The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer

282 Pages·2015·1.87 MB·English

by  Roseanne Montillo

DEDICATION
Dedicated to my family
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
1 The Inhuman Scamp
2 The Bridge
3 The Marble Eye
4 The Boundless Sea
5 The Great Fire
6 Loss of Innocence
7 Katie
8 The Wolf and the Lamb
9 The Twisted Mind
10 Patience Personified Pomeroy
11 Madness Unleashed
12 Unearthed
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Also by Roseanne Montillo
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
O Boston, city of our Pride!
O Massachusetts, our loved State,
Thy faults we ever seek to hide,
We for thy perfect glory wait!
—POEM READ BY REV. MINOT J. SAVAGE AT THE
DEATH OF GOVERNOR WILLIAM GASTON
I
n the early hours of Thursday, August 1, 1929, crowds formed in front of the
main gate of the Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown, a sprawling
compound of brick and granite encircled by a tall, wrought-iron gate. It was a
warm morning and would become even more so as the temperatures reached as
high as ninety-five degrees. Young mothers had risen early so they could make it
to the prison, dragging their children along with them. Workers from the nearby
factories had taken the day off, and the elderly men who had followed the
notorious case for more than fifty years were lined up along the streets. Standing
next to them on the sidewalk were numerous reporters from across the country,
who did not seem to mind the heat. All of them had been drawn there by the
fermenting curiosity of years past and by more recent tantalizing articles.
For days newspapers in the region had been speculating about whether the
people of Boston would get the chance to see Jesse Harding Pomeroy again. Or,
as the Boston Daily Globe wrote, would Pomeroy “have a glimpse of the world
denied him for 53 years.” In recent days those residing near the prison, and in
the city at large, had been waiting to hear if Jesse Pomeroy would be transferred
from the state prison to the Bridgewater State Farm, nearly two hours to the
south of Boston. Originally built to house “paupers” from the state hospitals, the
Farm had now become a warehouse where hospitals, prisons, and other
institutions dumped their so-called undesirables, those who could not be helped
by routine treatments. On the evening of July 31, special editions were printed
with headlines screaming that indeed, it would be so: he would go on the
following morning.
Sixty-eight-year-old Pomeroy was not happy about his transfer. He had
entered the Massachusetts State Prison—or the Massachusetts Bastille, as it was
often referred to—when he was barely a teenager, and his cell, Number 19 in the
South Wing, had become his home. He knew where each brick had a line
running across it, most likely because he had chiseled it there himself. He had
felt every wedge or crack the walls possessed with the tips of his aging fingers.
He knew where his old cot sank beneath his weight, where his pillow had come
loose at the seams; he knew which of the officers would be bringing him his
meal simply by the distinct way that person had of jingling his key into the door.
He knew what that meal consisted of, and how many minutes before the
appointed hour it would arrive. Now he would have to leave it all behind in favor
of a place where people donned not guns, as was customary, but white uniforms,
as white as his eye.
Jesse was adamant that he deserved a full pardon and had not wanted to
leave until it had been granted. He felt so strongly about it that, as a final act of
defiance, he’d even refused to pack his few belongings until a guard had made
him do so—first gently, then with a little more force. Jesse’s attorney, John Daly,
had fought a valiant fight. He ardently believed that Jesse deserved to be
pardoned because if he had been tried today instead of the 1870s, he would have
been sent to a hospital for the mentally “unsound,” and not to the state
penitentiary.
“He was a victim of circumstance,” Daly argued before those members who
had agreed to hear his plea. He proclaimed that Pomeroy’s sentencing had
occurred “during an era when insanity was not considered to the degree” that it
was now. Daly was also in agreement with Pomeroy that he needed to be
pardoned. He was so convinced of his argument that he’d even taken the liberty
of coordinating with the Salvation Army, who had assured him a home would be
provided for Jesse upon release.
But something in Daly’s eagerness and choice of words had unwittingly
irked those on the panel deciding Jesse’s fate. At one point, Daly had described
Pomeroy’s murderous actions as “getting into trouble,” which had seemed to
trivialize the offenses. Daly’s summations had also seemed to imply that the state
owed Pomeroy not only his freedom, but an apology, which Jesse had been
requesting for years. When the committee released their decision, they gave no
validation to what Daly had expressed. If anything, the men felt that too much
grace had already been extended on the prisoner. Pomeroy would not be
pardoned; instead he was being transferred.
On this August morning, Pomeroy shed the prison uniform he had worn for
fifty-three years and changed into a borrowed suit, dark in color and two sizes
too big. It hung ungainly from his body, the fabric alien on his sagging skin. In
his pockets, he carried a dollar and sixty-six cents, part of his earnings from legal
speculations with the stock market, and when he spoke to the minister, his breath
smelled of hot beef hash and coffee, which he had consumed as his last meal on
the premises.
With the paperwork taken care of, the door to his cell opened and he was
escorted into the corridor. It must have seemed odd that with a few twists of the
key, he was able to step beyond the threshold of his cell, beyond the steel bars he
had often tried to dislodge with contraband weapons. He walked slowly down
the South Wing of the prison and followed the hallway that led to a large
rotunda, where a guard post was located. He looked up and saw the cells
arranged in a circular formation, heard the shouts from the prisoners that in
isolation he had never heard before, the ding of steel bars as they opened and
closed. On entering the prison, some visitors compared the institution to a busy
beehive. And so it must have looked to Jesse when he stared upward.
As he walked out, he did not offer a thank-you, a salute, or any kind words to
the warden, James L. Hogsett, or to the officers who had taken care of him
during the past years. He merely pushed the tip of a newsboy cap over his eyes
and readied to walk outside, where the crowds awaited him.
Guards posted near the prison’s front staircase stared as the people surged
forward by the locked gates; these officers patrolled the area holding bayonets
and wooden clubs, making certain that a riot would not ensue. Taking drags from
their cigarettes, reporters stood in the sun with pencils at the ready. “It was a
morning of tense silence,” an editorial in the Boston Evening Globe stated later
that evening, describing the moments prior to Jesse’s arrival. Most of those who
idled by the curb had been youngsters at the time of Jesse’s roaming, protected
by their mothers, whose fears had overwhelmed them. Along with them there
were now young mothers, sisters, and some much older individuals who had
been Jesse’s schoolmates.
In 1634, the governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, ordered Castle Island in Boston Harbor to be used
as a prison fortification. It was in 1803, following a series of highly publicized breakouts, that the
Massachusetts Senate passed a bill to close Castle Island and build a new state prison on five acres of land
on Lynde’s Pond in Charlestown. Built entirely of granite, and surrounded by tall barbed-wire fencing, Jesse
Pomeroy went on to spend more than half a century within it, becoming one of its most famous inmates.
(The Charlestown Historical Society)
For the most part, they remained calm and quiet. The only sounds they heard
were the dings and whistles from the elevated trains running nearby, and the
shouts of dogs in the distance. Occasionally a murmur arose when they thought
the approaching hour was at hand, until it got louder and louder when from
“behind that big door arched as cathedral window set down the center . . . was
the answer to our gathering,” continued the Boston Evening Globe.
Warden Hogsett emerged from the main door, looking serious and pale, and
began to chat with several of the uniformed guards. As a group, they moved
toward the gates and eyed the crowd. Moments later, from behind them there
appeared several more guards holding rifles, followed by two other inmates also
being transferred, their shackled feet clinking as they walked forward.
Jesse Harding Pomeroy left the Massachusetts State Prison at precisely 11:33
A.M., the rattling of his chains announcing a reemergence into the sunlight.
Although the sun was blinding, as he moved toward the car he saw the outlines
of those who had come to see him and heard the shouts coming from their
direction. He did not acknowledge their presence or the words they were hurtling
toward him. Instead, he lifted his eyes toward a hot and unfriendly sky. He
blinked several times, then headed toward a black sedan enlisted for the occasion
and took a seat between the two other inmates, Daniel Watts and Giuseppe
Malavia, also headed for Bridgewater. William I. Robison, from the Parole
Office, drove the car, while Joseph O’Brien, another state official, sat in the
passenger’s seat. A second black sedan followed them, carrying three more
inmates to Bridgewater.
As the people dispersed in the hot haze, they realized that something was
amiss and anticlimactic in the way Jesse had been returned to them. From its
very beginning, the newspaper articles had described Jesse as a beast, the devil, a
larger-than-life individual lurking among the streets of Boston and leaving havoc
and death in his wake. That’s what the crowd had come to see, what the people
had expected. But the man who had left the prison seemed shriveled and
desiccated by time, not even of average height, a long mustache hanging limply
by his cheeks, bearing the whole of his life under his arm in a small package
wrapped in old newspaper and tied with butcher’s string, like a Sunday roast.
The person he had become had stunned them into silence, and as the sedan
became a speck of black on the horizon, they quietly returned to their lives, to
the breweries and the factories making buttons, to taking care of their children,
and to their games of baseball in the nearby park.
During the ride to the Bridgewater State Farm, Jesse remained quiet, almost
solemn. As they moved from the prison grounds toward the Charles River, he
looked out at the city that had developed during his absence, the buildings that
had risen at the banks of the river. While in prison, he had been allowed to pass
the time reading books and newspapers, and had memorized poems, sonnets,
languages, geographical locations, historical facts, maps, and figures in order to
keep up with the world. But now, looking out from the window, it seemed as if
the speed in which the world in general had progressed in the previous fifty
years had been faster than Jesse’s reckoning. What he had not been a part of for
more than fifty years now revealed itself, on August 1, 1929.
Indeed, it was the type of world his books and newspapers had described in
detail yet reality had not prepared him for: bright, breezy, crowded, noisier than
he recalled. There were no horses on the cobblestone streets he had trod upon as
a boy. The click-clacking of hoofs had been replaced by the honking of
automobiles whizzing by at the dizzying speed of twenty or thirty miles an hour.
A grinding noise alerted him to an alien creature flying toward soft cumulus
clouds, and looking upward he saw the wings of an airplane gliding across the
blue expanse, machines unheard and unseen during his time.