Jesse Pomeroy died on September 29th, 1932 of natural causes. He was seventy-two years old and spent fifty-eight of those years in prison, forty-one in solitary confinement. As a young teen Pomeroy ran rampant through the streets of nineteenth-century Boston, torturing young boys and later killing two children – making him the youngest serial killer in American history (Habel). This has garnered him no shortage of infamy, resulting in multiple writings on his life and his crimes such as the original reporting of the case run by the New York Times headlined as “A YOUNG DEMON”; a nineteenth-century crime pamphlet titled “Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend”; to more reflective, modern-day explorations of his crimes in the form of podcasts such as Aaron Habel and Justin Evans’ “The Boston Boy Fiend.” While all of these works are inherently dealing with the same subject matter, they are all fundamentally different in the way they approach the material, the facts of the case that they feel are important, as well as who they are producing this information for. These defining variances make all the difference in the way that the case is consumed and understood by a contemporary audience.
Before Jesse Pomeroy was known as a serial killer, he was just a “peculiar boy” from Boston. As a child he was abused: forced to remove his clothes so that his father could beat him until his mother eventually tired of the abuse and “ran him out of the house” (Habel). When he was twelve Pomeroy lured a number of small boys to remote locations and tortured them methodically for hours before leaving them strung up to be found. This went on from the winter of 1871 until his arrest in the fall of that year, where he was sentenced to the “House of Reformation…for the remainder of his minority” where he was to be closely watched and guided into better behavior (Habel). He was released after only sixteen months of his sentence for outstanding behavior, and within two months returned to his “fiendish” ways (Anonymous). On March 18th, 1874, ten-year-old Katie Curran wandered into Pomeroy’s mother’s dress shop looking for a notebook. Pomeroy lured her into the basement, slit her throat and further mutilate her body before hiding it in an ash heap where she wouldn’t be discovered for another five months (Anonymous, Habel). Then on April 22nd, 1874, Pomeroy lured four-year-old Horace Millen to an abandoned stretch of beach along the marshlands and stabbed him to death, leaving his mutilated body in the mud for anyone to find. He was arrested the following day but did not admit to the murder until he was forced to be face to face with the corpse. He did not admit to the murder of Katie Curran until her body was discovered that July, after his mother and brother taken into custody as accessories to the crime.
On April 24th, 1874 the New York Times published an article titled “A YOUNG DEMON,” which explained that fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy had confessed to the murder of Horace Millen. The article appeared directly in the middle of the front page and primarily reported his known crimes and recent confession. The article also focused heavily on the police investigation, explaining that they knew to haul Pomeroy in based on “a knife…found on his person spotted with blood…a spot of blood marked the breast of the under-shirt, and his boots were covered with mud of that peculiar hue…of [the] marsh lands” (YOUNG). This is not the only time that the article focuses in on the polices’ efforts: they also acknowledge the work they went through to identify the footprints found on the beach as well as the fact that the tracks indicated that Pomeroy helped Millen down from the wharf to the ground before walking him to his death (YOUNG).
The article also explains the reason that Pomeroy was released from the reform school, but it reads as part afterthought and part explanation. Knowing that Pomeroy had been forced to attend the reform school as part of his sentence, many people were demanding to know why he had been allowed back out into the community – the Times explained that if the boys display “exemplary” behavior and their “parents are anxious to have them returned” that they may be released early (YOUNG). This portion of the article reads like the Times is trying to increase public understanding over the Police’s mistake, given the nature of the public’s outcry. This makes sense in relation to the list that the article provides of all the boys that Pomeroy tortured. What is distinctly notable about the way that all three texts present this list of boys is that they are all different –while they generally have the same names listed, none of them can agree upon the order in which these boys were attacked. This alludes to the fact that exact order that the boys were assaulted remains unknown – even the article written days after his arrest does not seem to know the order, for the boys are not listed chronologically (YOUNG). To a certain extent, this may not have been seen as important to the writer of the Times article – the purpose of which was to inform the public of Pomeroy’s confession, and the torture of the boys had been covered the year before. The article gives us the who-what-where-when-and-why of the moment that the readers are primarily concerned about, and additional coverage or repetition of information may not have been necessary or seen as significant. This decision may also, in part, be an appeal to the ethos of their readership in that detailing what Pomeroy did reminds the public not only how monstrous the boy was, but that the Millen murder was not a contained event that came out of nowhere. This is an important element of the article because the people of Boston are angry, and the Times is only too happy to encourage these feelings. This fact – working alongside the list of boys—maintains the public’s interest in the case and continues to encourage paper sales.
In Harold Schechter’s True Crime: An American Anthology there is a thirty-page murder pamphlet on the case titled “Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend.” In his introduction of the piece, Schechter explains that “American crime pamphlets had…evolved into an unabashedly sensationalistic form of popular entertainment” and that these publications were not necessary cherished for the accurate retelling of events (Schechter). While this makes for an engaging read of the crime, it does miss more than a few of the facts in order to perpetuate the story already in circulation; leaving out Pomeroy’s history of abuse as well as the questionable police practices surrounding the case in order to present the image of him that they wanted to facilitate, which was that of a malicious, violent murderer without remorse (Anonymous). Given that this fits within the genre standard this is not so much of an issue, but in terms of accuracy, it leaves much to be desired when looking for usable, viable information. An example of this is the list of boys and what Pomeroy did to them – accurate or not it grabs and maintains the reader’s attention, leading them through the killer’s conquests (Anonymous, Habel). This is seen in both the pamphlet and the podcast, and it works well within the narrative that the pieces weave, as both of them are strongly focused on the information as much as, if not more so, the storytelling.
Additionally, the pamphlet and the podcast both mention the reform school as a way of making sure that they are presenting all the facts as well as providing a deeper look into the mind of Pomeroy. The pamphlet notes that Pomeroy was “exceptionally good” and the podcast also states that his behavior whilst at school was exemplary (Habel, YOUNG). This showcases Pomeroy’s manipulative nature to the readers, while also explaining why Pomeroy was released. This answered the question of how he was able to commit the murders and develops him as a character over the course of the narrative, which is important given that it is meant to appeal to a readership looking to be entertained. Without this blend of information and character development, the pamphlet would not have been as successful because it either would have been boring or uninformative.
All of the sources mention the fact that the tracks police found on the beach indicate that Pomeroy helped Millen down from the wharf to the ground before walking him to his death. This is a substantial element in all three of the pieces, and the main reason seems to be to highlight the vicious nature of these attacks. By explicitly pointing out that Pomeroy helped the boy down, all three sources are attempting to evoke both sympathies for the young boy and disgust for Pomeroy. The goal of the pamphlet is to once again highlight the deficits in Pomeroy’s character, adding to this sensationalistic retelling of the crime by showing the care that Pomeroy took to ensure that the boy got to the ground safely. This works within the genre of the piece because it turns Pomeroy into a villain, one that would smile while stabbing you in the back.
Out of the three, “The Boston Boy Fiend” from Aaron Habel and Justin Evans delves the deepest into Pomeroy’s life, detailing his history of abuse as well as providing anecdotes into his childhood, detailing his life during the trial, and acknowledging his long prison life. Produced 146 years after the crime took place, Habel and Evans provide more of a complete picture of the crimes and the circumstances that led Pomeroy to commit them than the other two sources. This information is important because it gives a full, detailed image of the crime rather than a snapshot of a specific instance or aspect. Habel and Evans are able to do this because of the nature of Podcasts as a genre – they are a more variable form of storytelling and allow for a different type of analysis, one that is both conversationally and narratively driven. This allows for the podcast on the Pomeroy murders to be more inclusive and expansive than the original article or the later murder pamphlet, which was restricted to thirty pages.
Like the Times article, Habel and Evans deliver the information about the footprints as a way to thicken the Pomeroy narrative while also providing an opportunity to dip into a discussion about the investigation practices of the time. Habel and Evans talk for a lengthy amount of time about the way that the police officers tracked the boot prints, fitted the boys’ shoes into the marks, and then used Plaster of Paris to confirm that the prints belonged to Pomeroy and Millen (Habel). This shows that while the podcast is attempting to inform the listener about Pomeroy’s misdeeds it is also attempting to shed light on the police practices of the time. The split focus of their purpose results in an informative, multifaceted listening experience.
Something that each of the sources does differently is the presentation of the death of Katie Curran. The news article does not mention Curran at all because the article was written the day after Pomeroy’s arrest, and Curran’s body would not be discovered for another four months. The Pamphlet provides the information in the order in which the people learned the information as it pertained to Pomeroy. This is effective because it is chronological to the public, providing the readers with the information the way that it was received at the time while also keeping Pomeroy as the center of the work. Given that this pamphlet was in circulation the year following the conviction, it is likely that many of the people who bought it had lived through the events. By presenting the case as the people had experienced it the first time the writer of the pamphlet is creating a more immersive reading experience, given that the readers can look back on their own memories of the events they are reading about. The podcast takes a different approach, providing the information in chronological order the way that it happened and, in a sense, the way that the police worked through it. This works directly in relation to all the commentary that this podcast gives us about law enforcement, detective work, and court dealings of the time and acts as a way for the reader to follow along with that part of the narrative. Additionally, telling the story chronologically in this way allows for more suspense within the narrative without sensationalizing the story, unlike what we see in the pamphlet, which enhances the storytelling aspect of the recording.
Jesse Pomeroy was born November 29th, 1859 in Charlestown Massachusetts to Ruth and Thomas Pomeroy. He would grow to become one of America’s youngest and most vicious killers, torturing and later killing young boys because of an uncontrollable compulsion. While the connections between these three texts are important what is interesting about the Pomeroy legacy has less to do with what similarities but the disparities in what is recounted. It is clear that the audience and the writer’s purpose play a key role in the way that the case is presented over a variety of genres, and that these varying presentations of the crime are directly related to the way that the case material is consumed and understood by its readership, original and contemporary.
Works Cited:
Anonymous. “Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend.” True Crime: An American Anthology, edited by Harold Schechter, Library of America, 2008, pp. 98-116.
Habel, Aaron, Justin Evans. The Generation Why Podcast: The Boston Boy Fiend – 235 – Generation Why. http://thegenerationwhypodcast.com/the-boston-boy-fiend-235-generation-why. Accessed 9 Mar. 2018.
“A Young Demon.: Frightful Record of Jesse Pomeroy, of South Boston His Last Act the Confession of a Murder.” New York Times, 1874, pp. 1.
Dogears and Papercuts 