Dick Hickock and Carol's marriage

Dick and Carol Hickock’s marriage joined two teenagers and soon became entangled with the pressures of raising three children and earning enough to support a family. Dick later described himself as deeply attached to Carol, but the marriage ended after his infidelity, financial problems, and criminal conduct; his accounts of his feelings for her do not entirely agree.

A Young Marriage Under Strain

Dick married Carol when she was sixteen. Her father, a minister, opposed the match and, in Dick’s recollection, regarded him as a failure. The disapproval became less absolute after Carol became pregnant, though Dick remembered that her father never wished him well. The marriage brought three sons while Dick and Carol were still very young. Dick later connected their debts and his effort to earn additional money with the pressures they faced, while also insisting that he had tried to provide for the family.

Work, Money, and Separation

Before turning twenty-one, Dick had worked as a railway trackman, ambulance driver, car painter, and garage mechanic. Another account describes his early employment after leaving school: he worked for the Santa Fe railroad, then at a motor company, and later took a night job at a service station near Kansas City. He subsequently worked for Perry Pontiac for five years, earning seventy-five dollars a week. These jobs mark a succession of attempts to establish a livelihood, but they did not prevent the couple’s financial difficulties or the rupture of the marriage.

In early 1957, while Dick and Carol were living in an apartment in Kansas City, he left his automobile-company job and went into business operating a garage. He began seeing Margaret, whose husband was away in the Marine Corps, and Carol sued for divorce. Dick later wrote that he had come to think he had never truly loved his wife, reasoning that otherwise he would not have acted as he had. He did not contest the divorce. Afterward, he drank heavily, neglected the garage, spent beyond his earnings, and wrote bad checks; his theft conviction eventually led to a five-year sentence in Kansas State Penitentiary.

Conflicting Retrospections

Dick’s accounts frame the marriage differently. In conversation, he described Carol as someone he remained deeply fond of and recalled having tried to earn more for their children. In a later written account, he treated his conduct toward her as evidence that he had never really loved her. The contrast does not erase the practical history they shared: an early marriage, three sons, economic pressure, and a divorce following his relationship with another woman. It instead shows how Dick’s own explanations shifted between attachment and retrospective self-reproach.