‘Sir James’ : Molest Suspect Says He’s Misunderstood, but Prosecutors Insist He’s a Con Man

There is a picture of James Allen Hydrick sitting at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza, feet crossed in the lotus position, eyes raised toward the heavens, a white cotton kaffiyeh headdress shielding his face from the sun.

As Hydrick tells it, the hurricane-force winds that he summoned through meditation suddenly began whipping through the Western Desert. It was, he says, quite an impressive show for the Egyptian dignitaries who had gathered to watch this young American demonstrate his psychic powers.

He prizes the picture, one of the many faces of James Allen Hydrick.

In one series of photos, Hydrick, his tattooed arms set off by a jet black martial arts outfit and white headband, smashing through six slabs of concrete with a bare fist at Venice Beach. A crowd of spectators is shown cheering, and Hydrick responds with a muscular arm raised in triumph.

These are the images that James Allen Hydrick wants the world to see: of achievement, of success, of a man who has earned the adoration and respect of others.

But Huntington Beach police see a different person in the 29-year-old karate expert currently held in a high-security area of the Orange County Jail. What they see is a master manipulator, a fast-talking con artist who finally ran afoul of the law one too many times.

Between last June and September, police say, while Hydrick was living in a small apartment in downtown Huntington Beach just a few blocks from the ocean, he befriended a group of young boys who were awed by his tales of psychic tricks and martial arts demonstrations. Then, according to police, Hydrick lured them to his apartment, where he molested them in exchange for food, drugs and cigarettes.

Hydrick now faces 13 counts of felonychild molestation, one misdemeanor child molestation charge and one count of failing to register as a sex offender. Authorities have declined to identify the exact number of alleged victims. Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Koski said the sex offender status stemmed from a 1978 incident in Santa Monica in which Hydrick was convicted of oral copulation.

No Plea Yet

Hydrick has yet to enter a plea because his arraignment has been postponed at least three times, in part because of the controversy that surrounds the man who calls himself “Sir James” and claims to have escaped from no fewer than 148 jails and institutions across the United States. When he has appeared in court, it has been amid uncommonly tight security.

Hydrick is scheduled for arraignment again today in West Orange County Municipal Court in Westminster.

Hydrick’s notoriety stems from his self-professed ability to slip out of handcuffs and bust out of the strongest prisons, his undisputed expertise in karate and tae kwon do, and a bizarre tale about how he was transported back to California after being arrested in Georgia and extradited.

According to law enforcement officials, private security guards who had been driving Hydrick back to California became unnerved when they suspected that Hydrick was using supernatural powers to rock the van. In Johnson County, Ark., where Hydrick was dropped off with local authorities, the security guards warned county jailers not to look Hydrick in the eye for fear he might cast a spell.

By the time Hydrick arrived in Orange County earlier this month, local officials already knew of his reputation and his love of publicity. Jail guards joked about Hydrick levitating himself out of the downtown Santa Ana facility to freedom, about the prisoner giving “the evil eye” to guards.

Pamela Boyd, the Orange County public defender who represents Hydrick, finds her client in a precarious position because of the publicity and stories about supernatural powers and multiple escapes.

“Rumors are abounding about what he is capable of, and I want to stop the circus atmosphere every time he comes to court,” Boyd said. “This guy does have an ability to slip out of his cuffs . . . (but) I don’t have any personal knowledge of him putting hexes on anyone.”

Neither prosecutor Koski nor Huntington Beach police would elaborate on the case against Hydrick, but they did say they consider him an escape risk because of his past. Koski said it had been confirmed that Hydrick escaped from at least three jails in Utah, Georgia and South Carolina.

Says He’s Perplexed

In a recent telephone interview, Hydrick said he is innocent and is perplexed about why the young men he had befriended in Huntington Beach had turned on him.

“In my heart I don’t think I did wrong,” he said. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I like kids. I wouldn’t ever hurt them.”

Speaking in a soft accent that told of his rural Deep South upbringing, Hydrick denied that he had ever presented himself as someone gifted with supernatural powers, but affirmed that he had escaped from countless jails, allegedly after being mistreated.

“If they treat me like an animal, I act like an animal, and I get out,” he said. “(But) I’m no more psychic than you are. I don’t know where that started. My promotions are breaking bricks with my hands, that’s all. If I have supernatural powers--and sometimes I can do funny things with my mind--I don’t know it.” Hydrick said he was appearing in promotions for a local sportswear company, breaking bricks and concrete with his hands, when he began teaching a group of Huntington Beach teen-agers the martial arts.

“But I never hurt anyone,” he said.

Claims of Escape

In a cover story on Hydrick that appeared in the November issue of Inside Kung-Fu magazine, a martial arts trade journal, Hydrick made his claim to have escaped from 148 jails and other institutions. It was in that story that he was credited with whipping up an 80-m.p.h. wind for the Egyptian officials.

Hydrick said he was in Egypt on a promotional tour, but like so many things about this man, even that seems in dispute. His adoptive mother told The Times that the 1981 trip was not a promotional tour but rather a simple vacation, and that there was no demonstration before local Egyptian dignitaries. She said she knew nothing about her son making the winds howl in the desert.

“I don’t know why he’d say that,” she said.

One story that Hydrick likes to tell, but that could not be confirmed, centered on his claim that about 10 years ago he spent a year wandering the Savannah River in Georgia with a Tibetan monk learning kung fu and other martial arts disciplines.

What is clear, however, is that he did learn martial arts from someone--and excelled at it. Last year he set an unofficial world record by breaking 89 inches of concrete at a tournament in Long Beach, according to Inside Kung-Fu.

Martial Arts Expert

His expertise at martial arts and his alleged psychic ability, moreover, have been the subject of at least three syndicated television talk shows. Ironically, it was his last television appearance, on the nationally televised “Sally Jessy Raphael” show on Nov. 29, that led to his arrest. An off-duty Huntington Beach police officer saw him on the show and tracked him down to Georgia, where he was in custody on an unrelated charge.

If Hydrick presents a complex picture in public, his family and friends say that beneath all the bravado is a troubled young man who has been in and out of jails since he was a teen-ager.

“Most of what Allen does are just tricks,” said his sister, Deborah Olmstead, speaking from New Ellington, S.C.

And all the talk about psychic powers and putting hexes on people? “That’s just Allen talking big again, trying to get attention,” she said.

Olmstead said she believes her brother’s problems stem from a desire “to be somebody. Even now he feels like he is a nobody. He wants so much to call my daddy up say, ‘Hey, aren’t you proud of me?’ ”

Olmstead and her brother, Billy Hydrick of Gloverville, S.C., said that they know of at least six different times that Hydrick escaped from local jails in South Carolina and Georgia, but that the escapes were not the result of him smashing through bars or putting hexes on guards.

Walked Out the Door

“One time a deputy went to answer the phone and Allen just walked out the door,” his brother said. “That was about all there was to it.”

In Aiken County, S.C., Sheriff Carroll Heath described Hydrick as a perennial problem who “has made a right good pest of himself.”

“I’m no psychologist, but let’s face it, everybody likes to be liked,” Heath said. “Problem with James, he didn’t attract too much attention from the adult population but the kids idolized him. He’d lay that Rambo stuff in their heads. He’d tell everyone that he had a chauffeur and a limo down around Atlanta, about how famous he was, that kind of stuff.”

Several years ago, Heath said, Hydrick escaped from the Aiken County Jail by kicking out some concrete blocks and slithering through a hole, along with two other inmates.

“You don’t need to be psychic to do that,” he said. “But he did have some martial arts training. One time he kicked the whole top of a steel door down with his feet.”

Troubled Childhood

Janice Shrock Smith, a 60-year-old Salt Lake City woman who adopted Hydrick when he was almost 22, said the seeds of her son’s problems were sown in a troubled childhood in which he was abused and abandoned. She said she adopted Hydrick because “I thought I could help him.”

The Hydrick children were taken from their parents when they were toddlers and placed in a succession of foster homes and institutions. By his own count, Hydrick was moved among at least seven different foster homes.

“He was an abused baby,” Smith said. “It’s not his fault. It’s bravisimo that comes through and they don’t understand their actions.”

Smith, who is convinced that Hydrick is psychic, said her adopted son was always drawn to teen-agers because he empathized with them, seeing a little of himself in the troubled youngsters who would watch him break bricks and perform other martial arts feats on the beaches of California.

“He is like a Pied Piper,” she said. “He is not a child molester. He can’t stand to see parents abusing kids. He feels for kids who are having problems with their parents. He is tremendously naive when it comes to kids. He forms an attachment, a protective attachment to them. He feels for kids who are having problems.”

To Huntington Beach Police Sgt. Bill Peterson, the Hydrick case is a simple one of child molestation that should not be made “larger than life.”

“The charges speak for themselves,” Peterson said, saying he could not comment on details of the case. “He is very manipulative. This gentleman appears to like publicity. He is a showman.”