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Jesse Pomeroy (1859-1932), was America's first infamous young
murderer. At the age of 12, he had tied up and tortured several young boys
in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He mercilessly beat his victims, and permanently
maimed them by slashing with a knife or by knocking out teeth.
After
moving to South Boston in 1872, he continued to capture and torture more
boys, all between the ages of seven and eleven. According to the April 24th
1874 New York Times, Pomeroy had "stripped, gagged, tied to a telegraph
pole, whipped and cut with a knife in the head" one of his young victims.
Pomeroy's father worked in a market in downtown, and his mother became a
respectable dress maker in South Boston. Eventually the police arrested
Jesse, and he was convicted and sentenced to six
years at the Boys Reform School at Westborough, Massachusetts. Pomeroy was
very intelligent, and because of good behavior, was released after
serving only one year and five months.
At age 14, on April 23rd 1874, Jesse Pomeroy tortured and brutally murdered
a four year-old boy in a marsh in Dorchester Bay. During the immediate
police investigation, the murder scene footprints indicated: "The tracks showed
plainly that Pomeroy jumped off the wharf into the soft clay, and then took
his little victim down, lending assistance by a swing of the arms. The boots
of the murdered boy exactly fitted the smaller prints and corresponded
precisely with the plaster casts taken from the prints." The NY Times
article did not mention the murderer's footprint casts, but did say dirt on Pomeroy's
boots matched the curious color of the mud at the wharf. Later that day,
Pomeroy was taken to the coroner's office to view the body [without council]. He then
confessed to the murder and said he wiped blood from his knife by dipping it
in the mud.
In July 1874, Jesse Pomeroy also confessed to the slaying of a 10
year-old girl who had been missing since March. He had coaxed her into the
basement of his mother's dress shop, cut her throat, and then buried her
under an ash heap.
When asked why he committed the murders he stated "I couldn't help it."
A sensational trial took place and Jesse Pomeroy was found guilty in
December 1874. He was sentenced to death, but Governor William Gaston would
not sign his death warrant due to his age (14). The frustrated Governor's Council, which could
legally commute Pomeroy's sentence to life in prison, voted twice to affirm
Pomeroy's death sentence. A third anonymous vote in 1876 by the council did
commute his sentence, and Jesse spent the next 56 years in prison for the
brutal murders.
Pomeroy was called the Boy Fiend, the Boy Murderer, the
Young Demon, and the Child Murderer by the press of his day.
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