James Hicks Part 1 | The Murders of Jennie Cyr Hicks & Jerilyn Towers | Maine's Only Serial Killer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- This week, Yergy and Drewby discuss the crimes of James Rodney Hicks, arguably Maine's only known serial killer.
On 1 November 2000, Maine's Penobscot County grand jury formally charged confessed killer James Hicks, 49, with the murders of Jerilyn Towers and Lynn Willette. Hicks served six years of a 10-year prison sentence for killing his first wife, 23-year-old Jennie Hicks, who disappeared from the couple's Carmel home in 1977.
Hicks was not arrested for her murder until 1983 and was convicted in 1984. Before his arrest, Towers, 34, of Newport, disappeared after leaving a Newport bar with Hicks. In fact the police investigation into Towers' disappearance prompted the re-examination Jennie Hicks' disappearance and subsequently the charging Hicks with her murder. At the time he was not charged with Towers' death because police lacked adequate evidence.
After his release from prison in 1990, Hicks met 40-year-old Willette of Orrington with whom he worked at the Twin City Motel in Brewer. The two eventually lived together at a South Main Street apartment where Hicks now claims he killed Willette 26 May 1996. Though also suspected in her disappearance, Hicks was never charged with her death because of lack of evidence. That is until he was handed a 55-year sentence in Lubbock, Texas, and confessed to the three killings and led authorities to their bodies.
Hicks was convicted in Texas of holding a gun to the head of a 67-year-old woman, forcing here to write a check to him and sign over the title to her car, and then write a suicide note. He planned to drug and drown the woman to make it look like a suicide, but she somehow managed to escaped. When he was convicted to 55 years in prison Hicks asked to cut a deal with authorities in Maine whereby he agreed to direct them to the bodies of the three missing in exchange for serving his time in Maine instead of Texas.
Back in Maine Hicks located the remains of his three victims after two days of digging around his former home in Etna and at several roadside sites in Aroostook County, Maine. The remains of his former wife and Towers were found 100 feet apart next to the home where he grew up. Willette's remains were found in concrete buckets buried next to the road in Aroostook County. Apparently all the bodies were dismembered and some parts he allegedly tossed in a nearby river.
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If you literally hear somebody yelling, "stop, you're killing me!" WHY, WHY, WHY do you not call the police? You can always give an anonymous tip. There's always excuses like, some people don't want to get involved in other people's business. But a scream and terror is something that cannot be mistaken. And the fact that she yelled "you're killing me".... It literally does not get more obvious than that
Because small towns have a habit of minding their own business when it comes to things like that. Lots of nefarious activities in Carmel going back to the 1800s.
@@23Dawnay Maybe for that particular town but it's not typical. I rest easy in my small town knowing if my neighbors hear me scream they'll be here shortly, armed.
For college educated people you're pretty ignorant about people in your own state.
It's a very sad concept isn't it. Like the kitty situation where everybody heard her and did nothing. The whole reason we have 911 but still dont use it
“He was contemplating killing her thankfully he did not” yeah thankfully because Susan is my grandmother😭
Hope she's doing better in recent years!
You guys have the sweetest energy 🥰 it creates a nice balancing factor with the intensely dark content. New subscriber, and I very much enjoy this channel!
Just started listening to this channel and subscribed! I’m from Maine! Omg I’ve never seen any other youtuber from Maine 😂 this inspires me to start my channel that I’m so terrified to start.
He graduated high school at the age of 23?!??! WTH lol 😂
I’m a Floridian transplant to houlton maine. We drove around with florida plates for months and never got pulled over. You’d think of ALL states, we’d get pulled over for being suspected of dubious activity. 🤣
I used to work at Birch Point in Island Falls back in the day, and we got out of state visitors ALL the time. Year round. Lots of out of state vehicles in Aroostook county, few (if any) were up there for drug trafficking😂😂
Going to move to northern Maine in 2 weeks literally in the middle of nowhere 😂❤
I was a Goth Teen ( Now a Goth Adult. ) and the EXACT same thing happened to me!!!!! 😑 i feel your pain sis.
In case you need the information, where you said it's like six degrees of Kevon Bacon, the actual phenomenon is called six degrees of separation, where most people are up to six or fewer social connections away from someone they know. Basically, the concept is, if you stand and talk to your neighbor long enough, you will most likely discover you both know a same person, and you have a bit more than a passing relationship with such person, such as you worked with them or were their neighbor for a while.
Oh I know - but I like to call it my Bacon number
I lived above James Hicks for a little less than a year in 1996. He did several weird things that led to us moving out early. Including Spring my cat with gasoline.
I also lived above James Hicks , while he was dating one of his victims. I would hear drilling sounds coming from the basement apartment. I felt from the beginning there was something extremely off about him. I moved out and few months later Lynn went missing.
Lol so yous two talking about how Maine is a good place to dump a body reminds me of a story my aunt told me.
So my whole family is from Philadelphia. We’re very used to the noises and chaos and all that comes with living here.
So when my aunt went to college it was in a very wooded area and it terrified her (as it does me) she said it took her three years to even be able to sleep through the night because it was TOO QUIET.
She finally got some perspective on it when a friend of hers told her “Mary NOBODY GETS MURDERED IN (TOWN NAME). THEY GET MURDERED IN PHILLY AND DUMPED IN (TOWN NAME)”
Which I find funny.
I know this video is super old but in regard to Maine/Northern Maine .. I was 17 when I drove my cousin's wife to Caribou to visit her mom, who was near death. I gave her a ton of space during the week, because I didn't know her very well, so I certainly didn't want to intrude in such an emotional time. So I did a lot of poking around in the woods and driving around town looking for stuff to see/do. My first trip into town was EERIE as hell .. It looked like I drove into a movie set or something?? Like the town, the people, the buildings and everything looked like it was all preserved in a bubble and time couldn't touch it since the mid 70s. I also got sort of like a "The Truman Show" kind of feeling - everyone looked at me funny, people would stop talking if I walked into an establishment etc. It was utterly bizarre but I did like it up there lol. I'm from a large city in CT and I've never seen anything like it!
Oh and I slept in a cabin on the property and a fucking BEAR tried to come inside one night. No biggie 😳
😂😂😂. I live in Bangor
When you guys were saying how big Maine is, how you’ve never seen the northern area, or how people in the east of the state haven’t been 100 miles in any other direction… it can be that way even in the most populous state CA! I’m from San Diego, and while California is obvi massive next to Maine, I’ve only been to SF once, for a few days in 4th grade. I’ve gone on just 2 other road trips to Oregon, as a kid, equating four trips up and down the coast (or the inland fields lol) with minimal stops. I’ve been told I stay in San Diego “too much” and I need to at least go to OC or LA more often. It’s like two hours away. Lol. No car… no time!
Looking forward to all the new pod cast so glad i stumbled upon you guys
"Bangor handsome" cracked me up. I live about 25 miles from Bangor.
I live in Bangor 😅
I just love watching your videos. Very informative. Keep up the great work!!!! Love you guys!
*Sorry you had to go through that with the cops "goth-profiling"-- folks are so ignorant. You didn't deserve that. **Thanks for also acknowledging people of color having like experiences.
6 years for killing your wife🤦♂️
That was back when seven years was a life sentence. It’s 14 now…
I'm so concentrating on the wrong thing here, but I had to LOL @ "Bangor handsome". Now I wanna know what that looks like.
This is going to get me a bunch of hate... this episode already has, lol... Once you start heading north in Maine, it starts becoming like the rural south - but with snow and trees. So he's your blue collar type that probably has a Nascar jacket (and I can say that because I worked at the Bangor Wilson's Leather where Nascar jackets were huge sellers), and most of his teeth. He probably thought he was the king of the trailer park.
...and this is more of a joke and gross exaggeration. Tons of fine folks live up there. But I will say, I'd never seen so many goddamn drugs in my life until I lived up there in 2015.
@@TheMiseryMachine 😂😅😂😅. I am dying. I live in CT but have never visited Maine. I would agree that having most of one's teeth would make him king of the trailer park. I am definitely stealing the term "Bangor handsome". That was hilarious.
@@reignstorm9941 he's a Knight in Shining Snowmobile, lol.
Me too! I live in Bangor 😅
Woohoo. Thank you for the shout out 🥰. Love you guys
Just stumble across your channel and appreciate the focus on maine or southern canada 😂 have you heard of the case out of hancock county about Amy Cave? Its an odd one check it out
I dont understand why the neighbor didn't call the police if they heard her yelling for help.
Catching up to older ones. I've heard his name before, but not about the case. Sounds like a nutjob! Rip to the victims , so sad! 🙏
“Is he Bangor handsome?” 😂 I’m from Bangor/Old Town and I swear some of us are attractive! You need to go further north lol
We lived in California for something like two months before we were notified we needed to register our vehicles and get California plates. In previous interstate moves, I had just waited until my current registration expired.
For some reason, the TH-cam channel Ghosts of Carmel Maine is closely related to this story. Something about this place called the Lamb House. Might be worth checking out.
Hey Bender! I've actually seen his channel - he did some ghost hunting in the vacant lot in Carmel where the trailer park was (the one where Jennie was killed). I've not seen other episodes, but I'll look more into it. We're not THAT far from Carmel, all things considered. Part of me wishes we would have went to find the lot the day we went on the scavenger hunt to find the other landmarks.
Jennie is my cousin. I went to the location of her murder with him. That day Kent planted bones on the pile he had me digging behind where the trailer used to be. He is a con and he has twisted all of Carmels history around. The house he lives in was not a funeral home like Kent claims and in fact it was only Edmund Lambs residence where he raised his family. He had a separate building that he performed his undertaking. My first investigation with Kent was at that very location. Don't waste your time with him.
Goth adjacent adult 🤣
With the license plates thing, i believe if you move to or are in oregon for i think over 6 months, you have a month to get oregon plates on your car but I may be wrong. This case is really odd, I wish I could understand where everything is...I tried to follow along all the town names looking at a map of Maine but you are correct, it is big, there's surprisingly ALOT of towns, making it hard to find and keep track of the towns and cities, I feel like i need to get a physical map so I can highlight them
Ok I live in WA, Puget Sound region, and right before this we had lived in upper state NY. We drove cross country in our Plymouth Acclaim.
Husband and I drove around for 2 years with NY plates. No cops bothered us.
We wound up trading in the car and the dealer was the only person to comment on our license plate.
So, I don’t know. Maybe nowadays cops would pull you over to make their quotas ( my dad was a cop in Stamford CT and he said they are quotas but the cops are viewed as not doing their job if their ticket book is too full of pages - plus the city, county and state make $ off those tickets so that was the other reasons for the need to write tickets).
this video is old but the gateway was the bar however it is a Chinese restaurant now, Chinaway:) I worked there in high school! my nana also worked at the gateway!
I remember going by that bar when I was 7 wasn't much in that part of newport then.
There are laws in Washington about out of state plates but I've never known anyone to be pulled over for it.
I actually was a targeted goth, me and my at the time boyfriend were in a band and were hounded by police after parkland, anything we said was written down and twisted out of context. At a certain point a threat was called into the school and my boyfriend was arrested as a person of interest. He didn’t even know how to shoot a gun.
How can I watch this episode not through podcast?
MM: Maine is big
Me: Laughs in Queenslander
I was also a freshman in high school when Columbine happened. I was also a goth girl who wore trench coats. I totally experienced the witch hunt. I was questioned, watched, treated like I was a danger to society. I was bothered by cops, by my school, by my peers.
The old bar is a chinese restaurant. I remember that old place when i was 7 id go by with my grandmother. Newport was like a ghost town then.
You guys are cool with each other
Oh my goodnes, didnt realize you are from Maine.
I love the New England chat speak. I miss my home. Staties, packies and such.
Finished high school at 23. Enough said.
I’ve watched a few of y’all’s videos. This video is all over the place. Y’all talking about stuff y’all have done & things that happened to you. I completely lost the points of the case. When hearing a case I want to hear about it in its entirety.
I moved to Maine in 2007
Swear I've been haunted since
I often listen to misery machine all the way from NSW Australia, but I used to live in West Australia and would love to request that you do a show about an event in 1993 locally penned the Greenough family massacre it is an event that most west Australians are very familiar with and was one of Australia’s worst massacres feel free to Google it
Woodland, ME! That is some next level isolation. I have family up there. There's woods, moose, and....potatoes. My radio cut out driving up there.
What about John Joubert?
Um, there is a Woodland Maine in Washington County. Much closer to Carmel.
Also, the Carmel in Maine has the accent on the 1st syllable.
The bar is now the chinaway restaurant
Hey if you guys ever come to Northern Maine let me know, I can show you around anyplace from Presque Isel north! Also your probably right about the body dumping but in northern Maine the amount of hunting, they would need to bury the body and deep or a bear will dig it up. That’s what happened in Woodland back in the 70’s or 80’s with Mike and Brenda Yonk, there is barely any info on that case but woodland is so rural and it has a dark history of murder. I can show you woodland I know it well. I would love to provide you dinner and a tour of some… of arootook county. We can never forget that aroostook county is bigger then the entire state of Massachusetts. But I know a huge chunk of it.
It's a date!
Did anybody else peep that Jeriyn lived on elm street?
Funny how there's so many little spots in whatever state you live in..... that ya either haven't heard of, or never traveled to 😂😂😂... I'm the same
agree people bring bodies from other states
Wow.. re: Washington
Florida… they don’t care. As long as it has tags current. They don’t even pull us over even if you drive with Tennessee tags for three years in a small town lol. Hence, small town, they’ve seen you before. Lol
Idk maybe its just me but i am finding you guys go on tangents. It makes it hard to follow the story…
Ps drew you are not missing anything not going to extreme northern Maine. Not even radio stations play up there lol
No radio stations at all? Man if I had lived there growing up I would have started an underground radio station -Drewby
I’m into all this kind of subject matter never even heard of this guy🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
Ahhh you found one of our older episodes! :D What's crazy, is if you look up Maine serial killers, they omit James Hicks, when he's actually our only serial killer aside from Mary Foster in the 1800's. They give us John Joubert, who did the bulk of his killing in Nebraska.
@@TheMiseryMachine isn’t Maine where Stephen king made most of his story novels from?
@@TheMiseryMachine IT and the moth of madness and whatnot?
@@TheMiseryMachine Thought I’d send you a message because I don’t wanna sound like one of the people that you talk about laugh out loud but I’ve joined your Instagram send you a message do you just take ideas of people on your Peartree on or do you take ideas from average fans?
Sorry my micro is cheeks!! I’m sure you Will be able to be interpret it, Would it be a personal question to ask something? You talked about dumpsters in one of your videos the pair of you have you had like a bad childhood between the pair of you? As I’m going through your catalogue of videos I’m just wondering? Just curious you seem to be doing okay now so never mind if you don’t wanna say anything but when you were talking about mouldy bagels and people live in bags outside dumpsters you got me interested
Hello 👋 from rhode island
Welcome!!! We love RI!!!
You guys are the sheeeeeeeeeeet!
It’s not a bar anymore. It’s the China way
Hello
He murdered my aunt
So sad to hear he did that to your aunt
F
23 year old high school senior? Real bright boy hm?
This is incorrect. Jimmy Hicks graduated Hermon High School in 1970. He was born in April, 1951. Therefore, he could not have been age 23 when he graduated. I knew Jimmy and Jennie personally.
Can we please see goth photos?!?!?! #fellow goth high schooler 💀😂😝
Join our Discord!!! There are some in there: discord.gg/4HhKxnFz
🎦
Talk too damn much! Just tell us the story!
Hi Chris, we don't banter now. Your watching an extremely old episode.
My apologies
No worries! We're in the process of editing a lot of the crap out of our old episodes, but we have so many now it's become quite the job to do, lol. Not to mention the TH-cam tool to do so us archaic as he'll and doesn't let you do multiple edits at once.
@@TheMiseryMachine I appreciate the connection you have and show through the "in between "-- discussions and banter remain relevant and provide insight to character depth.
Love the maturity in your responses and respect for all despite the subtle unnecessary poke. Fly high ✔️
@@chrismedina9303 respect for the apology