Fiend

by Harold Schechter

  In any event, Baxter complied with his jailmate’s request by describing (if not quite as fully as Jesse had hoped) a particularly brutal whipping he had received from his father. Jesse’s reply is arguably the most revealing letter in the series:

  Dear Will,

  Your note I have. I think you ought to write me longer letters but I suppose it tires you. Your account of the whipping is amusing. Tell me more about it. Did it hurt very much and was [sic] your clothes off at the time he did it. I will tell you about the hardest licking I got was about 3 or 4 years ago. I played truant and stole some money from mother. My father took me into the woodshed and I had to strip off my jacket & vest and two shirt so as to leave my back naked. Father took a whip and gave me a very hard whipping. It hurt me very much and every time I think of it I seem to be undergoing the flogging again. My father was sorry he had to whip & use so much severity but as I had played truant very much he thought I deserved it. You may just bet I never played truant again. Another severe flogging I got was . . . in July 1872. I ran away from home and got brought back again. My father gave me a lecture and ended by ordering me upstairs and take off the whole of my close [sic]. He took a strap and gave me a sound liking [sic]. It hurt me did yours.

  The perverse, salacious tone of this note (“Your account of the whipping is amusing. Tell me more about it. Did it hurt very much . . . ”) is, of course, profoundly unnerving and speaks volumes about Jesse’s alarmingly sadistic nature. Even more significant, however, is the light this letter sheds on one major cause of his pathology. Though information about Jesse’s background is scarce, we do know that there was a history of wife-beating and child-abuse in his family. His paternal grandfather had been known in the community as a drunken brute who had driven his wife to divorce—a desperate expedient at the time. Jesse’s mother had left her husband for the same reason. A violent alcoholic (who would ultimately die of cirrhosis of the liver), Thomas Pomeroy, Jesse’s father, was always ready to mete out extreme physical punishment to his unruly younger boy. (Why Jesse received harsher treatment than his brother is an intriguing question, though his deeply unsettling appearance—repugnant even to his own father—seems to have been one of the reasons.)

  Indeed Jesse’s only recorded memories of his father involved beatings. In a published reminiscence, for example, he recalled the time he had attended a Sunday School picnic and returned home with his clothes so “covered with dust” that his mother seemed to despair of ever getting them clean. Thomas Pomeroy’s solution—though presumably offered as a sort of jest—was nevertheless typical of the man. “Give him a good thrashing,” he had growled, “that will make the dust come off.”

  While a brutalized upbringing might not be the sole cause of psychopathic lust-murder, it is certainly a key element. Criminological studies reveal that, almost without exception, serial killers have suffered extreme, often grotesque, forms of abuse—physical, emotional, sexual—during childhood. (Henry Lee Lucas, to cite just one of many examples, was forced to watch his prostitute-mother have sex with her tricks. She also made him dress in little girl’s clothes, routinely beat him with a two-by-four, and took pleasure in torturing his pets.) As forensic psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Lewis observes in her 1998 book, Guilty by Reason of Insanity, “murderers are made not born.” Subjected to torturous punishment as children, such people grow up full of a murderous rage that is directed against all of humanity—a frenzied need to take vengeance on the world by inflicting as much pain and death as possible.

  To be sure, other factors beside child-abuse are involved in the creation of a serial killer, and Jesse’s next letter to Willie Baxter reveals another possible source of his pathology:

  Friend Will,

  I think you ought to tell me the answers to the questions I asked you in my letter last night. Don’t be afraid of answering, for I only want to see if you know what I did to those boys on Powderhill [sic] and the railroad. Answer in full all you know about it and I will tell you if you are right. Did you know of Will Almeder ever getting a whipping. I never did. Tell me some more of your floggings for want of something to talk about. Tell me it the same as I have told you of my two floggings, if it hurt and how your father did it. What do you think of me, my appearance. Do I look like a bad boy. Is my head large. You don’t look as though you were 14 but as though you were only 10 or 12. I hope you do not do anything bad to yourself while you are in here. You understand what I mean don’t you. I meant playing with yourself or abusing yourself. I am glad you prayed last night.

  Yours truly

  J. H. Pomroy [sic]

  P.S. teare [sic] up my notes

  * * *

  Jesse’s ostensible solicitude for Willie (“I hope you do not do anything bad to yourself while you are in here”) clearly masks a keen, prurient interest in the younger boy’s masturbatory habits. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the letter, however, is the part concerning Jesse’s appearance.

  At the core of most serial killers is a bottomless well of self-loathing. Their crimes are a way, not only of striking back at the world, but of boosting their egos. Torturing helpless victims becomes their perverse means of achieving a sense of power. The notoriety they receive also provides them with a twisted feeling of significance, affirming that they are people to be reckoned with.

  The extreme sense of inadequacy that underlies their behavior derives from various sources. Foremost among these, of course, is growing up in a disturbed, pernicious household, where they are regularly beaten, belittled, and made to feel utterly worthless. But there may be other causes, too. In an intriguing 1994 article titled “The Role of Humiliation and Embarrassment in Serial Murder,” sociologist Robert Hale argues that, in many instances of serial murder, the killer “is releasing a smoldering rage that is rooted in early embarrassment.”

  There is no question that, from his youngest days, Jesse Pomeroy had been made to suffer a great deal of embarrassment. With his exceptionally ill-favored looks—his milky eye, oversized head, heavy jaw, and satchel mouth—he had been ridiculed all his life, not only by his peers but by his own inimical father as well. The “smoldering rage” he must have felt as the result of this constant humiliation was manifested most clearly, perhaps, in the way he mutilated the faces of several of his young victims. These acts can be seen as the pathological expression of his own sufferings, as if—having been unfairly disfigured by life—he was determined to make others share the same fate.

  Given the horrendous nature of his crimes, it is clearly impossible to work up much pity for Jesse Pomeroy. Still, of everything he wrote, the plaintive questions he posed to Willie Baxter—“What do you think of me, my appearance. Do I look like a bad boy. Is my head large”—come closest to eliciting a certain amount of sympathy. They reflect the painful self-consciousness of an unsightly adolescent whose peculiar looks have brought him a lifetime of mortification.

  Complying with Jesse’s insistent demands—“Write and tell me what I did to those boys & the boy and girl. . . . Tell me all you have heard of me doing to those boys. . . . Don’t forget to tell me about what you have heard of my doing on Powderhill & railroad”—Willie evidently replied to this letter by repeating what he knew about Pomeroy’s crimes. Jesse’s next two letters are extremely important. Written in the belief that their contents would remain confidential (he had advised the younger boy to destroy their correspondence and warned him not to “say anything to anyone of what we write for if we are found out we will be punished”), they constitute nothing less than signed, unequivocal confessions of his crimes. As such, they stand in marked contrast to his public statements, which would continue to hedge on the question of his guilt.

  The first of these notes concerns Horace Millen and Katie Curran:

  Friend Willie,

  You asked me to tell you why I did those things and what I said to the boy and girl. The girl came in the store one morn and asked for paper. I told her there is a store down stairs. She went down, I killed her. Oh
Willie you don’t know how bad I feel for her and also the boy. What I said to the boy I have no reccollection [sic] but you know I killed him too. I feel very bad for him, and believe me I can’t tell you the reason I did those things.

  In the next letter, written later the same day, he spoke about the depredations he had committed in Chelsea and South Boston:

  Dear Will,

  I met the boys and took them up on the hill and beat them but I do not remember sticking pins or knifs [sic] in them or putting salt water in their backs. I do not know why I did those things. I hope you will never do as I did, but hope you will and I also will be good boys here after don’t you. Do you mean to be good or bad. Willie I hope you will be good. Give your heart to God. Are you a Christian.

  A few days later, Willie Baxter was taken to court and sentenced to a stint at Westborough. In his final letter to his friend, Jesse offered him the benefit of his own experience by telling him what to expect at reform school. Like his previous letters, this one contains a bizarre mix of elements—a preoccupation with corporal punishment, a markedly erotic interest in the younger boy, and a prim, paternalistic tone—that make it ineffably creepy:

  Friend Willie,

  Each of the boys have a separate bed. They go in bathing every Saturday. The boys work at making chairs, washing clothes, making shoes, getting the dinner for the boys and officers, and working on the farm. I hope you will behave up there for if you do you will get out soon. If you don’t you will get a good flogging every time you don’t do right. . . . Don’t do anything bad to yourself. You know what I mean don’t you Willie. Don’t mind the boys up there. They will plage [sic] you at first and ask you to do bad things but don’t mind them. If you do you will get a whipping with a strap. Tell me about your being in Court. How do you feel to-day Willie. I am well. Did you undress & pray last night. I took off all my clothes except my shirt. I prayed too. Tell me all.

  Your friend forever

  Jesse H. Pomroy [sic]

  40

  Human beings seem so many departures, more or less gross, from the line of beauty. For every success in nature’s evident aim at perfection there are a thousand failures, and when the deviation from the type becomes extreme, we call it monstrous. What shall we do with it?

  —Epigraph to the Autobiography of Jesse H. Pomeroy (1875)

  Like certain infamous serial killers of our own era (most notably John Wayne Gacy, whose paintings of leering circus clowns and deranged-looking Disney characters are prized by collectors of macabre art), Jesse Pomeroy possessed something of a creative streak. His metier, however, was not visual art but the written word. Though the letters he composed to Willie Baxter display little, if any, literary potential, he clearly had a certain affinity for writing. Indeed, he would eventually turn himself into a jailhouse poet, contributing occasional verses to various publications and even issuing a slender volume of his collected works.

  His first significant production, however, was a two-part memoir, initially published in the Boston Times on successive Sundays in July, 1875. Immediately following its newspaper appearance, this flagrantly self-serving life story would be reissued as a slender, fifteen-cent volume entitled the Autobiography of Jesse H. Pomeroy, Written by him while imprisoned in the Suffolk County Jail and under sentence of death for the murder of H. H. Millen.

  There seems little doubt that this work is, by and large, the product of Jesse’s own hand. True, it has clearly been treated to a certain amount of editorial polishing (as Jesse’s letters indicate, he was an egregious speller, consistently miswriting even his own last name as Pomroy). And the syntax and punctuation have also been regularized for publication.

  Even so, the memoir is a thoroughly amateurish piece of work, rambling, repetitious, almost unreadably dull in places—precisely the sort of thing that a moderately literate fifteen-year-old would produce. Even Jesse was abashed by its shortcomings, describing it in a closing apology as “merely the disjointed ideas that are in my mind.” Appended to the text, moreover, is an affadavit by his mother—sworn before Justice of the Peace Russell H. Cornwell—in which she declares that “the composition of said autobiography is wholly and exclusively the work of the said Jesse H., and that the same was written by him without the assistance of any person.” Almost without question, the document is authentic. As such—like Jesse’s correspondence with Willie Baxter—it affords valuable insight into its author’s mentality.

  There is one major difference, however, between his letters and the autobiography. Writing confidentially to his boyhood pal, Jesse readily (even eagerly) confesses the truth of his crimes. In addressing the general reader, on the other hand, he insists on his innocence, going to great, often tortuous, lengths to deny all the charges against him. Indeed, one of the things this memoir reveals most clearly about Jesse is his genuine gift for hairsplitting, evasion, and casuistry. Had he not been a psychopathic killer of frightening precocity, he might well have turned out to be a successful lawyer.

  In an effort to dispel the widespread conception of himself as a “fiend”—a natural-born killer who had engaged in acts of cruelty from the time he was a toddler—Jesse begins by depicting his early childhood as an era of idyllic pursuits. In describing this part of his life, he comes across as a kind of urban Huck Finn—a high-spirited lad who liked to play hooky from school so he could hang around the Navy Yard and “whittle a piece of wood.” On Saturdays, he and his “chums” would go boating on the Mystic River or play baseball in a vacant lot.

  To be sure, he occasionally got into trouble. He recounts the time that—after setting off some firecrackers in school—he was forced to stand in a corner “with a dumb bell in one hand and a stone on top of my head; [my teacher] told me if I dropped either of them or made any noise she would give me a thrashing, and I believe she would.” Still, Jesse hastens to add, “you must not think I was always bad at school; I gave my teacher trouble enough I am sure; but as a general thing I was what is commonly called a good boy.” Indeed, he describes himself as an inveterate reader not only of adventure novels but of “good solid books that will be to my advantage in the future.” He also “went to Sunday School every Sunday.”

  While most of these recollections are presented in entirely general terms, he does take time to recount two incidents in specific detail. Both of these passages represent heavy-handed attempts to address a recurrent charge against Jesse—i.e., that his glaring lack of remorse was the sign of his cruel, unnatural temperament. To counter this allegation (made by virtually everyone who had observed him, from policemen to reporters to psychologists), he describes a time when he and his brother were fishing side-by-side on Chelsea Bridge. As Charlie went to cast his line into the river, the hook “struck and caught” Jesse’s face just below his left eye, burying “itself deep right near the bone.” The two boys rushed to the home of the neighborhood physician, Dr. Bickford, who extracted the hook from Jesse’s cheek.

  Jesse’s reason for mentioning this incident, he writes, “is this—that though the pain was great and hurt very much, I did not show any feeling at all, either when it was in there or when the doctor was taking it out; and now what strikes me as curious at this time is that it might furnish a clue as to why I do not show any feeling now in regard to this case. Though I did not at this time show any feeling, it was no sign I had none, and now if I do not show any in regard to these cases, it is not to be supposed that I have none.”

  The second incident he relates is meant to reinforce this very point. Several years earlier (according to Jesse), he and his Sunday School class were returning by train from a picnic at Walden Pond when the locomotive struck a deaf man who was strolling on the tracks and did not hear the warning shriek of the engineer’s whistle. “When the train was stopped,” Jesse writes, “the men of the engine picked him up dead. Poor man! To be cut off so suddenly, almost without warning, it was too bad. I know it made me feel bad the rest of the night, and I could not help thinking about it for a long
time after; the rest of our company felt very bad, for some of them cried, particularly the girls; but then as they are the weaker sex I suppose that was all right.” Like the tale of the embedded fishing hook, this anedote is clearly meant to demonstrate that—far from being a callous brute—Jesse is a person of deep feeling (“Poor man! . . . it was too bad”) who is simply not given to open displays of emotion, partly because of his natural disposition and partly because (as his remark about the “weaker sex” suggests) he regards it as girlish to do so.

  Having covered (in less than three pages) the highlights of his life between 1859 and 1871, Jesse then cuts to “the time my troubles came”—the period when (as he tells it) he was unjustly accused of crimes that he never committed. According to his version of events, he was strolling home from school on the afternoon of September 21, 1872, when—“out of mere curiosity”—he stopped to take a perfectly innocent look inside Police Station Six. A few moments later, as he continued on his way home, he was accosted by an officer who grabbed him by the arm and led him back into the station house. Protesting that he had “done nothing,” Jesse “commenced to cry, I was so frightened.” Inside the station, several “of those boys that had been so maltreated by another came and said that I was the boy that did it to them, and the only way they identified me was because I had a spot on the right eye.”

  Terrified and confused, Jesse was “locked up in a cell, not allowed to see my parents or friends. Here that night I was kept in torture. . . . I could not give an iota of the way I was treated by the men and officers of that station. They used nasty language to me, called me all sorts of names, and I venture to say that never was a boy of my age placed before in such a condition. All this time, bear in mind, I . . . did not have hardly an idea of what I was arrested for.”