Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Children Who Kill

  Profiles of Pre-teen and Teenage Killers

  CAROL ANNE DAVIS

  For Ian

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  1 The Hurting

  Jesse Pomeroy

  2 Pale Shelter

  William Allnutt

  3 Substitute

  Cheryl Pierson & Sean Pica

  4 I Am, I Said

  Peter Dinsdale (aka Bruce Lee)

  5 Dare To Be Different

  Luke Woodham

  6 Waiting For A Girl Like You

  Cindy Collier & Shirley Wolf

  7 Save Me

  Robert Thompson & Jon Venables

  8 Can’t Get It Out Of My Head

  Roderick Ferrell

  9 Don’t Cry Out Loud

  Mary Bell

  10 Under Pressure

  Kip Kinkel

  11 The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind

  Wendy Gardner & James Evans

  12 Nobody’s Child

  Sean Sellers

  13 Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

  Johnny Garrett

  14 Senses Working Overtime

  Recognised Typologies Of Children Who Kill

  15 Cry Me A River

  Further Classifications

  16 Heard It Through The Grapevine

  Children Who Kill Their Friends

  17 Hungry Like The Wolf

  Youthful Sex Killers

  18 Born To Run

  Children Who Kill Their Families

  19 Alone Again, Naturally

  Children Who Kill Again As Adults

  20 Blame It On The Pony Express

  The Scapegoats

  21 Riders On The Storm

  The Myth-Makers

  22 She’s So Cold

  Telling It Like It Is

  Appendix: Useful Information

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Available from Allison & Busby

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Claire Rayner OBE for talking to me about the dangers of offering violence to children. Claire has published numerous books on medical issues and has been an energetic advocate of children’s rights throughout her life.

  I also thank Ron Sagar MBE for answering my interview questions in depth and for providing unique details. As a Detective Superintendent, he interviewed Britain’s most prolific juvenile killer, Bruce Lee, at least twenty-eight times. With over thirty years experience in criminal investigation, Ron offered much insight into Bruce, a multiply-abused boy who claimed twenty-six lives.

  I was similarly fortunate in interviewing Don Hale who fought for seven years to gain the freedom of the wrongly imprisoned Stephen Downing. Stephen was seventeen when he was jailed for a murder he didn’t commit – and was forty-four before his conviction was overturned and he was finally freed. As a result of his first class journalism on the case, Don Hale was made both Man Of The Year and Journalist Of The Year in 2000. I’m delighted that he took time out of his busy schedule to contribute to this book.

  Thanks also to crime writer David Bell for drawing my attention to an interesting case I hadn’t heard of. David is author of the Staffordshire Murder Casebook, Nottinghamshire Murder Casebook and Leicestershire Murder Casebook amongst others.

  Most of my interviewees live in England, but my thanks extend overseas to Florida-based Lisa Dumond, a contributing editor to Black Gate and many other science fiction magazines. Though hard at work on her latest novel – and busily promoting her existing novel Darkers – Lisa helped me track down some vital criminal facts.

  I’m also grateful to the organisations which answered my questions and sent me invaluable reports, namely The Children’s Society, Children Are Unbeatable, Save The Children, Kidscape and The Howard League For Penal Reform. Finally, my thanks to The Home Office for providing me with year by year statistics of children who kill.

  Preface

  As a child, I was friends with a twelve-year-old boy who attempted to murder a slightly older girl. They’d argued over which television programme to watch and he fetched a knife from the kitchen and thrust it deep into her back. Paul (not his real name) then left the room.

  At first the girl thought that Paul had just punched her very hard. She felt ill and lay down on the settee on her stomach. When the pain intensified she looked back and saw the protruding handle of the knife.

  The teenager staggered downstairs to alert a neighbour. Thankfully the neighbour left the weapon in situ – if she’d pulled it out, the girl would certainly have died. As it was, the blade had done irreversible damage to one of her lungs and she spent weeks in hospital, initially in intensive care. She later faced reconstructive surgery for the hole left in her back and had to take strong prescription drugs to help her sleep.

  Twelve-year-old Paul now faced an attempted murder charge – but numerous adults came forward to say what a polite and helpful boy he was. He belonged to a youth organisation and they too were very impressed with him. The judge recommended that he see a psychiatrist and the parents said that they’d arrange this, but didn’t. His teenage victim was terrified that he’d attack her again.

  It’s unclear how much the judge knew of Paul’s background – but I know that he and his siblings were regularly terrorised by their alcoholic father. He verbally mocked them and beat them with his belt. Paul’s mother did nothing to stop these sessions, instead adopting a slightly martyred tone and telling anyone who would listen that her children were very polite to strangers and that she couldn’t understand why they glared at her when they were at home.

  In fairness, I really liked Paul’s parents and spent as much time as possible with them. Both had the capacity to be kind and generous to a child who wasn’t their own. Paul’s mother cooked me excellent meals and both parents took me with them on family outings, adventures I’d otherwise never have enjoyed. It was only in child-nurturing that they failed, presumably parenting as they had been parented.

  Paul’s attempted murder charge was just one of numerous instances of violence in my childhood so it quickly faded from my consciousness. I rarely thought of it again until halfway through writing this book. Only then did I realise that Paul’s story had the same ingredients as almost every child’s story that you’ll find here. That is, the child is physically and emotionally abused by an adult or adults, often the very people that created him. In turn, he – or she – goes on to perpetrate violence on someone else.

  The children in this book tortured, burnt, battered, strangled or raped their victims – victims aged from two years old to eighty. But these young killers had been tortured, burnt, battered, half strangled or raped before they carried out their pitiless acts.

  The first two profiles are historic ones which demonstrate that children who kill aren’t a modern phenomenon brought about by horror videos or by single parent families. There are also brief details of other latter day killers in some of the sociological chapters, one of which bears a striking resemblance to the Robert Thompson and Jon Venables case.

  The rest of the profiles are contemporary, featuring young killers from Britain and America whose ages range from ten to seventeen. But there are case studies in the later chapters involving younger children including a boy who killed at the age of three.

  Several of the murders involve a sexual element, but as many readers find it difficult to understand how young children can become sexual predators, I’ve inc
orporated a chapter on youthful sex killers which offers many more case studies. These killers are male but some were sexually molested by their mothers so the chapter also looks at female sex offending, an under-reported crime.

  These crimes are horrifying but comparatively rare. Though the media likes to suggest otherwise, there isn’t an epidemic of mini-murderers in Britain. To give some examples, in 1995 – 1996 there were 30 people under the age of eighteen convicted of murder in England and Wales. In 1996 – 1997 there were 19 and in 1997 – 1998 there were 13 such deaths. 1998 – 1999 saw 25 and the following year there were 23. These later numbers may rise as some cases are still being dealt with by the police and by the courts.

  The numbers rise by approximately twenty convictions per year if we add manslaughter and infanticide to the murder statistics. But children are still far more sinned against than sinning when you consider that one child a week dies in Britain at its parent’s hands.

  Moreover, the children who commit violent crimes have invariably been victimised by violent adults. A recent study of 200 serious juvenile offenders found that over 90% of them had suffered childhood trauma. 74% of the total sample had been physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused and over 30% had lost a significant person in their life to whom they were emotionally attached.

  The following profiles, then, are stories of cruelty and of loss, of children who weren’t allowed to experience a happy childhood. But they can also be stories of hope because the power to change future childhoods is within our grasp.

  1 The Hurting

  Jesse Harding Pomeroy

  Jesse was born to Ruth and Thomas Pomeroy on 29th November 1859. The couple already had a four-year-old son called Charles. They lived in a dilapidated rented house in Boston, USA.

  The Pomeroys were an impoverished and argumentative couple from the start. Thomas was an angry, heavy-drinking man who hated his work at the local shipyard. Ruth was more industrious but equally morose, an intelligent women who was worn down by life.

  She was also worn down with caring for Jesse as he was a physically weak infant who suffered numerous ailments. A serious illness in his first year left one of his eyes milky white. This clouded-over eye gave the fretful baby a sinister cast.

  Thomas said that he couldn’t stand the sight of his second son and frequently hit the toddler. In response, little Jesse had skin rashes and terrible headaches and insomnia. He also had lengthy nightmares when he did eventually sleep. Charles too was being regularly beaten by his father and took it out on Jesse, who lived in constant fear.

  Mrs Pomeroy was equally badly treated by her increasingly alcoholic spouse. Determined not to be the sole victim, she sometimes lashed out at her unhappy sons. Abuse makes children physically tense and clumsy so Jesse walked increasingly awkwardly, his shoulders hunched.

  Victim becomes victimiser

  When a child is constantly hurt like this, he naturally wants revenge but there was no way that Jesse could stand up to his enraged, belt-wielding father. So he turned to victims that couldn’t fight back. When he was five years old he caught a neighbourhood kitten and stabbed it with a small knife, enjoying its agonised cries. By the time that a neighbour intervened the animal was bleeding badly and Jesse had apparently gone into a trance. Later Ruth Pomeroy brought home a pair of pet birds to add colour to the household but Jesse waited till she’d gone out then killed them by twisting their necks. He was showing one of the traits of the fledgling serial killer – cruelty to animals. (The other signs include bedwetting into puberty and starting fires.)

  When Jesse was six, his father changed employment and became a porter at the local meat market. He now carried carcasses around by day and beat his sons at night.

  At school the other little boys played football whilst the increasingly-hunched Jesse sat and watched, nursing his most recent bruises. He fared little better in the classroom as he constantly lapsed into daydreams and the teacher caned him for this. We now know that excessive daydreaming is one of the symptoms an abused child displays in a desperate attempt to escape the painful reality of their lives – but many teachers of the mid nineteenth century believed that children were mischief makers who had to be broken down.

  Finding that school offered him no more understanding than his home, Jesse started to play truant, going for long walks by himself or sitting reading novels. He bought some of them with dimes stolen from his mother’s purse. His father beat him for this and for playing truant, using a horsewhip on the child’s naked back.

  Jesse ran away from home to escape further pain but was found by his father each time and punished. There was a strong humiliation element to these sessions, with Thomas Pomeroy making Jesse strip before taking him out to the woodshed and hitting him until he bled.

  The fantasy phase

  Desperate to be the victimiser rather than the victim, Jesse kept searching for small animals to mutilate. But it wasn’t enough and he began to fantasise about hurting a human, someone he could verbally taunt during the abuse just as his father always taunted him. He therefore joined in a game in the schoolyard where cowboys were tortured by Indians. Jesse insisted on being one of the torturers and became so elated that his playmates regarded him with distaste. He couldn’t forge any camaraderie with these boys excepting the torture games so remained apart from them, lost in his own lonely world.

  When he was ten, his mother left his father as she couldn’t stand to see Jesse suffer any more abuse. But by then the damage had been done, and Jesse’s sadism was firmly rooted. He looked for sadistic scenes in novels and in boyhood conversations and eagerly thought about the day when a helpless victim would be his to extensively hurt and verbally torment.

  Charles was constantly battering Jesse and though Jesse now fought back, he was still on the losing end of these vicious encounters. He needed a smaller boy that he could control.

  The first torture victim

  On Boxing Day 1871 Jesse seized his chance. He was now twelve and tall for his age. He found a three-year-old boy called Billy Paine playing unattended and made up a story to get the toddler to follow him. He led Billy into a disused building. Now he could make his sadistic fantasies a reality.

  Jesse undressed the uncomprehending child then tied him to a roof beam by his wrists. By now the child was terrified – exactly the response that the boy torturer wanted. He beat the boy’s back with a stick again and again. Jesse himself had often been punished in this way by his brutal father but now he was the one in charge and he was going to make the most of it. It’s likely that the sadism continued until Jesse orgasmed but this is conjecture as Billy was too young to explain.

  Eventually Jesse ran off, leaving the child swinging from the roof beams. A passer-by heard his semi-conscious whimpers, investigated, and cut him free. The three-year-old was too traumatised to explain exactly what had happened to him or to fully describe his captor so Jesse remained at liberty to torture again.

  The second torture victim

  Two months later, on 21st February 1872, Jesse met up with a seven-year-old boy called Tracy Hayden and took him to an abandoned outhouse. There he undressed the younger child and gagged him with a handkerchief. Jesse was already learning from experience, having feared discovery when Billy shrieked during his beating. This time he would only hear his captive’s muffled groans.

  Jesse tied the seven-year-old’s feet together before roping his hands to an overhead beam. He thrashed the boy with a stick just as he had with his previous victim. But this time the violence was even more extreme and Jesse reigned blows upon the child that blackened his eyes and knocked out some of his teeth. He swore and laughed as he attacked his tightly-bound victim and was clearly overwhelmed by a sadistic glee. He also added a particularly terrifying verbal threat, saying that he was about to emasculate the helpless child.

  Tracy was found by passers-by and taken to his parents who immediately called the police. The child was able to give them a reasonable description of the ‘big bo
y’ who had harmed him, but unfortunately this did not include the fact that his attacker had a clouded-over eye.

  The third torture victim

  Three months later the bloodlust had rekindled in Jesse and he struck again, asking an eight-year-old boy called Robert Maier if he would like to accompany him to the circus. Instead he led the child to a pond and attempted to drown him but the terrified victim managed to struggle free. Jesse then partially knocked the boy out and dragged him to an outhouse where he undressed him and tied him to a post. He whipped the boy with a stick, forcing him to use sexual (and, for the time, shocking) words like prick. Jesse masturbated during this taunting and quickly orgasmed. This sexual release apparently drained him of all tension for he released the child, ordered him to dress then let him leave.

  The fourth torture victim

  Seven-year-old Johnny Balch was the next neighbourhood boy to be enticed to an abandoned outhouse by the boy torturer. It was July 1872, a mere two months since the last attack, yet Jesse’s sadistic frenzy had increased so much that he actually tore off the boy’s clothes rather than unbuttoning them. Then he hung him by his wrists from a beam and flogged him with his belt. The abuse was the most ferocious so far, the belt lashing into every part of the helpless child’s anatomy. Again, it was Jesse’s orgasm that ended the assault. Thereafter he untied the brutalised boy and hurried away. The traumatised Johnny lay on the floor of the building for hours until he was discovered by a horrified stranger. A week after this assault, Ruth moved Jesse and Charles to a different part of Boston which offered cheaper rents.

  The fifth torture victim

  Within days of arriving in his new South Boston home, Jesse went out hunting for prey. On 17th August 1872 he found seven-year-old George Pratt near the beach. Jesse took him to a nearby boathouse where he stripped, gagged and bound him with a rope. As usual, he employed his favourite act of thrashing the child all over, only this time he used the buckle end of a belt. Jesse was becoming increasingly crazed during these assaults. He bit George’s face and one of his buttocks. This might have been a result of the atavistic urge that surfaces in some sexual sadists or it may have been learned behaviour, as some abusive parents bite their children as a punishment. Thomas Pomeroy might well have fallen on little Jesse in a drunken rage, battering and biting him in turn.