Crimes where children are the victims are especially heinous. In this post, I present the murder of Marion Parker, which occurred in 1927. The Los Angeles Times called it “the most horrible crime of the 1920s.” Although worse crimes have since eclipsed it, at the time, it was considered the most horrific crime in California history.
Marion Parker Goes Missing
Frances Marion Parker was a 12-year-old schoolgirl in 1927. She had a twin sister, Marjorie, and an older brother, Perry Parker, Jr. Her father, Perry Parker, Sr., was a cashier at the First National Bank of Los Angeles.
On December 15, 1927, Marion went to Mount Vernon Junior High School in the tony LaFayette Square section of Los Angeles. A man representing himself as an employee of the bank where Perry Parker worked showed up at the school. He told registrar Mary Holt that Perry had been in an accident and wanted to see his daughter. Holt excused Marion from class and released her to the man. He appeared to be unaware that Marion had a twin sister.
The next day, the Parker family received the first of several ransom demands by telegram. It demanded $1,500 ($27,084 in 2024) in $20 gold certificates. The kidnapper signed the telegrams with names like “Death,” “Fate,” and “The Fox.”
Paying the Ransom for Marion Parker
Perry Parker established a meeting to pay the ransom late on December 16. Before leaving, he recorded the serial numbers of each bill so police could trace the money. Although he waited for several hours, the kidnapper failed to appear. He had noticed the police staking out the exchange site.
The next evening, December 17, Perry received several phone calls from the kidnapper. They established a new meeting site at the corner of West 5th Street and Manhattan Place. A final call at 7:15 p.m. told Perry to leave immediately.
Perry arrived at the meeting place with the ransom money around 8:00 p.m. Almost immediately, the kidnapper pulled up beside Perry’s car in a Chrysler Coupe. The driver, his face concealed by a bandana, held a sawed-off shotgun on Perry as he handed over the money. He saw Marion in the back seat, but she didn’t move or respond when he called to her. He assumed she had been drugged.
As soon as he received the money, the kidnapper put the coupe in gear, moved forward, and shoved Marion out of the car. Perry quickly realized that his daughter was dead and had been horribly mutilated.
The Hunt for Marion Parker’s Killer
On December 20, police found the abandoned Chrysler coupe. It had been stolen in San Diego, but investigators recovered some fingerprints from its door.
A laundry mark on a towel found with Marion’s body led police to the Bellvue Arms apartments near Chinatown. They interviewed several tenants and matched the fingerprints taken from the getaway car to William Edward Hickman, a former coworker of Perry’s at the bank.
A year earlier, Perry had filed a complaint charging Hickman with stealing and forging checks. He was sentenced to a year of probation and had only recently returned to Los Angeles, moving into the Bellvue Arms under an alias.
On December 22, the Chief of Police and a traffic officer arrested Hickman in Echo, Oregon, following a harrowing car chase. They found $1,400 of the ransom money in the green Hudson he was driving.
After first denying involvement, Hickman soon confessed to the kidnapping. He claimed he participated in abducting Marion with two brothers named Cramer. Naturally, he contended that the Cramers committed the murder. This proved impossible, though, because both Cramer brothers were in jail at the time of Marion’s murder.
Epilogue
William Hickman went on trial in February 1928. He was one of the first defendants to use California’s new “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense. The jury did not buy it, though, and he received a death sentence. He went to the gallows in San Quentin Prison on October 19, 1928.
You can read more about Marion Parker’s abduction and murder in I Want to Come Home Tonight by Troy Taylor and James L. Neibauer’s Butterfly in the Rain.
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