Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks

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CHAPTER ONE

HELL BEGINS

A Wife Goes Missing, The Case of Jennie Lynn Cyr Hicks

No one knew where Jennie Lynn Hicks went on that day in July 1977. Perhaps to deliver a birthday cake. Perhaps to visit her sister. No one really knew where Jennie went—they only knew that she did not come home that night, or the next one or the one after that. Five years later, no one knew where Jerilyn Towers went one night after visiting a local bar, and fourteen years after that, no one knew where Lynn Willette went one May evening. All three women had family and friends, people who loved them. None had a compelling enough reason to leave her home and loved ones for good, yet all three did. Whether into the Maine woods or into an urban area, no one knew where the women might have gone. Some people did have their suspicions, however, or—perhaps more aptly put—their fears.

Jennie Lynn Hicks was twenty-three years old in July 1977. She had two young children and a husband a few years older, a husband she had met and married while in high school. Jennie, an attractive young woman with longish, light hair, wore eyeglasses—dark, plastic, angular glasses that she needed quite badly. Her family lived in a trailer park in small-town, mid-state Maine. Jennie worked in a nursing home part time. Her relationship with her parents was sometimes difficult, and the one with her husband was often extremely so. It seems that Jennie’s life was not going in the direction that she might have wished in early 1977, and things would only get worse.

Jennie Hicks was born to Myra and Adrian Cyr on February 6, 1954, in Danbury, Connecticut. Her family moved to Maine when she was a small child, and she started school in the Dixmont School System. She lived in Etna, Maine, a town of under 1,000 people, for much of her young life. As a teenager, she attended Herman High School. The school of about 150 students served a few communities, including Etna and Carmel.¹

While a freshman, Jennie met James, or Jimmy, Hicks, an older local boy, on their school bus. She passed him a note one day asking him to sit with her. Jimmy complied, and the two began a romantic relationship. Jennie became pregnant at the age of sixteen, and the two decided to marry. According to some sources, Jennie had had some issues with her parents—perhaps only standard teenage issues—and thought that getting married and having a child of her own might gain her some freedom. That would not prove to be the case, however, and her parents apparently did not want the teenager to marry.²

The five-foot-seven, blue-eyed, 125-pound, dark blonde–haired young woman did, however, marry Jimmy Hicks. She did so the summer after she met him, in 1970. Jennie dropped out of high school soon thereafter, and the young couple moved in with her parents. Jennie’s daughter Abigail* was born in 1973, and Jennie’s marriage became an increasingly challenging one. Jimmy finished his senior year of high school and then found a job working at a local woolen mill. He soon moved on to a job with a construction company and joined a labor union. Jennie eventually found work at a local skating rink.³ Over the years, James Hicks would work a variety of jobs as a union laborer, many of them for Maine paper mills.

At one point, Jimmy Hicks and his father-in-law, Adrian Cyr, worked for the same employer, and the two families moved farther north so that the men would be closer to their jobs. They stayed at the new location for a few years and then returned to the Carmel-Etna area. Both families lived in the area in 1977.⁴

By 1974, the marriage had numerous problems, and the couple applied for a divorce. Jimmy Hicks admitted to numerous instances of sexual infidelity and, according to some sources, had made sexual advances toward Jennie’s sister, Denise. Jennie and Jimmy put their divorce proceedings on hold, however, when they discovered that Jennie was pregnant again. She gave birth to her second child, Brian,* in December 1974.⁵

During 1977, the young family lived at the T&N Trailer Park on Route 2 in Carmel. Route 2 was a relatively quiet road on its stretch from Bangor to Newport, passing through Hermon, where the couple had attended high school, and then through Carmel, Etna and eventually Newport. By 1977, Interstate 95 had been constructed through Maine, allowing most through traffic and larger trucks to bypass the narrow, winding Route 2. The stretch of I-95 located between Bangor-Brewer and Newport parallels Route 2. From Newport west, I-95 turns southward, while Route 2 continues predominately westward. Hermon, Carmel and Etna remained small towns in the following years. Newport was the largest community along the Bangor-Newport stretch, but it was still a small town.

The T&N Trailer Park was a relatively small one, with two rows of mobile homes situated fairly close to one another. The Hickses lived in the second row, the one farthest in from Route 2, in the second trailer on the western side of the court, Lot 28. The court featured the single-wide trailers popular at the time—trailers with small rooms and little windows that rolled on a crank. The trailers, with their tiny yards, offered residents little privacy, either from one another or from their next-door neighbors. But it was a place where children could find other kids to play with, and neighbors could talk to one another across their driveways, yards or clotheslines.⁶

Jimmy had secured a job with the Paul Lawrence Construction Co., and he worked that summer at a site in Woodland, Maine, driving for three to four hours each day to make the 115-mile commute. He was out of bed by 4:30 a.m. each day, left the trailer by 5:15 a.m. and started work at 7:30 a.m. Jimmy later said that he made the long commute each day so that he could be with his wife and children, then ages four and two, in the evenings, whereas most of the other men stayed in Woodland during the week.⁷

James and Jennie Hicks lived at the T&N Trailer Court in Carmel at the time of Jennie’s disappearance in 1977. The Hickses’ trailer has since been destroyed and the trailer park condemned and closed. Jennie and James Hicks would have lived in the second row behind the one shown here. Photograph by Trudy Irene Scee.

In addition to baking birthday cakes––some of them quite creative, such as a Greyhound bus cake that Jennie made for her best friend’s father––for additional income or as gifts, Jennie had recently started working as a tray person or kitchen helper at the Penobscot Nursing Home in Brewer, the Twin City to Bangor. She worked a part-time, split-shift position and was considered a dependable, hardworking employee. In order to take the job, she had needed to find a baby sitter. Her friend Linda Elston lived next to Jennie’s trailer park and volunteered to baby-sit for her children until Jennie could work out a more permanent arrangement. Jennie was also arranging to start Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) classes at the nursing home to further her career potential. This would also require child-care arrangements.⁸ As with much else in her life, the child-care situation introduced its own problems and mysteries.

Linda Elston lived with her husbands’ parents in a small home facing Route 2 in 1977. Her husband, Wayne, was serving in the army. His mother became seriously ill in 1976, and Wayne was transferred to Bangor until after his mother’s death. The couple had two daughters. The oldest was the same age as Jennie’s daughter Abigail, and their youngest was about the same age as Brian.⁹

Both Wayne and Linda came to know Jennie quite well. Linda considered herself Jennie’s best friend. The Elston house was just a two- or three-minute walk from Jennie’s trailer, down the short dirt drive in the park and then a few hundred yards along Route 2. Either I was at her house or she was at mine, every day, mostly when Jimmy was at work, Linda later stated. The two would often go shopping or run other errands with their children. They often went to see Jennie’s parents in Newport, especially when her father was ill. Jennie was generally a quiet woman and did not speak of her home life to her friends.¹⁰

Wayne Elston had known Jimmy Hicks since kindergarten—they were the same age and had gone to the same schools—but Wayne had been friends with Jimmy’s brother Sheldon rather than with Jimmy. Sheldon Hicks, like Wayne Elston, had been involved in sports, while Jimmy pretty much hid himself during school. After he graduated from high school, Jimmy Hicks did not really seem to hang around with any friends; instead, he spent time with his family, in particular his brothers and, of course, his young wife. Wayne and Linda came to know Jimmy better after he moved into the T&N Trailer Park. Of Jennie, Wayne later said, She was just a very nice person, she would do anything for anyone. Linda said of her, She was an awesome woman…a mother to die for.¹¹

To Wayne, Jennie seemed to be living two or three different lives, one when she was with other people, one a good life with her kids and the third a terrible life with Jimmy. The marriage clearly had troubles, but she would never tell anyone what it was all about.¹²

At about the same time as Jennie was looking for a permanent baby sitter, Susan Matley, a fifteen-year-old ward of the State of Massachusetts, ran away from her foster home and hitchhiked to Maine with two of her friends. Dwight Overlock and two other men gave the girls a ride part of the way. Overlock was headed to the Carmel area. When they arrived, Susan––a small and slender girl with blonde hair and blue eyes––decided to stay there with Overlock. Overlock and James Hicks had attended school together but were not close friends.¹³

Overlock’s family introduced Jennie to Susan and the two agreed that Susan would move in with Jennie to work as a baby sitter. At the time, Susan described Overlock as her boyfriend.¹⁴

The teen moved in with the Hicks family. In return for watching the children when Jennie was away, Susan earned her room and board, as well as cigarettes. She slept on the top of a bunk bed in the children’s room, while Abigail and Brian slept on the bottom. Jimmy Hicks soon made advances on her. He did so one afternoon while Jennie and the children were away, grabbing and pinching her and backing her into the refrigerator. Susan fled the kitchen. Jimmy followed her and, purposely or not, burned her neck with a cigar after throwing her onto a bed. Susan started crying for him to let her go and he did. Soon thereafter, she told Linda what had happened.¹⁵

Susan told Jennie about the incident on July 16 or 17, and the married couple argued about it. Jennie, understandably upset about the improper advances on the girl, argued with Jimmy about which one of them––she or her husband––should move out of the mobile home. The two had had similar angry encounters in the past. So far, however, Jimmy had always been able to convince his wife to stay. This time, the situation seemed dire. After all, Jimmy had made advances on a minor in their own home, and Jennie did not let the matter rest.¹⁶

That Sunday, July 17, Jennie, Jimmy and their little boy went for a long drive. They stopped in the small town of Kenduskeag, and Jennie and Jimmy argued further about the situation. They decided that Jimmy would be the one to leave and that he would be out of the trailer by the end of the month, less than two weeks away. Jennie would keep the kids. Jimmy later said that he thought he would be able to change her mind during the interim. The couple then went home, and on Monday morning, July 18, Jimmy got up as usual and went to work.¹⁷

Jennie and her children went to see her sister, Denise, that Monday. Denise was living in a nearby town, and after their visit, Jennie headed to Bangor to buy some ingredients to make a cake for Linda Elston’s nephew. Abigail, they decided, would stay with Denise. The sisters made plans to meet the next day and for Jennie to take her sister to a dental appointment late in the afternoon. They also talked about the arguments Jennie had had with her husband over the weekend.¹⁸

Later that Monday, Jennie talked with her friend Linda on the telephone. Jennie told Linda that she had finished making the cake, and they confirmed their plans to take the cake to Bangor the next day. Jennie called again later and asked Linda if she could come over, but Linda said that she could not, as she did not have anyone to watch her children. She would