[1] He and an accomplice typically killed their victims and stayed on the move, spending money on alcohol, prostitutes, and fine clothes until it ran out.

He was a known raconteur, and when his confessions were published, The New York Times raised some doubt about their accuracy, but modern biographer Rich Cohen said there was evidence to support at least some of the stories.

[1][4] Hicks eventually ended up in New York City, at the age of 40, with a newly married wife who knew nothing of his criminal past and a young child to support.

There were four men on the boat, including Captain George H. Burr, brothers Oliver and Smith Watts, and Hicks.

Hicks grabbed a sea axe and struck a blow to the back of Smith's head, felling him to the deck.

Hicks recalled that the body slowly sagged downward and the head rolled onto the deck, now sprayed with the blood of two brothers.

The Captain was a tall, strong man and the ensuing fight lasted a while, with Burr almost strangling Hicks to death.

Hicks swung the axe and chopped off his fingers, which fell onto the deck; the rest of Smith slipped into the water.

He then took the money, about $230, and the possessions of the murdered crew and abandoned ship in a yawl, rowing for shore and landing about daybreak next to a farmer's field on Staten Island just above Fort Richmond (Battery Weed).

Believing that he would not be caught, he made his way back home to Manhattan, stopping at saloons merrily drinking and making a spectacle of himself.

Johnson was discovered the next day by the coast guard, they found the deck and cabin bathed in blood, including inexplicably a set of severed fingers.

Detectives had by now determined Hicks' identity, and they continued to follow a chain of witnesses who remembered a large man with a wife and small child taking trains and boats northward.

When police found the last witness to see him, a cabbie who took Hicks to a boarding home outside Providence, Rhode Island, they surrounded the house in the middle of the night and took him captive in bed without a fight.

They found in his possession Captain Burr's watch, several money bags, and a daguerreotype belonging to Watts, among other damning evidence.

"[4] Soon after his burial, grave robbers stole his body and possibly sold the cadaver to medical students at Columbia University.

[1] Biographer Rich Cohen argues that Hicks originated a gangster clothing fashion that can still be seen in art and real life.

[5] The Hicks look of a Kossuth hat pulled low over one eye, long-tailed monkey jacket and pumped footwear were displayed at the Barnum wax figure museum where millions saw a very bad but handsome man.

[7] Irish singer-songwriter Vincent Cross recorded a modern take on the 1860 ballad for his album The Life & Times of James "The Rooster" Corcoran (2020) titled "Albert W.