Carol Hickock

Carol Hickock was Dick’s first wife and the mother of their three sons. The book presents her almost entirely through Dick’s retrospective accounts: he remembers falling in love with her, marrying while they were both young, and later describing her with lasting affection, even as their marriage ended and his life turned toward crime.

Identity and Early Marriage

Dick recalled that he married Carol when she was sixteen. Before his twenty-first birthday, he had worked as a railway trackman, ambulance driver, car painter, and garage mechanic; his account places their marriage amid this unsettled early working life. In his later written history, he said that he met Carol and fell in love while he was unemployed after a car accident and its aftermath. He described their courtship as serious and said they married in July.

Family and Pressure from Her Father

The couple had three sons. Dick portrayed their youth and financial strain as central difficulties: they were too young, he said, to have three children, and debt made the household harder to support. He recalled trying to earn extra money. These pressures are presented through his own explanation, not through Carol’s testimony, so the book does not establish how she understood their finances or marriage.

Carol’s father, a minister whom Dick’s written account identifies as a Baptist preacher, opposed the relationship. Dick said her father resented him and caused trouble around the marriage. He recalled that the opposition intensified after the wedding and did not become supportive when the pregnancy became known. This conflict forms the clearest detail about Carol’s family beyond her marriage and children, but the narrative gives no fuller account of her father’s actions or her response to them.

Separation and Dick’s Recollection

By the time Dick was convicted of burglary in 1958, Carol had left him. The book does not specify when she departed, what brought about the separation, or whether their marriage formally ended before then. Dick’s account contrasts her departure with his continuing idealization of her: he remembered her as a loved and admirable person and said his feelings had endured. That recollection conveys his attachment, but does not supply Carol’s perspective on the relationship.

After Carol had left, Dick married another sixteen-year-old girl. That second wife—not Carol—divorced him while he was imprisoned. The distinction matters because Dick’s life story places the two marriages close together while providing markedly different information about each: Carol is remembered through the marriage, their sons, and her departure; the later wife is associated with his imprisonment and divorce.

Narrative Role and Limits

Carol’s significance in the book lies in the contrast between the family life Dick recalls and the criminal course that followed. His account links the young household with debt and his efforts to earn more, then records Carol’s departure before his conviction and imprisonment. These details show how Dick framed his past, but they do not establish that financial hardship caused his later offenses or explain Carol’s decision to leave. As a character, she remains largely absent from direct narration: her presence is consequential to Dick’s remembered history, while her own voice and subsequent life are not given.