Fiend (38 page)

At first, Jesse sullenly refused to talk. Before long, however, his egotism got the best of him, and—unable to resist the chance to flaunt his ingenuity—he told his captors everything.

His plan—which he had hoped to put into effect sometime during the coming week—was to wait until midnight, when the
officer who kept watch over the inmates retired for the night. With five unattended hours before the morning guard came on duty, Jesse would finish sawing off the outermost bar of the window, squeeze outside his cell, and lower himself to the ground floor of the rotunda by means of a long, knotted rope he had fashioned from the cords that supported his mattress. Though he expected to meet no resistance, he was prepared (as he told his interrogators) to “knock over”—and, if necessary, to kill—“anyone who opposed him.” Once he had cleared the jail building and scaled the outer wall, he intended to make his way to Canada, traveling by night, and “become a citizen of that country.”

How Pomeroy planned to saw off the iron window bar was made clear in a letter that Sheriff Clark discovered inside the boy’s coat pocket. Addressed to his mother, this letter described Jesse’s jailbreak scheme in lengthy detail, and urged her to bring him a file when she came for her next semiweekly visit. The file, he suggested, could be hidden inside “a banana, as fruit can be passed to a prisoner without examination.”

Following his interrogation, Jesse was placed in a different cell, this one on the lower tier of the north wing. One of the most impregnable in the jailhouse, its walls were constructed of solid granite blocks “which no one could cut through in a year,” as Sheriff Clark assured the public. Taking no chances, Clark also posted a twenty-four-hour watch in front of the cell.

Just before locking him inside, turnkey Bradley asked Jesse “why he did it.”

“I ain’t going to be shut up here all my life,” Pomeroy growled in reply. “I was going to make a trial for liberty.”

News of Jesse’s “latest exploit” (as the
Boston Post
called it) caused a sensation. By Thursday morning, every paper in the city had run a major story about the “boy fiend’s” attempted escape. “An Ingenious and Daring Plan!” proclaimed a headline in the
Boston Globe.
“One of the Most Remarkable Attempts of Jail-Breaking on Record!” declared the
Herald.
According to the
Boston Journal,
Pomeroy had diplayed “The Cunning of an Old Jail Bird” in concocting the scheme.

Needless to say, whatever sympathy Jesse may have generated with his just-published memoir was completely undone by the discovery of his planned escape. His brazen bid for freedom
confirmed the worst fears of those who believed that no prison would ever hold the “boy fiend”; while those who scoffed at his claims of insanity felt bitterly vindicated by this proof of his obvious cunning.

“For an insane person, as the professional philantropists claim him to be,” the
Globe
commented dryly, “he certainly displays a remarkably clear head when any planning is to be done.” In a similarly sardonic vein, the
Herald
observed that “If Jesse Harding Pomeroy . . . is an insane person, as was claimed at his trial, the malady has developed itself in a form heretofore unknown to the profession who have made insanity a study. For a boy of his age, he has recently shown himself to be a genius in cunning, and has within a week made for himself a reputation for faculties rarely found in one of his years, and which are proof positive that he is not only in full possession of his senses, but has an extraordinary adaptability for conceiving bold and desperate schemes and plans for defeating justice, and the nerve to attempt their execution.”

*  *  *

While the the rest of the world may have perceived Jesse as a prodigy of evil and a “genius in cunning,” his mother and brother remained stubbornly convinced of his innocence. At one point in mid-April, for example, they had been visited by a man named James Ingalls, who identified himself as a prison guard at Randall’s Island in New York City. According to Ingalls, one of his inmates, a teenaged boy named Coe who was in the last stages of tuberculosis, had confessed to the murders of Horace Millen and Katie Curran and wished to make a dying statement directly to a member of the Pomeroy family.

Mrs. Pomeroy—convinced that her faith was about to be rewarded and Jesse fully exonerated—gave Charlie thirty dollars for travel expenses and sent him off with Ingalls. Over the next few days, she waited impatiently to hear from her older son—but the anticipated telegram never arrived. Finally, nearly a week after his depature, Charlie showed up with nothing to relate but a tale of petty and malicious trickery.

Ingalls, it turned out, was an imposter. After decoying Charlie to New York, he had contrived to finagle all thirty dollars from the boy and left him stranded penniless in the city. Somehow, Charlie had managed to scrape enough money together to make his way home.

As for Ruth Pomeroy, her feelings about her younger boy were expressed in a lengthy letter she sent to a San Francisco woman who had written to ask for a lock of Jesse’s hair. (Like many notorious sociopaths, Pomeroy attracted the fascinated attention of various—mostly female—correspondents, the sort of morbid admirers we now refer to as serial-killer groupies.) Somehow, the press got hold of Mrs. Pomeroy’s letter, which was widely reprinted in papers throughout the country, including the
New York Times.
The full text ran as follows:

DEAR FRIEND

For such I deem you by your writing me in this, my hour of trouble—I feel it my duty to answer you immediately. Although I may differ with you in regard to this case, you have written to me expressing sympathy with me, and I feel deeply grateful for your kindness, although a stranger to me; yet by your letter it shows that there is one woman who does not feel disgraced by writing to a poor, heartbroken mother. I cannot write you that Jesse is guilty of those terrible crimes, although he has been convicted—yet not proved—by law. You will no doubt be surprised, yet I mean just what I say, there is no justice in Massachusetts for a poor boy. Had he been the son of some rich person, the case would have had a more thorough investigation. That is my view of the subject.

Jesse’s confession was given after the girl was found in the cellar of the store occupied by three or four different parties, having to go there every day after coal, within three feet of where the body lay. If three policemen searched the cellar, looked in the very spot where it was found, and found nothing—if it was there, then I don’t see why there was no smell, it being about six weeks after the girl disappeared. When found it was only partially covered with ashes, workmen having worked there nine days without smelling anything. I said his confession was made after the girl was found—or the bones—for there was nothing to recognize her by except shreds of clothing, I was told.

I and my son were dragged to prison, and for what? Just to satisfy the public. I had done nothing, nor did I dream of such a thing as that body being there: nor do I believe, today, that it was. I was taken from my home bareheaded to the station from my work, thinking all the while that everything was coming out right, and I could afford the stings and scorn of people that were cast upon us, when the last blow fell upon me, crushing my heart to atoms. Ah! I never can tell you what we have suffered. No pen can describe, no tongue can tell the deep agony of that hour. From the first I believed the body was placed there after we moved from the store, and that nerved me up to more strength to bear; and I determined to rise above it, believing yet, till at last the terrible news came that Jesse confessed that he had done the deed.

For a while I was almost wild, but when I came to reason the case, I began to doubt, not believing it possible that it could have been done and we not knowing anything about it. They told me Jesse would tell me all about it, but when I asked to see him they refused my request; they kept me five weeks and my oldest boy six, and after I had been home five or six weeks they allowed me an interview. I knew Jesse thought the world of me, and I knew it would nearly set him crazy to have me and Charlie in jail. My suspicions were correct, for when I got the papers I saw by the Chief’s testimony that Jesse had confessed to save his mother and brother. I was not surprised—I knew Jesse better than anyone, and I knew his generous heart; and today he would rather suffer death than have any harm come to us. I do not doubt that he is insane—driven insane by the treatment that was heaped upon us. Jesse is no ordinary boy, but I do believe he is no criminal. If I could see and talk with you, and tell you all the mysterious circumstances surrounding the mysterious affair, I think you would agree with me that there is some terrible mystery about the whole affair that has not been brought to light. Jesse never was of a cruel disposition; there never was a more kindhearted boy. Is it not a little strange that his mother never saw a thing in the boy that would lead me to suppose him capable of committing such crimes? It is entirely different from his disposition—and the people have been blinded by passion, and shut their eyes to the real facts, and been blinded by the horrible crimes recently committed in our midst; and as I write you this last blow has fallen. They tell me that my boy is to die, and for what? Why, to satisfy the mothers of Massachusetts. Yes—mothers. But I do here declare that the time will come when this great injustice will be known. It may be too late to save the life of my boy, yet it must come, sooner or later. Mark what I say, Massachusetts will yet bow in shame for murdering my boy, for murder it will surely be. I have no fear for my boy; God will take care of him. Remember, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Did you see anything in the lock of hair to make you believe Jesse capable of committing such crimes? I do not know as I can get your kind letter to Jesse, as they will not allow it to be given to him.

Again, I thank you for your kindness in writing to a brokenhearted mother.

Deeply grateful,

Mrs. R. A. POMEROY

However impassioned, Mrs. Pomeroy’s letter served no other purpose than to impress Bostonians with the deeply deluded nature of blind mother-love. The startling news of Jesse’s aborted escape inspired a fresh burst of calls for his execution. In spite of this pressure, Governor Gaston remained staunchly opposed to signing Jesse’s death warrant. This principled but highly unpopular stance effectively cost Gaston any chance of reelection. In August, 1875, the Democrats nominated the Honorable Charles Francis Adams to run for governor in the fall elections.

As soon as the campaign got underway, a committee of the city’s most influential women sent a small delegation to sound out Adams’s opponent, Alexander H. Rice, on the subject of Pomeroy. Rice assured them that, if elected, he would promptly set a date for Pomeroy’s execution. Partly as a result of this promise, he handily won the election.

Contrary to his pledge, however, Rice—who was, in truth, no more eager than Gaston to send a teenaged boy to the gallows—found ways of stalling his decision. And by the summer of 1876, the situation had undergone a significant change. Nearly two years had passed since Jesse’s trial, and—though feelings against Pomeroy still ran high among a certain segment of the public—most Bostonians had put the matter out of mind. Moreover, on May 26, 1876, Thomas Piper—“the Monster of the Belfry”—had gone to the gallows, and his death seemed to have slaked, at least to a degree, the public’s thirst for vengeance. Even Lieutenant Governor Knight—the most vociferous supporter of the death sentence on the Executive Council—had done an about-face by then and no longer demanded Jesse’s execution.

The final disposition of the case occurred on the afternoon of
August 31, 1876, when—during a brief, closed-door meeting—the council reversed its previous position and, by a six-to-three vote, decided to commute Jesse’s death sentence. From all reports, the councillors were deeply influenced by the impassioned pleas for mercy submitted by some of the most eminent members of the Suffolk bar, including Judges George Tyler Bigelow, Benjamin F. Thomas, and Dwight Foster, all ex-justices of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Recognizing, however, that the public would not be placated unless Pomeroy were subjected to something more extreme than mere imprisonment, Governor Rice sentenced the boy to “solitary confinement for the remainder of his life.”

The news of the governor’s decision created only a minor stir among the populace. True, there were those who felt that, in sparing Jesse’s life, Rice had commited political suicide. “The Pomeroy business killed Gaston last year,” one Boston man commented bitterly, “and it will send Mr. Rice back to private life.” For the most part, however, the public appeared to respect the decision, viewing it (in the words of the
Boston Herald
) as “the honest conviction of those upon whom the great responsibility of this trying duty has devolved.”

For Ruth Pomeroy, news of the commutation came as a joyous surprise, and she received it, according to the
Globe,
“with tears of gratitude.” Jesse’s reaction, on the other hand, was considerably more subdued. By that time, he was nearly seventeen years old. Though no longer the barely pubescent “boy fiend” of the popular imagination, he was still appallingly young to be facing the awful prospect of a lifetime in solitary. From his vantage point, the governor’s decision was no cause for celebration. Jesse had concluded his published autobiography by remarking that the prospects he faced were equally grim. “If they say I must die, I am dead,” he had written. “If they send me to prison for life, I am dead too.” Now, the second of these two ghastly fates had come to pass. Jesse Pomeroy had been saved from the gallows—but condemned to a living entombment.