Hicks enters guilty plea> Killer admits to suffocating Towers and Willette

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BANGOR – Under extraordinarily tight security, self-confessed serial killer James Hicks pleaded guilty Friday to suffocating two women, dismembering their bodies and burying them in shallow graves in Penobscot and Aroostook counties.

Hicks, clad in a gray jacket and black jeans, entered his plea before Justice Andrew Mead as 10 law enforcement officers sat or stood directly behind him. Other court security officers were scattered throughout the courtroom, while armed Maine State Police troopers and Penobscot County sheriff’s deputies stood guard in courtroom hallways.

“We had some intelligence [reports] and we had to act upon that,” Sgt. Al Jamison, head of court security for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, said.

Jamison would not specify exactly what kind of threats were made on Hicks’ life, but the threats prompted almost unprecedented security, including metal detectors and outside “sweeps” of the Penobscot County Superior Courthouse.

During Monday morning’s arraignment, Hicks, 49, formerly of Etna, pleaded guilty to the 1982 murder of 34-year-old Jerilyn Towers and the 1996 murder of 40-year-old Lynn Willette.

Justice Mead aggressively questioned Hicks about his decision to plead guilty to the charges that are likely to carry a sentence of life in prison.

Hicks responded yes to a series of questions designed to ensure that he was aware of his rights and was making the decision of his own free will.

Family members of Towers and Willette, as well as family members of Hicks’ first wife, Jennie Cyr Hicks, packed the second-floor courtroom, waiting to hear James Hicks say the word “guilty.” James Hicks was convicted in 1984 of killing 23-year-old Jennie Hicks, but her body was not discovered until last month when he confessed to killing Towers and Willette and led police to the shallow graves where he left the remains of the women.

Hicks was compelled to confess to killing the women after he was arrested last April in Texas for attacking and robbing a woman in Lubbock, Texas. Because of the violence involved in the Lubbock attack and his previous murder conviction in Maine, Hicks faced a 55-year sentence in a Texas prison.

Favoring Maine prisons over those in Texas, Hicks agreed to cooperate with Maine authorities in exchange for the promise that he be allowed to serve any prison time in Maine before serving time in Texas prisons. With a life sentence almost guaranteed in Maine, the likelihood is slim that Hicks will ever serve more time in Texas.

His sentencing date in Maine has not yet been scheduled, but may occur early in December.

In October, just days after being brought back to Maine from Texas, Hicks led state police and forensic experts to the remains of the three women. Towers and the partial remains of Jennie Hicks were found in 6-inch-deep graves just behind Hicks’ former homestead on Route 2 in Etna. Willette’s partial remains were found embedded in cement at a roadside site along Route 2A just south of Houlton.

On Friday, Assistant Attorney General William Stokes revealed even more gruesome details as he told the court the elements of the state’s case against Hicks.

Stokes told the court that law enforcement failed to take the disappearance of Jennie Hicks seriously. The young mother of two vanished on July 19, 1977, and James Hicks’ explanation that his wife had simply abandoned him and the couple’s children was not seriously questioned by officers.

“They seemed to accept that at face value,” Stokes said.

Then on Oct. 16 1982, Hicks ran into Towers, who had been dropped off at the Gateway Lounge in Newport. She was never seen again.

Stokes said that a few days later, police received an anonymous call from a woman who said she saw Hicks leave the bar with Towers. Police questioned Hicks, who denied being at the Gateway that evening.

Shortly afterward, police realized that Hicks was the husband of Jennie Hicks, who also had disappeared without a trace. The renewed interest reopened the investigation into Jennie Hicks’ disappearance and eventually resulted in James Hicks’ conviction for her murder.

Stokes said while there was much suspicion that Hicks had killed Towers, police had only statements from a bartender to show the two had left the bar together. Like Jennie Hicks, Towers’ body was not discovered.

Hicks was released from the Maine State Prison in Thomaston in July 1990 and three or four years later met Willette. He eventually moved into her South Main Street apartment in Brewer. Willette ended the relationship in the spring of 1996, and on May 25, she, like Towers and Jennie Hicks, disappeared.

“I don’t think he takes rejection well,” Stokes speculated Friday.

During hours of questioning by police, Hicks has admitted that he strangled all three women and then dismembered their bodies.

Stokes said officials recovered all of Towers’ remains, though the body had been dismembered. She was located just behind a shed at the Route 2 site. They found only the skull of Jennie Hicks, embedded in a block of cement. The rest of her body was scattered throughout parts of Carmel, Hicks told police.

Willette’s head was found embedded in one cement-filled bucket in Aroostook County. Her hands and feet were found in another bucket, buried beside the first one, Stokes said.

The rest of Jennie Hicks’ and Willette’s remains was never found.

The three women were identified through dental records and DNA, Stokes said.

Hicks showed no emotion and occasionally leaned back in his chair and swiveled back and forth casually as Stokes spoke to the court.

After Hicks conferred for a few seconds with his attorney, Jeff Silverstein of Bangor, at the defense table, Silverstein told the judge that Hicks did not “object to the accuracy” of the state’s comments.

Outside the courtroom, Towers’ daughter, Tammy Price of Fairfield, said the guilty pleas brought her some relief.

“He’s no longer in control. He always had the control because he knew where my mother wa. Now we have her back, and he’s lost all of his control,” she said, as she stood surrounded by reporters on the courthouse steps.

Last weekend, memorial services were held for Jennie Hicks and Willette. Today, Towers will be laid to rest at a cemetery in Rome. Three homing pigeons, representing all three women, will be released during the service, Price said.

“It’s a symbol that these women are finally spiritually free,” she said.

While family members are not able to speak to the court during arraignment proceedings, they will have the opportunity when Hicks is sentenced in December.