Fiend (11 page)

When Hood’s bulletin reached Police Station Six—where John Millen had gone earlier in the day to report his son’s disappearance—Captain Dyer immediately wired back for further details. Moments later, the electromagnetic device produced a reply: “He is rather tall for a child four or five years old but is slender with long light hair, light complexion, with dark brown eyes and dressed in knee breeches with a checked waist, attached to which is a red-and-white checked shirt trimmed with black velvet. He wore white woolen socks and high-laced boots. His cap is of black velvet trimmed with a gold lace band.”

The captain exchanged a grim look with his subordinates. Every detail of the murder victim’s dress and appearance precisely matched the description of John Millen’s missing boy. Dyer and an officer named Childs immediately repaired to the Millen home on Dorchester Street, where—as the
Boston Evening Traveller
reported—the “scene that ensued was heartrending.” Though both parents had already begun to fear the worst, Dyer’s awful tidings left them shattered.

Leaving his prostrate wife in the company of Childs, John Millen accompanied Captain Dyer to Waterman’s, where he broke down anew at the sight of his butchered son. Helped into a waiting room, he was observed by a reporter for the
Boston Evening Journal,
who described the father’s “terrible bereavement.”
Arrangements had been made to leave the child’s body at the undertaking parlor overnight. Horace would be retrieved by his parents in the morning—though exactly how the Millens would afford a proper funeral for their murdered boy was an agonizing question.

“The family are in indigent circumstances,” the reporter wrote, “and amid the father’s lamentations came the painful inquiry, ‘How shall we bury our dead?’ ”

16

I continued my daily work of carrying newspapers, as usual, and nothing worthy of record happened until the 22nd day of April. On that day a small boy was murdered on the South Boston marsh. Somehow—I have never been able to find a reason—suspicion fell on me.

—
Autobiography of Jesse H. Pomeroy
(1875)

I
n the hours immediately following the discovery of Horace Millen’s body, the crime produced a chilling sense of
déjà vu
in the people privy to its details. No one familiar with the facts of the case—policemen, reporters, Coroner Allen and his jury—could fail to be reminded of the horrific attacks committed in Chelsea and South Boston less than two years before.

At first, there was some confusion about the name of the “boy torturer” who had terrorized the city in 1872. In their early morning editions, some newspapers would refer to him as “Willie Pomeroy,” others as “Eddie.” But there was no doubt that the Millen crime shared the same grisly
m.o.
with the earlier outrages: a very small boy slashed, tortured, and sexually mutilated after being lured to an isolated location. As the
Boston Globe
put it when the story first broke: “The similarity of the crimes is so great that it seems almost a logical conclusion that they are the work of one and the same hand.”

*  *  *

Among the people whose thoughts immediately turned to Pomeroy was the chief of the Boston police, Edward Hartwell Savage.

Sixty-two years old at the time of the Millen murder, Hartwell was a failed businessman from New Hampshire who had emigrated to Boston in his twenties, reportedly five thousand dollars in debt. After working several years as a handcart-jobber to
pay off his creditors, he joined the police force in 1851 and quickly worked his way up the ranks. Within just three years, he was made captain in the North End, the toughest section of the city. By 1861, he had been promoted to Deputy Chief of the entire department. During his tenure as deputy, he instituted a number of important innovations, including an extensive rogues gallery, a modernized system of record-keeping, and a specialized detective corps. In his spare time, he was also an amateur historian, who published a popular chronicle of the city,
Boston Events,
and a bestselling history of the department,
Police Records and Recollections, or Boston by Daylight and Gaslight for Two Hundred and Forty Years.

In 1870, Savage—then a distinguished, gray-haired widower who lived at home with a spinster daughter—became head of the force. He quickly established himself as the most successful and popular police chief in Boston history. Among the city’s business elite, he was known as a stalwart protector of property. During the Great Fire of 1872, he was in direct command of over 1800 men—including members of the military—and remained continuously on duty for nearly ninety-six hours, ensuring that civil order was maintained. It was a particular source of pride to him that, during his nearly decade-long service, no more than $100,000 in property was stolen in any given year (a drop of more than 300 percent from previous years). Not a single bank in Boston was robbed during the entire time he was chief.

Savage also took credit for a dramatic improvement in the department’s investigative capabilities. At the time Horace Millen’s savaged body was discovered on the marsh, not a single homicide had gone unsolved by his detectives in four years.

*  *  *

At around 9:30 on the evening of the Millen murder, one of Chief Savage’s most trusted men—a detective named James R. Wood—arrived at police headquarters in City Hall. Wood (who, fifty years later, would publish a personal reminiscence of the case in
The Master Detective,
a popular true-crime magazine of the 1930s) was immediately directed to the chief’s office. There, he found Savage in consultation with three other detectives named Dearborn, Ham, and Quinn.

“A young boy has been murdered in South Boston,” Savage
said by way of a greeting. “Brutal business. Some clam diggers found his body on the marshes.”

“Any suspects?” asked Wood.

Savage shook his head. “It’s the damndest thing,” he said, as if musing aloud. “It sounds just like the work of that kid we’ve got in the reformatory. Remember? The one with the mania for tying up little boys and slashing their faces?”

“You mean the Pomeroy boy?” said Detective Quinn. “He’s not in the reformatory. They let him out on probation in February.”

Savage cast a sharp look at his subordinate. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Quinn said. “I heard that he’s living with his mother. She keeps a dress shop somewhere in South Boston.”

Rising from his chair, Savage crossed the room and, using the patent-writing telegraph device, transmitted a message to Captain Dyer at Station Six: “Is Jesse Pomeroy living in your precinct?”

Several moments elapsed while the chief and his four detectives huddled silently around the apparatus. All at once, the electromagnetic pen stirred to life and printed the reply: “Yes. His mother has a store on Broadway. They live at 312 Broadway.”

Savage immediately wired back, instructing Dyer to “send an officer to the house. If he can find young Pomeroy, bring him along to the station house. I’ll send some men over without delay.” Then—after officially assigning Dearborn, Wood, and Ham to the case—he ordered them to proceed to Station Six at once.

Without a word, the trio hurried outside onto Congress Street, summoned a hack, and headed for South Boston.

*  *  *

In response to Savage’s message, Captain Dyer immediately dispatched two of his men—Officers Samuel Lucas and Thomas H. Adams—to the Pomeroy home at 312 Broadway. Arriving at the ramshackle little house shortly after 10:00
P.M.
, they were admitted by Mrs. Pomeroy, who grudgingly informed them that her younger son was up in his room, getting ready for bed.

Summoned downstairs, Jesse sauntered into the parlor still dressed in his street clothes. As the two officers questioned him about his whereabouts that morning, they studied his appearance, taking special note of several fresh scratch marks on his face and the reddish-brown mud stains on his trouser cuffs and shoes.

After listening to Jesse’s rambling account of his day’s activities,
the two policemen announced that they were taking him down to Station Six for further questioning. Mrs. Pomeroy bitterly protested, but the officers assured her that her son would be back soon.

“Don’t fret, Ma,” Jesse said breezily as he was led out the door. “I didn’t do nothing.”

*  *  *

The hack carrying Dearborn, Wood, and Ham pulled up at Police Station Six just as Jesse was being escorted inside. Ushered into Captain Dyer’s office, he was seated in the center of the room, while more than half a dozen men—Dyer, Coroner Allen, the three detectives, Lucas, Adams, and a few of their fellow officers—crowded around his chair and began pummeling him with questions.

By this time, Jesse’s mood had gone from cocky to peevish. Asked again to describe his day, he sullenly repeated the story he had already told Lucas and Adams. After rising at 6:00
A.M.
and eating breakfast, he had gone across the street to help his brother sweep out the store. At around 7:30, he headed off to the city to fetch the weekly papers at the New England News Company, returning with his load about an hour later.

He remained in the store until about half past eleven, when he had strolled home for lunch. Afterward, he had killed a few hours ambling around the city before picking up his afternoon papers at the offices of the
Boston Evening Traveller
and the
Boston Journal.
Then he set off on his 3:00
P.M.
route. By 4:30, his supply had run out. Making his way back to the store, he collected another batch of papers, then spent the next hour or so completing his deliveries. He had arrived back home at around half past six, his work day finally over.

It was immediately clear to his interrogators that there were gaping holes in Jesse’s story, particularly concerning the hours between 11:30
A.M.
—when he’d left the periodical shop and returned home for lunch—and 2:30
P.M.
, when he had picked up his papers for his afternoon route. He claimed that, after crossing the Federal Street Bridge and making his way to Tremont Street, he had spent most of the time strolling around the Boston Common and Public Garden. But when asked for more precise details, his memory got suspiciously hazy. He could not recall, for example, if there was any construction work taking place on
Tremont Street (a large section of which had, in fact, been torn up for a public works project). Nor could he say whether there was a baseball match or a military display taking place on the parade ground.

As the interrogation proceeded, the detectives scrutinized Jesse with practiced eyes. He was wearing an old, visorless cap, mud-stained pants, and a damp, dirty coat with no vest. His boots, like his trousers, were conspicuously muddy.

“How did your shoes get so dirty?” one detective inquired.

“From walking around so much,” Jesse answered coolly.

He was ordered to remove the boots. Upon closer inspection, the left one proved to have several stalks of what appeared to be marsh-grass sticking from a crack between the heel and sole.

Next, Jesse was told to strip off his jacket. Detective Ham carefully went through the pockets but found nothing incriminating. When Jesse was ordered to remove his shirt, however, the detectives noticed a reddish-brown stain about the size of a thumbprint on the front of his flannel undershirt. This garment was immediately confiscated, along with his boots. Jesse’s jacket and shirt were returned to him.

Like Lucas and Adams—the two officers who had picked Jesse up at home—Detective Wood and his colleagues were struck by the ugly marks on Jesse’s face: a nasty scratch across his left cheek, and three smaller lacerations under his left ear. They found some other scratches at the base of his neck and on the back of his left hand. As Wood would later testify, “they all seemed of recent origin.” When Jesse was asked how he’d scratched his face, he shrugged and answered: “Shaving.”

Having learned from Coroner Allen that Horace Millen had been stabbed and mutilated with a small-bladed implement, Captain Dyer asked if Jesse owned a knife. After a moment’s hesitation, Jesse admitted that he did.

“Do you have it on you?” Dyer asked.

Jesse shook his head. The knife was at home, in the pocket of his vest.

Dyer immediately dispatched a sergeant named Hood to the Pomeroy home. A short while later, he returned with the knife. It was a typical boy’s pocketknife, with two slightly rusty blades, the longer of which measured about three inches. When the knife was opened, the investigators noticed that the aperture was
clogged with particles of moist dirt. They also found a smudge of what appeared to be dried blood on the mother-of-pearl handle. The weapon was turned over to Coroner Allen, who—eager to learn if the knife matched the stab wounds in the victim’s body—promptly left for Waterman’s undertaking parlor.

Altogether, the interrogation lasted nearly three hours. At around 2:00
A.M.
, Jesse was finally led off to a cell, where he curled up on the bunk, closed his eyes, and immediately drifted off into a deep and—to all outward appearances—untroubled sleep.