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Albert W. Hicks (c. 1820 - July 13, 1860) was an American triple murderer remembered as the last person executed for piracy in the United States (although slave trader Nathaniel Gordon was executed under the Piracy Act 1820 two years later).
Biography edit
By his own account, Hicks was born in Rhode Island in 1820. He never attended school and was imprisoned at age 15 for theft. Hicks escaped multiple times but was always recaptured and given a severe sentence, eventually culminating in a year in solitary confinement during which Hicks swore revenge against the whole human race. Hicks claimed in his memoir The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert W. Hicks, The Pirate and Murderer that he spent the next 20 years engaged in highway robbery, murder and mutiny under a variety of aliases and credited himself with hundreds of murders, but the accuracy of his claims is disputed.
By the age of 40 Hicks was living in New York City with a wife and child. In March 1860, Hicks shipped aboard the oyster sloop A.E. Johnson, which he knew to be carrying a large amount of cash, as a deck hand. The only other three people on the boat were Captain George Burr and brothers Oliver and Smith Watts. Once the ship had picked up its cargo in Virginia and began its journey back to New York, Hicks began planning his next move.
When the Johnson sailed into the "Narrows" strait in New York City, Captain Burr and Oliver Watts retired to bed, leaving Smith Watts and Hicks on night duty. By Hicks' account, he distracted Smith by pointing to something out at sea before striking him in the head with a sea axe, apparently killing him. Oliver Watts, awoken by the commotion, looked out through the cabin hatchway and was decapitated by Hicks. Hicks then entered Captain Burr's cabin but found him awake and alert. They struggled for a long while, with Burr almost strangling Hicks to death, but Hicks eventually managed to slash Burr across the face with the axe and kill him. He looted valuables from the living quarters before returning to the deck, where he found Smith still alive and walking towards him. Hicks shoved Smith overboard, but he was able to grab hold of the guard rail, forcing Hicks to cut off his fingers and drop him in the sea to drown. Hicks then disposed of the bodies and the axe overboard.
With Hicks preoccupied murdering his crewmates, the Johnson was running unattended and soon collided with the moored schooner J.R. Mather, breaking the mast and rendering it incapable of continuing. Hicks then attempted to scuttle the Johnson by boring holes in the keel before abandoning ship in a yawl with $230 in cash and the possessions of the murdered crew in a ship's bag. Believing he would not be caught, he celebrated his success by drinking heavily at various saloons on his way home.
Unknown to Hicks, the Johnson had not sunk and was found by the coastguard the next day, with the deck and cabins bathed in blood and a set of severed fingers on the deck. Police soon observed the missing yawl and found it abandoned in some rushes in Staten Island after a two-day search. From this location, a series of witnesses were found who had seen a suspicious-looking man carrying a large heavy ship's bag. Sightings of this man were tracked all the way back to an apartment in Manhattan, identifying the man as Albert W. Hicks. By this time Hicks had realized police were on his trail and fled the city with his family, but police continued to follow the trail established by witnesses who had seen the Hicks family on northward-bound trains and boats, allowing them to trace Hicks' flight until they eventually found a cab driver who recalled dropping Hicks off at a boarding house in Providence, Rhode Island. Police surrounded the boarding house and Hicks was arrested in the night without a fight. Captain Burr's watch, several bags of money and a photograph belonging to one of the Watts brothers were found in Hicks' possession.
As the murders had occurred in the course of a robbery aboard a boat, Hicks was charged with piracy as well as murder. A jury convicted him after deliberating for only seven minutes and he was sentenced to death. Awaiting execution, Hicks confessed and penned a lengthy account of his life which was published the day of his execution. Hicks was hanged on July 13, 1860, with his body soon being stolen by grave robbers and sold to medical students for dissection.