NARRATIVE OF EVENTS - PART 2

The man who was pronounced dead at County-USC Medical Center was born on July 4, 1976, to Margaret Valerie Hidell and George Ray Hidell in Alton, Illinois. The parents named him "Alek Hidell," with no middle name. He was to be their only child. Hidell was two years old when his mother died in what was eventually ruled an accident by the Alton County coroner; at the time, police suspected George Hidell had pushed his wife down a flight of stairs while intoxicated, but the prosecuting attorney cited a lack of evidence in declining to press charges. Nonetheless, Hidell was taken from his father by county child-protection authorities when police discovered "unsafe conditions" in the Hidell family's two-room basement apartment. While a custody hearing was pending, George Ray Hidell took his 2-year-old son by force from a foster home and fled to Seattle, Washington.

George Hidell apparently supported himself and his young son in Seattle primarily with various criminal activities that included narcotics dealing, forgery, theft and pandering. At least three women with records of prostitution convictions were believed to have lived at the Hidell residence, a one-bedroom apartment on Pike Street in the central district of Seattle, at different times. One of these women, Celia Mayer, cared for Alek Hidell while his father served a prison sentence from 1981 to 1984 for grand larceny. His father's place was taken in these years by Willard "Speedy" Rife, a one-time professional billiards player who hosted high-stakes poker games at the apartment. Mayer, posing as Alek Hidell's stepmother, enrolled him in Minor Elementary School in September 1982. Alek's attendance records at the school were nearly perfect. The comments of teachers and others who knew him at that time do not reveal any unusual personality traits or characteristics.

Upon his release from Washington State Penitentiary in January 1984, George Hidell moved into the one-bedroom apartment on Pike Street with Celia Mayer, Willard Rife and 7-year-old Alek. Two days after George Hidell's arrival, in the kitchen of the apartment, he and Rife had an argument over Rife's intention to remain in the apartment. While the two men struggled physically, Rife took a knife from the counter and stabbed George Hidell nine times, killing him. Rife was arrested at the apartment, confessed to police detectives and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. After Rife's arrest, leaving no forwarding address with the Seattle police, Celia Mayer drove with Alek to New Orleans, Louisiana.

From 1984 to 1990, Mayer and Alek lived in a succession of one-and two-room apartments in New Orleans' French Quarter. Over the six-year period, Mayer was arrested on prostitution charges eleven times, convicted seven times, and served a combined total of 35 days in jail. Child-protection authorities in New Orleans attempted several times to take Alek into state custody, but each time, including when Mayer served her jail sentences, Alek eluded them. Several witnesses who lived near Mayer and Alek at the time confirmed that friends and criminal associates of Mayer would secretly take Alek in during these periods, but that often Alek would be left to his own devices on the streets of New Orleans.

Alek's school records for this period indicate sporadic attendance, low grades, poor study habits and frequent disciplinary actions for classroom disruption. One middle-school teacher wrote in his record, "Remarkable capacity to learn. Quick-witted and bright. But fails to study and seems to believe other students and teachers are 'out to get him.' Is often absent and tardy." Alek participated in a standard classroom Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test in February of 1987 but failed to complete the last section of the test, apparently out of boredom. The incomplete portion of the exam indicates his IQ score likely to have been between 140 and 160, a rating considerably above the average mark of 100. Despite this rating, Alek performed poorly on two standardized comprehensive exams testing knowledge and writing ability.

While truant from school, Alek spent much of his time at Audubon Park Zoo and the New Orleans Public Library, at which the librarians were led by Alek to believe that he was working on a "special assignment" for school. Books checked out by Alek between 1986 and 1990 include many spy novels as well as nonfiction volumes on U.S. history and world political systems. One librarian interviewed for this report suggested Alek checked out historical and political books merely as part of his "special assignment" ruse and was more interested in paperback novels and motion-picture novelizations. Staff members at Audubon Park Zoo were also given the "special assignment" story by Alek, who they remember as spending most of his time writing in a journal.

Largely a loner until age 12, Alek began making friends in 1988 and spent many evenings and weekends with Ron and Russell Beaudry, 12 and 14, respectively, the sons of Alexander Beaudry, an associate of Celia Mayer who had a record of twelve arrests and five convictions, mostly on pandering charges. The three boys were suspected of involvement in the mutilation of a cat left as an apparent warning on the doorstep of a boy with whom Alek had a disagreement, but police found insufficient evidence to pursue charges.

Alek Hidell was arrested in New Orleans on April 5, 1989, at the age of thirteen, for transporting the records of a "numbers" gambling scheme in the service of Carlos Civello, a twice-convicted New Orleans-based racketeer. Alek was released on probation to the custody of Celia Mayer at a hearing in juvenile court. The hearing prompted an automatic investigation into the living conditions in Mayer's home. For reasons that are not clear, the investigation was delayed for eight months. The case worker who eventually inspected Mayer's home found "no unsanitary or hazardous conditions" but remarked in her report, "Interviews indicate subject and her son sleep in same bed except when subject is 'entertaining.' Only single hung tapestry separates child's 'room' from subject's bed area." The report found Mayer "not unfit" as a parent but recommended annual follow-up visits.

After an argument with Mayer, during which he struck her face, Alek left New Orleans for Los Angeles sometime in the spring of 1990. He would not return and apparently communicated with Mayer only through infrequent phone calls. Mayer was found dead, her throat slit, on the shoulder of a highway in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, in 1996. No suspects were identified, and the case remains open.

Alek arrived via bus in Los Angeles at the age of 14. Clay Ferrie, 52, the self-proclaimed "deacon" of the nonexistent Church of the Cross and the owner of a now-closed coffee house on Franklin Boulevard in Hollywood, befriended Alek at the Hollywood Greyhound bus station. Promising Alek food and shelter in exchange for dishwashing and bussing work, Ferrie took Alek to his home, an apartment above the coffee house, where Ferrie lived with his homosexual partner, David Shaw, 33.

Presenting Alek as his nephew, and using falsified documents, Ferrie enrolled Alek at Hollywood High School, where he attended class sporadically from 1990 to 1992. Alek's grades remained at the low level he maintained in New Orleans, and his teachers remember him as "sullen," "hostile," "disruptive" and "withdrawn." Alek's sole extracurricular activity was his performance of a small walk-on role in the drama department's production of "Our American Cousin" in December 1991. In February of 1992, when assigned to write a fictional story for English class, Alek wrote a story about a 16-year-old boy named "Alek" who bludgeons to death a man named "David Shaw" as revenge for several perceived insults. School police and a psychologist interviewed both Alek and Clay Ferrie about the story, but apparently it was not discovered that David Shaw was an actual person in Alek's life. Ferrie agreed to seek counseling for Alek, and no formal disciplinary action was taken by the school.

At approximately 3 a.m. on May 4, 1992, two months before his sixteenth birthday, Alek Hidell took Clay Ferrie's Honda Accord without permission, apparently intending, for reasons never determined, to drive to Mexico. While Alek headed south on Interstate 5 at approximately 85 miles per hour, a Highway Patrol officer attempted to pull the Accord over. Alek failed to yield to the officer and a high-speed chase began that continued past dawn and was televised live on several Los Angeles and San Diego television stations. The chase ended only when the Accord ran out of gas. Alek violently resisted the arresting officers and had to be subdued with a taser weapon.

In a voluntary plea arrangement with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Alek pleaded guilty to two felony charges related to the incident, including assault on a peace officer, and was sentenced to two years in custody of the El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility in Paso Robles, California. Upon learning of the lack of familial ties of any kind between Clay Ferrie and Alek, as well as discovering Ferrie's felony conviction in 1981 for lewd conduct in the presence of a minor, police investigators pursued the possibility of an abusive or exploitative relationship between Ferrie and Alek. Alek denied any such relationship, and investigators found no conclusive evidence that one existed. Investigators also were unable to find any connection between Alek's impulsive behavior on May 4, 1992, and David Shaw's disappearance at that same time. David Shaw remains classified as a missing person as of the publication of this report.

In his first year at the youth correctional facility, Alek responded positively to a rehabilitation program designed specifically for emotionally troubled young men. His ward supervisor wrote at Alek's six-month review that Alek "shows as much of a 180-degree turnaround in attitude as I have seen." Under a program that insisted on academic focus and discipline, Alek earned marks equal to his apparently high IQ, receiving his sole "less than satisfactory" mark in Physical Education. According to official logs and the recollections of guards, Alek spent most of his unassigned hours in the facility's library, where he requested 26 books, mostly of a political nature, through an inter-library loan program.