Jesse Pomeroy

 VICTIMS: Between 14 and 29

In this era where we are constantly hearing about how criminals are getting younger and younger I thought I'd add Jesse Pomeroy to the site just to prove that kids have been killing other kids for a long time now.

Jesse was born in 1860 in South Boston. He had some very striking physical abnormalities, namely a bad hair lip and one eye that was completely white. He also suffered from some sort of retardation. No doubt he had to endure some shocking abuse in his early life as we all know just how cruel kids can be, but unfortunately we don't really know much about the first eleven years of his life.

What we do know is that at the age of eleven, in 1871, he started to show some very scary signs. He would take smaller children into the woods and make them strip off all their clothes. He would then tie them up and torture them. At first he just beat his victims, but as he grew more confident he started to cut them, and once repeatedly poked pins into a small boy. After he had tortured seven children in this way he was caught by police (I guess not many people fit the description given of Jesse)

At the end of 1872 Jesse was sent to the West Borough Reform school, where he was supposed to stay until he turned 21.

But with good behaviour Jesse was released just one and a half years later. And he had a whole new plan. If the kids he tortured were dead they couldn't give a description to police. It was that simple.

In March, 1874, Mary Curren went missing. The ten year old girl found herself in the company of Jesse Pomeroy for a few hours until he became bored with his new toy and killed her.

Then, just one month later, Jesse found a new plaything, four year old Horace Mullin. Jesse took the boy to some marshland outside of the city and slashed him viciously with a knife until he died. The boy was nearly decapitated.

When the body was found police didn't take long to narrow the suspects down, and on top of that list was the fourteen year old, known child torturer, Jesse Pomeroy.

When he was picked up by police he was carrying a bloodstained knife, had mud from the marsh where Horace Mullin was found on his trousers and was wearing shoes that had the same sole print as ones taken from the crime scene. I don't think Jesse was going to get away with this one.

And neither did Jesse, as when police asked him if he killed the four year old, he said, "I suppose I did."

In July of that year Jesse's mother moved house, and the landlord decided to do some renovations, which included digging up the basement. He found the body of Mary Curren. When police asked Jesse about this new development he admitted to killing the girl.

Jesse also admitted to killing 27 others, 12 of which he buried around his mothers house.

With no real defence Jesse Pomeroy was found guilty of the two original murders, and despite his age was sentenced to death. Luckily the state realised this was a little harsh for a 14 year old retarded boy, so they commuted it to life in prison, with the added penalty of being kept in solitary confinement for the rest of his existence. This is truly one of the more horrific sentences I can think of. I honestly think he would have been better off being hung. Can you imagine, at 14 years of age, being told you will never again have human contact? Disgraceful decision.

After forty-one years alone, and countless suicide attempts, common sense prevailed and Jesse was moved to an asylum, where he finally allowed out to see other prisoners, although what social skills he ever had must have been totally gone by that time so what interaction there was must have been far removed from normal.

He eventually died in the asylum in 1932, at the age of seventy-two.
 

MY OPINION

This is one of my all time favourites. The poor kid never received any help, and it’s a wonder they didn’t kill him. A lot of people keep e-mailing me about how patronising I am in my defence of certain killers, but I’d like to know how anyone could defend the action taken out against poor Jesse. I mean, how can you just lock up a 14 year old retarded kid and think that is deserved? Shit like that really pisses me off. Anyway, I’ve no doubt that Jesse had a lot of anger at other children for what I can only imagine as merciless teasing of him, and therefore I can see why he acted out his rage in such a way.