American murderer who, on 15 December 1927, kidnapped 12-year-old Marian Parker and killed her on 17 December in Los Angeles, California. He was 19 years old when he committed the crimes. He ordered a ransom from her father Perry Parker—a bank employee—who met Hickman in central Los Angeles at around 8 PM on 17 December 1927. Upon the exchange of the money, the assailant drove away, throwing Marion’s mutilated body out of his car as he fled. The child had been significantly disfigured, her limbs cut off, her eyes fixed open with wires, and her abdomen disemboweled and stuffed with rags; her limbs were discovered the next day.
At approximately 1:30 PM on 22 December 1927, the Chief of Police and a traffic officer arrested Hickman in Echo, Oregon, after a frantic car chase.
Hickman was extradited to Los Angeles, where he confessed to another unrelated murder, which he had committed during a drugstore hold-up; he also confessed to having committed a number of other armed robberies.
Hickman admitted to having strangled Parker, whom he had blindfolded and tied to a chair, until she was unconscious. He proceeded to hang Parker’s body upside down in his bathtub, slicing her throat at the jugular vein to drain the body of blood. After disarticulating her arms and legs, he proceeded to disembowel her.
Hickman subsequently wrapped Parker’s limbs in newspaper before temporarily storing her torso in a suitcase. He then left the apartment to see a film at the Loew’s State Theater, but claimed he was unable to focus on the feature and wept throughout. Later that night, realizing that Parker’s father might want to physically see his daughter before paying the ransom, Hickman attempted to reconstruct and disguise Marion’s body to make it appear that she was alive, leading him to adorn her with makeup and sew her eyes open with wire.
Hickman told his attorneys that he had killed Parker upon the direction of a supernatural deity he called “Providence”. This claim was touted by Hickman’s defense attorney in court, who attempted to explain Hickman’s actions by reason of insanity.
In February 1928, a jury rejected the insanity defense and the judge sentenced Hickman to death by hanging. He appealed his conviction but it was upheld by the California Supreme Court. During his final months, Hickman reportedly embraced Roman Catholicism and wrote letters of apology to his victim’s families.
On 19 October 1928 at 10:10 AM he was hanged on the gallows in San Quentin Prison. Upon falling through the trap doors of the gallows, Hickman struck his head and hung, “violently twitching and jerking.” Per witnesses, it took approximately two minutes for Hickman to die. He was declared dead at 10:25 AM. An autopsy performed after his execution showed that Hickman’s neck did not break during the hanging, and that he had died from asphyxia. He was 20 years old.
Before his death Hickman confessed to another murder, committed on 24 December 1926, in which he and a friend Welby Hunt, robbed and fatally shot Ivy Thoms, a druggist, in his Los Angeles store.
Link to Wikipedia biography