The Deadly Web of Serial Killer James Hicks, Part One
The Gateway Lounge in Newport, Maine. 1985.
This is the first in a two-part series. Click here for part two.
She entered The Gateway looking for love, and instead, she found him…
On the night of Saturday, October 16th, 1982, 34-year-old single mom, Jerilyn Tibbetts-Towers stopped at the Gateway Lounge in Newport, Maine after a night out with family at the bowling alley to have a drink. Newport is my hometown in central Maine.
The Gateway Lounge still stands today, except it’s now a Chinese food restaurant called China Way, and has been for more than three decades. Her father dropped her off at the bar on their way home, and expected Jerilyn would call when she needed somebody to come and pick her up.
Coincidentally, Jerilyn lived just a stone’s throw away from my childhood home on a tiny quiet street with just a few houses—the street I grew up on. Jerilyn lived in a cottage next door to her parent’s house, and I remember playing with my cousin near where the cottage used to stand. Home for Jerilyn was less than 5 minutes from The Gateway Lounge.
Around 1am, a car pulled into the yard and turned off its engine. Believing Jerilyn most likely got a ride home with somebody to save him the trip, her father assumed she was safe and went to bed. But the next morning, Jerilyn’s mother, June Tibbets, called her son Vance in a panic. Jerilyn still wasn’t home, which was super unlike her. She did have a history of leaving for a few days, but always told her family where she was, and when to expect her back. Maybe she went home with somebody and forgot to call this time?
June informed the Newport Police who reassure her that Jerilyn would probably turn up soon. But when she still wasn’t home a few days later, Newport police chief, Jim Ricker, went out to ask a few questions, starting with the bar where she was last seen. Jim Ricker was interviewed for both episodes of Murder, She Told.
The bartender who was working the night of October 16th, Judy, said she remembered seeing Jerilyn there, and she wasn’t alone. She was approached by a man who flattered her and bought her drinks all night. They seemed to be laughing and having a great time. Around 1am they left together, but Judy swore that Jerilyn never got in the car with the man. Chief Ricker questioned her about this mystery man’s identity, and she said “I can’t remember names, but I can always remember faces.”
A week later, Judy reported to work, and sitting in the same spot, wearing an almost identical outfit as the night she saw him last, was the mystery man who left with Jerilyn. His name was James “Jimmy” Hicks, and despite admitting to being at the bar the night of Jerilyn’s disappearance, he said he didn’t know any more than that. He was there alone, and he left alone.
It wasn’t until Judy started getting harassing phone calls at work—with the person on the other line breathing heavily, or hanging up—that police decided to pay James Hicks a second visit. One call even threatened to know where Judy lived and that she needed to keep her big mouth shut.
So, Chief Ricker paid him a visit in Carmel where he lived with his girlfriend, Linda Marquee. As he questioned Jimmy about his time at the Gateway the night of Jerilyn’s disappearance, his behavior became increasingly strange and erratic.
James Rodney Hicks becomes a suspect
Chief Ricker was interviewed for this episode, and said:
“What was really ironic was that this was one of those times that as a law enforcement officer, you’re really talking to an individual only because you think they may be a witness, and it was during that conversation that he quickly became a primary suspect.
I remember explaining who I was and why I was there, and asked him if he’d be comfortable answering a few questions. He agreed, but he basically started to become completely unwrapped: he was very nervous, and at one point he took a glass of water and poured it over his own head trying to drink it. Then, he started accusing me of thinking he murdered his first wife.
Now, I had never heard of James Hicks and I certainly never knew he had been married or that his first wife may be a missing person before that interview. So, I started asking him questions about it. When I started focusing on his statement, Linda asked us to leave the house.
If he had been cool, calm, and collected and even said he saw Jerilyn that night, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But basically, at that moment in time, James Hicks made himself a primary suspect in her disappearance.”
Not having much to go by except that James Hicks was married to a woman named Jennie Cyr, Chief Jim Ricker opened the phone book and started making calls trying to find her family.
“I found a Cyr family and called and just by happenstance asked if they were related to Jennie Cyr and the lady on the other end started crying, so I asked if I could come talk to them.
When I got to the house it was like a family reunion; there must have been ten relatives there. The mother, Myra, said ‘Nobody has ever believed me. I know James Hicks killed my daughter, but nobody will believe me. He told the police she ran off with a trucker and left her kids, but she would never do that to her kids. She would leave him, but she would never leave those kids’”
James Hicks married Jennie Cyr when she was just 16 years old and pregnant with their first child. She dropped out of school at Hermon High School in 1971, and married James against her family’s wishes (they suggested she have an abortion and tried sending her to a convent school). But eventually the family came to terms.
The relationship was rocky; marred by infidelity on James’ part and financial struggle. At one point around 1974 they filed for divorce, but after discovering Jennie was pregnant again, they decided to give the marriage another shot.
But three years later everything would change. On July 19th, 1977, James frantically called the local police department and told them that his 23-year-old wife was missing.
The Cyr family put out a missing persons ad in the paper and filed a missing persons report, but the police didn’t believe she was missing at all, and the report was never officially filed.
The Investigation Begins
Maine State Police Detective Dick Reitchl is called in to assist Jim Ricker on the case, and they start by knocking on the doors at the T&N Trailer Park where James and Jennie lived, hoping to strike a nerve with somebody who might remember them.
A neighbor, Trudy, who was too afraid to speak up while Hicks lived just doors down, told the detective the night that Jennie disappeared, she heard fighting coming from the trailer, banging, and then silence. Shortly after that she remembered hearing what sounded like wood being chopped in the back of his trailer. The police allegedly approached her in 1977 when initially questioning the disappearance, but Hicks was with Trudy at the time and she was too afraid to say anything. This was the first time anyone had asked about it since then.
Trudy also mentioned a live-in babysitter named Susan Mattley who might know exactly what happened.
Susan Mattley was 15-years-old when she came to live with James and Jennie Hicks. She was a foster child, and Jennie had made an arrangement with her case worker to have Susan live with them and essentially act as a babysitter for their two young children.
Susan told a similar story as Trudy—that she was afraid for her safety and that’s why she never spoke up against Hicks, and gave them a detailed account of the last day she saw Jennie...
Susan’s verbal testimony gave police enough circumstantial evidence to indict James Hicks on a murder charge in the disappearance of Jennie from 1977, and on Oct 5th, 1983, he was arrested without bail.
There was only one major issue surrounding the case: there was no body, no blood, and no physical evidence. This meant that the state had the extremely difficult task of not only proving that Jennie Hicks was dead, but that James had caused her death by an intentional and knowing act. This is the first murder case to go to trial without a body in the state of Maine.
The defense, however, was eager to point out that Jennie was alive and could walk through the courtroom door at any time.
The Trial
The trial began in March of 1984. The prosecution’s star witness was a 22-year-old Susan, who had to face her fears in front of a courtroom full of people and testify against a man she was still afraid of.
Jimmy’s defense attorney, J. Hillary Billings, stated “the fundamental point of this case is simply whether you will be able to find it in your selves to convict someone of murder if you don’t even know if a death has occurred. There is no solid evidence that a death occurred.”
The defense claimed that Jennie was unsatisfied with her life in general and with her marriage, and that her relationship with Jimmy produced two unwanted pregnancies. J. Hillary Billings stated that his client had been living with his current girlfriend, Linda Marquis, since Jennie abandoned him and their two children. Since then, he’d had two other children with Linda, and had taken in her other two kids from a previous marriage. James Hicks was a family man, they argued. Linda sat in the courtroom along with other members of the Hicks family to support that.
But the whole trial was hinging on Susan Mattley’s testimony and deeper details on what exactly may have happened that night.
Susan’s Testimony
Two days before Jennie disappeared, Susan who was only 15, was in the kitchen cooking, and said that Jimmy came up behind her and grabbed her, pressing himself into her body. When it was clear he was trying to force her to have sex with him, she fought back, and he retaliated by burning her with his cigarette, putting it out on her chest. She still had the scar to show for it.
The morning of July 18th, 1977, after James had left for work, Susan told Jennie about the incident, and Jennie decided it had to be now—she was going to tell Jimmy she was finally leaving him. She asked Susan to go out for the evening so that she could talk to her husband.
When Susan arrived home around 4am, she expected the house to be quiet since it was so late. She definitely wasn’t expecting the unsettling scene she walked into when opening the door to the Hicks’ trailer.
She testified that she saw James, sitting in silence and staring at static on the television screen, and next to him on a love seat, wearing a blue bathrobe, was Jennie. Only something wasn’t right... She was laying there in a such a peculiar way, it was hard for Susan to believe she was sleeping. Her body was partially off the couch with her head on the wooden arm rest. She was “scrunched up as if she hadn’t put herself there”. Her hair was completely covering her face so that none of her features could be seen, and was so long it touched the floor. Her arms flailed in “crazy positions”, one of them over her head, pointing down. Jennie Hicks looked dead. James simply said she was sleeping and told Susan to go to bed, so she did... but she couldn’t sleep very well and later heard what sounded like slippers scuffing and dragging across the floor, and the door to the trailer closing.
The next day Jennie was gone... but strangely enough, her purse—complete with IDs, credit cards, and her glasses—sat on the kitchen table. He said she just took off with her lover. But there were two things that Susan knew Jennie would never, ever leave town without: her children, and her glasses. Jennie had terrible eye sight and couldn’t go anywhere without them.
Prison for James Hicks
It only took the jury 9 hours to come to a conclusion: they found James Hicks guilty of acting with reckless intent in causing his wife’s death, and convicted him with manslaughter, which held a maximum sentence of 10 years with option for parole at the Maine state prison in Thomaston.
Throughout the entire trial, Jimmy maintained a calm but smug presence, and hearing a verdict of guilty didn’t change that composure. His family, including his girlfriend Linda Marquis, sat in the back of the courtroom in stunned silence. They later huddled together through tears.
“I am not guilty, but someday it will be proven. I’ll accept what the court gives me,” he said.
A free man
In July of 1990, after serving only seven years of his ten-year sentence, James Hicks was released on good behavior; a convicted felon, but a free man.
Back in Etna, to no surprise at all, Jimmy didn’t have a lot of fans. He got a job as a maintenance worker at the Twin City Motor Inn on Wilson Street in Brewer, a motel that no longer exists today. He was trying to stay off the radar, and seemingly leading a normal life. But police hadn’t forgotten just exactly who had moved back into town, so they kept tabs on him. They also hadn’t forgotten about Jerilyn Towers.
While working at the Twin City Motor Inn, Jimmy met a woman named Lynn Willette who had no idea about her new boyfriend’s criminal past, and the two started dating.
In spring of 1996, Maine State Police Detective Joe Zamboni brought James into the station for something completely random, and he brought Lynn with him. Detective Zamboni didn’t even realize that Jimmy had a new girlfriend, and he wondered how much she actually knew. Sensing Lynn could be in danger, he tried to subtly warn her by asking questions about Jerilyn, making sure it was understood that Jerilyn was missing, and that her boyfriend was the last person to be seen with her…
A few days later, on May 26th, 1996, a frantic James Hicks called up Detective Zamboni. His girlfriend, Lynn Willette... was missing.
To hear more from this episode including a first hand account interview with former police chief, Jim Ricker, tune in to part one of The Deadly Web of James Hicks on Murder, She Told wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
Click here for part two.
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James Hicks (18) - 1970 Hermon High School
Jennie Cyr (16) - 1970 Hermon High School
Jennie Cyr missing photo
Jennie Cyr Hicks - later photo
Jerilyn Towers
James Hicks, arrest and 1983 mugshot for Jennie’s murder
Sources For This Episode
Photos of The Gateway shared with Murder, She Told by Carolyn Kurro.
Yearbook photos from the 1970 Hermon High School Microphone
Newspaper photos mostly from Bangor Daily News
Additional photos from Buried in the Backyard & Tragedy in the North Woods by Trudy Irene Scee
Bangor Daily News Articles by Renee Ordway
A Sister Searches for Answers, October 7th 1996
Killer May Reveal Details of 3 Murders, October 1st 2000
Hick Admits Brewer Killing, October 1st 1996
Murder Suspect Returns to Maine, October 10th 2000
Hicks Leads Search for Victims Remains, October 11th 2000
Two of Hicks' Victims Found, October 13th 2000
Grand Jury Charges Hicks with 2 Murders, November 7th 2000
Two Families Mourn Hicks' Victims, November 13th 2000
Hicks Gets Two life Terms for Slayings, December 5th 2000
Bangor Daily News
James Hicks Out on Bail Awaiting Appeal by A Jay Higgins, December 20th 1984
Hicks Saga Revealed in Confession by Jeff Tuttle, October 15th 2000
Locals Find Grave of Hicks' Third Victim by News Staff October 15th 2000
Additional Sources
Oxygen’s Buried in the Backyard
Hicks Sentenced to 55 years By Linda Kane, Lubbock Avalanche Journal, January 7th 2000
Episode Credits
Production, writing, research, audio, and editing by Kristen Seavey
Murder, She Told was created by Kristen Seavey
This episode was also co-produced by AKA Studio Productions.