The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1874-08-21
The Mystery of n Monster.


| ~ liIdu uOg, a hungry tlger, dlndOC
running muck, are all dangerous, anG
they are shot down, cut down anC
blqdgeoned down SO as to be happily
what of the boy Pomeroy, the "boy
tiend" of Bost0n7 His murders and
revolving cruelties committed on chill.
dren has been so ingeniOusly savage
that nothing in history can be theil
equal. They are unparalleled.
Years ago, nearly four of them per,
haps, children were found in Boston
with wounds in different parts of theil
bodies, as Of pieces of flesh cut out af-
ter the manner of the wild Indians OF
old, who tortured their prisoners be-
fore they gave them the coup de gyoct
in the, middle of the blazing faggots
Like the bloody mark of the Jibbenai-
nOsay the tOrtures of those children
showed they had been done by a knife,
After time, when more children were
cut and stabbed, and when parents be-
gan to think it dangerous to let their
children pass out of their sight, the boy
Jesse POmerOy was discovered to be the
wonderful brute that had so mutilated
them. Not more than eleven years old,
what could be done with this precocious
tiger? He was too young to punish, and
besides 1t was impossible that he should
comprehend the brutal enormity of his
acts. lie was a D1GuUGlS Suget, bad boy
with cruel instincts, but he would get
over all that in the State Reform School.
People shook their heads in distrust,
but what could be done? Eleven or
twelve years old, and torturer with a
system? Impossible. Three or four
years in the State Reform School would
take all the harm out of little Jesse
PPomeroy. A year, perhaps more-we
do not remember how lOng-and inf1u-
ence, a mothers pleadings and the boys
assembling released him from the State
school. From a refined torturer the
boy had become a murderer. Only
are traced directly to him, to the COM
mission of which ;he has confessed. Not
robbery or child's spirit for revenge
for trivial spite, but simply the hOrri-
ble desire to kill and look at blood, and
ar done with the cunning of devil that
fairly sickens us while we think of it.
And now what is to be done with this
unparalleled fiend of fourteen years old;
this mad dog, this wild beast of the
jungle, this red enthusiast in murder,
who took his child victims down by
desOlate marshes and enticed them into
cellars and buried them under cinder
heaps. He will be tried for these two
murders and convicted and what then?
A verdict of acquittal On the ground of
insanity will send him to lunatic asy-
lum, from which, according to the laws of
Massachusetts, nothing can set him free
but the action OF the Supreme Court.
This is the extent of the severity of the
law to which we can hopefully look for
the solution of this youthful miscreant's
life problem. Eminent men have not
hesitated to declare that such crimes,
even though committed by criminals
SO young, are deserving of death, and
people by thousands who are not emf
nent, but only just, declare they can
see no difference between this bOy-fiend,
POmerOy, and a mad-dOg or tiger, or
any other wild beast whom it would be
the duty of community to kin, out of
the way, at sight. His crimes are de-
clared to be unnatural and exceptional,
demanding exceptional punishment. To
hope for cure of this mania for blood is
hopeless 1t is in the fend's nature, as
his wretched mother intimates. 1t was
born with him. 1t is one of the mys-
teries OF conception. Her husband was
a butcher. During her pregnancy with
this boy she visited the sfaughter-house
she became fascinated by the sight of
blood; her low-bred nature reve1ed in
the fancy of the reeking shambles, and |
she assisted her husband to cut up the |
carcasses. This is her brutal story, told |
to the physicians in order to weave the |
thread of her child's insanity in their |
minds; and it may all be true. Blood, |
IN the fancy of the father, in that Of |
the mother, transferred. to the child, |
cropping out, as we are told, in his in
FAINT acts of stabbing wood, and so on,
rs he grew up, with the slaughter-house
nature developing stronger in him with
Zach days life-into stabbing children,
md so, by natural degrees, to murder.
It appears as q dreadful theory, per-
laps, to advocate death for such mon.
ter; but there are monsters so wild
hey ought not to live.