HICKMAN IN ALLEGED CONFESSION DECLARES HE KILLED GIRL AS SHE KNEW TOO MUCH, NO STATEMENT GIVEN OUT BY LOS ANGELES COPS WHEN QUESTIONED BY REPORTERS
Portland, Oregon.
The Telegram says it has learned on good authority that William Edward Hickman has confessed to Los Angeles authorities that he alone is responsible for the murder of little Marian Parker.
That it became necessary for him to do away with her because he had "told her too much," was the reason given by Hickman, it is understood, for the crime.
The crime was committed in a manner that is even more gruesome than the public has been led to believe, the Telegram said, and it is deemed advisable by the Los Angeles officials to withhold the confession until Hickman is securely locked behind jail doors for fear that the details would fan into flame the embers of the lynching spirit that is said to have taken hold of the Los Angeles populace.
"We will have no statement to make," said James Davi, Los Angeles Chief of Police, when questioned about the confession last night.
"Do you deny that a confession has been made?" he was asked.
"We will make no statement now," he reiterated.
Asa Keyes, district attorney, merely stated, when asked about the reported confession, that he could say nothing at present.
Hickman contended that he did not intend to murder Marian Parker, the Telegram learned. "I had no intention of doing her harm," he is quoted as having said, "but after I let her find out who I was that I had worked at the bank and all that, I knew that if she ever saw her father again they would know who I was and get me. There was nothing else to do."
It was also intimated that Hickman did not commit the actual murder in the Bellevue Arms apartment, but killed the girl elsewhere, nearby, and then took the body to the apartment and there mutilated it. According to the alleged confession, Hickman committed no outrage upon the body of the girl. He used drugs with which to put her to sleep, and purposely administered an overdose prior to committing the deed which is described by one Los Angeles official as "too awful to talk about."
In his alleged confession, the Telegram stated Hickman says he cut up the body with intentions of disposing of it, but later realized that could not obtain the $1,500 unless he presented the girl to the father, whereupon he reconstructed the body as best he could to make it appear that Marian was still alive.
Sacramento, Calif. Dec. 26.
The Sacramento Bee in a story from Dunsmuir, Calif., today says that Asa M Keyes, district attorney of Los Angeles, denied that William E Hickman, kidnapper, had confessed the killing of Marian Parker, 12 year old victim.
"Hickman has made no further confession other than what he told the officers at Pendleton, Ore., before the Los Angeles officers arrived," said Keyes.
Aboard Cascade Limited, at Klamath falls, Ore. Dec. 26.
Speeding toward the southland where the kidnapping and murder of Marian Parker was perpetrated, the special car bearing W Edward Hickman was at the doorstep of California this morning. Locked in a compartment Hickman spent the night shackled to a Los Angeles detective. He slept and made no disturbance, said his custodians.
The youthful kidnapper and alleged slayer who made two attempts to end his life Sunday morning after a night of hysteria quickly recovered his composure under soothing tactics of his new custodians, but his appearance showed unmistakably the effect of the intense nervous strain of the past week. Knowledge that he was returning to the scene of his crime was not expected to improve his mental or physical condition.
Maurice Cottouri, one of the railroad agents guarding the car, said this morning that Hickman reminded him of Hugh de Autremont one of the trio of brothers responsible for four murders in a holdup in southern Oregon in 1923.
Cottouri was active in running down the de Autremonts.
"Hickman is the same type as Hugh," he said. "Sly and cunning, superficially smart. It is this kind of youth that thinks he can get away with a career of crime. Hickman, like the de Autremonts, showed a tremendous ignorance of the methods of officers of the law in tracking criminals. They both left in their tracks a mass of evidence that led to their identification and capture. Both of them were "smart", and thought they could outwit the law."
Rumors that Hickman would be taken off the train somewhere in California and transferred the rest of the way by airplane have been definitely denied by officers on the train. District Attorney Asa B Keyes said such a procedure would be foolhardy.
The big plane in which Inspector of Detectives D M Longueran flew as far as Corning, Calif. last week, with extradition papers was released yesterday by order from the Los Angeles officers.
Hickman will remain on the train as it passes through Oakland this evening. The stop there for transfer of the special car to the Southern Pacific Padre will be only about 20 minutes, it was said. The train is due in Los Angeles at 9:40 Tuesday morning.
A small crowd met the train at Klamath falls.
Los Angeles, Dec 26.
Los Angeles detectives continued today to add to the fabric of evidence they have woven to show how little Marian Parker was murdered.
As they awaited the arrival of William Edward Hickman, the accused youth, from Oregon, the police extended their search for "the woman in the case." This move developed after the discovery Saturday night of a woman's fingerprints on dishes in the apartment Hickman occupied here.
Further substantiation of the police theory that Marian was killed and cut to pieces in Hickman's apartment was found when the drain pipe of the kitchen sink revealed two pieces of flesh, which the police believe to be that of a human being. A microscopic examination of Hickman's lair is being made.
The fact that Hickman named one Andrew Cramer as the murderer of Marian parker and the fact that the girl's body was dismembered, were connected and given significance today by Milton Carlson, handwriting expert criminologist.
Carlson pointed out that the youthful kidnapper of the slain girl admitted familiarity with the details of the life of Jesse James and the Loeb-Leopold case. He suggested that possibly Hickman also had read of the Whitechapel murders in London in 1881 (sic). Several women were murdered and mutilated and the suspected murderer, a young student of surgery, although never caught, was found dead in the Thames river. His name was Andrew Kramer.
The criminologist declared it a trait of the criminal mind to unhesitatingly use an incident or name out of a case or report of which he had read much. Carlson also referred to Hickman's spelling of the name "Cramer" at first, the later admitting it might have been spelled with a "K" as in the Whitechapel cases.
