0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: childhood. 0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's often painted as a time of joy, simplicity, and innocence. 0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: A sacred period that should be free from the world's darker realities. 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet there are times when this very innocence becomes the mask for something deeply sinister. 0:30 [SPEAKER_00]: welcome back friend to hometown history. 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Today's episode is about one such case, a series of chilling events that would not only shock the community, but also capture the attention of an entire nation. 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the case of Jesse Pomeroy, America's youngest, 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Born in 1859, in Charles Town, Massachusetts, Jesse Harding Palmeroy, was the second child in a seemingly ordinary family. 1:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But behind his innocent facade, looked at darkness that would soon manifest and horrifying ways. 1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: There's some disagreement about Jesse Pomeroy's early life. 1:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Some historians believe his father, Thomas Pomeroy, a civil war veteran and worker at the Charles Town Naval Yard, was abusive towards him, and would often whip him with the horse whip and make him strip naked. 1:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But there are also some people who say that Jesse and his older brother Charles experienced 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: This makes it difficult to really identify where things went wrong in Jesse's life. 1:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Either way, his odd behavior was obvious from early on. 1:59 [SPEAKER_00]: When Jesse was just five years old, a neighbor accused him of killing a cat and throwing it into the river. 2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're a fan of true crime, like I am, 2:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You know that torturing and killing animals is a sign. 2:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Desavio, and Carol Edward Cole. 2:22 [SPEAKER_00]: were all known to torture animals at a young age and later escalated to murders. 2:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Even one of his teachers described him as peculiar and stubborn, not bad, but hard to understand. 2:39 [SPEAKER_00]: To add to that, Jesse had a birth defect that covered his eye in a thick white film. 2:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So he was often bullied by his schoolmates. 2:48 [SPEAKER_00]: With that, Jesse soon became a loner who enjoyed reading dramatic stories about life on the frontier. 2:58 [SPEAKER_00]: All these factors combined set the stage for Jesse, in a way no one could have ever suspected. 3:05 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1872, in the neighborhood of Charles Town in Chelsea, Massachusetts, local children started 3:18 [SPEAKER_00]: was someone who, to their disbelief, was just a child himself. 3:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, a 13-year-old Jesse Pomeroy, would lure them to secluded spots with promises of sweets or money. 3:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Now since Jesse was almost the same age as them, the children trusted him instinctively, not knowing that this trust would be betrayed 3:49 [SPEAKER_00]: at that young age, Jesse which strip and bind his victims, before subjecting them to brutal beatings with his fists and a belt, as time passed, these acts escalated. 4:05 [SPEAKER_00]: He began torturing them with knives, or pins in the face, or genitals, and then it went into outright sexual violence. 4:17 [SPEAKER_00]: During the initial stages, his victims were left alive, but the physical and emotional scars left some of them permanently disfigured. 4:30 [SPEAKER_00]: His first known victim was seven-year-old Tracy Hayden, who was beaten and left on 4:40 [SPEAKER_00]: a few months later, on May 20th, eight-year-old Robert Mayer suffered a similar fate being found beaten in a abandoned outhouse in Chelsea. 4:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The violent continued when Johnny Bouch, another young boy, was discovered on July 22nd, tied up and beaten in a similar setting on Powder Horn Hill. 5:07 [SPEAKER_00]: As the attacks went on, the public's concern grew, especially after the Boston Globe labeled this person as the Fiendish boy. 5:21 [SPEAKER_00]: You have all these terrible attacks happening on kids, and the phrase used to describe this perpetrator is something you'd call a young boy who filled up a car with popcorn for a prank. 5:35 [SPEAKER_00]: This was far beyond normal misbehavior or youthful indiscretions. 5:41 [SPEAKER_00]: With this, the Boston Globe also featured headlines, such as the boy torture her and the red devil to describe Jesse. 5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Based on this, Ruth Pomeroy, Jesse's mother, along with many others in Charleston, began to see how these descriptions matched Jesse. 6:04 [SPEAKER_00]: In an effort to silence the rumors and stop Jesse's violent behavior, she quietly relocated the family to South Boston. 6:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But regrettably, this moved to not achieve what she had hoped. 6:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesse's next victim was George Pratt, a seven-year-old found injured by a local fisherman in South Boston on August 17th. 6:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Not long after, on September 11th, Joseph Kennedy, another seven-year-old, was lured to a vacant boathouse, beaten and cut with a pocket knife, 6:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The youngest of his victims, four-year-old Robert Gould, was found on September 17, tied to a telegraph post near the railway tracks, also beaten and slashed. 7:01 [SPEAKER_00]: All of his victims were younger than him, and that meant he was not going to stop any time soon. 7:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It also meant his victims would get older as he got older, 7:14 [SPEAKER_00]: felt no remorse or so had appeared and it was enough to cause panic. 7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The local community was in an uproar and the pressure was mounting on the authorities to put a stop to these acts. 7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But Jesse was careful. 7:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, more than that, no one suspected a teenage boy to be behind these 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But then, Jesse's own behavior became his downfall. 7:48 [SPEAKER_00]: After one particular attack, where he had beaten and stabbed Joseph Kennedy, near a police station, Jesse made the brave or rather stupid decision to walk past the station. 8:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, he peaked inside the window to catch a glimpse of what was going on. 8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, Joseph recognized him and pointed him out to the officers. 8:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was it, Jesse was arrested on the spot. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Now as anyone would, initially denied any involvement in the attacks. 8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But when he was eventually brought in front of his victims, every one of them identified him as their attacker. 8:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The evidence was overwhelming, and the testimonies of his victims added to it. 8:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Leading to Jesse, eventually confessing to his crimes. 8:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesse was tried and sentenced to reform school until he was 18. 8:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Based on his confessions and the severe nature of his actions, 8:58 [SPEAKER_00]: With that, the community of Boston, which had been held in the grip of fear, breathed a collective sigh of relief. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They expected the worst was behind them. 9:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They could not be more wrong. 9:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow, Jesse's mother managed to get him released on parole within months of this sentencing. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a grave mistake. 9:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea behind the reform program was to give him time to reflect on his actions and think about the consequences. 9:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When that opportunity was taken away, and when he was indirectly told by his mother, she would save him from absolutely every problem. 9:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He returned to his old ways. 9:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Only this time, he went too far. 9:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Just a month after Jesse Palmeroy was released on parole. 10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Ten-year-old Katie Carrand went missing. 10:04 [SPEAKER_00]: She was last seen near the dress shop, operated by Jesse's mother, where Jesse also worked. 10:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And that made the police suspicious. 10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: After all, the situation was very similar to the crimes he had committed. 10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So the police questioned him and searched the shop, but they found no evidence linking him to Katie's disappearance. 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that did not mean he was innocent. 10:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Five weeks later, the body of another kid, four-year-old Horace Millen, was found on a beach, nearly to capitated. 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was not the only disturbing thing about this victim. 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: his body was severely mutilated, with his genitals almost cut off. 10:57 [SPEAKER_00]: There were stab wounds shaped like excess across his body, and it had also been burned. 11:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Near the body were boot prints, matching those of Jesse Pomeroy. 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It was clear by this point that Jesse was in an extremely disturbed state of mind. 11:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The initial crimes had started with beatings, but to murder our child in that manner, meant that regardless of his age, severe measures were needed. 11:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The police questioned him again, and this time they noticed scratches on his skin and blood on his clothes. 11:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It appeared that Horace Millen had tried to defend himself with everything he had. 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: So, the evidence was against Jesse this time as well. 11:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He was arrested on April 24, 1874. 11:57 [SPEAKER_00]: After which he soon confessed to the murder, claiming I suppose I did. 12:02 [SPEAKER_00]: After that, he went on to confess to the murder of 27 others. 12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, although this number was never confirmed, Horace Millen was not his only murder victim. 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: When Jesse's mother sold her shop for much need of cash, following his arrest, the situation worsened for the family. 12:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The new owners found the decomposing body of Katie Coran, in the basement of the shop, leading to yet another confession from Jesse. 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Israel began on December 9, 1874, just after his 15th birthday, and concluded the very next day. 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The difficult thing here was to determine a proper sentence for him, considering the nature of his crime, as well as his young age. 13:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Now although the jury dismissed the defense's claim, the Jesse was insane, they wanted to show some leniency because he was only 15. 13:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The judge, though, didn't agree that Jesse deserved the kindness, and he gave him a death sentence, which he felt was justice for the victim's families. 13:24 [SPEAKER_00]: But the governor's office refused to enforce this decision because he was only a child, 13:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, after two years and three votes, Jesse's sentence was changed to life and solitary confinement, and he was imprisoned in Massachusetts State Prison, on September 7th, 1876. 13:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But the story doesn't end there. 13:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Over the next 50 years, Jesse Palmerroy attempted to escape from prison, multiple times, 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He wants nearly caused an explosion by tampering with the gas pipes and his cell. 14:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The only reason it didn't work was because Jesse ended up incapacitated by the blast himself. 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly, that was not all he did. 14:18 [SPEAKER_00]: During his time in prison, he learned several languages, wrote poetry, and according to 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Later in 1929, Jesse was moved to the state prison farm in Bridgewater, Massachusetts to live out his final years. 14:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He died of a heart attack on September 29, 1932, just before his 73rd birthday. 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Marking the end of a complex chapter in the history of America, by the time of his death 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And this was the longest that America had kept someone behind bars up to that time. 15:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Now even though he is known as the youngest serial killer in the history of America, the term serial killer was coined years after he died. 15:20 [SPEAKER_00]: According to the term, the serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people. 15:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesse's pattern of selecting and attacking victims showed early signs of acts later associated with serial killers like Dhammer and Bundy. 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: His case is the prime example of how criminal tendencies can be evident from early on. 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is our window for intervention to try and avoid the possibility of yet another serial killer in this world. 15:53 [SPEAKER_00]: If Ruth Pomeroy had allowed Jesse to complete his sentence the first time, it might have made a difference. 16:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But at this point, all we can do is speculate. 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: and that wraps up today's episode. 16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The case of Jesse Palmerroy poses some interesting questions about whether killers are born or made. 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And if they're born that way, our interventions and reform programs enough to change that. 16:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to Home Town History and be sure to follow along for more stories from the past.
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