Jesse Harding Pomeroy (; November 29, 1859 – September 29, 1932) was a convicted American murderer and the youngest person in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be convicted of murder in the first degree. He was found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874. He was also a suspected serial killer.
Background
Jesse Harding Pomeroy was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas J. Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman. He was the second of two children; his brother Charles Jefferson Pomeroy was two years older. Thomas J. Pomeroy (1835–1898) was a veteran of the U.S. Civil War.
Reported attacks in 1871–1872
From 1871 to 1872, there were reports that several young boys were individually enticed to remote areas and attacked by a slightly older boy. However, no one was ever arrested. The attacks were noteworthy because of the extreme amount of brutality used by the assailant. The young boys were beaten with a fist and a belt and, in at least two of the attacks, a knife. Some of the boys were physically scarred permanently.
In 1872, Ruth and the two children moved to South Boston. Pomeroy's attacks on young boys continued, and he was finally arrested and his case heard in front of a Juvenile Court judge. Pomeroy was found guilty and sentenced to the State Reform School for Boys at Westborough, Massachusetts, for his minority (i.e., until he turned 18). The Boston Globe covered this story; the last line of the article: "It is generally concluded that the boy is mentally deficient."
Crimes
In February 1874, at the age of 14, Pomeroy was paroled back to his mother and brother in South Boston. His mother ran her own dressmaking shop, and his brother Charles sold newspapers.
In March 1874, a ten-year-old girl from South Boston named Katie Curran went missing. On April 22, 1874, the mutilated body of four-year-old Horace Millen was found on the marsh of Dorchester Bay. Immediately, the police detectives sought out Pomeroy, despite lacking evidence implicating him in the crime. The body of Katie Curran was found later, in the basement of Pomeroy's mother's dress shop. Her remains were hastily and carelessly concealed in an ash heap.
Trial
Pomeroy was taken to view Millen's body and asked if he committed the murder. At the coroner's inquest, Pomeroy was denied the right to counsel.
The case of Commonwealth v. Pomeroy was heard in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Suffolk County, Boston) on December 9 and December 10, 1874. At the trial, the Attorney General argued for a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. In his closing arguments, he urged an alternative charge of murder with extreme atrocity, which, according to Massachusetts law, is first-degree murder, but differs from the original charge in the requirement of premeditation.
Pomeroy was pronounced guilty on December 10, 1874, with the jury's recommendation of mercy on account of the prisoner's youth.
Pomeroy's attorney, Charles Robinson, filed two exceptions which were overruled in February 1875, at which point Pomeroy was sentenced to death by hanging.
After the trial
It remained for the Governor to sign the death warrant and assign a date for Pomeroy's execution. However, Governor William Gaston refused to comply with this executive responsibility. The only legal means of sparing 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. Over the next year and a half, the Council voted three times: the first two votes upheld Pomeroy's execution, and both times Governor Gaston refused to sign the death warrant.
In August 1876, the Council took a third vote, anonymously, and Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to life in prison in solitary confinement. On the evening of September 7, 1876, Pomeroy was transferred from the Suffolk County Jail to the State Prison at Charlestown, and began his life in solitary. He was 16 years and 9 months old. Pomeroy remained incarcerated at the Charlestown State Prison.