shirt, a pair of blue pants, a pair of light pumps, and the old Kossuth hat he wore when arrested, completed the attire." Hicks liked to wear the hat down low over one eye to give him a mysterious appearance. He made no gallows speech only directing the executioner to "Hang me quick — make haste." Soon after his burial, grave robbers stole his body and possibly sold the cadaver to medical students at Columbia University. Because his body went missing, for years after his death there were unfounded rumors of his survival and escape. Legacy Hicks soon became a legend in the New York underworld, with the help of showman P. T. Barnum. Barnum had met Hicks in prison and made a deal that would allow Barnum to take a death mask while he was still alive, in return Barnum would give Hicks a new set of clothes, the electric-blue suit he wore for the execution. Barnum used the casting to create a full-size wax statue of Hicks wearing the same clothes as when he committed the murders. The wax likeness was displayed for ten years and seen by millions of visitors before it melted in a museum fire. Biographer Rich Cohen argues that Hicks originated a gangster clothing fashion that can still be seen in art and real life. 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. This style passed from gangster to gangster and through generations as a sort of badge of association with legends of the past, eventually reaching Hollywood films of the 1930s and broader culture to the present. Hicks was hanged on Friday the 13th. There is some speculation Hicks originated or helped solidify a superstition of the day's ill-luck, though there are other theories. His name became a slang gambling phrase, meaning six on a pair of dice (rhymes with Hicks). Henry Sherman Backus, an itinerant composer of murder ballads that romanticized crimes, dedicated a ballad titled Hicks the Pirate sung to the traditional Irish tune "The Rose Tree". 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. Hicks." The execution of Albert Hicks is dramatized in