The Deadly Web of Maine Serial Killer James Hicks, Part Two
48:06 Share

This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule, wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner, or just need a little extra one-on-one support, Talkspace is here for you.

Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance? No problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. ♪♪

You're listening to Murder, She Told, true crime stories of Maine, New England, and small-town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Sevey. This episode is part two of the James Hicks saga. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first.

If you're loving Murder, She Told, I encourage you to take a moment and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or share it with a friend. You can find key photos from this episode and more on our Instagram at Murder, She Told Podcast and connect with me at Murder, She Told dot com.

Lynn Ouellette was described by her sister Wendy as a jack-of-all-trades and fiercely independent, as told to Renee Ordway of the Bangor Daily News in a gorgeous 1996 two-page spread titled A Sister Searches for Answers. Renee is a longtime family friend of mine. She and I have chatted about true crime over wine on the porch of the summer camp owned by my aunt.

She was a staff writer at the Bangor Daily at the time of this story and is the most credited source of the articles I used for this episode. Lynn was, quote, somebody you could rely on to fix a kitchen sink and maintain a gorgeous garden, end quote. She was a talented artist who was accepted into Disney's cartoon school in Florida but turned it down to get married after graduating high school. The marriage, however, was short-lived. From there, she joined the army and became a machine operator of heavy equipment in Oklahoma.

She received an honorable discharge from the Army and eventually returned home to Maine after working as a paramedic in California and living in North Carolina with an ex-husband.

Lynn had been married and divorced twice. Wendy said, quote, After returning to Maine in 1994 in her late 30s, Lynn was hired by a man named James Hicks to be a maintenance worker at the Twin City Motor Lodge in Brewer, Maine.

She and James, who is now 43, started talking and went out on just a few dates before he told her that he was being kicked out of his trailer and needed a place to live.

The relationship progressed rather fast, and Hicks ended up selling most of his possessions, against Lynn's wishes, and moving in with her at her new apartment. Lynn didn't want him to sell his things, knowing that the relationship wasn't going to be permanent. But Hicks was inserting himself into every aspect of Lynn's life, and becoming part of the family. He was suddenly at all the family functions, and would even help her mother around the house constantly. Lynn felt smothered by the relationship, and unbeknownst to Hicks, in early 1996, she was preparing to leave him.

On May 18, 1996, Lynn finally told him she was done. She'd been quietly moving some of her things over to her mother's house and told James he could stay at the apartment. Over the next week, he showed up at her house on an almost daily basis after work and would call incessantly, sometimes even at 4.30 in the morning.

The following week, while on a shopping trip with Wendy, Lynn shares a dark secret she'd recently learned about James and told her about his missing wife and serving seven years in prison for her murder. Lynn begged her sister not to tell anyone, telling her that James swore up and down that he was innocent, he'd been railroaded, and pinned for a crime he didn't commit.

She told Wendy that James wrote her an eight-page letter and wanted her to stop by the apartment so he could read it to her. Wendy told the Bangor Daily, "I asked her if she was going to go, and she said she probably would. She was trying to keep things friendly with him, but it was obvious she wanted to end the relationship."

She told me that night that they hadn't been intimate for a year and questioned why he was so intent on maintaining the relationship." When they were finished shopping, Wendy dropped Lynn off at their mother's house, and that was the last time she ever saw her sister. The following day, Lynn didn't come home from work,

By 7:30 p.m., Wendy drove past the apartment she used to live at with Hicks and saw her blue Toyota in the driveway, but Hicks' Chevy Blazer was gone. By 11:30 p.m., she circled again. This time, she saw the opposite and assumed her sister was on the road heading home.

About 10 a.m. Sunday morning, as they were getting ready for a family barbecue that Lynn had planned, Hicks' vehicle pulled into the driveway. Lynn had invited him, despite breaking it off with him. He asked where Lynn was, and then asked if he could talk to Wendy alone. Quote, "He said, 'I know Lynn told you about my past. Why is she gone and taken off like this? She knows how this is going to look.'" End quote. By 1 p.m., when Lynn still wasn't at the cookout, Wendy decided to inform the police.

But it was Hicks who made the first call to State Detective Joe Zamboni. And Newport Police Chief Jim Ricker wasn't too far behind.

Wendy said, quote,

The search for Lynn went day and night. Wendy said that she would sometimes even go out at midnight upon her mother's insistence to search for her sister, but nothing ever turned up. Hicks only stated that he was sure Lynn would return home someday. According to Hicks,

He and Lynn had gone for a drive the afternoon she disappeared to talk about their relationship, and he wasn't happy about her decision to move back home. He said a similar thing about Jenny and their alleged three-hour car ride the night she went missing. Jenny also went missing after she told her family that she planned to leave Hicks.

and it seemed this pattern was possibly happening again. Police released photos of Lynn and took to the public for help. Also missing was her vehicle, a light blue 1988 Toyota Tercel, license plate 88AU.

Despite the existing circumstances surrounding James Hicks, it wasn't considered suspicious. About 10 to 20 tips came in with a few sightings of her vehicle, one reported in Calais and another in Rockland, though witnesses weren't able to describe the driver. Police urged people not to touch the vehicle if they should come across it.

A few days later in June, Eldon Dyer of Jonesport was leaving Dysart's and Herman's. Yes, the Dysart's of the buttery, flaky crusts viral commercial. And as he was driving out of the parking lot, his headlights flashed on a car parked in the back of the building, a light blue vehicle. Though the familiarity didn't dawn on him until later. Eldon was an avid listener of police scanners, and he knew those numbers on the license plate. That car belonged to Lynn Ouellette. The discovery of her car heightened concern for her whereabouts.

Lynn was still nowhere to be found, but police continued to maintain that this was still considered a missing persons case and that James Hicks was not a suspect in the matter, though the discovery of her abandoned vehicle did spark curiosity. The vehicle was locked and the keys were missing, having been there for a few days at that point, and according to the police log, had been spotted several times over the past week on the road. It was taken to the crime lab in Augusta for analysis.

The pressure is starting to mount on Mr. Hicks at this point. Now he's not only been charged, but still the person of interest was Gerilyn Towers, and now he's the primary suspect in Lynn Willett. And law enforcement is just combing everything trying to find evidence. That was Newport Police Chief Jim Ricker.

A year later, Lynn still hadn't returned, and since her disappearance, the Jerilyn Towers case took priority again. In 1992, the family had Jerilyn legally declared dead after a decade of no answers.

Her sister told the Bangor Daily News, quote, it was Gerilyn that led police to arrest Hicks for Jenny's death, and I've always thought that maybe someday Jenny will somehow lead police to solve Gerilyn's murder, end quote. Chief Ricker was also confident Gerilyn's case would be solved, and believed the answer was Occam's razor, or the simplest answer saying, quote, why is it that of all the people in Maine, only the girlfriends of James Hicks seem to disappear, end quote.

"You can't investigate one of these cases without investigating all three," said Detective Zamboni. He also said that investigators had recently taken a look at Jenny's case to compare notes. The only outlier in the situation was Jerilyn, who only knew Hicks for one night. "Something I noticed in my research is that people have a lot of opinions about this case. Opinions on putting someone in prison based on circumstantial evidence.

Opinions on James Hicks being the obvious connection between three missing women. Even Linda Hicks, James' ex-wife, sent in a bizarre letter to the editor warning people about Hicks. She listed her phone number, suggesting that people come together and create a support group of people who have been victimized by James Hicks. I can't help but think that divorcing him while he was still in prison is quite possibly what may have saved her life.

In 1998, Gerilyn's sister, Jean Worthley, sent in a scathing opinion column to the Bangor Daily about the handling of Gerilyn's case, saying one police officer remarked that she'd probably show up in an alcoholic rehab program somewhere, and that her response was, quote, I always thought that rehab programs were 28 days, not 26 years, end quote.

Vance Tibbetts, Gerilyn's brother, confirmed that his sister was a "hopeless alcoholic" in an article from 1996, saying that she'd recently been released from the hospital the night she entered the Gateway and met James Hicks.

But I want to make it clear that investigators were just as frustrated as the public. Zamboni told the Bangor Daily that there had been absolutely no trace of these women since they disappeared. There was no doubt in the minds of the families that all three women were dead, and it's obvious that the common link was James Hicks.

Hicks was determined to try and have a normal life in small-town Maine, but was facing opposition from a community that more than disliked him. That normal life included charming, unsuspecting women. Gerilyn's daughter Tammy said in an opinion article by Tom Weber from October 15, 2000 that, quote, "...he was very charismatic. He preyed on women with problems and low self-esteem. My mother was very upset the night she went to the bar, the night she disappeared. She was looking for love, and she found him."

Not long after Lynn disappeared, James Hicks found love again. He moves back to the old family house in Aetna. And so I can remember going there once with the now detective and the final detective on the case was Joe Zamboni. And Joe and I go there. He is not there. His

- Got a young girlfriend and a baby at the time, and we interviewed her. And basically, to this day, I don't know if Jimmy was there or not, but he certainly wouldn't come out if he was. - Not long after Lynn disappeared,

James Hicks found love again. That girl was an 18-year-old named Brandy Mayo. Her 43-year-old husband, James Hicks, was 25 years her senior. Their baby was subsequently taken by the Department of Human Services. Later that year, Brandy was pregnant, again. And to avoid having the state take away their second child, they moved to Leveland, Texas, a small town of about 13,000 close

close to where Brandy's grandparents lived, thinking this would remedy the situation. But while Hicks is now out of the jurisdiction of the Maine State Police, they still keep tabs on him and inform local Texas authorities to do the same. After learning of Hicks' dark history and allegations of sexual abuse from his now-adult children, the state of Texas took away their new baby boy on a temporary custody.

Despite the allegations against her now-husband, Brandy refused to believe he was a killer. Quote, all I've ever wanted was for someone to give me proof, end quote. Two years later, Brandy was pregnant for a third time, and she and James were living a relatively quiet life. But the underlying rage of a dangerous man can't stay quiet for long, and a nightmare was about to be unleashed on a sleepy Texas town.

From an interview with Renee Ordway for the Bangor Daily News titled, Woman Recounts Hicks Attack,

June Moss, the 67-year-old survivor at the center of this heart-pounding story, walks us through the events of this bizarre and terrifying encounter where she knows she's lucky to be alive. I'm going to read some of her first-person account and quotes directly from the article to help tell her story. June Moss had hired James Hicks to do some handiwork around her single-story brick home in West Texas, and at this point he'd been working for her for about six months.

In the early spring of 2000, arrangements were made for him to do some paintwork in the bedroom and replace the tile floor in the kitchen. He arrived at 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 8th. She said that later that day, after returning to buy some tiles and paint, he unloaded the van and picked up a beer can, asking, "Do you care if I drink?" June told him that yes, she did care. She didn't want him to drink in her home. Hicks reluctantly set the beer back in the van, and June tells Renee that she just had a funny feeling.

As he followed her back into the house, he was pointing things out in the garage.

That's worth a lot of money. This is worth a lot of money. And then he got to work in the bedroom. But according to June, it's taking a long time. More time than it should be. As she sat in the den, she saw him come around the hallway and enter the room. There was something off about him. He was swearing, something June didn't like, and walked up so close to her until his knees touched hers. And then she noticed the gun that was hanging from one of his hands. He said, quote,

"'I can't do your house. It's taking too long. It's just taking too long.'" June was frozen with fear, her heart pounding so loudly she could barely hear what he was saying. She tried to stand up, but he pushed her back down, looming over her. She then reached for the phone on the table that was right by the chair, but he grabbed it and disconnected it. Hicks then went into the kitchen, locking the deadbolt, and continued to do the same on the other doors in the house. He said, "'I need two things from you. I need your time and your money.'"

and he said that he needed to get out of the state and that it would take him four hours. June described how sometimes he was right in her face, shouting at her, and then other times he talked in a normal voice. "June, just don't get him angry. Just talk to him quietly," she thought to herself. Hicks paced back and forth, growing with anger. "I've been married four times. I killed my wife and I can't see my son because of child protective services." She begged him to leave her home. Then he stopped.

June said she was shaking, but trying not to let him see her fear. He calmly walked over to her and told her to get up. "I said no, and he shouted at me and said, 'Get up and go to the bedroom.' And he pulled on my arm and began dragging me to the bedroom. He was pulling on my arm so hard I had a bruise. Then he got behind me, put his left hand on my shoulder, and pushed me forward. That's when he shot the gun."

"The bullet went right by my ear and I jumped because I didn't expect it. I turned around and I saw him pointing the gun at the ceiling. 'Go to the bedroom,' he said loudly. So I started down the hall towards the bedroom." He asked June if there were any guns in the house. At first, she said no, but then she remembered the two old guns that belonged to her son buried deep in the cluttered bedroom Hicks was working on, the room furthest away from where they currently stood. He then took all of the money from her purse, about $200 cash,

and demanded she write him a check for $1,250. June told him that she'd written her last check in the book that morning and that she needed to go to the office for more. Hicks just shook that gun in her face, telling her to go find them. He was right in my face, and his face was beet red.

He then left the room and came back with a blue department store bag and some beer. As he was drinking the beer, pacing around the room, he demanded the keys to her house and the title and keys to her car. And then he slammed a notepad in front of her. "Write this to your children," he said. June was sobbing as she told Renee this part of her story, saying he made her write what she thought was the suicide note.

Dear Susan and Steven, I'm selling my car to Jim for the work he's done on the house. I also gave him the washer and dryer. I am sorry for this, but I have not been able to get the work completed. I am tired of all the problems that this has caused and no one helping me. Please understand. Signed, June E. Moss

She hoped that if this was actually her last moment on Earth, that her children, who know her as mom, would recognize this wasn't their mother's writing. She was afraid in this moment she wouldn't ever see her children again. He reached into the blue bag and pulled out a 20-ounce Diet Coke bottle filled to the brim with a black concoction that definitely wasn't Coke. "Here, I want you to drink this. It's cherry cough medicine." He took a swig and handed it to her.

He forced her to drink about half the bottle, as much as she could handle until she started vomiting. The liquid that came up in the trash can was red. She begged him not to make her drink anymore, and he yelled at her to hurry up and finish it, all the while waving a gun in her face. He then left the room, and June said she heard water running in the bathroom, filling up a bathtub. He kept returning to the den where June sat, shaking and trying to stomach his cherry cough syrup cocktail, while he brought her towels and washcloths, laying them out on the sofa.

Hickson went down the hallway and June heard a familiar sound, the tinkling of wind chimes. He was getting into the closet she mentioned to look for the guns. Quote, I have a small set of wind chimes on the closet door. I heard that sound and I knew where he was and that he was looking for those guns. I jumped up and I'd been sitting for so long that I was kind of stiff, but I ran to the door and slid the chain off and turned the doorknob and neither made a sound.

As Hicks was jumping in his van to take off, the grandson and the neighbor got in their car to follow him. Hicks tore up the suicide note and threw it out the window, and they watched as he later ditched the guns into a dumpster.

June spent that night in the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness from the amount of cough syrup she consumed. The following day, Hicks called her house three times. The day after that, he showed up at her door. Quote, My daughter said she couldn't recognize the man on the porch, so I looked out of my peephole and it was him. It was Jimmy Hicks. My daughter was standing there with a gun in her hand. End quote. He left a sticky note on the door asking for his tools back.

He was arrested a few hours later. "I'm so thankful that evil man has been caught. I'm so thankful that he didn't kill me. Sometimes I think the Lord allowed this to happen so he would get caught," June said.

So Hicks found himself back in police custody, this time facing charges of aggravated assault and robbery. And if convicted, because of his status as a felon, he faced 15 to 99 years in prison with no chance of parole. Normally, aggravated robbery brings a lesser charge, but this was also a crime that caused injury to an elderly woman. While this may seem extreme, a 99-year prison sentence isn't uncommon for a first-degree felony. According to Lubbock County Sheriff David Gutierrez,

Texas takes crime seriously. It's a capital punishment state, and sentences for violent crimes are lengthy. Unlike Maine, where only judges can sentence an offender, in

In Texas, the jurors who determine guilt or innocence often get to set the punishment, and it can be harsh. He gave an example to the Bangor Daily about a man who had recently committed an armed robbery at a church and was sentenced to 99 years in prison by a jury. Based on this, officials have a feeling Hicks will be seeing a good portion of the rest of his life behind bars. Quote, Texas might not have been the best choice. He might have wanted to have chosen another state to live in if he was going to commit a crime, end quote.

said Gutierrez. Well, in the state of Texas at the time, I don't know if it still goes on. I wouldn't be surprised because it was like that when I was down there in the 70s. You get charged with a crime and then the judge has a pre-hearing conference with you, your attorney, the district attorney, and the judge. And the judge, not listening to evidence so much,

This is kind of a formal, informal type hearing. I don't know how I'd even describe it. And the judge would ask things like, does this individual have a prior conviction? Yes, he does. And he looked at Jimmy Hicks and says, if you don't spend your life in prison here...

It's only because we will execute you. It was around this time that the FBI made an unusual move and officially declared James Hicks as a serial killer, despite the fact that he'd only officially been convicted of one murder. Chief Ricker and Detective Zamboni met with an FBI profiling team in Boston, who then added James Hicks to their list of known serial killers, according to a letter written by Ricker. The week after the attack on June Moss, Brandy Hicks, who was now eight months pregnant with their third child,

filed for divorce and for an order of protection. In a court affidavit, according to the Bangor Daily, she wrote, quote, My husband, James Hicks, has been arrested for aggravated robbery in Lubbock, Texas. He was convicted of murdering his wife and has been accused of murdering other women. I'm not willing to take a chance of those allegations being true. I'm afraid for mine and my children's safety. End quote.

The court took away his parental rights to their unborn child and granted the divorce in the order of protection. Brandy had been fighting for custody of her other son with Hicks who lived in Texas, stating that the problem in the household was Hicks and that was no longer an issue. Maine investigators think their key to cracking the missing persons cases might actually lie in Brandy, and they wondered how much she actually knew about his troubled past and if she had any evidence that could help them in their case against him.

Brandy offered her husband's belongings to the police, saying that she was planning to sell them, but her attorney intervened, expressing that they couldn't do that without a warrant first.

After spending only a couple weeks behind Texas bars, Hicks discovered that he didn't enjoy life inside the Texas jail system. He's put into a lockup facility not very desirable for a white boy from mid-Maine. And, you know, you're in there for trying to kill an old lady. You're not going to be a popular guy in a prison system like that. So he was genuinely scared for the first time.

being in a jail. He began working on a plan to get back to Maine, according to a court affidavit. He wanted to strike a deal with Maine authorities. He immediately gets on the phone to Detective Zamboni and wants to confess to all his crimes in Maine.

But the deal is he wants them to drop the charges in Texas, and he'll come back here and admit to murder if we will take him back here and let him serve a life sentence in Maine.

Zamboni reminded him that there were no outstanding warrants for his arrest in Maine, and he couldn't just bring him back so that he could confess here. He pried Hicks, saying that he didn't know what Hicks was going to tell him, if and when he was ever brought back to Maine.

He needed something good. Quote, you know exactly what I'm going to tell you. End quote. Hicks responded. Hicks will tell them where the bodies are if he gets to come back to Maine to serve his time. And with a life sentence almost guaranteed in Maine, it's unlikely he would ever return to Texas if he cooperated.

But two out of the three families of the victims said that they would sacrifice knowing where their loved one was if it meant that Hicks would stay put in Texas, knowing how much he hated it there. Denise Clark, Jenny's sister, said, quote, Jimmy Hicks has controlled the situation the whole time. He has always had his way. Now he's trying to control it by getting to come up here because he doesn't like it in Texas. Let him stay there. He hates it there, from what I understand, so I think that's a good place for him to spend the rest of his life, end quote.

Hicks pled guilty to aggravated robbery and, as part of a bargain, agreed to cooperate with Maine state detectives in a deal that would allow him to return to Maine to reveal where his secrets were buried.

The Lubbock County District Attorney agreed to the deal, understanding that the 55-year Texas sentence would be served after any time for new murder charges in Maine. On October 4, 2000, during an interview with detectives, Hicks finally confessed to killing 40-year-old Lynn Ouellette in May of 1996. He said he suffocated her at the apartment and brewer they used to share.

Hicks agreed that once he returned to Maine, he would show detectives where the remains of Lynn Ouellette, Gerilyn Towers, and Jenny Hicks were located.

Quote, he doesn't show a bit of remorse for the victims or their families. He's a very cold individual, and it's clear that he's doing what he thinks is best for James Hicks, end quote, said Texas District Attorney Susan Scolaro. Bangor police issued a warrant for his arrest, and although the original thought was to transfer him under an aid to law enforcement agreement, the attorney general opted to move forward with the murder charge and extradite him. In the following week, accompanied by Detective Zamboni and two other state detectives,

James Hicks was on a comically long commercial flight with several layovers bound for the state of Maine. It was the best they could do last minute. I asked Mr. Ricker if he ever thought James Hicks would return to Maine. If he would have picked nine other states, probably, I'd say no, he'd probably never come back. But I really thought when he left here and went to Texas, he was running. And a running man usually returns.

On Tuesday, October 10th, Hicks appeared at the district court in Bangor with standing room only where he was formally charged with the 1996 murder of Lynn Ouellette, a somber day for Lynn's family. Charges in the case of Gerilyn Towers hadn't been made at this point as Lynn was the only case that he'd confessed to. And despite never officially confessing to Jenny's murder since he was convicted in 1985, he couldn't be retried, even if a body did show up because of the laws around double jeopardy.

Something has been taken away from us that we are never going to get back. There is some satisfaction in what happened here today, but not much, Merlin Tibbetts said. Prosecutors demanded Hicks provide details of how all three women were killed in addition to leading them to the bodies. Attorney General William Stokes said he needed more information than basic confessions. We want to know details. We want answers. We want to know how and why these women were killed.

That same day, Hicks led investigators to two separate sites to begin the search for remains. One in Aetna, where his family's farmhouse used to stand, and the other up in Forkstown Township in Aroostook County. Forkstown is so remote and sparsely populated, it's part of an unorganized territory with other surrounding townships. Forkstown also has no power. It's also part of the Haynesville Woods, notoriously known to be one of Maine's most haunted stretches.

The Haynesville Woods is mostly only seen by long-haul truckers and was made popular in 1965 by Maine country singer Dick Curliss with his song "A Tombstone Every Mile," referencing the frequent accidents that happened there and the lives that were taken along Route 2A. The Haynesville Woods is probably the perfect place to hide a body in Maine. "It's a stretch of road up north in Maine that's never ever seen a smile. If they buried all them truckers lost in them woods, there'd be a tombstone every mile."

The family of Lynn Willett accompany the investigators to the Forkstown dig, though they didn't find anything on the first day and plan to reconvene the following. The site they were working at is a turnaround that's used for snow plows and to dispose of unwanted dirt that was dug up from ditch creation. Over the years, the Aetna property where the Hicks homestead once stood has been home to various trailer and mobile homes after the house was torn down.

James and Jenny also lived close by at a Carmel trailer park when she disappeared, and he and Linda lived in a now-abandoned tar paper shack that still sat on the property when Gerilyn disappeared as well. At the time of Jenny's disappearance, Hicks' mother lived in the house on the property. I searched for bodies with and without the state police.

I searched for bodies with a forensic doctor out of Bangor. We got information that there was bodies in New Hampshire. We took cadaver dogs. We went there. I've spent, I don't know how many hours on horseback looking at all the old building sites and all the old haunts where the Hicks family lived, places that I thought that Jimmy knew, places that

that I knew that he knew where he could hide bodies and that type of thing. I had employed a psychic two different times. We walked the entire property. Oh yeah, that was endless. That just went on forever. And when you're looking for a body like that or you're looking for clues like that, you know, you can get discouraged. But I never stopped looking. I was always on guard looking at some place.

The first body was discovered beneath an apple tree along the tree line of the property. The following day, they found a second body just behind a small shed to the right of the abandoned tar shack.

By late afternoon, both bodies had been removed and taken to the medical examiner's office in Augusta. Though autopsies had yet to be performed on the remains, family and investigators knew whose identity they belonged to. There's a full-size three-page article showing photos printed from the search showing the property written by Rene for Bangor Daily called Two of Hicks' Victims Found. Photos of families waiting and hugging one another. Photos of the outline of the property and backhoes and bulldozers. An investigator surveying.

Key photos from this episode and more can be found in the show notes at MurderSheTold.com and on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. Family members at the Aetna dig expressed their frustration by how close to home their loved ones were buried. Shallow graves right outside the back door. After decades of searching for answers, why hadn't they looked there? The graves were only six inches deep. You can't get a warrant to search a place if you don't have probable cause.

There was no probable cause. I mean, yeah, if there was probable cause to say that Jimmy took her to his house, no, I'm talking about Gerlind Towers. If we had probable cause to prove that the last place Gerlind was seen was on that property, we may have been able to get a search warrant. But there was nothing you can do without it. It makes me sick to know that after all these years, she's been right there. I'll never understand why they didn't search this property.

It was

It was clear that Jerilyn had been dismembered and mostly buried in one place. Jenny was also dismembered under the apple tree. He indicated that in some spots he buried parts and others he disposed of them on top of the ground, giving the team a slim likelihood that a complete body will ever be found. Back in Forkstown, investigators were still searching for the remains of Lynn Willett with no success. Because the soil was much softer, they speculated that the remains might be deeper and more difficult to find.

The team used heavy machinery to dig buckets of dirt out of the ground, but Lynn's sister Allison said, quote, I wish they'd bring Jimmy Hicks out here with a spoon and make him do this, end quote. She also said of Lynn, quote, She always wound up where I was. It didn't matter where I was. She always found me. Now it's my time to find her, end quote. Considering how far a rustic is from Penobscot County, we're talking a good 100 miles. Police aren't sure why Hicks chose that as his dumping site.

Police Lieutenant Darrell Ouellette thought that it was kind of bizarre and that Hicks thought that maybe it was just a remote area and would be a good place to hide a body. Hicks would frequent the back roads of Maine back when the paper mill industry was thriving in the 1970s. Finally, after two days of digging along roadsides in Forkstown Township with no success, the remains of Hicks' third victim was discovered. Lynn had finally been found. Two

Two local men who'd been watching the police activity began to search on their own, and they started digging after police stopped around 2:00 PM and located the grave allegedly 10 feet away from where they'd been digging.

The men overheard police say they were looking for cement-filled buckets that Hicks claimed to have used for a grave marker and found them sticking out of the ground, just over a bank from where they were looking. Parts of the buckets were showing above the ground. Wendy Allison, Lynn's sister, was notified of the discovery, putting an emotional end to four and a half years of wondering. He showed absolutely no emotion, acted friendly even, as he led investigators to the three grave sites.

Hicks's presence, the perverse incongruities gave off a disturbing chill, Tom Weber wrote for an opinion article in the Bangor Daily News. As the remains of their loved ones are finally unearthed, perhaps the families no longer have to search for answers in Hicks's vacant eyes, in the mask that disguised his evil from the unsuspecting for so long. Now, maybe they can finally begin to look for closure instead.

He was proud of what he got away with, like he was smarter than anyone else. But he wasn't smart. It's just that he didn't have the decency to feel bad about what he did, said Denise Clark. The following week, the identities were confirmed by the medical examiners as that of Jenny, Gerilyn, and Lynn. Back in Newport, the family of James Hicks was shocked. Lori Hochstadter, James' sister, said, quote,

The search for additional remains was paused to get more information from Hicks. Why had he taken the lives of three innocent women?

The following week, the Penobscot grand jury indicted and charged Hicks with two counts of intentional first-degree murder, each sentence carrying a 25-to-life possibility. And in a seven-hour interview after 23 years of waiting, Hicks finally gave detectives details on all three missing persons cases. He started with Lynn first.

James Hicks said he killed Lynn Willett when she returned to the apartment they used to share to get some of her things. As she was leaving, he strangled her from behind with a cord.

He said that he kept Lynn's body in a homemade wooden box for several days in the maintenance room at the Twin City Motor Inn before dismembering and disposing of her remains in Holden, Ellsworth, and Forkstown Township. He told them that he drove her car to Dysart's in Hermann the same day that he killed her, abandoning it in the employee parking lot before riding his car back to Brewer. More details were also revealed about what exactly was found buried in the ground in Forkstown. It was Lynn's head.

embedded in a cement block inside one of the buckets, and her hands and feet in another. He said that he met Geraldine Towers at the Gateway in 1982 that fateful October night, and they enjoyed each other's company over drinks and had a good time.

He said that after he left the bar, he saw Gerilyn at a gas station and offered her a ride home. An argument ensued in the car and Hicks snapped and claims that he strangled her from the back seat with his hands. He then dismembered her body, wrapped it in plastic sheets, and buried her in the dirt floor of a shed that used to be a chicken coop. Gerilyn's rings were found still on her skeleton fingers.

On the night of July 18th, 1977, James and Jenny Hicks got into an argument after she told him she was leaving, so Hicks removed his belt and strangled her with it. Like the other women, he then dismembered her, scattering her remains through Carmel and Etna. Except for one part. Jenny's head.

He then placed it in a plastic bag inside a cooler and filled that cooler with cement, leaving it around the trailer. Former members of the trailer park remember seeing Hicks carting the cooler around as if surreptitiously putting it on display. But the worst part? Hicks used that cooler as a chair at the table, making his children sit on it while eating breakfast.

James made Jenny's children sit on their own mother's head inside a cement-filled cooler. Eventually, he removed the cement block and buried it near the apple tree in the backyard of his mother's old house. That's what investigators discovered that day. The rest of her remains were never found. When he...

killed Gerilyn. He took her home to a house full of kids and a wife and somehow was able to take this woman from his vehicle to the backyard and bury her in this animal coop. And nobody seen anything? I don't know. I mean, maybe that was the relationship he had, but if I come home at one or two in the morning and then

was outside digging a hole at four, I think my wife might ask a question. But he did have...

I mean, he did have a lot of mind control on these women. Don't ask me how, but he certainly did. I mean, he controlled them. You know, they just weren't in relationship with Jimmy Hicks. You were his property. And I think that's what happened to these women is that he couldn't control them. They wanted to leave him or, and Gerilyn doesn't even make any sense at all. That was, I think she tried to fight back and that's what was her demise.

Hicks never gave a reason for the killings, but said that something just seems to come over him. Zamboni told the Lubbock Avalanche Journal before his confessions, quote, I looked at him one day and said, you know you've got to go to jail or another woman is going to die. He said, yeah, I think you're right, end quote.

On November 17, 2000, surrounded by 10 officers in the Bangor courtroom arraignment, Hicks pleaded guilty to murdering, dismembering, and scattering the remains of two women. And the Superior Court Justice made sure that he would never get another chance to kill again. Two weeks later, Hicks was given two life sentences. Maine, unlike most states, has no parole for a crime like murder. Attorney General William Stokes said, quote, "I don't recommend life sentences very often,

But if a case ever warranted a life sentence, this is it." Hicks gave no apology, and he didn't show any signs of remorse. In fact, he didn't even look up. Jeff Tuttle wrote in the Bangor Daily that his reasons for coming clean 23 years after his first murder were rooted more by self-preservation than remorse, or a wish to give three grieving families some long-awaited answers. If Hicks hadn't have been caught in Texas, this resolution most likely wouldn't have happened.

Denise Clark said, quote, I wanted to look him straight in the eyes and let him know that finally, finally everyone is going to know the truth, end quote. Expecting to see a face to match the monster, people were surprised at how normal this myth of a man looked. Ordinary, if you will. Somebody you might see at the hardware store or walking down the street. Somebody who blends in. I spoke with a few people who said they crossed paths with Hicks when he was a free man, walking around Newport or running into the Aetna Variety Store.

and they all told me the same thing. There was nothing unusual about James Hicks. He was friendly and polite, and he kept to himself. Was this seemingly normal man capable of committing such heinous crimes? Could this man, who sat so composed and peaceful, be compelled to such unpredictable and ugly violence?

Tom Weber wrote, quote, End quote.

Now, I've always been very, very guarded with what I just told you only because these kids are still here. And to think, when they were two and three years old, they actually ate dinner sitting on their mother's head.

You know how traumatic that must be for her kids, Jennifer's kids. I mean, you know, anybody that was raised in a normal household, and when I say normal, every household is a little dysfunctional. I mean, this is so far beyond bizarre, this guy, and what he put that family through, and the psychological damage he is still doing to people.

because of his past actions and believe me this stuff doesn't go away when you turn twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or sixty uh... it stays with you the rest of your life and hopefully you can you can put it in a place where it doesn't affect your daily activities but there's a lot of people who cannot do that and when i think back of what he did to these children and so forth it just

You know, hell isn't deep enough for this guy. Gerilyn's daughter, Tammy, spoke in court saying, quote, I spent my life trying to remember what my mother sounded like and smelled like and felt like, but my mother didn't abandon me. You killed my mother and cut her up and discarded her like garbage. I won't let you destroy my life, James Hicks. Today, my roller coaster ride stops and I get off, leaving you behind, end quote.

That same week, the remains of Jenny, Gerilyn, and Lynn were released to the three families who were finally able to put their loved ones to rest in private services and home gatherings. Jenny's sister had a grave ready for years inscribed with the name Jennifer Sear. She refused to put the last name Hicks on it. Jane Hink, Lynn's mother, honored Lynn with an urn saying, quote, Hicks put her in the ground up there and she was there for four and a half years. I'm not ready to put her back in the ground, end quote.

June Moss, his victim in Texas, made a statement in court. Quote, For over 20 years, you murdered and terrorized innocent people and their families. You committed crimes without shame, and now you face the consequences without remorse. You are an evil man. People are no longer hiding from you in fear, but for you, there is no hiding place. End quote.

James Hicks is still alive, inmate number 44644 at the Maine State Prison in Thomaston. He is currently 69 years old with his 70th birthday right around the corner in April, another birthday he will spend in prison. My cousin Brandon worked in his pod for a year at the state prison and told me that Hicks is still the model prisoner he was back in 1985. He said that he was surprisingly normal and mild-mannered, and that he was nothing like he expected based on knowing his story.

They had many "normal" pleasantries. Hicks could always strike up a conversation about anything from hunting to snowmobiling, and on the outside, he seemed like one of those guys you could chat with at the local gas station. Even the other inmates said the same. He also mentioned something he found odd. Hicks was constantly receiving and sending a ton of mail on a regular basis.

Though Brandon didn't know who they were from, the other guys said it was fan mail. I'm glad it's behind us. I'm glad he's where he needs to be. I just, you know, your heart goes out for these victims that never really get closure. You know, you do the best you can, and at the end of the day, you hope, you know, you feel good, you've got your convictions and whatever, but then you look at these kids and grandkids and you go, you people never get closure. You just never do.

Why did somebody you love just get snuffed out just because they had an interaction with an idiot? You know, a career criminal. And that's what he was. A career criminal indeed. And although Hicks is behind bars and his secrets are no longer buried, the family's healing is never done. The impact that one man had on so many lives leaves many scars. Scars that time will remedy, but never completely heal.

Knowing that James Hicks will never take another life is a small comfort for families who are forever imprinted by something they didn't ask for. And to all the other James Hicks in the world who may have gotten away with your crimes for decades, the clock is ticking. You will be found. It's only a matter of time, but you will be found.

My sources for this episode include original articles from the Bangor Daily News from 1977 to 2001, found in archives from newspapers.com featuring the writing of Rene Ordway, Tom Weber, Jeff Tuttle, and John Hubbard. A very special thanks to former police chief Jim Ricker for talking with me for this episode, and Tammy for trusting me with her story. Thank you to the former friends, neighbors, and sources including Carolyn, Linda, Rick, and Brandon who helped make this possible.

Additional thanks to the Herman High School alumni and the residents of the town of Newport. Murder, She Told is co-produced by AKA Studio Productions. All links for sources can be found in the show notes and on MurderSheTold.com. And a special thanks to you for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you.

Be sure to subscribe and follow Murder, She Told on Instagram at Murder, She Told Podcast for key photos from this episode and more. If you loved this episode, please consider sharing Murder, She Told with a friend and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. If you are a friend or family member of the victims or anyone connected to this story, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at Murder, She Told Pod at gmail.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love hearing from you.

My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your loved ones alive. Murder, She Told will be back next week with another crime story from Maine. Thank you for listening. I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.

Yes, I know I'm sending to your bank account. Western Union. Send it their way. Send money in-store directly to their bank account in India.