limb,
What should it know of death?
—William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven”
T o secure her son’s release, Mrs. Pomeroy had promised that Jesse would be put to work right away, assisting his older brother, Charles—a strapping sixteen-year-old who earned a small but steady income by selling newspapers. More than a half-dozen papers were published in Boston during the 1870s—the Globe, the Post, the Journal, the Herald, the Daily Advertiser, the Evening Traveller, the Evening Transcript, and others. Charles sold them all from the little newsstand he ran in the front part of his mother’s dressmaking shop at 327 Broadway. He also had a delivery route, with more than two-hundred-and-fifty subscribers.
True to his mother’s word, Jesse was given a job as soon as he got home. Two days after his return, he was put in charge of Charles’s afternoon route. Setting off from the shop at around 3:00 P.M. —a big canvas pouch slung over his shoulder—Jesse would deliver papers to approximately one hundred homes in the city. At other times, he helped out in the store.
Jesse approached his new responsibilities in a methodical fashion, keeping a little notebook in which he neatly listed the names and addresses of his customers and the papers they took. This notebook is still preserved in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and anyone examining it today is bound to be struck by how exceptionally ordinary—how entirely nondescript—it seems. Written in an almost compulsivelytidy hand, it could be the ledger of any earnest, hardworking adolescent—the type of boy who, in the old days, might have tried to earn a pair of roller skates by joining the Junior Sales Club of America and peddling door-to-door greeting cards after school. The notebook stands as concrete evidence of Ruth Pomeroy’s contention that her younger son was a bright, studious, industrious boy.
Of course, Jesse’s energy and aptitude were in no way inconsistent with his extreme psychopathology. Homicidal maniacs of the type that we now call “serial killers” have often been effective, highly organized businessmen and professionals. John Wayne Gacy, for example—whose suburban crawl space contained the rotted remains of twenty-seven victims—ran a thriving contracting business. Ted Bundy distinguished himself in law school and was regarded as a rising young star of the Republican party. Other serial killers have been successful military officers, stock market speculators—even physicians.
Indeed, the disparity between the seeming normality of sociopathic sex-killers and their hidden pathology is one of the most fascinating—and frightening—things about them. In this regard, Jesse Pomeroy was typical of the breed. His rational faculties were fundamentally intact. But his human qualities—empathy, conscience, a capacity for remorse—were completely missing from his makeup. In their place, concealed beneath his “mask of sanity,” was a second, utterly ungovernable self—a being of ferocious appetite that would erupt at the right provocation: a suitable victim, an importunate need, an unforeseen opportunity.
Given Jesse’s predatory nature, it was only a matter of time before the creature he contained showed its face.
* * *
Early on the morning of Wednesday, March 18, 1874—just six weeks after Jesse was released from reform school—a ten-year-old girl named Katie Curran remembered that she needed a new notebook for school. Her mother—who was busy dressing Katie’s younger sister, Celia Abby—told the girl to take some coins from her purse and hurry over to Tobin’s, a neighborhood store not far from the Currans’ South Boston home.
Katie, who was wearing a black-and-green-plaid dress, threw on an old jacket, tied a scarf about her neck, and made for the front door. Just before she stepped outside, she turned back toher mother and called: “Have Celia Abby ready when I get back. We’ve got a new teacher, and
What should it know of death?
—William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven”
T o secure her son’s release, Mrs. Pomeroy had promised that Jesse would be put to work right away, assisting his older brother, Charles—a strapping sixteen-year-old who earned a small but steady income by selling newspapers. More than a half-dozen papers were published in Boston during the 1870s—the Globe, the Post, the Journal, the Herald, the Daily Advertiser, the Evening Traveller, the Evening Transcript, and others. Charles sold them all from the little newsstand he ran in the front part of his mother’s dressmaking shop at 327 Broadway. He also had a delivery route, with more than two-hundred-and-fifty subscribers.
True to his mother’s word, Jesse was given a job as soon as he got home. Two days after his return, he was put in charge of Charles’s afternoon route. Setting off from the shop at around 3:00 P.M. —a big canvas pouch slung over his shoulder—Jesse would deliver papers to approximately one hundred homes in the city. At other times, he helped out in the store.
Jesse approached his new responsibilities in a methodical fashion, keeping a little notebook in which he neatly listed the names and addresses of his customers and the papers they took. This notebook is still preserved in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and anyone examining it today is bound to be struck by how exceptionally ordinary—how entirely nondescript—it seems. Written in an almost compulsivelytidy hand, it could be the ledger of any earnest, hardworking adolescent—the type of boy who, in the old days, might have tried to earn a pair of roller skates by joining the Junior Sales Club of America and peddling door-to-door greeting cards after school. The notebook stands as concrete evidence of Ruth Pomeroy’s contention that her younger son was a bright, studious, industrious boy.
Of course, Jesse’s energy and aptitude were in no way inconsistent with his extreme psychopathology. Homicidal maniacs of the type that we now call “serial killers” have often been effective, highly organized businessmen and professionals. John Wayne Gacy, for example—whose suburban crawl space contained the rotted remains of twenty-seven victims—ran a thriving contracting business. Ted Bundy distinguished himself in law school and was regarded as a rising young star of the Republican party. Other serial killers have been successful military officers, stock market speculators—even physicians.
Indeed, the disparity between the seeming normality of sociopathic sex-killers and their hidden pathology is one of the most fascinating—and frightening—things about them. In this regard, Jesse Pomeroy was typical of the breed. His rational faculties were fundamentally intact. But his human qualities—empathy, conscience, a capacity for remorse—were completely missing from his makeup. In their place, concealed beneath his “mask of sanity,” was a second, utterly ungovernable self—a being of ferocious appetite that would erupt at the right provocation: a suitable victim, an importunate need, an unforeseen opportunity.
Given Jesse’s predatory nature, it was only a matter of time before the creature he contained showed its face.
* * *
Early on the morning of Wednesday, March 18, 1874—just six weeks after Jesse was released from reform school—a ten-year-old girl named Katie Curran remembered that she needed a new notebook for school. Her mother—who was busy dressing Katie’s younger sister, Celia Abby—told the girl to take some coins from her purse and hurry over to Tobin’s, a neighborhood store not far from the Currans’ South Boston home.
Katie, who was wearing a black-and-green-plaid dress, threw on an old jacket, tied a scarf about her neck, and made for the front door. Just before she stepped outside, she turned back toher mother and called: “Have Celia Abby ready when I get back. We’ve got a new teacher, and
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