Jesse Pomeroy

"Put me somewhere, so I can't do such things."

Jesse Harding Pomeroy, a.k.a. "The Boston Boy Fiend" and "The Boy Torturer", was the youngest person convicted of murder in the first degree in the history of Massachusetts, when he was fourteen years old.

Background
Jesse Pomeroy was born in Boston in 1859, the second son of Thomas Pomeroy, an alcoholic dockyard worker, and his wife Ruth. Jesse was intelligent but had trouble socializing with other children because of his large size for his age, periodic epileptic seizures, and the fact that he was born with a whitish membrane over his right eye, similar to a cataract. He disliked sports and spent most of his free time reading violent tales of the Indian Wars. When he played with other children, it was often as an Indian in "Scouts and Indians" games, where he would reenact tortures he had read about. Jesse was also subjected to horrific physical abuse by his father from a young age. The common punishment was to be taken to the outhouse, stripped naked and hit with a belt until blood was drawn, a ritual that he later imitated with his victims. Before his tenth birthday, Jesse killed his mother's songbirds by tearing their heads off, and was later caught torturing a neighbor's cat with a knife.

Crimes, Arrest and Incarceration
Jesse's first human victim was four-year-old William Paine, who was found in an isolated outhouse of Powder Horn Hill on Boxing Day 1871. He was hanging from the ceiling by a rope tied to his wrists, semiundressed and suffering from hypothermia, and had been hit repeatedly with a belt or switch. In the following months, three more young boys denounced that they had been lured to the same place by an older boy with brown hair, who fondled himself while he tortured them. The news caused outrage in Boston and prompted police to post a $500 reward for any clue leading to the arrest of the criminal, but they also took on a life of its own, and soon it was misreported that the perpetrator was a young adult with red hair and a pointy beard.

On July 20, 1872, only two days before Jesse tortured his last victim in Powder Horn Hill, Thomas Pomeroy gave Jesse his most severe beating yet. Ruth had enough this time and chased her husband out of the family home with a knife. He never returned. A few days later, Ruth and her children moved to South Boston, where Jesse's attacks became closer in time and more violent than ever before. He scratched George Pratt with his nails, stabbed him with a needle, and bit chunks out of his cheek and buttocks; repeatedly stabbed Harry Austin with a pocket knife and attempted to cut off his penis, slashed Joseph Kennedy's face and dunked him in salt water, and also slashed and was about to cut Robert Gould's throat when he was startled by people approaching and fled. After Gould described his attacker as a "big boy" with a "milky" eye, the police enlisted Joseph Kennedy to accompany them in a tour of Boston's schools as a way to identify the attacker. Pomeroy dodged them when they visited his school, but just after they returned to the station, for reasons never explained, he entered the building and left immediately. Kennedy recognized him and he was arrested in the street nearby. After spending the night in a cell and being threatened with a 100-year prison term if he didn't cooperate, Pomeroy admitted his guilt in all the attacks and was sentenced to live in the Westborough Boys Reform School until he was eighteen. However, his good behavior at the institution and the efforts of his mother, who was convinced that Jesse was framed, granted him an early release after a year and a half. Six weeks after leaving Westborough, on March 18, 1874, Pomeroy was tending to his mother's shop when ten-year-old Katie Curran walked in and asked if they carried notebooks. Pomeroy told Curran to come downstairs to see if they had any left, and once in the cellar, he cut her throat and stabbed her groin repeatedly "to see how she would react". He then buried the body under a pile of ashes behind the water closet, washed himself and returned to work. During the following month he tried to lure young boys again, but he could not convince any or they were whisked away by people who knew of his reputation. After the stabbed and mutilated body of four-year-old Horace Millen was found in a marsh out of the city, Pomeroy was immediately arrested without evidence. He confessed while being held alone by the police, but recanted after being assigned a lawyer. Amidst backlash, his mother was forced to sell the shop, which ironically led to the discovery of Curran's body. This time, Pomeroy admitted sole responsibility of Curran's death only after he was told that his mother and elder brother were arrested as presumed accomplices.

Though Pomeroy stood trial for Millen's murder and not Curran's, the new development convinced his lawyer to drop the claim of innocence and aim to get him adquitted for reason of insanity. The jury was not convinced by the allegations and on February 1875, Pomeroy was found guilty of the premeditated murder of Horace Millen and sentenced to die by hanging, the only penalty for this charge at the time. However, the execution was delayed for a year and eventually commuted to life in solitary confinement after two governors refused to sign the death warrant. For the next 41 years, Pomeroy's sole interactions were the guards and his own mother, who visited him once a month until she died. In 1917 he was allowed to join the rest of the prison population, and in 1929 he was moved to a prison farm due to his deteriorating health, where he died in 1932.

Modus Operandi
Excluding Curran, whose murder was a crime of opportunity, Pomeroy targeted lone boys four to eight years old. He would lure them to isolated areas using different pretexts, such as going to see some spectacle together or hiring them to help with an errand. Once alone, Pomeroy would tie them, strip them and hit them with a belt, stick or his own fist while he masturbated. He escalated to slashing and stabbing with his fifth victim, and was ready to kill by the eighth, but he was prevented from doing so by passers-by. After his institutionalization he changed his MO to cutting the throat of his victims before stabbing their groin repeatedly. He threatened some of his victims with castration but only carried it with the last one, Horace Millen.

Known Victims

 * 1871:
 * December 26: William Paine, 4
 * 1872:
 * February 22: Tracy Hayden, 7
 * May 20: Robert Maier, 8
 * July 22: Johnny Balch, 7
 * August 17: George Pratt, 7
 * September 5: Harry Austin, 6
 * September 11: Joseph Kennedy, 7
 * September 17: Robert Gould, 5
 * 1874:
 * March 18: Katie Curran, 10
 * Unspecified date, April: Harry Field, 5
 * April 22: Horace Millen, 4

On Criminal Minds
Jesse Pomeroy is similar to three unsubs that appeared on Criminal Minds, all with first names beginning in "Je-":
 * Jeffrey Charles: Both had birth conditions that made interaction with other children difficult (Jeffrey's severe dairy allergy, Pomeroy's epilepsia and pale eye), were abandoned by one parent and cared by the other alone, lured other children away and beat them, committed their first crimes when they were twelve years old, and visited a police station while their crimes were being investigated.
 * Jeremy Sayer: Both had one sibling considered the "good" one, were abandoned by their fathers, killed pets, gained the trust of their victims (mostly children) before tying, beating and stabbing them; and killed people for the first time in their adolescence. Jeremy also had unspecified antecedents for sexual assault, and there was a sexual motive in Pomeroy's attacks.
 * Jerry Tidwell: Both were abused by their fathers, often with a belt, and subjected their victims to the same abuse after tying them up; both killed for the first time in their teens, and both resumed their crimes after a period in which they were institutionalized minors.