Jesse Pomeroy

Jesse Pomeroy was an unattractive boy, with a head that seemed oversized for his body and a right eye that was disfigured with some sort of white spot; although the known pictures of him do not show it very clearly, it was universally commented on by those who observed him. He came from an abusive, broken home, and had a father who had punished him savagely. He had a surly, disagreeable disposition.

In 1872, Jesse began luring younger, smaller boys to secluded places, where he would attack them, restrain them and torture them, often whipping them with his belt after forcing them to strip. After a string of these attacks, he was finally identified as the perpetrator and sent to the Massachusetts House of Reformation at Westborough, Massachusetts. While there, he seemed to reform, and despite the fact that his sentence had been intended to run until his majority, he was out in less than 17 months, having been paroled to the care of his mother.

On March 18, 1874, Jesse was alone in the store operated by his brother and mother when Katie Curran, age 10, came in looking for a notebook for school. Jesse lured her downstairs, cut her throat and concealed the body in a pile of ashes and refuse. Suspicion did not fall on him, despite his known record, since he had no prior history of attacking girls.

On April 22, 1874, Jesse Pomeroy encountered four-year-old Horace Millen in the street. After his murder of Katie Curran, he had apparently tried to entice other children, but had been unlucky. This time, nothing interfered, and he lured Horace off to the Dorchester marsh, where he killed the boy, mutilating him savagely. When the body was found, Jesse was soon under suspicion, and he was arrested the night of the discovery at his mother's home. At the police station, he finally confessed to the murder.

Jesse's mother and brother found themselves thrown on hard times after Jesse's arrest and confession, and they were forced to give up the store premises they had used as a dressmaker's and periodical shop. On May 31, workers clearing out the basement found the decomposed remains of Kate Curran, which aroused great indignation against all the Pomeroys; they were taken into protective custody for their own protection.

Jesse was put on trial and convicted, but then a great controversy erupted over whether he should be put to death, as the law allowed for murderers even as young as he. The governor of Massachusetts refused to sign his death warrant, and this is commonly cited as one of the factors causing him to fail of re-election. His successor, waiting until the furor had died down, commuted Jesse's sentence to life in solitary confinement, a sentence he served at the Charlestown penitentiary.

While in prison, Jesse Pomeroy was a persistent escape artist; he is on record as having tried everything from cutting the bars to digging through the walls to diverting gas into his cell and exploding it. Between escape attempts, he read voraciously, and became known as a self-taught scholar and "jailhouse lawyer." Some accounts of him say that prior to his conviction, he had been a devoted reader of the "dime novels" of his time, with their blood-and-thunder violence, but other accounts say that Pomeroy himself claimed that prior to his imprisonment he had never read a book for pleasure in his life. During his stretch in solitary, he apparently became conversant with several foreign languages, such as French and Spanish, although he could not speak them since there was nobody to speak them to. He also took to writing short essays and poems for the prison newspaper, but they show very little sign of literary merit; they are the sort of things a moderately bright boy would write as a school assignment.

Up until the 1920s, Jesse Pomeroy was one of the best-known convicts in America; some people were outraged at the length of his sentence, while others felt that life of any sort, even in a solitary cell, was too good for such a sadistic monster. Clarence Darrow once said that he had thought of leading a group into Massachusetts and attempting to free Pomeroy. Pomeroy himself relished his fame or infamy, and was crushed when, after being allowed to mingle with other convicts, he encountered men who had never heard of him.

In 1917, Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to the extent of allowing him the privileges afforded to other life prisoners. At first, he resisted this, wanting nothing less than a pardon, but he eventually did adjust to his changed circumstances, and even appeared in a minstrel show at the prison. In 1929, again against his will, he was transferred to the prison farm at Bridgewater; his advanced age and infirmities, including a large inguinal hernia, made it unlikely that he would be able to escape.

Jesse Pomeroy died at the Bridgewater Prison Farm on September 29, 1932, two months short of his 73rd birthday and 53 years after he had been first arrested.

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