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By Root 503 0

were times when this love and affection I had for him drained from my heart like wasted water. Whenever he would not try to understand my problems. Give me a little consideration & voice & responsibility. I had to get away from him. When I was sixteen I joined the Merchant Marine. In 1948 I joined the army - the recruiting officer gave me a break and upped my test. From this time on I started to realize the importance of an education. This only added to the hatred and bitterness I held for others. I began to get into fights. I threw a Japanese policeman off a bridge into the water. I was court-martialed for demolishing a Japanese cafe. I was court-martialed again in Kyoto, Japan, for stealing a Japanese taxicab. I was in the army almost four years. I had many violent outbursts of anger while I served time in Japan & Korea. I was in Korea 15 months, was rotated and sent back to the states - and was given special recognition as being the first Korean Vet to come back to the territory of Alaska. Big write up, picture in paper, paid trip to Alaska by air, all the trimmings. ... I finished my army service in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Smith's pencil sped almost indecipherably as he hurried toward more recent history: the motorcycle accident that had crippled him, the burglary in Phillipsburg, Kansas, that had led to his first prison sentence: ... I was sentenced to 5 to 10 years for grand larceny, burglary and jailbreak. I felt I was very unjustly dealt with. I became very bitter while I was in prison. Upon my release I was supposed to go to Alaska with my father - I didn't go - I worked for a while in Nevada and Idaho - went to Las Vegas and continued to Kansas where got into the situation I'm in now. No time for more. He signed his name, and added a postscript:

"Would like to speak to you again. There's much I haven't said that may interest you. I have always felt a remarkable exhilaration being among people with a purpose and sense of dedication to carry out that purpose. I felt this about you in your presence." Hickock did not write with his companion's intensity. He often stopped to listen to the questioning of a prospective juror, or to stare at the faces around him - particularly, and with plain displeasure, the muscular face of the county attorney, Duane Wen, who was his own age, twenty-eight. But his statement, written in a stylized script that looked like slanting rain, was finished before the court adjourned for the day: I will try to tell you all I can about myself, though most of my early life is vague to me - up until about my tenth birthday. My school years went quite the same as most other boy my own age. I had my share of fights, girls, and other things that go with a growing boy. My home life was also normal, but as I told you before, I was hardly ever allowed to leave my yard and visit with playmates. My father was always strict about us boys [his brother and him] in that line. Also I had to help my dad quite a lot around the house. ... I can only remember my mother and dad having one argument that amounted to anything. What it was about, I don't know.. . . My dad bought me a bicycle once, and I believe that I was the proudest boy in town. It was a girl's bike and he changed it over to a boy's. He painted it all up and it looked like new. But I had a lot of toys when I was little, a lot for the financial condition that my folks were in. We were always what you would call semi-poor. Never down and out, but several times on the verge of it. My dad was a hard worker and did his best to provide for us. My mother also was always a hard worker. Her house was always neat, and we had clean clothes aplenty. I remember my dad used to wear those old fashioned flat crown caps, and he would make me wear them too, and I didn't like them. ... In high-school I did real well, made above average grades the first year or two. But then started falling off a little. I had a girl friend. She was a nice girl, and I never once tried to touch her anyway but just kissing. It was a real clean courtship. . . . While in school I participated