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Jesse Harding Pomeroy (; November 29, 1859 – September 29, 1932) was a convicted American murderer and possible
serial killer A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders three or more people,An offender can be anyone: * * * * * (This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separat ...
and the youngest person in the history of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
to be convicted of
murder in the first degree In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In many US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degre ...
. He was found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874.


Background

Jesse Harding Pomeroy was born in
Charlestown, Massachusetts Charlestown is the oldest Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Also called Mishawum by the Massachusett, it is located on a peninsula north of the Charles River, across from downtown Bost ...
, to Thomas Jesse Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman. He was the second of two sons.


Early attacks

On February 21, 1872, a seven-year-old named Tracy Hayden of Chelsea was beaten and left on Powder Horn Hill. On May 20, an eight-year-old boy, Robert Maier, was also beaten and left in an abandoned outhouse in Chelsea. On July 22, Johnny Balch was discovered tied up and beaten in an abandoned outhouse on Powder Horn Hill. Soon after the third attack, ''
The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...
'' reported that "the public are considerably excited" about what they described as a "Fiendish Boy" who was violently attacking younger children. Around August 2, 1872, Ruth Ann Pomeroy and her children moved from their home in Chelsea to Broadway Street in the South Boston area. By this point, Thomas Pomeroy had abandoned his family. A fourth attack against a young child occurred August 17, 1872. Seven-year-old George Pratt was found beaten by local fishermen in South Boston. Barely a month later, on September 11, another seven-year-old boy, Joseph Kennedy, was assaulted. He was supposedly lured to a vacant boathouse near the South Boston salt marshes; once there, he was beaten and cut with a pocketknife. Six days later, on September 17, railway workers walking along the Hartford and Erie Line in South Boston stumbled upon Robert Gould, a five-year-old boy, who had been tied to a telegraph post near the tracks, beaten, and slashed by a knife. A while after the last attack, Pomeroy was walking past South Boston's Police Station Six and decided to look in the window. Joseph Kennedy, the child who had been assaulted on September 11, was inside. He spotted Pomeroy looking through the window and pointed him out to the officers as his assailant. Pomeroy was immediately arrested and readily admitted to being the "boy torturer". Eventually, the rest of the children who had been assaulted throughout the year all identified Pomeroy as their attacker. On September 21, 1872, Jesse Pomeroy was arraigned and heard in front of Juvenile Court Judge William G. Forsaith. The 12-year-old Pomeroy confessed to the attacks, was found guilty, and sentenced to six years at the State Reform School for Boys in Westborough, Massachusetts.


Crimes

In February 1874, at the age of 14, Pomeroy was
parole Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...
d back to his mother and brother in South Boston. His mother ran her own dressmaking shop, and his brother Charles sold newspapers. In March 1874, a 10-year-old girl from South Boston named Katie Curran went missing. On April 22, 1874, the mutilated body of a 4-year-old boy named Horace Millen was found on the marsh of Dorchester Bay. Immediately, the police detectives sought out Pomeroy, despite lacking evidence implicating him in the crime. The body of Katie Curran was found later, in the basement of Pomeroy's mother's dress shop. Her remains were hastily and carelessly concealed in an ash heap.


Trial

Pomeroy was taken to view Millen's body and asked if he committed the murder. At the coroner's
inquest An inquest is a judicial inquiry in common law jurisdictions, particularly one held to determine the cause of a person's death. Conducted by a judge, jury, or government official, an inquest may or may not require an autopsy carried out by a cor ...
, Pomeroy was denied the
right to counsel In criminal law, the right to counsel means a defendant has a legal right to have the assistance of counsel (i.e., lawyers) and, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal ex ...
. The case of ''Commonwealth v. Pomeroy'' was heard in the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously fu ...
(Suffolk County,
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
) on December 9th and 10th, 1874. At the trial, the
Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general (: attorneys general) or attorney-general (AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have executive responsibility for law enf ...
argued for a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. In his closing arguments, he urged an alternative charge of murder with extreme atrocity, which, according to Massachusetts law, is first-degree murder, but differs from the original charge in the requirement of
premeditation Malice aforethought is the "premeditation" or "predetermination" (with malice) required as an element of some crimes in some jurisdictions and a unique element for first-degree or aggravated murder in a few. Insofar as the term is still in use, ...
. Pomeroy was pronounced guilty on December 10, 1874. The jury added a recommendation for mercy on account of his young age. Pomeroy's attorney, Charles Robinson, filed two exceptions which were overruled in February 1875, at which point Pomeroy was sentenced to death by
hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...
.


After the trial

It remained for the
Governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
to sign the
death warrant An execution warrant (also called a death warrant or a black warrant) is a writ that authorizes the execution of a condemned person. United States In the United States, either a judicial or executive official designated by law issues an ...
and assign a date for Pomeroy's execution. However, Governor
William Gaston William J. Gaston (September 19, 1778 – January 23, 1844) was a jurist and United States Representative from North Carolina. He was the author of the official state song of North Carolina, The Old North State (song), "The Old North State". Gas ...
refused to comply with this executive responsibility. The only legal means of sparing Pomeroy's life was through the
Massachusetts Governor's Council The Massachusetts Governor's Council (also known as the Executive Council) is a governmental body that provides advice and consent in certain matterssuch as judicial nominations, pardons, and commutationsto the Governor of Massachusetts. Council ...
, and only if a simple majority of the nine-member Council voted to commute the death penalty. Over the next year and a half, the Council voted three times: the first two votes upheld Pomeroy's execution, and both times Governor Gaston refused to sign the death warrant. In August 1876, the Council took a third vote, anonymously, and Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to life in prison in
solitary confinement Solitary confinement (also shortened to solitary) is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single Prison cell, cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to ...
. On the evening of September 7, 1876, Pomeroy was transferred from the Suffolk County Jail to the State Prison at Charlestown, and began his life in solitary. He was 16 years and 9 months old. Pomeroy remained incarcerated at the
Charlestown State Prison Charlestown State Prison was a correctional facility in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts operated by the Massachusetts Department of Correction. The facility was built at Lynde's Point, now at the intersection of Austin Street and New Ruthe ...
.Gribben, Mark. "Jesse Harding Pomeroy." ''Crime Library''
17. Resurrection
Retrieved on November 27, 2010.
In prison, Pomeroy claimed that he taught himself to read several foreign languages, including
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
; and one visiting psychiatrist found that he had learned
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
with "considerable accuracy". He wrote poetry and argued with prison officials over his right to have it published, and he studied law books and spent decades composing legal challenges to his conviction and requests for a pardon. A psychiatric report on Pomeroy made in 1914, and quoted extensively in ''The Boston Globe'' after his death, noted that Pomeroy had made 10 or 12 "determined attempts" to escape and that handmade tools were frequently found in his possession. A prison warden reported finding rope, steel pens, and a drill that Pomeroy had concealed in his cell or on his person. According to ''The Globe'', Pomeroy lost an eye after attempting to destroy the side of his cell by redirecting a gas pipe. The 1914 psychiatric report claimed that Pomeroy had shown the "greatest ingenuity and a persistence which is unprecedented in the history of the prison." In 1917, with the support of
District Attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...
Joseph Pelletier, Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to the extent of allowing him the privileges afforded to other life prisoners. At first, he resisted, wanting nothing less than a pardon. He eventually adjusted to his changed circumstances and appeared in a
minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
at the prison. In 1929, by this time an elderly man in frail health, he was transferred to Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he died on September 29, 1932.


In popular culture

* Jesse Pomeroy appears in the novel ''
The Alienist ''The Alienist'' is a crime novel by Caleb Carr first published in 1994 and is the first book in the Kreizler series. It takes place in New York City in 1896, and includes appearances by many famous figures of New York society in that era, in ...
'' by
Caleb Carr Caleb Carr (August 2, 1955 – May 23, 2024) was an American military historian and author. Carr was the second of three sons born to Lucien Carr and Francesca Von Hartz. Carr authored '' The Alienist'', '' The Angel of Darkness'', '' Casing t ...
, and was subsequently featured in the TNT television adaptation, played by Stephen Louis Grush. * ''Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer'' by
Harold Schechter Harold Schechter (born June 28, 1948) is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism ...
. * ''The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer'' by Roseanne Montillo.


See also

* Curtis Jones * Eric Smith * Kristen Pittman *
Murder of Craig Sorger Craig Martin Sorger (February 10, 1990 — February 15, 2003) was a 13-year-old American boy who was murdered by his then 12-year-old friends Evan Drake Savoie (born October 22, 1990) and Jake Lee Eakin (born November 14, 1990) in Ephrata, Washin ...
*
List of serial killers in the United States A serial killer is typically a person who kills three or more people, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial murder a ...
*
List of youngest killers This is a list of children confirmed by reliable sources to have deliberately killed another human being. Individuals in this list are documented to be younger than age 13. __TOC__ List See also * Age of criminal responsibility * Capi ...


References


External links

*
Court TV Court TV is an American digital broadcast network and former pay-television channel. It was originally launched in 1991 with a focus on crime-themed programs such as true crime documentary series, legal analysis talk shows, and live news cover ...
's Crime Library: Mark Gribben
"All about Jesse Pomeroy"
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pomeroy, Jesse 1859 births 1932 deaths American male criminals American murderers of children American people convicted of murder American people who died in prison custody American prisoners sentenced to death Deaths in mental institutions Minors convicted of murder Male murderers People convicted of murder by Massachusetts People from Charlestown, Boston Prisoners sentenced to death by Massachusetts Prisoners who died in Massachusetts detention Recipients of gubernatorial clemency in Massachusetts Suspected serial killers