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The Postcard Killer: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey
In 1912 John Frank Hickey, "The Postcard Killer," was one of the first known and captured serial killers. This fascinating story tells how a solitary milquetoast of a man wandered the American east coast for decades, harboring a terrifying assortment of personal demons. Many of the behavior patterns that have long since come to be trademarks of the sociopathic killer are revealed in Hickey's long, demented life of crime. Unfortunately, the police and investigators in the early 20th Century had few if any tools to battle with a solitary individual's compulsion to murder young newsboys who wandered the urban streets alone. From his first murder at eighteen until his capture and conviction nearly three decades later, Hickey traveled and worked at anonymous clerical or engineering jobs while he committed murders of breathtaking brazenness, sometimes attacking in open view. Hickey was well into middle age when his need for public attention drove him to taunt his victims' families and mock the police. He began a long series of correspondence about his crimes in the form of postcards. He enjoyed knowing that they could be read by anybody while they were en route. The postcards eventually formed the net that snared him.
272 pages, Paperback
First published August 21, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 7, 2016
McLaughlin has two problems:
(1) He has no idea of how to organize his facts to make a coherent and followable narrative. (Yes, o text editor, I know that "followable" isn't a real word. Hush.)
(2) He tries to present Hickey as a serial killer a la Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy, and his evidence, while it doesn't disprove the idea, doesn't support it, either. He has a man who clearly murdered three people and who may have murdered god knows how many others. The police of Buffalo, Lackawanna, Boston, Cleveland, Whiting and pretty much every point in between had lists of unsolved murders and disappearances they wanted to question J. Frank Hickey about. But he didn't confess, and the only thing they actually had to go on was that he was the kind of person who would have done it, not any real evidence that tied him to any of the crimes.
So. J. Frank Hickey was a horrible little man who raped and murdered at least two children and then blamed it all on the demon rum. Oh and then started sending taunting postcards to the parents of his final victim, leading to the discovery of the child's body (concealed, like Francis Saville Kent, in the vault of an outhouse) and ultimately to the discovery of Hickey himself. The evidence of his life indicates that he was both a sociopath and an alcoholic. He committed his first murder in 1883, when he was eighteen (unlike the others, this one had an adult victim and was not sexually motivated). He spent his adult life drifting from job to job (he learned very quickly that it was much better to quit before his erratic behavior got him fired) and preying haphazardly on boys. His second confessed murder was in 1902 and the third in 1911. I absolutely 100% agree that it seems likely Hickey committed other murders that could never be pinned on him, but discussing him as if we know for a fact things we can only speculate about makes me suspicious and untrusting, like a mule faced with a tarpaulin.
Hickey was not executed. The jury could not agree on whether he was sane or insane in the legal sense, and the judge, reprimanding them like a pack of schoolboys who'd broken a window pane and wouldn't 'fess up, told them pretty much flat out that he wouldn't dismiss them unless they reached a verdict. McLaughlin seems to feel that Judge Brown didn't mean it that way, but I read what the man actually said and I agreed with the jury: I do not feel justified in discharging you. It seems to me if you could consider with rational and common sense the logical phases, stripped of their undue excitement and passion, or anything preventing the application of the ordinary rules of common sense, that you ought to be able to agree. [...] It is too distressing a thing to send out to the world that a jury of Erie County could not agree in a case of this kind, and I am not going to send you out (McLaughlin 165). What recourse did the poor jury have? They battled grimly on, sane vs. insane, until someone suggested a compromise on second-degree murder. None of them believed in it, but they were all beaten down to the point of accepting it as a compromise.
And then--how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless judge--the judge reprimanded them for that, saying: Ordinarily it is quite the uniform practice to extend the thanks of the court to the jury for their care and consideration in reaching a conclusion. [...]The public and the court do not feel satisfied with this result. For those of you who have earnestly endeavored to provide a different result, the court extends the most appreciative and sincere thanks for your efforts.
Hickey spent the last nine years of his life in prison--which at least meant that he could not find any more boys to prey upon.
McLaughlin's narrative is hard to follow and surfacey. He wants to analyze Hickey, throwing around modern psychiatric and criminal profiling terminololgy, but he doesn't, for instance, spend any time talking about the more distressing contents of the postcards Hickey sent George Joseph, thereby bowdlerizing his own research before anyone else has a chance to complain. This book should have been fascinating, but was only disappointing.
(1) He has no idea of how to organize his facts to make a coherent and followable narrative. (Yes, o text editor, I know that "followable" isn't a real word. Hush.)
(2) He tries to present Hickey as a serial killer a la Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy, and his evidence, while it doesn't disprove the idea, doesn't support it, either. He has a man who clearly murdered three people and who may have murdered god knows how many others. The police of Buffalo, Lackawanna, Boston, Cleveland, Whiting and pretty much every point in between had lists of unsolved murders and disappearances they wanted to question J. Frank Hickey about. But he didn't confess, and the only thing they actually had to go on was that he was the kind of person who would have done it, not any real evidence that tied him to any of the crimes.
So. J. Frank Hickey was a horrible little man who raped and murdered at least two children and then blamed it all on the demon rum. Oh and then started sending taunting postcards to the parents of his final victim, leading to the discovery of the child's body (concealed, like Francis Saville Kent, in the vault of an outhouse) and ultimately to the discovery of Hickey himself. The evidence of his life indicates that he was both a sociopath and an alcoholic. He committed his first murder in 1883, when he was eighteen (unlike the others, this one had an adult victim and was not sexually motivated). He spent his adult life drifting from job to job (he learned very quickly that it was much better to quit before his erratic behavior got him fired) and preying haphazardly on boys. His second confessed murder was in 1902 and the third in 1911. I absolutely 100% agree that it seems likely Hickey committed other murders that could never be pinned on him, but discussing him as if we know for a fact things we can only speculate about makes me suspicious and untrusting, like a mule faced with a tarpaulin.
Hickey was not executed. The jury could not agree on whether he was sane or insane in the legal sense, and the judge, reprimanding them like a pack of schoolboys who'd broken a window pane and wouldn't 'fess up, told them pretty much flat out that he wouldn't dismiss them unless they reached a verdict. McLaughlin seems to feel that Judge Brown didn't mean it that way, but I read what the man actually said and I agreed with the jury: I do not feel justified in discharging you. It seems to me if you could consider with rational and common sense the logical phases, stripped of their undue excitement and passion, or anything preventing the application of the ordinary rules of common sense, that you ought to be able to agree. [...] It is too distressing a thing to send out to the world that a jury of Erie County could not agree in a case of this kind, and I am not going to send you out (McLaughlin 165). What recourse did the poor jury have? They battled grimly on, sane vs. insane, until someone suggested a compromise on second-degree murder. None of them believed in it, but they were all beaten down to the point of accepting it as a compromise.
And then--how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless judge--the judge reprimanded them for that, saying: Ordinarily it is quite the uniform practice to extend the thanks of the court to the jury for their care and consideration in reaching a conclusion. [...]The public and the court do not feel satisfied with this result. For those of you who have earnestly endeavored to provide a different result, the court extends the most appreciative and sincere thanks for your efforts.
Hickey spent the last nine years of his life in prison--which at least meant that he could not find any more boys to prey upon.
McLaughlin's narrative is hard to follow and surfacey. He wants to analyze Hickey, throwing around modern psychiatric and criminal profiling terminololgy, but he doesn't, for instance, spend any time talking about the more distressing contents of the postcards Hickey sent George Joseph, thereby bowdlerizing his own research before anyone else has a chance to complain. This book should have been fascinating, but was only disappointing.
August 8, 2009
Interesting true crime novel that details the crimes of one the fisrt serial killers--one overlooked often in the history of crime.
I expected maybe a little more background into Hickey's life, rather than a strict recounting of his crimes. The suthor shares some insights into Hickey's psyche, but I was left wanting more--which may just be part of the enigma that is J. Frank Hickey, turn-of-the-century American serial killer.
I expected maybe a little more background into Hickey's life, rather than a strict recounting of his crimes. The suthor shares some insights into Hickey's psyche, but I was left wanting more--which may just be part of the enigma that is J. Frank Hickey, turn-of-the-century American serial killer.
February 13, 2010
The case of J. Frank Hickey was a fascinating read. Though I disagree with the assertion the author makes, that Hickey was the first man ever captured as a result of profiling, that does not render this book any the less absorbing and hard to put down. Read the rest of the review here.
October 26, 2012
My stepsister sent me this book, and I found it to be a well researched, well written account of J.Frank Hickey, the first modern serial murderer to be accurately profiled. The author is a law enforcement professional, and has a firm grasp of forensic psychology as well as the history of the time period. I highly recommend to anyone interested in the history of crime!
August 30, 2022
The criminal life of J. Frank Hickey presented in Vance McLaughlin's The Postcard Killer: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey is a rather interesting true crime story. McLaughlin's writing style is simplistic and breezy, which makes for a very quick read. That said, the organization of the book is poor and somewhat confusing, while some of the conclusions drawn by the author are truly speculative and based on a rather flimsy fact pattern. The book is entertaining to read but suffers from the lack of a good editorial review of the story's overall presentation to the reader.
As an example of poor presentation, toward the end of his book McLaughlin provides an outline of Hickey's early life and how his early life may have affected his later behavior using basic genetics versus environment arguments. I would have presented this early life information toward the beginning of the book to provide better context to later facts discussed in the story.
As a side note, McLaughlin mentions that Hickey had a son, Harold Hickey, and states that other than the son's birth information nothing is known of him. This son was Harold Paul Hickey, born March 9, 1891, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and died April 19, 1958, in Largo, Florida, at the Suncoast Osteopathic Hospital. Harold was a retired electrician for the Utility Service Corporation of New Jersey and a member of the Masons (Lodge No. 192). Interestingly, J. Frank Hickey also had knowledge of electricity and was a Mason per information contained in McLaughlin's book. Harold's published obituary in The Tampa Tribune (April 19, 1958) states that he was married to Clara J. Barton. No children are mentioned in Harold's death notice, which suggests that there are no living descendants of J. Frank Hickey. The obituary also fails to identify Paul's parents.
Finally, the title of the book is somewhat odd and sensationalized: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey. Is there an untrue story available for reading? If so, the author never mentions it.
As an example of poor presentation, toward the end of his book McLaughlin provides an outline of Hickey's early life and how his early life may have affected his later behavior using basic genetics versus environment arguments. I would have presented this early life information toward the beginning of the book to provide better context to later facts discussed in the story.
As a side note, McLaughlin mentions that Hickey had a son, Harold Hickey, and states that other than the son's birth information nothing is known of him. This son was Harold Paul Hickey, born March 9, 1891, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and died April 19, 1958, in Largo, Florida, at the Suncoast Osteopathic Hospital. Harold was a retired electrician for the Utility Service Corporation of New Jersey and a member of the Masons (Lodge No. 192). Interestingly, J. Frank Hickey also had knowledge of electricity and was a Mason per information contained in McLaughlin's book. Harold's published obituary in The Tampa Tribune (April 19, 1958) states that he was married to Clara J. Barton. No children are mentioned in Harold's death notice, which suggests that there are no living descendants of J. Frank Hickey. The obituary also fails to identify Paul's parents.
Finally, the title of the book is somewhat odd and sensationalized: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey. Is there an untrue story available for reading? If so, the author never mentions it.
May 7, 2017
I'm surprised at the low ratings this is getting. Though the writing in places might sound a bit dry and clinical, this is an absorbing story of America's first "modern" serial killer. J. Frank Hickey had only three confirmed kills, but his subsequent toying with the police and families of his victims by sending them postcards taunting him might have inspired later killers such as the Zodiac to do that as well. As is often the case with true crime, much of the appeal of this book is the psychology of the killer himself. What would drive a person to rape and strangle children, then send postcards to their parents lording it over them? In case that doesn't make it clear, this is not a story for the faint of heart. But as Vance McLaughlin says late in the book (I'm paraphrasing): "The harder you look at J. Frank Hickey, the less there is to see." At his core, the man seems to have been driven by a naked quest for power. Which is hardly unusual for a serial killer. It's a gripping and informative read. Especially thought-provoking is the debate late in the book over the legal definition of insanity and whether Hickey met it. Recommended to those with an interest in the subject matter.
July 2, 2007
I really didn't like this one. I like mysteries in general, though this would be called "true crime". I thought the historical aspect of crime investigation would be appealing as well. It became pretty graphic pretty quickly, and I am just too darn squeamish. I think I should stick to the fictional crime from now on!
January 6, 2015
The story of one of the first uses of criminal psychological profiling in US history. The writing is solid, though the last couple of chapters get a bit weak and redundant. The ongoing explanation of criminal insanity in the New York legal system was helpful, but could have been condensed a bit. All in all, an interesting read.
September 14, 2012
Excellentlly told story of Americas first profiled serial killer. Also sheds light on the fact that these nuts were running around a long time ago. We just hear about them more now because communication is so much faster.
January 20, 2010
actually skipped the trial part ... too much repetition
January 3, 2011
Have just begun the book - I'll let you know what I think.
Read
January 24, 2015Love my James Patterson. This one was intriguing.
June 8, 2015
Inconsequential true-crime account of Hickey, the "first" modern serial killer, and the first, according to the author and the back-cover blurb, to be "captured with profiling".
January 22, 2016
No actual postcards were killed in the course of this story. This is the oddly quaint true story of an unbelievably fiendish child killer and his need to keep his name in the papers.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews