Trudy Irene Scee - Tragedy in the North Woods

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2009 by Trudy Irene Scee

All rights reserved

First published 2009

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.62584.131.5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scee, Trudy Irene.

Tragedy in the North Woods : the murders of James Hicks / Trudy Irene Scee.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

print edition ISBN 978-1-59629-550-6

1. Hicks, James Rodney. 2. Murderers--United States--Biography. 3. Crime--United States--Case studies. I. Title.

HV6248.H44S24 2009

364.1523092--dc22

2009017423

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

We all have our own gifts and abundance, our own sorrows and poverty. To those who suffered from the violence described herein, or from violence and loss like this, this book is dedicated.

And to Mary Louise Scee Engleke

My Mother

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

James Rodney Hicks, Maines serial killer, affected the lives of many people over the course of three decades. He left a trail of destruction behind, as well as decades worth of police and legal documents. I would like to thank everyone who spoke with me and shared their memories, photographs and documents. In particular, I would like to thank Deputy Attorney General William Stokes; Nancy Hersey; Joseph Zamboni, former Maine State Police detective and now a criminology professor for Maines Husson College; James Ricker, former Newport police chief and now Newport town manager; Rose Mannette of the Penobscot County Sheriffs Department; Tammy Price; Linda and Wayne Elston; the Brewer Police Department; and a few others who wished to remain nameless. I would also like to express my appreciation to Lance Warren and the staff of The History Press for all of their aid and their forbearance of my lagging technology skills.

In addition, I would like to thank my friends and family who have had to listen to my research and writing woes once again, and this time for an often unpleasant story. In particular, I wish to thank my daughter, Mariah Irene Alainor Ruth Cameron Scee, for her continued fortitude in dealing with a scribbling mother.

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 wentthey 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, orperhaps more aptly puttheir 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 eyeglassesdark, 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 Jennies 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.

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 parentsperhaps only standard teenage issuesand 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.

The five-foot-seven, blue-eyed, 125-pound, dark blondehaired 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. Jennies daughter Abigail 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.

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 Jennies 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,

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 timetrailers 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.