Albert W. Hicks (c. 1820 – July 13, 1860), also known as Elias W. Hicks, William Johnson, John Hicks, and Pirate Hicks, was a triple murderer and one of the last people executed for piracy in the United States. Cultural historian Rich Cohen places him as the first New York City legendary gangster figure, a bridge between the piracy of old and the rise of a new "gangster nation". Biography According to Hicks' testimony, he was born around 1820 in Foster, Rhode Island. His father was a farmer who had seven sons, of whom Hicks was the second youngest. He was known to be headstrong and a fighter. He never attended school and worked on the farm until age 15 when he ran away to Norwich, Connecticut, where he began a life of crime. Arrested for theft, he was put into jail. Biographer Rich Cohen suggests it wouldn't have been uncommon for a teenage runaway to be "buggered" by older inmates. Hicks escaped a number of times but he was re-apprehended and given increasingly severe sentences, including a year in solitary where Hicks said he went a little crazy. He swore vengeance "against the whole human race." The account given by Hicks for the next 20 years is murder and mayhem on the high seas, the gold fields of California, throughout South America, Mexico, the South Pacific, and the Atlantic trade triangle. Ship mutinies and highway robberies were his main occupation. It is possible that Hicks killed hundreds of people. 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. 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. Needing money for his family he turned to the skills he knew best. Murder on the A.E. Johnson Hicks hired on as a deck hand with the oyster sloop A.E. Johnson out of New York City, which he knew to be carrying a large amount of cash for buying oysters in Virginia to be transported back