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Robert Nixon (criminal)

Robert Nixon (July 19, 1919 – June 16, 1939) was an American serial killer, born in the small town of Tallulah, Louisiana, who confessed to five murders and multiple assaults, including the Los Angeles "brick bat[2] murders" of 1937. Depicted with racist imagery in the mainstream press after his arrest, he was given the nickname the "Brick Moron" as he killed his victims with bricks and was depicted as dimwitted.

Robert Nixon

Robert Nixon

(1919-07-19)July 19, 1919[1]
Tallulah, Louisiana, U.S.

June 16, 1939(1939-06-16) (aged 19)

Cook County Jail, Cook County, Illinois, U.S.

Execution by electrocution

The Brick Moron

Murder

Death

3–5

1937–1938

United States

California, Illinois

May 28, 1938

Convicted of murder, he was executed in Chicago in 1939. Nixon served, in part,[3] as the basis of the character of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's 1940 social protest novel Native Son.

Chicago arrest[edit]

Using the alias Thomas Crosby, Nixon had survived in Los Angeles by petty theft, racking up arrests for shoplifting and purse-snatching. He was also suspected of auto-theft. He returned to Chicago, where another brick-killing was committed.


On the night of May 27, 1938, Florence Johnson, the Caucasian wife of a Chicago fireman, had been slain by multiple blows on the head with a brick, as she fought off burglars. Her sister, who shared her apartment in Chicago's North Kenwood District on the South Side and slept in another room, saw two assailants leave the house. Within hours, Nixon was arrested (on the 28th), picked up because of blood on his clothes and scratched hands.

Accomplice[edit]

Robert Nixon sometimes had an accomplice to his acts, Earl Hicks[7] (a.k.a. Howard Jones Green). Hicks was sent from Chicago to Los Angeles and taken to the Wordens' former room at the Astoria Apartments. He admitted to the L.A. police that he beat 12-year-old Marguerite on the head with the butt of a pistol, but denied taking part in a sexual assault or using a brick. Hicks said that he and Nixon stole eight dollars from the Wordens (equivalent to approximately $170 in 2023[14]). In addition, he confessed to attacking Zoe Damrell, for which he was sentenced to five-years-to-life.


Nixon's defense in the Florence Johnson murder was to claim that it was Hicks who wielded the brick that killed her. The defense was not effective as the Illinois Supreme Court held that under the rules of felony murder, both burglars were responsible for the murder. The law holds both culpable: The perpetrator of a murder and any accomplice who does not actually commit or partake in the killing during the commission of another crime are equally as guilty of the murder.[15]


On January 27, 1939, Hicks was sentenced to 14 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the charge of murder in regards to Johnson's death. This occurred 5 months after Nixon was sentenced to death.[16]

Execution[edit]

Robert Nixon was convicted of the murder of Florence Castle and sentenced to death.[18] He was executed in the electric chair at the Cook County Jail on June 16, 1939.

List of serial killers in the United States

List of homicides in Illinois

Sources[edit]

Life and Death Of and In the Astoria, On Bunker Hill: A Lost Neighborhood Found Elizabeth Dale. Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871–1971. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016.