A Sinister Plot: William Hickman’s Path to Crime

You could say that the perpetrator, William Edward Hickman, single handedly robbed LA of its innocence. Hickman wanted to go to college but he couldn’t afford to. He wanted nice things but he couldn’t afford those either. What he didn’t want to do was work for a living unless a job might give him a really good chance to steal. That’s how he ended up getting a job as a messenger at a prestigious downtown LA bank – the Security First National Bank, situated in a new imposing marble building on Spring Street.

In those days, banks were built to resemble Greek and Roman temples. They were shrines to the American dream of making money and plenty of it.

Bankers were among the most respected members of the community. There Hickman came under the supervision of the assistant manager Perry Parker, a highly respected banker and a devoted husband and father. Parker had a son and twelve-year-old twin daughters, Marjorie and Marion. Marion, especially, loved riding the streetcar downtown and visiting her father at the bank. Did she notice the young messenger with the nice smile and friendly manner? Perhaps.

The Parker Family and the Messenger: Innocence Targeted

We do know that Hickman noticed Marion, a friendly, well-mannered child who never got in anyone’s way. But Hickman wasn’t interested in working his way up from messenger to a higher position. He’d been there only a short time when he was arrested for forging his signature on checks he stole from the bank. Dismissed in disgrace, he was arrested and prosecuted. Perry Parker testified at Hickman’s trial. Parker was a kind-hearted man and took no pleasure in Hickman’s downfall.

Marion’s family lived in an attractive two-story house on South Wilton Place, at the time an affluent neighborhood of large Victorian homes. More tomboyish than her twin, she liked playing in the neighborhood and she loved Penny, the family dog. But she was very close to her parents and loved best to stay at home with them. Each week day Marion and her twin caught a streetcar on Venice Boulevard that took them to Mount Vernon Junior High School a mile away.

The Fateful Day: Marion’s Kidnapping

Sometime around noon on December 16, 1927, Marion was called out of her class Christmas party and told her father had been hurt in a car accident and was asking for her. A nice-looking young man “from Mr. Parker’s bank” had been sent to pick her up. It is unthinkable to us that a school would release a child into the custody of a total stranger.

The alarm bells should have been deafening. Why did Mr. Parker ask for only one twin? Why did this well-spoken young man not know Marian’s name until the secretary helpfully provided it? Why did he ask for the “smaller” girl? But the school let her go and Marion trustingly got into Hickman’s Chrysler coupe. Even when Marjorie returned home alone, the family didn’t worry. It wasn’t unusual for Marion to stay late to help her teachers and Marjorie didn’t know she had been picked up.

The Ransom Letters and a Father’s Agony

Only when Mr Parker phoned the school to ask why Marion was so late was the ghastly truth discovered. Far from being in an accident, he’d been home all day celebrating his birthday. That evening he got a telegram telling him to wait for further instructions. In the morning he received the first ransom note, signed by “The Fox,” demanding $1500 in gold certificates. There was also a note from Marion with the heart-rending words “Please, Daddy, I want to come home tonight.”

A Day at the Movies: Hickman’s Twisted Game

While driving around with Marion that afternoon, Hickman told her she had been kidnaped. This was so rare an event that she probably wasn’t too frightened. He took her to the Rialto in South Pasadena where they watched a silent movie. Called “Figures Don’t Lie,” it was about a young man’s comic struggles to get the girl. According to Hickman, Marion laughed a lot. I hope she did because, after that, she would never have laughed again.

The Bellevue Apartment: The Final Moments

Hickman then took her to the Bellevue Apartments near Echo Park where he rented a room at the back. It has since been turned into condos but the front of the building is still exactly as Marion would have seen it when she climbed the stairs and passed through the front door

Hickman’s first attempt at picking up the money ended when he spotted police officers at the transfer point. Another ransom letter followed with new instructions and a warning that Marion would be killed if Parker brought the police. But at some point before the second scheduled meeting, Hickman grew tired, as he later told police, of having Marion around. He said he grew weary of looking at her. So there, in room 305, he brutally ended her life by tying her to a chair then strangling her to death. It then suddenly occurred to him that Mr Parker would expect to see a living child. What he did next was so horrific that newspapers could only hint at it.

Mr. Parker arrived at the exchange point at Fifth and South Manhattan on the evening of December 17th. Marion was propped up next to the driver, almost completely wrapped in blankets and, in the dark, Parker could only catch a glimpse of her face. He handed over the money. Hickman then sped off in a stolen car, tossing the precious bundle onto the boulevard. Parker picked it up and then screamed in primal terror and agony. He was holding only the head and torso of his child.

Her eyes had been sewn open with thread and then secured with wires, while her cheeks had been covered with rouge. The next day, people walking in Elysian Park on a path that now runs behind Dodger Stadium, found six parcels wrapped in newspaper. They contained the limbs and internal organs of Marion Parker. In a case left in the road at the transfer point, a woman found blood-soaked papers and a spool of thread.

A City in Terror: The Hunt for Hickman

Police officers from all over the country came to help with the manhunt. Angelenos from the poorest to the richest chipped in to set up a reward. LA’s two main mob bosses halted bootlegging and sent their “soldiers” to help in the search. But his identity was quickly discovered when his fingerprints were found in the stolen car and one of the towels wrapped around Marion had the laundry mark of the Bellevue Arms apartments. But when police arrived with a warrant, he was already gone.

Dumping the car he’d driven to the exchange, he’d carjacked another (plus fifteen dollars) from a man on Hollywood Boulevard. As far as the police were concerned, he could have gone anywhere–but in fact he was heading north for the Canadian border. Every police officer in the country had his photograph and his fingerprints. And Perry Parker, the diligent banker, had recorded the serial numbers on the gold certificates he gave to the kidnaper. Those numbers were printed in newspapers across the country and there wasn’t a store, hotel, gas station, or restaurant that didn’t have those numbers beside its cash register.

Caught and Confessed: Hickman’s Arrest and Trial

When Hickman cashed one near Pendleton, Oregon, it was only a matter of time until the cops patrolling every highway and back country road spotted his license plate. He was caught by two highway patrol officers and appeared in an Oregon courthouse where he made his first confession.

Continuing to make one confession after another, Hickman was brought by train back to LA. By then the biggest problem was keeping the thousands of outraged citizens outside from storming the jail and lynching him. When he went on trial at the newly built Hall of Justice in downtown LA, he admitted his guilt so only the task for the jury was to decide if he was insane. Under a new California law, he couldn’t be found not guilty by reason of insanity–but insanity would save him from death by hanging.

Hickman didn’t help his case by asking fellow inmates for suggestions on how to act insane. Ayn Rand, then a young writer in Hollywood, was probably the only person with a good word to say for him. She wrote in her journal that Hickman had “a wonderful, free, light consciousness” regarding “the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people.” On the other hand, Tarzan-author Edgar Rice Burroughs who covered the trial for the LA Examiner spoke for every other Angeleno when he wrote: “I hope the jury will show him proper consideration. I hope they will accord him the same consideration that he accorded Marion Parker.”

The trial was a nightmare for the jury who learned exactly what he had done to the little girl–atrocities the newspapers had merely hinted at because they were so appalling. On seeing photographs taken at the autopsy, one juror collapsed in a faint It took the jury less than an hour to decide he was sane after which the judge pronounced sentence of death. Hickman was hanged at San Quentin less than a year after the kidnap and murder.

A Ghostly Legacy: The Haunting of South Wilton Place

Sometime around 1990, the author of a book about famous LA murders called the current owner of the house on South Wilton. When he told her Marion’s story, she said “Oh, that accounts for our ghost.” She and others in the home had felt the small, friendly spirit of a child, a child who moved small objects and could be heard walking around. A child who seemed to love being there. Marion had always loved spending time at home.