A Man With A Past In A Place That Nearly Isn’t

William Browning: LONETREE — In open country, a humble home sits with a couple of trucks and a car parked in the dirt driveway. The local phone book says he lives here.

Home, a poet said, is where they have to take you in. This was different. Mike Hickey left after deaths that darkened his corner of the world, four of them with details that stain: A teenage girl’s mutilated body found on a mountainside, her head caved in. A home bombed in the night, killing three who slept inside.

More than three decades ago, these murders shook Wyoming’s blue skies and open spirit. He admitted to committing them, testified against a man later given a death sentence and — poof — vanished into prison under an alias.

Now, people were saying he had come home. Hard, unanswered questions circled the rumor.