Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Boston Gangster’s Rise, Fall, and Comeback | Johnny Hickey
Thu, 08 May 2025
A one-time street kid from Boston, these days Johnny is a celebrated filmmaker, actor, and anti opiate crusader.Jonny's social media is @thejohnnyhickey Johnny's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohnnyhickey/Johnnys IMDb https: //www.imdb.com/name/nm2485488/Johnny's YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@thejohnnyhickey?si=C_0onCMd-xIYrFMQOXY MORONS: https://g.co/kgs/qvakki HABITUAL: Habitual https: //g.co/kgs/CXVEDd https://youtube.com/@thejohnnyhickey?si=Dt3AfaJeCdxb3amFFollow Matthew Cox on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewCoxTrueCrime?mibextid=LQQJ4dDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form: https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What was Johnny Hickey's childhood like in Boston?
And so she gets a business degree, teacher certification, and she lands a teaching job up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is about 45 minutes north of Boston. It's this island in Cape Ann. And it's a different world for me. So senior in high school now, I'm in college. You know, in Charlestown High, I was going to Charlestown High. Charlestown High was like prison.
It was like Charlestown kids were actually a minority in our high school because, again, forced busing. So all the like white Charlestown kids would sit at one table. There's like seven or eight of us. It wasn't many of us, believe it or not. And then like Dorchester kids wouldn't sit with Roxbury kids. It was all neighborhoods. It wasn't like gangs. It was more neighborhoods.
but the Japanese kids and the Chinese kids didn't get along either. And they separated themselves. So it was this segregation in like the cafeteria where you would eat. And sometimes there'd be like fights and all this shit. But overall, like that's the environment that I was used to. And now I moved to a neighborhood where they got like, where it's like,
the shit you see on TV as a kid, for me, really as kids with jock jackets on with it, you know what I mean? Football players, and then like freaks with like green hair and all that stuff. I never seen any of that at that time. And Boston was very, very different at that time. So Now I'm in this whole new environment, and I'm like, okay, whatever I can do, this is easy.
And the kids in that neighborhood tested me constantly because I was a city kid. Because I wasn't one of them, they picked fights with me, did shit with me. And one day I put some kid's face in a locker, smashed the locker on his face a bunch of times, cracked his eye socket. busted a bunch of his teeth, his face up. And the judge up there wanted to make an example of me.
I had never been in trouble. I have no criminal record, no juvie record at that time or anything like that. Like I said, I've always been able to kind of like fly through my neighborhood. Like I was a part of it, but I was always like, the things I did there were never like, we're looking for him.
But in Gloucester, doing something like that, like a big fight and hurting somebody, they wanted to make an example of me. So they sent, they locked me up. They held me for 30 days. And I was at that time, they put me in a cell with a guy who's on, you know, waiting trial for murdering his wife, although they didn't have a body.
And he eventually this guy ended up becoming the first man, a person in Massachusetts and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted without a body. They convicted him on bone fragment and blood samples that they found in his neighbor's wood chipper that he borrowed from his neighbor. I go from 17 years old. I can't buy scratch tickets. I can't buy cigarettes. I can't buy booze.
I can't even enlist in the military yet. I'm in a county jail, but I'm in a holding pot where you, it's just everybody, it's fed inmates, it's state, you know, people are from Merth. And so they put me in with this guy who was actually very fucking nice and like cooked for me every night. But, you know, he'd start to talk about his story and I'd look at him. He was a construction worker dude.
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Chapter 2: How did Johnny's life take a turn after his fall?
So when they took me and held me in the six months for these cases, when I tell you that the six months that I was held in these cases was like 10 times longer than the three-year bid I did because I have my little girl now and because I wasn't a criminal no more and I legitimately wasn't guilty of any of this shit and I was like so in a fucking like panic attack of like,
and conspiracy theory of like, how can they do this? Like, I don't even know what this fucking gun is or anything to do with this gun. And they're holding me on this with zero evidence. And then, and then, and then this, and then this bitch fucking making up, you know, just saying this shit about me and then going to fuck a cop to like work it against me. So, Eventually, we take it to trial.
So now I'm indicted in New Hampshire on the gun charge. So we take it to trial. We go in front of a judge. And now I also have, like, people in Massachusetts, like probation offices that were on, like, ran the heroin education awareness task. People that were very proud of Mark Seymour's, like, writing to, like, the district attorney up there and stuff saying, like, What's going on with this?
And they're looking at the evidence and they're like, he didn't do this. People are fucking with him right now. This kid's turned his life around. We truly believe that. We need to help. So even the DA at that point now was on my side when we went to the indictment with my lawyer. They just wanted to give me time served.
So in order for me not to go to trial and risk going away forever, I had to plead guilty to something I didn't do. But whatever, I get time served, wrap it up. The judge didn't want to do it. She's like, where's the gun? And the judge didn't – the fucking – the DA is like, we don't have it. She's like, well, I don't understand. Why is he being – and so she's like, I have to let him go.
And she didn't want to. She's like, Eve – and so they let me go from that. So when they let me go from that, the guys – The DEA task force I was telling you about that were in my movie that came and played, they sent their task force guys to pick me up for the case in Boston for the attempted murder. When they got there, they picked me up. They didn't cuff me.
They just brought me in the CEOs at the New Hampshire. You're not going to cuff them? They're like, Johnny? Nah, he's fucking good. They get me in the car. They got a coffee for me. They got cigarettes. I'm like, I don't smoke anymore. They're like, all right, whatever. They're like, yeah. And they give me their cell phone. You know, call your lawyer.
Call whoever you need because we got to bring you there. But when we bring you in, we're not giving them this case up here. We're not going to let them know you're being held. We're going to bring it in that you turned yourself in on your own. I was like, oh, my God. All right, cool. Bye, guys. Thank you. And they're like, we know the case is bullshit. We know what's going on.
i'm like all right so so do that i go in and the judge is like i can't let you i can't hear this today i need his lawyer so i go back to the original geo where i did the three years now i'm held there overnight And that place felt like fucking Disney World compared to like where I had just been in New Hampshire. I was just in New Hampshire.
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Chapter 5: How did Johnny transition from crime to filmmaking?
um and i just always wanted to do something like that so that was my second film uh we won again we won a ton of awards for that we had a theatrical release and it put me on a it put me in a new position of like connections in la networking uh me as a filmmaker now now that i have two movies under my belt and in kind of like obviously the niche market that i'm going to and also tying into all these anti-drug groups and stuff like that
building that cult following kind of with people that like doc crime dramas they don't have to have been affected by drugs but at this point in today's society it doesn't matter if you did drugs like someone in your family your brother your cousin your boss yeah you're affected somehow you're affected you know that you know what you know yeah you've been you know your best friend's daughter and just something horrible you know has happened if not a ton right so
So that's kind of my audience has become these people that love the rawness and the realness of these movies and this content that I'm making because I don't glamorize shit. I don't candy coat stuff. I'm very raw, real.
And I'm also, you know, I don't have millions of fans, but I have hundreds of thousands of people over the course of the last, you know, 10 years, say, since Oxymorons was made that
reach out to me even still to this day and i'm like dude i have my my kids back and my life changed because of your movie and you know like i had a woman come up to me they'd tell me her and her husband got like seven years clean now because they watched my movie together and decided to get clean after watching oxymorons and i always said like one person watched oxymorons
And it deterred them and helped them get off drugs. And I like changed the world. Like I did my justice. And after it became one person to like a thousand people, I was like, wow, okay. I have to like, that's why I'm doing this. That's why I survived the 80 foot fall.
That's why I have the willpower and the manifestation to fight through all this bullshit is to not make content that's just making content to be Hollywood or to be a movie star and to be famous. It's to really make content that people connect with and can change their lives and bring awareness without being candy-coated. Don't do drugs and put drugs all in one basket.
Yeah, listen. All that Hollywood shit wouldn't make you happy anyway in the end.
No. No, no, no. I've seen... I've been out in Hollywood. I've lived in Hollywood. I see it all. It's so fake.
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Chapter 6: What is the message behind Johnny's films?
Isn't it? At that time, it was the, the Oxycontin epidemic was huge. It was really big. Yeah. Back in 2010, 2011, it was, that was the main thing. There was a lot of people doing it. And, uh, So I get to FCC, and, of course, I know quite a few people in there because it's just a small town. And they're like, here, this will help.
Take some candy and, you know, like, whatever, anything that'll help. And he's like, make sure you go take a shower. Go do this. And, like, everybody knows that I'm going through withdrawals. So they're like, just... Leave them alone and let them sleep it off. So there's A wing, B wing, and C wing. And A wing is the higher security.
And then B wing is like the low level, and C wing is the workers. And B wing is just like, it's disgusting. It's like the kind where you just look down, and there's mold and dripping water onto the cement, and all the paint's scratched off, and it's not very clean.
And so, yeah, I'm kicking for seven, seven to 10 days before I start coming out of it and coming out of my cell and eating and kind of socialize and talking to a few guys that I know outside of there, but that they're in as well. And then like, I start to understand some of the, cause I've never done time. I know that there's certain politics, certain things you should do.
In jail, there's no politics in FCC, really.
Right. At all. Yeah, there's too mixed up. There's not enough guys to get together to be dangerous. It's whites and natives.
Yeah. That's it. So after 20, 20, 30 days, like I'm playing spades, you know, playing spades with these guys and I'm eating, hanging out. I'm like, this isn't actually isn't too bad. I can do this. I can do this for what? I've been here for 28 days. I can do this for 70 more. This is easy. Maybe they won't even take me to federal pen or a federal FCI. And then on day 30.
They go over the intercom. Lalon, roll it up. And everybody's like, oh, shit. Federale, here we go. And, uh, yeah, I knew. So I rolled it up. I mean, all I have is my blankets and I have my paperwork. So you throw your sheets and your blankets at the bin. And, and, uh, so they walked me up to booking. So that's, it's no longer, um, just the correction officers.
I walk over and then there's the FBI. So they got there. I always know their FBI cause they got their tan pants and their blah, blah. Um, um, You mean the U.S. Marshals? Yes. Yeah. The U.S. Marshals. Yeah. And so there, I think there was maybe two or three. I think there's three total, including me, that were all federal and we were getting transported.
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