Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers

I’d like to thank Claire Rayner OBE for talking to me about the dangers of offering violence to children. Claire has published numerous books on medical issues and has been an energetic advocate of children’s rights throughout her life.

I also thank Ron Sagar MBE for answering my
interview
questions in depth and for providing unique details. As a Detective Superintendent, he interviewed Britain’s most prolific juvenile killer, Bruce Lee, at least twenty-eight times. With over thirty years experience in criminal investigation, Ron offered much insight into Bruce, a multiply-abused boy who claimed twenty-six lives.

I was similarly fortunate in interviewing Don Hale who fought for seven years to gain the freedom of the wrongly imprisoned Stephen Downing. Stephen was seventeen when he was jailed for a murder he didn’t commit – and was forty-four before his conviction was overturned and he was finally freed. As a result of his first class journalism on the case, Don Hale was made both Man Of The Year and Journalist Of The Year in 2000. I’m delighted that he took time out of his busy schedule to contribute to this book.

Thanks also to crime writer David Bell for drawing my attention to an interesting case I hadn’t heard of. David is author of the
Staffordshire
Murder
Casebook,
Nottinghamshire
Murder
Casebook
and
Leicestershire
Murder
Casebook
amongst others.

Most of my interviewees live in England, but my thanks extend overseas to Florida-based Lisa Dumond, a contributing editor to
Black
Gate
and many other
science
fiction magazines. Though hard at work on her latest novel – and busily promoting her existing novel
Darkers
– Lisa helped me track down some vital
criminal
facts.

I’m also grateful to the organisations which answered my questions and sent me invaluable reports, namely The Children’s Society, Children Are Unbeatable, Save The Children, Kidscape and The Howard League For Penal Reform. Finally, my thanks to The Home Office for providing me with year by year statistics of children who kill.

As a child, I was friends with a twelve-year-old boy who attempted to murder a slightly older girl. They’d argued over which television programme to watch and he fetched a knife from the kitchen and thrust it deep into her back. Paul (not his real name) then left the room.

At first the girl thought that Paul had just punched her very hard. She felt ill and lay down on the settee on her stomach. When the pain intensified she looked back and saw the protruding handle of the knife.

The teenager staggered downstairs to alert a
neighbour
. Thankfully the neighbour left the weapon in situ – if she’d pulled it out, the girl would certainly have died. As it was, the blade had done irreversible damage to one of her lungs and she spent weeks in hospital, initially in intensive care. She later faced reconstructive surgery for the hole left in her back and had to take strong prescription drugs to help her sleep.

Twelve-year-old Paul now faced an attempted
murder
charge – but numerous adults came forward to say what a polite and helpful boy he was. He belonged to a youth organisation and they too were very impressed with him. The judge recommended that he see a
psychiatrist
and the parents said that they’d arrange this, but didn’t. His teenage victim was terrified that he’d attack her again.

It’s unclear how much the judge knew of Paul’s
background – but I know that he and his siblings were regularly terrorised by their alcoholic father. He
verbally
mocked them and beat them with his belt. Paul’s mother did nothing to stop these sessions, instead adopting a slightly martyred tone and telling anyone who would listen that her children were very polite to strangers and that she couldn’t understand why they glared at her when they were at home.

In fairness, I really liked Paul’s parents and spent as much time as possible with them. Both had the
capacity
to be kind and generous to a child who wasn’t their own. Paul’s mother cooked me excellent meals and both parents took me with them on family outings, adventures I’d otherwise never have enjoyed. It was only in child-nurturing that they failed, presumably parenting as they had been parented.

Paul’s attempted murder charge was just one of numerous instances of violence in my childhood so it quickly faded from my consciousness. I rarely thought of it again until halfway through writing this book. Only then did I realise that Paul’s story had the same ingredients as almost every child’s story that you’ll find here. That is, the child is physically and
emotionally
abused by an adult or adults, often the very people that created him. In turn, he – or she – goes on to
perpetrate
violence on someone else.

The children in this book tortured, burnt, battered, strangled or raped their victims – victims aged from two years old to eighty. But these young killers had been tortured, burnt, battered, half strangled or raped before they carried out their pitiless acts.

The first two profiles are historic ones which demonstrate that children who kill aren’t a modern phenomenon brought about by horror videos or by single parent families. There are also brief details of other latter day killers in some of the sociological
chapters
, one of which bears a striking resemblance to the Robert Thompson and Jon Venables case.

The rest of the profiles are contemporary, featuring young killers from Britain and America whose ages range from ten to seventeen. But there are case
studies
in the later chapters involving younger children including a boy who killed at the age of three.

Several of the murders involve a sexual element, but as many readers find it difficult to understand how young children can become sexual predators, I’ve incorporated a chapter on youthful sex killers which offers many more case studies. These killers are male but some were sexually molested by their mothers so the chapter also looks at female sex offending, an under-reported crime.

These crimes are horrifying but comparatively rare. Though the media likes to suggest otherwise, there isn’t an epidemic of mini-murderers in Britain. To give some examples, in 1995 – 1996 there were 30 people under the age of eighteen convicted of murder in England and Wales. In 1996 – 1997 there were 19 and in 1997 – 1998 there were 13 such deaths. 1998 – 1999 saw 25 and the following year there were 23. These later numbers may rise as some cases are still being dealt with by the police and by the courts.

The numbers rise by approximately twenty
convictions per year if we add manslaughter and infanticide to the murder statistics. But children are still far more sinned against than sinning when you consider that one child a week dies in Britain at its
parent’s
hands.

Moreover, the children who commit violent crimes have invariably been victimised by violent adults. A recent study of 200 serious juvenile offenders found that over 90% of them had suffered childhood trauma. 74% of the total sample had been physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused and over 30% had lost a significant person in their life to whom they were
emotionally
attached.

The following profiles, then, are stories of cruelty and of loss, of children who weren’t allowed to
experience
a happy childhood. But they can also be stories of hope because the power to change future childhoods is within our grasp.

Jesse was born to Ruth and Thomas Pomeroy on 29th November 1859. The couple already had a four-
year-old
son called Charles. They lived in a dilapidated rented house in Boston, USA.

The Pomeroys were an impoverished and
argumentative
couple from the start. Thomas was an angry,
heavy-drinking
man who hated his work at the local shipyard. Ruth was more industrious but equally morose, an
intelligent
women who was worn down by life.

She was also worn down with caring for Jesse as he was a physically weak infant who suffered numerous ailments. A serious illness in his first year left one of his eyes milky white. This clouded-over eye gave the
fretful
baby a sinister cast.

Thomas said that he couldn’t stand the sight of his second son and frequently hit the toddler. In response, little Jesse had skin rashes and terrible headaches and insomnia. He also had lengthy nightmares when he did eventually sleep. Charles too was being regularly beaten by his father and took it out on Jesse, who lived in constant fear.

Mrs Pomeroy was equally badly treated by her increasingly alcoholic spouse. Determined not to be the sole victim, she sometimes lashed out at her unhappy sons. Abuse makes children physically tense and clumsy so Jesse walked increasingly awkwardly, his shoulders hunched.

When a child is constantly hurt like this, he naturally wants revenge but there was no way that Jesse could stand up to his enraged, belt-wielding father. So he turned to victims that couldn’t fight back. When he was five years old he caught a neighbourhood kitten and stabbed it with a small knife, enjoying its agonised cries. By the time that a neighbour intervened the animal was bleeding badly and Jesse had apparently gone into a trance. Later Ruth Pomeroy brought home a pair of pet birds to add colour to the household but Jesse waited till she’d gone out then killed them by twisting their necks. He was showing one of the traits of the fledgling serial killer – cruelty to animals. (The other signs include bedwetting into puberty and starting fires.)

When Jesse was six, his father changed employment and became a porter at the local meat market. He now carried carcasses around by day and beat his sons at night.

At school the other little boys played football whilst the increasingly-hunched Jesse sat and watched,
nursing
his most recent bruises. He fared little better in the classroom as he constantly lapsed into daydreams and the teacher caned him for this. We now know that excessive daydreaming is one of the symptoms an abused child displays in a desperate attempt to escape the painful reality of their lives – but many teachers of the mid nineteenth century believed that children were mischief makers who had to be broken down.

Finding that school offered him no more
understanding 
than his home, Jesse started to play truant, going for long walks by himself or sitting reading
novels
. He bought some of them with dimes stolen from his mother’s purse. His father beat him for this and for
playing
truant, using a horsewhip on the child’s naked back.

Jesse ran away from home to escape further pain but was found by his father each time and punished. There was a strong humiliation element to these sessions, with Thomas Pomeroy making Jesse strip before taking him out to the woodshed and hitting him until he bled.