Two families mourn Hicks’ victims > Relatives, friends, neighbors hold memorial services for murdered women

BANGOR – Myra Cyr waited for 23 long years to lay her daughter to rest. Jane Hincks waited 41/2. Over the weekend, both mothers, surrounded by family and close friends, did what they needed to do for their daughters.

Jennie Hicks, who was 23 years old when her husband, James Hicks, murdered her in 1977, was buried Saturday in a cemetery with her father in Auburn after a small graveside service.

In Orrington on Sunday, family and friends of 40-year-old Lynn Willette held a private memorial service at the home of Willette’s sister, Wendy Allison. Willette was killed by Hicks in May 1996.

A graveside service for Jerilyn Towers, whom Hicks killed in 1982, will be held on Saturday, Nov. 18.

Some family members had given up hope that they would ever be able to hold memorial services for the three women Hicks killed over the last 23 years.

Though family members felt sure the three women were dead, their bodies were not found until earlier this fall when Hicks finally led police to the sites where he had buried the remains.

Hicks served six years in prison for Jennie Hicks’ death, but never revealed where her body was. Before his arrest for Jennie Hicks’ murder, Hicks had confessed to killing Towers, whom he met at a Newport bar. He met Willette after his release from prison.

Last week, Hicks was indicted for the murder of Towers and Willette. He is expected to plead guilty to both murders. After keeping his secret for decades, Hicks finally confessed to killing the women after he was arrested in Texas for assaulting and robbing a woman there in April.

Facing 55 years in a Texas prison, he agreed to cooperate with Maine authorities in order to be allowed to serve any time in Maine before serving time in Texas.

Towers and Jennie Hicks were discovered in shallow graves behind Hicks’ former homestead on Route 2 in Etna. Willette’s remains were found in a roadside site off Route 2A in Forkstown Township in Aroostook County.

After autopsies and forensic testing in Augusta, the bodies of Hicks and Willette were released to their families last week. Towers’ family is expected to receive her remains later this week.

The services for Jennie Hicks were private on Saturday.

On Sunday, Allison’s home was filled with Willette’s family – nieces and nephews and their children, aunts, uncles and friends and neighbors. Her 6-month-old grandnephew was passed from lap to lap, while her almost 7-year-old grandnephew sampled the potluck fare set out on the kitchen table.

Her mother, Jane Hincks, sat on a couch just feet away from her daughter’s small pink urn which rested on a coffee table, surrounded by candles, a few family photographs and a worn baby book.

“We’re not going to bury her,” said Allison.

“No, we’re not,” her mother piped up. “He [Hicks] put her in the ground up there and she was there for 41/2 years. I’m not ready to put her back in the ground,” Hincks said as she blinked back the tears that have come and gone for so many years.

“Finally,” said the Rev. Bob Carlson, “Lynn has been brought home.”

The small living room was filled with people who held hands around the small memorial and bid Willette farewell.

On the living room wall hung a picture board containing humorous and poignant moments from Willette’s life – her first day of school, at the beach in Massachusetts, at the site of a California earthquake where she worked as a paramedic, with a dog and another and another.

And in most of the pictures, Willette stood next to her older sister, who for the last two months has felt her way through the awkwardness of preparing a service and writing an obituary for someone who’s been dead for more than four years.

“It’s not like there’s a book to go by. You constantly ask yourself what you should do. What would be appropriate. But I think this worked out well,” Allison said as she stood in her small kitchen, filled with sounds of family and the smells of traditional family recipes that warmed on the stove.