She left to pick up her son. Four days later, they pulled her car out of a pond.
On the evening of October 18, 2001, 25-year-old Regina Rowe Hicks left her boyfriend's home in her white Chevrolet Camaro to pick up her four-year-old son. She never arrived. Four days later, a man riding a four-wheeler beside a pond off Section Line Road 30 in Willard, Ohio, saw something in the water. It was her car, with her body inside.
Suspicion fell on her estranged husband almost immediately — Paul Hicks filed for divorce the day after she was reported missing, asking to be named the residential parent of their son, and a polygraph was never administered after he told investigators he had taken three Xanax and two shots of whiskey beforehand. But suspicion is not evidence. Four days underwater had left almost nothing to test: a BCI forensic scientist later testified that five items recovered from the car produced genetic material that was simply not sufficient for comparison. The case went cold for 24 years.
What eventually broke it was not new technology. It was the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation going back through the file and re-interviewing the people around the case — including Paul's best friend, Steve Gates, who testified under a grant of immunity that he had watched what happened and stayed silent about it for more than two decades. A Huron County grand jury indicted Paul Hicks in April 2025. On December 19, 2025, a jury convicted him on all counts, and on January 9, 2026 he was sentenced to 25 years to life. He is appealing the conviction.
This video covers the marriage, the night Regina disappeared, the recovery of the Camaro, the divorce filing, the 2019 arson case that kept Paul Hicks in the news, how a cold case unit actually works when the forensics are gone, the immunity deal, and the two-week trial — including what the defense argued was missing.
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Sources and image credits
FACTUAL SOURCES - Ohio Attorney General, news release, "Ex-Husband Sentenced to Prison for 2001 Murder," Jan. 9, 2026 (Norwalk dateline; 25 years to life; Yost and Huron County Prosecutor James Sitterly; the Oct. 18, 2001 ~8 p.m. departure in the white Chevrolet Camaro; car found Monday Oct. 22 in a pond at Section Line Road 30, Willard, body inside; BCI investigated at the request of and with the assistance of the Huron County Sheriff's Office; prosecuted by the AG's Special Prosecutions Section and the Huron County Prosecutor's Office; the "truth has no expiration date" quotation). - Ohio Attorney General, news release, "Ex-Husband Found Guilty of Murder in 2001 Cold Case," Dec. 19, 2025 (two-week trial; guilty of three counts of murder and one count of kidnapping; indicted April 2025). - Ohio Attorney General, news release, "Arrest Made Following Indictment in 2001 Cold Case," April 2025 (indictment and arrest). - ABC News / "20/20," "Regina Hicks' murder: Estranged husband convicted decades after body found in pond," May 1, 2026 (Lisa Hersha interview and the "more silent, more small" quotation; the three strikes to the top of the scalp; the aborted polygraph and the three Xanax / two shots of Jim Beam; BCI Special Agent John Saraya's "it's a hard case"; the wig and custom wearable mask alleged in the arson scheme and the guilty plea to insurance fraud with the other charges dismissed; Steve Gates's immunity and his account; defense attorney J. Anthony Rich's "speculation and conjecture"; prosecutor Dan Kasaris's "Motive. Motive. Motive." closing; Montana Hicks's sentencing statement at age 28). - Cleveland 19 News (WOIO), "Sandusky man sentenced to 25 years for killing ex-wife in 2001," Jan. 9, 2026, including its day-by-day trial log (jury selection Dec. 9 with 12 jurors and 4 alternates; Crystal Hicks on the house in disarray and the muddy clothes in the bathtub; Jewell Hicks contradicting the twin-brother claim; Roger and Richard Whetstone finding the car and the purse; Janzen Phipps on the beat-a-polygraph book and the true-crime programs; BCI DNA analyst Steven Wiechman on the five items and "not sufficient for comparison"; former detective Dane Howard on the Oct. 19, 2001 1:30 p.m. divorce filing and its custody language; the 2001 interrogation video played by the defense; both sides resting Dec. 17 with Hicks not testifying; arrest in Seneca County in April 2025). - Oxygen.com, "A Missing Mom, a Submerged Car and a 24-Year Secret: What Happened to Regina Hicks?," May 1, 2026 (indictment language describing the marriage as violent and turbulent; details of the alleged arson scheme, the staged break-in and the surveillance recording placed in a fire-protected safe; the 2019 indictment and the plea). Note on one discrepancy: Oxygen reports the divorce was filed the day BEFORE Regina went missing. Trial testimony from former detective Dane Howard, reported contemporaneously by Cleveland 19 News, puts the filing at 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2001 — the day AFTER. This video follows the trial testimony. IMAGE CREDITS - Regina Rowe Hicks, high school yearbook photograph — courtesy of Holiday Photos, via ABC News; widely republished for identification throughout coverage of this case. (Slides 1, 23; thumbnail; Facebook card.) - Regina Rowe Hicks, three additional photographs — released by the Ohio Attorney General's Office. (Slides 3, 4, 5.) - Paul Hicks — photograph released by the Ohio Attorney General's Office / Huron County Sheriff's Office. (Slide 9; Facebook card.) - The pond at Section Line Road 30, Willard, Ohio, and the recovered white Camaro — crime-scene photographs courtesy of the Ohio Attorney General's Office, via ABC News. (Slides 6, 7, 8; Facebook card.) - Steve Gates — photograph courtesy of the Ohio Attorney General's Office, via ABC News. (Slide 17.) - Legal document and pen — CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative. (Slide 10.) - Historical polygraph examination — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative, not from this case. (Slide 11.) - Forensic science laboratory — West Midlands Police, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative, not evidence from this case. (Slide 12.) - Records storage — National Archives photograph, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative. (Slide 14.) - Courtroom interior — CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative, not the Huron County courtroom. (Slide 20.) - Correctional facility fence — CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative, not the facility housing Hicks. (Slide 22.) - Rural highway at dusk, evidence handling, evidence collection, cold case file review, police vehicle, courthouse exterior and gavel — free-to-use licensed stock, reused from earlier videos in this series. All illustrative, none depicting this case. (Slides 2, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21.) No news-broadcast footage was used. The Cleveland 19 News graphics that carried the Ohio Attorney General's photographs of Regina and Paul were cropped to the underlying public-record photographs only; no station branding, chrome or produced segment appears in this video. AFFILIATE LINKS Generated 2026-09-08 with AMAZON_ASSOC_TAG=truecrimecases-20. One link, and it is a tagged Amazon SEARCH URL, not a product link: a search for a book about this case returned nothing, so under the skill's affiliate ladder this falls to rung 3 (an honest case-scoped search) rather than a decorative recommendation. The case was broken by witness re-interviews and an immunity deal, not by DNA or investigative genetic genealogy, so a book on forensic genealogy would have been decorative here and was deliberately not used. No ASIN was linked, so no verify_book.py check applied.
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