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Copyright Bangor Publishing Company Oct 17, 2000

BANGOR - Today investigators and forensic scientists may begin the grim search for additional remains of two women murdered by Maine's first identified serial killer.

James Hicks has admitted to authorities that he dismembered all three women and scattered the remains of two of them in sites in Penobscot and Hancock counties.

Meanwhile, officials said Monday that they will be reviewing several other unsolved homicides involving female victims to see whether Hicks could be responsible for even more deaths.

"It's important to note that we have nothing to connect him to any other unsolved homicides," said Maine State Police Detective Lt. Darrell Ouellette. "But at the same time, considering what we've found this week, we'd be remiss if we did not take another look at any cases involving women victims that have occurred within the last 35 years."

Hicks, 49, has denied killing anyone other than the three women he has already confessed to murdering, according to police, but he has agreed to answer all of the investigators' questions regarding any other cases, Ouellette said.

Late Friday afternoon, partial remains of 40-year-old Lynn Willette of Orrington were found embedded in two buckets of cement. Hicks had led police to a desolate wooded area off Route 2A in the Haynesville Woods last week and told them that he had buried the buckets there.

Last week, police found the remains of Hicks' first wife, 23-year- old Jennie Hicks, and 34-year-old Jerilyn Towers, buried in very shallow graves in the back yard of Hicks' former homestead on Route 2 in Etna.

Hicks, formerly of Etna and Brewer, confessed to killing the women over a 23-year period, after he was arrested in April for robbing and assaulting a 67-year-old woman in Texas. Facing 55 years in prison for that crime, Hicks agreed to cooperate with Maine authorities in exchange for his being able to serve prison time in Maine before serving his time in Texas.

Hicks did not get along well in Texas prisons, according to officials. He had particular trouble getting along with Hispanics, according to court documents. He was brought back to Maine just more than a week ago.

Hicks served six years in prison for the death of Jennie Hicks. He was arrested for her murder in 1983, six years after her sudden disappearance from the couple's Carmel home. He became the first to be convicted of murder in Maine without a body. Before his arrest for Jennie Hicks' murder, Towers, a 34-year-old mother of three, disappeared after leaving a Newport bar with Hicks. Her disappearance prompted police to take another look at Jennie Hicks' disappearance and subsequently resulted in his conviction for her death.

He has not yet been charged with Towers' murder, but those charges will be filed soon, according to officials.

Hicks met Willette in the 1990s at the Twin City Motor Inn, where they both worked in the maintenance division. They eventually moved in together, but in the spring of 1996, Willette ended the relationship and moved out. On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend that year, Willette disappeared without a trace.

On Monday, Ouellette confirmed that police were looking for body parts of Jennie Hicks and Willette. Towers' body, though also dismembered, was buried in one place just behind a dilapidated shed on the former Hicks' homestead.

Jennie Hicks' body, buried just six inches below ground under an apple tree about 100 feet from the house, was also dismembered, officials said, and Hicks has indicated that certain body parts were also disposed of in at least two other spots.

"He indicated that in some spots he simply disposed of the parts on top of the ground," Ouellette said. "In other areas, he buried them."

Ouellette did not specify where the sites were located, except to say that two were in Penobscot County and two were in Hancock County.

Today, detectives will meet with the State Medical Examiner's Office to determine what body parts they are searching for. The search may actually get under way after that meeting, Ouellette said.

Ouellette acknowledged that chances are slim to none that investigators could recover any remains that were left lying on top of the ground.

"Given the animal activity we have in this state, that would probably be unlikely," he said.

Regarding the other unsolved homicide cases, Ouellette said the task of reviewing those cases would only begin "after we have done all we can do with these three cases."

Three cases in particular that police will look at are the 1980 death of 16-year-old Joyce McLain of East Millinocket, who was killed behind Schenck High School in East Millinocket. Hicks was a union construction worker and at the time of McLain's death, nearly 500 construction workers were in the area doing work at Great Northern Paper Co.

Ouellette said Hicks would be questioned about his whereabouts on the day of McLain's death. She died of blunt trauma to her head and neck.

"We are going to have to take a hard look at his work history over the last 30 or so years. Again, right now we have nothing to connect him to any other cases, but we need to look at every possibility," Ouellette said.

Officials also will take a close look at the unsolved homicides of two 26-year-old women - Ellen L. Choate of Philadelphia and Leslie E. Spellman of Hingham, Mass.

The women's bodies were found in Newport and Northeast Harbor, respectively, within weeks of each other in 1977, the same year that Hicks murdered his wife.

A tourist in the Asticou Azalea Gardens in Northeast Harbor discovered Spellman's body on June 19, 1977, a month before Jennie Hicks disappeared. She died of lacerations to the skull and brain.

Choate's decomposed body was discovered in a wooded area on the side of the Old County Road in Newport two years after her disappearance. Choate was on her way from Philadelphia to Bangor to take a position as a nursery school teacher at the Children's House Montessori School.

Police believe Choate planned to take a bus to Bangor to start work at the school and, for unknown reasons, got off in Newport. The medical examiner on the case detected what he described as an "unnatural hole in the skull," but declined to speculate about the hole's origin.