Do you know who killed 32 year old Edward Leroy Hickson in 1978? Edward Leroy Hickson, a 32-year-old man, died during the early morning hours of February 15, 1978, after a fire brought police officers and firefighters to the 1500 block of South Sixth Street in Council Bluffs, Iowa. At approximately 4:14 a.m., Council Bluffs police responded after firefighters reported finding an unresponsive person inside Rock Island Bunkhouse No. 27.
Hickson was removed from the building and transported by ambulance to Mercy Hospital, but he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Authorities classified his death as a homicide, opening case B78-1173.
The events witnessed shortly before the fire suggested that another person had entered the bunkhouse only minutes before emergency crews were summoned. A witness told investigators that at about 4:05 a.m., he saw a white male enter Bunkhouse No. 27. The man was described as unusually tall, approximately six feet three inches to six feet four inches, and was reportedly wearing a brown stocking cap and a black jacket. Rather than remaining inside, the stranger quickly returned to a vehicle parked nearby, retrieved an unidentified object from it, and went back into the building.
The vehicle was described as a 1975 or 1976 Buick or Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a burgundy-over-white color scheme. The witness also noticed a green shirt hanging inside the automobile. A few minutes after the man reentered the bunkhouse, he emerged again, got into the same vehicle and drove away. The timing of his arrival and departure made him an important person investigators hoped to identify, but the publicly available case information does not indicate that police ever established his name or determined exactly what he removed from the car before returning to the building.
The available accounts do not explain precisely how Hickson was killed or describe the injuries or medical findings that led authorities to classify the death as a homicide. They also do not identify the origin of the fire, state whether investigators concluded that it was intentionally set, or explain whether Hickson died from injuries, smoke inhalation or another cause. What remains clear is that emergency personnel found him unresponsive inside the burning bunkhouse and that investigators considered the unidentified man and his distinctive two-tone automobile significant to reconstructing what happened in the minutes before the fire was reported.
No arrest, criminal charge, trial or conviction has been publicly reported in connection with Hickson's death. The tall man seen entering and leaving the bunkhouse has never been publicly identified as a named suspect, and the person responsible remains unknown. The Council Bluffs Police Department continues to list the homicide as an active unsolved case and has requested information from anyone who may recognize the description of the man, the clothing he wore or the burgundy-and-white vehicle seen near Bunkhouse No. 27 that morning.
Hickson, who was born in 1945 to Rex and Evelyn Louise Willson Hickson, left behind his parents, a brother named Larry and two sisters, Terry and Sheila. He was buried at Goodland Cemetery in Sherman County, Kansas. Decades after the fire, the image at the center of the investigation remains unchanged: an unidentified stranger arriving before dawn, walking into the bunkhouse, returning to his vehicle for something and leaving shortly before Edward Hickson was discovered inside. Without the stranger's identity or additional evidence explaining what occurred within the building, the case has remained unresolved since 1978.
