saloons merrily drinking and making a spectacle of himself. When the abandoned but still afloat A.E. 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. The city was shocked by the gruesome scene and intrigued by the mystery of what happened. Police detectives could see that a yawl was missing and began a search for it. After a few days a local boy led them to where it had been abandoned in some rushes. They began following a chain of witnesses who had seen a strange man carrying a large heavy sea bag. The detectives followed witness sightings all the way back to an apartment in Manhattan. Hicks learned the police were on his trail through newspaper reports and fled the city. 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. Trial and execution Hicks was put on trial and became the sensation of the city press. The physical evidence of his guilt was overwhelming and the defense made little effective rebuttal. The jury deliberated for about seven minutes before returning a guilty verdict. The judge ordered him to be hanged until dead. Afterwards, Hicks gave a full confession of the murders and his life story which was published as a book on the day of his execution. Hicks gave his reason "...the devil took possession of me." He was executed by hanging on Friday July 13, 1860, on Bedloe's Island, now known as Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty resides. An estimated ten thousand people viewed the event from boats anchored in New York Bay. Hicks was sharply dressed in an electric-blue suit he had made for the occasion. As a newspaper described, "His coat was rather fancy, being ornamented with two rows of gilt navy buttons and a couple of anchors in needlework. A white