Jesse Harding Pomeroy was a convicted American murderer and possible serial killer and the youngest person in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted of murder in the first degree.
19 Facts About Jesse Pomeroy
1.
2.
Jesse Pomeroy was found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874.
3.
Jesse Pomeroy was supposedly lured to a vacant boathouse near the South Boston salt marshes; once there, he was beaten and cut with a pocketknife.
4.
Jesse Pomeroy spotted Pomeroy looking through the window and pointed him out to the officers as his assailant.
5.
Jesse Pomeroy was immediately arrested and readily admitted to being the "boy torturer".
6.
On September 21,1872, Jesse Pomeroy was arraigned and heard in front of Juvenile Court Judge William G Forsaith.
7.
The 13-year-old Jesse Pomeroy confessed to the attacks, was found guilty, and sentenced to six years at the State Reform School for Boys in Westborough, Massachusetts.
8.
In February 1874, at the age of 14, Jesse Pomeroy was paroled back to his mother and brother in South Boston.
9.
Jesse Pomeroy's mother ran her own dressmaking shop, and his brother Charles sold newspapers.
10.
Immediately, the police detectives sought out Jesse Pomeroy, despite lacking evidence implicating him in the crime.
11.
Jesse Pomeroy's remains were hastily and carelessly concealed in an ash heap.
12.
Jesse Pomeroy was taken to view Millen's body and asked if he committed the murder.
13.
At the coroner's inquest, Jesse Pomeroy was denied the right to counsel.
14.
Jesse Pomeroy was pronounced guilty on December 10,1874, with the jury's recommendation of mercy on account of the prisoner's youth.
15.
The only legal means of sparing Jesse Pomeroy's life was through the Massachusetts Governor's Council, and only if a simple majority of the nine-member Council voted to commute the death penalty.
16.
In prison, Jesse Pomeroy claimed that he taught himself to read several foreign languages, including Hebrew; and one visiting psychiatrist found that he had learned German with "considerable accuracy".
17.
Jesse Pomeroy wrote poetry and argued with prison officials over his right to have it published, and he studied law books and spent decades composing legal challenges to his conviction and requests for a pardon.
18.
In 1917, with the support of District Attorney Joseph Pelletier, Jesse Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to the extent of allowing him the privileges afforded to other life prisoners.
19.
Jesse Pomeroy eventually adjusted to his changed circumstances and appeared in a minstrel show at the prison.