Corrections Employee Nellie Wicks

Nellie Wicks

Corrections Employee Nellie Wicks was stabbed to death by an inmate at the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at 7:45 a.m.

The inmate, a woman, was committed to the hospital in 1893 after she killed her husband and two women. It was September of 1893 when a woman and her grown daughter came to her home in Burllingham to talk to her husband about some property. The community became suspicious when the three could not be found and told the police they were missing. During a search of the property, the women's nude bodies were found in a barn near the home. Both had been struck in the back of the head with an axe and shot in the heart five times. Her husband was found under the house. He had been killed in the same manner.

Corrections Employee Nellie Wicks was a nurse in the prison hospital. The inmate was very fond of her. When she told the inmate she was quitting and going to work for a private hospital, the inmate followed her into the bathroom, locked the door from the inside, and, using scissors, stabbed her to death. The inmate died in the prison hospital on June 28, 1918, from Brights Disease.

Corrections Employee had served at the Matteawan Hospital for one year. She was survived by her parents and siblings.

Corrections Employee Wicks is the first known female law enforcement officer to be killed in the line of duty in the United States.