Little Dickies
Some stories refuse spectacle. They do not want a narrator who leans in too close or language that tries to outpace the truth. They ask instead for patience, accuracy, and care. This is one of those stories.
What follows is a documented casefile about James Rodney Hicks, a man who murdered three women across two decades in Maine. It is also a record of what his violence left behind. Not just the women he killed, but the children, families, and communities forced to live with unanswered questions for years. This is not written to shock. It is written to understand, to name patterns that are still missed, and to center the people whose lives were taken.
The Names
Before the perpetrator, there are the women.
Jennie Cyr Hicks.
A wife and mother. A woman who planned to leave. A woman whose absence was explained away for years before the truth surfaced.
Jerilyn Towers.
A young woman last seen after a night out. A disappearance that became quiet too quickly.
Lynn Willette.
A girlfriend who tried to end a relationship. A woman whose attempt to reclaim her independence put her in mortal danger.
These names are not case numbers. They are the reason this story exists.
The Disappearances
In 1977, Jennie Cyr Hicks vanished. James Hicks told people she left. There was no body. There were children who still needed breakfast and rides to school. There was a community willing to accept the explanation because the alternative was too difficult to confront.
In 1982, Jerilyn Towers disappeared after leaving a bar in Newport. Again, there was no body. Again, the absence settled into silence.
In 1996, Lynn Willette disappeared after trying to end her relationship with Hicks. By then, the pattern existed. It just had not been named yet.
Across all three cases, there were familiar refrains. She left. She ran off. She started a new life. These explanations are common in intimate partner violence cases. They are also frequently wrong.
The Confession
The case broke open in 2000, not in Maine, but in Texas.
James Hicks was arrested after a violent attack on an elderly woman who survived and escaped. Faced with a long sentence in the Texas prison system, Hicks made a choice. He confessed to the murders in Maine. Not out of remorse, but as a bargaining move. He exchanged information for transfer. He chose a prison system he believed he could survive.
That decision led investigators back to rural properties, wooded areas, and long ignored ground. What they found confirmed what families had feared for decades.
The Evidence
Hicks dismembered all three women after killing them. The methods escalated over time, but the purpose remained the same. Control, concealment, delay.
In Jennie Cyr Hicks’s case, the evidence was particularly chilling. Hicks decapitated her and encased her head in cement inside a heavy container that he kept in the home. His children unknowingly sat on it, believing it to be an ordinary household object. Cement does not signal panic. It signals time, intention, and domination. Jennie was reduced from a person to an object under his control, integrated into daily life as if she no longer mattered.
Jerilyn Towers was dismembered and buried behind a shed on family property. Lynn Willette’s remains were separated, with her head, hands, and feet encased in cement and hidden in remote woods. Each case showed a progression in planning and concealment. None suggested an accident or a momentary loss of control.
All three women were killed when they attempted to leave or assert independence. This is not coincidence. It is a known and documented pattern called separation triggered intimate partner homicide.
The Courtroom
James Hicks was convicted of murdering Jennie Cyr Hicks in 1984, even without a body. It was one of Maine’s rare no body homicide convictions. After his 2000 confession, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Jerilyn Towers and Lynn Willette. He received life sentences in Maine, served concurrently.
The legal record is settled. There are no credible disputes about his guilt. What remains unsettled is how long it took for these women to be believed.
<
Myths vs Facts
Myth: These were crimes of passion.
Fact: These were control driven murders that occurred when women tried to leave.
Myth: There were no warning signs.
Fact: Separation, prior abuse, surveillance, and coercive behavior are well documented risk factors.
Myth: Silence means nothing happened.
Fact: Silence often means someone did not survive to keep speaking.
What the Record Settles
James Hicks murdered three women. He dismembered them. He concealed their remains. He controlled the narrative for years by exploiting social discomfort around domestic violence and disappearance.
It is also important to say this clearly. James Hicks had more victims than the three women he murdered.
His children were collateral victims. Not in the legal language of indictments, but in the human reality of harm. They lost their mother. They lost safety. They were raised, for a time, by the man who caused that loss. Later, they had to absorb an unbearable truth about who their father was.
Their silence does not protect him.
It protects them.
They do not owe the public explanation, forgiveness, or participation in this story. Acknowledging their harm without demanding their voices is part of telling this case responsibly.
Why This Still Matters
Separation remains the most dangerous moment in an abusive relationship. Strangulation remains one of the strongest predictors of future homicide. Ordinary places remain where people vanish. Bars. Homes. Roads. Relationships.
This case is not an outlier. It is a warning that was written decades ago and still goes unread too often.
If there is a lesson here, it is not about monsters hiding in plain sight. It is about systems that minimize domestic violence until it becomes irreversible. It is about believing women when they say they are afraid. It is about understanding that leaving is not the end of danger, but often the beginning of the most lethal phase.
Remember the names.
Remember the pattern.
And do not confuse silence with safety.
What’s Next
The Disappearance of Tionda Bradley and Diamond Bradley
On July 6, 2001, Tionda Bradley, age ten, and her little sister Diamond Bradley, age three, vanished from their apartment on the South Side of Chicago. They were last seen in the morning hours, wearing pajamas, after Tionda was left in charge for a short period of time. They have never been found.
There is no confirmed crime scene. No confirmed sighting after that morning. No recovered remains. What exists instead is a trail of conflicting statements, missed opportunities, and a system that struggled to respond with urgency when two Black girls disappeared from a low income neighborhood.
The case is often framed as a mystery. It should be framed as a failure.
As with the Hicks case, early assumptions shaped everything that followed. That the girls wandered off. That someone would have seen something. That they would turn up. When those assumptions hardened into inaction, critical time slipped away. Leads cooled. Witness memories faded. The window for recovery narrowed until it closed entirely.
There are uncomfortable overlaps between this case and so many others. Children left briefly unsupervised because families are stretched thin. A caregiver narrative that becomes the focus instead of the missing children themselves. A lack of sustained national attention. Silence mistaken for resolution.
Tionda and Diamond Bradley are not footnotes. They are not symbols. They are two sisters whose lives stopped being visible to the world in the span of a morning. Their case remains open. Their names deserve to be spoken together, deliberately, and without speculation dressed up as certainty.
What comes next in this series is not about connecting cases that do not belong together. It is about examining how disappearances are handled, whose urgency is prioritized, and how patterns of delay repeat across geography, race, and circumstance.
The Bradley sisters were not lost.
They were failed.
And until there are answers, their story remains unfinished.
Thanks for Dicking around with Richie.
Comments
Post a Comment