes, which fill the front pages of our newspapers. To discover, to weed out, to emasculate these people, both as a remedy and protection for society, would be a most difficult matter. Young Hickman might have come to Pendleton, established himself here, gained a good reputation, and if he were afflicted with sadist desires, might have controlled them for an indefinite period. To discover these fellows before they commit their awful crimes is almost impossible.

  Chief Gurdane appeared incapable of following well-established police protocol. He further confused the legal situation by allowing the Reverend W. H. Robins to interview his prisoner. While it is acceptable for a prison to ask for religious guidance, it is not all right for the content of such a meeting to be released to the media. The man of the cloth spoke with the suspect and gave several newspapers and a newsreel camera crew a blow-by-blow account of his conversation:

  He asked me if I thought God would give him a chance. I told him the government of the country can punish crimes but not sin, because sin is against God. At that point, he broke down and cried for some time, and I feel convinced that his actions were not hypocritical. I then gave a prayer of two or three minutes. He acted as a perfect gentleman all the time I was with him. I would not definitely say that he is religious, although it is quite evident that he has religious training. He speaks excellent English and is well educated in some respects, although I would say his education is somewhat lopsided.

  The minister was asked by one of the newsmen to elaborate upon his comments. His response made reference to the very first case of murder in the United States in which the defendants successfully used the insanity plea to escape a death sentence:

  You must understand, I am not giving my opinion as to whether or not he is guilty of murder. But I think it’s the same rotten philosophy fed to Leopold and Loeb that is responsible for the situation. I believe also that if any blame is to be placed, we may say that those who gave these behavioristic teachings to this young man are responsible.

  The comment about Leopold and Loeb was a reference to Nathan Freudenthal Leopold and Richard Albert Loeb. In 1924 both young men had been attending college at the University of Chicago. They kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy named Robert Franks. Their admitted motive was to prove they had the intellectual sophistication to commit the perfect crime. The closing argument by their well-known attorney Clarence Darrow resulted in a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. The efforts of Clarence Darrow ignited a public debate over the morality of the death penalty, with the majority of Americans at the time of the trial believing the two suspects had avoided execution because of their social status and not because they deserved leniency.

  Chief Gurdane made a final lapse in good judgment by allowing Mr. Hickman to make a written statement before taking the opportunity to consult with a lawyer. The statement read as follows:

  This affair has gained nation-wide publicity and the great reward and search by the police of the west coast, shows the opposition of American people to criminal tendencies. Kidnapping and savage murders are the worst of American’s crimes and everything should be done to prevent anyone interfering in any way with the liberty and life of American citizens.

  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.

  The young men of this country can see that I can pass as an ordinary young man as far as outward appearances go.

  Crime in its simplest definition is to have without work and enjoy the same place in society as other people and still show no honest effort or intention to go right.

  Young men, when crime has once overcome your willpower to be honest and straight you are a menace to society. Take my example to illustrate this. See how I tried to get what every young man wants, but in becoming a criminal to do so I put my own life in a mess and the way out is dark.

  I hope I can do some good by giving you this warning. Think it over, see my mistake. Be honest and upright. Respect the law. If you do these things you’ll be happier in the end and you will have gained much more from your life.

  While the escort team made its way towards Pendleton, Oregon, Chief of Police Davis and Chief of Detectives Cline made statements to the press in an effort to counter the remarks made by Hickman. “There is little doubt,” Chief Davis said to newspaper reporters, “that there will be great change in Hickman’s story; now he will have to prove his assertions to me and my men, who are familiar with the brutality of the Parker murder and kidnapping.”

  When Cline was asked his opinion he responded in kind. “The story of Hickman involving an accomplice is an absurdity. We have checked every angle of his asserted accomplice and have found the story false and weak. We are after the truth of the matter, and I am convinced we shall find it when Hickman is faced with the facts by those who know the intricate details of the Parker crime. Hickman already has his neck in the noose.”

  As the time approached for transferring the prisoner, Chief Gurdane put him on suicide watch. Already suffering severe criticism for his handling of the case, Chief Gurdane did not want William Edward Hickman to die in his custody. The record shows that over the next twelve hours Gurdane’s prisoner made at least two ineffective attempts to kill himself. The first came when he jumped off the top bunk in his cell, falling headfirst onto the cement floor. The fall resulted in a nasty headache. The second attempt involved hanging himself with a small handkerchief. The noose broke, and Hickman suffered no injury.

  On Christmas Day, just moments before the Los Angeles escort entered the hallway of the Oregon jail, Mr. Hickman was reported to have said: “I’ve got the worst of it ahead of me. They are trying to hang me before they get me. They won’t give me a chance to tell my story and get cleared. I’m away up here and I haven’t got a friend. They’re right down there, where they can have everything fixed up by the time I get back.”

  What no one was reporting was the possible connection between Mr. Hickman and Mr. Perry Parker. When Detectives Lucas and Raymond built their timeline of Hickman’s life they discovered records showing Mr. Hickman’s criminal career had began at the age of seventeen, when he and a friend robbed a candy store in Kansas. They used the money from the crime to finance a trip to the West Coast. Before reaching Hollywood they found the cost of traveling across several states to be more expensive than they had originally thought. They took this problem in stride, and started robbing stores as their financial needs dictated. They committed over a dozen robberies before reaching Los Angeles. During their first robbery attempt inside California’s borders, they unexpectedly ran into a police officer named D. J. Oliver, who was visiting the pharmacy they wanted to rob. A gunfight quickly ensued. Mr. Hickman and his friend left the drug store pharmacist dead and the policeman seriously wounded.

  The pharmacy was their first unsuccessful robbery, and it literally scared both men into applying for honest work a few days later. The First National Trust and Savings Bank offered both men jobs just after New Year’s Day, 1927. Mr. Perry Parker was a senior officer with the bank. Mr. Hickman and his friend were given such inconsequential jobs that Mr. Parker did not remember him until a bank customer’s checking account ended up four hundred dollars short. The paper trail led directly to Mr. Hickman, who was arrested, tried, and convicted of fraud based on evidence obtained from Hickman’s own confession. In Los Angeles juvenile court, Judge Carlos Hardy sentenced Hickman to probation and restitution. Mr. Hickman immediately applied to get his old job back at the bank, but was turned down.

  In interviews with detectives, Mr. Parker stated he did not believe Mr. Hickman’
s discharge from his position with the bank was the motive behind the kidnapping.

  I recall the unusual manner in which Hickman talked with me about his discharge for forgery. I remember how he asked me for his position again after being granted probation, which probation I protested, and his replies to questions, with calm manner and voice I heard over the telephone, and lastly the coolness and nerve displayed Saturday night when we met for the exchange and I am convinced that Hickman was at the other end of the telephone and that he took the $1,500. I cannot call to mind any words of madness or revenge that passed while I was talking with Hickman, but I do remember that his reaction to the forgery charges did not seem to me to be usual. He evinced no nervousness and showed very little concern over the seriousness of his actions. This impressed me very much at the time, but no thought of his planning to harm me or members of my family in return for his discharge entered my mind.

  After Hickman’s trial on forgery was concluded, the young man had enough money for a train ticket back to Kansas City. With court approval, he left California, returned home, and took a part-time job in a local movie theater as an usher for the evening shows. While a movie theater was an ideal place for Mr. Hickman to enjoy his favorite pastime, he did not like keeping to a work schedule. People who knew him said he suffered from depression and a strong feeling of hopelessness and inadequacy. After he was fired from his job as an usher he bought a gun, breaking the first of many legal restrictions placed on him by the probation department in Los Angeles.

  Over the next two months Mr. Hickman used his new gun to commit forty-three armed robberies in five different states. This string of high-risk criminal actions was for one purpose: to earn the money he needed to get away from Kansas. Mr. Hickman let a few family members know he wanted desperately to get back to Southern California, but they had no idea how he earned the money to make the move.

  Mr. Hickman returned to Hollywood in the middle of November 1927, where he quickly picked up his old habit of robbing as a means of making a day-to-day living. He decided he needed to make one big score, something more than what he was making from each robbery. William Edward Hickman saw kidnapping for ransom as the means to this end. He remembered how there had always been money available to the staff at the bank. He first focused on Mr. Harry Hovis, a senior executive with the bank who had a young child. But Hickman decided the child was too young and would be difficult to keep quiet. Then he remembered Mr. Perry Parker and his twin daughters, Marion and Marjorie. One of them would be the perfect victim.

  Chapter 3

  “In the beginning was the Word.”

  John 1:1

  The legal team heading towards Oregon was sensitive to media coverage, because they all understood that the mood of the city was not tolerant of incompetence in law enforcement. Los Angeles had spawned a number of reform movements in reaction to the intimate relationship between bootleggers, politicians, and law enforcement. Three years earlier, in 1924, Congress had passed the Volstead Act, making the sale of alcohol illegal in the United States. It soon became apparent to the public that the law was a bad idea, but legislators were slow in moving towards repeal because of the huge amounts of money being made through graft and corruption. At the time of Hickman’s arrest Prohibition was still the law of the land, and any pretense at effective law enforcement was the exception rather than the rule.

  The debate on repeal was long past the point that the public simply opposed the idea of making alcoholic beverages legal. The issue was now eliminating the systemic corruption following in the wake of the ill-advised ban on drinking. District Attorney Keyes was aware of the public sentiment. During his first year term he had fired sixty of the eighty-seven employees working in his office. He also successfully prosecuted a number of Los Angeles councilmen for accepting bribes. His efforts to arrest members of the Klu Klux Klan involved in bootlegging led to the passage of legislation banning the organization from the state of California. Keyes’s persona as champion of law and order was popular among the citizens of Los Angeles, but also created serious opposition from politically influential businessmen with ties to organized crime. The ambitious district attorney did not want to give his enemies reason to challenge his bid for reelection. The process of bringing William Edward Hickman to trial needed to be a textbook case of proper procedure and correct legal protocol.

  Keyes was especially sensitive to the fact that he was dealing with a kidnap case. Two years earlier the popular evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson had claimed to have been kidnapped and taken to Mexico, where she was held awaiting the payment of a ransom. McPherson claimed she escaped from her captors, walked across the Senora desert, and made her way to Arizona. Keyes believed the story about the kidnapping was a lie, told to cover an illicit affair with a member of her staff. He charged her with perjury, and in the midst of a huge media circus, the charges were dropped. The scandal was one of the reasons Keyes wanted a clean case, with a clear villain and a clear road to resolution and justice.

  Each of the individuals chosen by the district attorney to escort William Edward Hickman from his jail cell in Pendleton back to Los Angeles was well aware of their boss’s concerns. The next phase of their investigation would depend largely on their suspect’s willingness to cooperate. The entire team wondered what the accused killer would be like when they met him for the first time. Most assumed he would be heartless and cruel. What they did not know was whether Mr. Hickman would be accommodating or temperamental.

  Several reporters recorded that first meeting in great detail. Chief of Detectives Cline stated he found Mr. Hickman disappointingly simple and later recalled their first meeting in sworn testimony:

  We called him out. The door was being unlocked, and we wanted to talk to him. He did not make any response at first, and if I remember right, one of the officers or someone attached to the jail went in and took him by the shoulder and kind of shook him and told him to come out, the Los Angeles officers were there. And he came out and immediately went into hysterics.

  Chief Cline also reported that Hickman’s small, pale body commenced to jerk as he cried out, in a loud tone of voice, “calling over and over again to Marion, Marion, Marion. Then Mr. Hickman looked around the room before violently trying to get at somebody, or get away from something.”

  Reporters from both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times saw things differently. They described one Los Angeles detective treating Mr. Hickman with verbal disdain and chiding him more than once to behave like a man. Regardless of the differences in these recollections, one of Asa Keyes’s earlier statements was taken down word for word and never disputed: “Of course he’s not insane. He is merely assuming that pose, I assume, for mercy. Tonight Mr. Hickman will tell me the truth of the Parker killing.” Mr. Keyes was only half right. William Edward Hickman did not confess that first night because the escort team’s departure was postponed for a day, until the day after Christmas.

  The effort by the escort team to get Mr. Hickman to make a binding confession started at the jail in Pendleton, Oregon, on December 26, when Detective Raymond spoke in a blunt and bombastic manner. “Get his things and let’s get out of here.” He made the statement as if addressing his partner, Detective Lucas. Before Detective Lucas could respond, Detective Raymond turned towards Mr. Hickman and ordered him to act like a man and to get up off the floor where he was crying. Detective Lucas immediately took up the role of “good cop” in the scenario. “Slow up Harry. This boy’s got his problems. Let the fellows clean him up a little; he has his pride you know. There are a hundred cameramen waiting for him outside. Don’t take him out looking like a bum.” Mr. Hickman’s apparent need for sympathy and attention was soothed by those flattering words.

  The good-cop-bad-cop ploy worked on Hickman as Detective Lucas pretended sympathy for the young man’s hopeless situation. Raymond immediately backed off so Lucas could take the role of lead detective in the interrogation. But before they could start they needed to get their priso
ner past the reporters, newsreel cameras, and the unruly crowd outside the jail. As a safety precaution Raymond and Lucas handcuffed themselves to Hickman’s wrists. The motorcade with Hickman and his escort team made its way from the jail to the train station without incident.

  Once they were all onboard the train, the questioning of Mr. Hickman started in earnest as Raymond picked up where he had left off, pushing the impressionable young man. “Did you hear that mob?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “As far as I’m concerned, I would just as soon let them have you.”

  Then Lucas knew it was his turn. “Oh, shut up. Quit punching. How do you know, he might beat the case; you’re not the jury.”

  Lucas turned and started asking Mr. Hickman a series of pertinent questions. The short young man was still sandwiched in between the two bulky detectives. His defense lawyers would later claim their client never stood a chance. Within two hours of leaving Pendleton, after being repeatedly asked the same questions over and over again, the two determined detectives and the ambitious district attorney received what they wanted: a full confession from William Edward Hickman about his role in the kidnapping and murder of Marion Parker.