Source: Chronicle of Crime
Fourteen year old murderer Jesse Pomeroy has been reprieved from hanging. But so dreadful are his offences that the court has ordered that he is to be held in solitary confinement for life: a penalty of unmatched inhumanity for modern times in America.
Pomeroy fell under immediate suspicion when 10 year old Mary Curran disappeared in March, and 4 year old Horace Mullen's body was found in the Boston suburb of Dorchester in April. Thirty nine stab wounds disfigured the child, and his head was almost severed from his body.
Pomeroy had been released from West Borough Reform School in February, having served two years there for a series of crimes of monstrous cruelty to other children. The twelve year old tied up boys and beat them unconcious. He stripped one naked and broke his nose with a board, knocking out several teeth. Another lad was tied to a telegraph pole and cut with a knife after he had been beaten. One victim's wound were doused with salt water. Three were tortured with pins and knife points.
Since those victims of 1871 and 1872 survived, they could describe their assailant, and Pomeroy, who has a hare-lip and a discolored eye, was swiftly arrested.
After Pomeroy had confessed to Horace Mullen's murder his mother, a grocer, moved house. The new tenant discovered Mary Curran's decomposing body in the celler.
This dreadful child criminal is now paying a dreadful penalty.