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

by Carol Anne Davis

  Sean threw the brick but James didn’t come out to investigate so they talked some more and decided to kill him with one of his own guns.

  So Rob and Cheryl took Sean to Cheryl’s house and showed him James’s many weapons – but then they realised that the gun would be traced back to the Pierson household. After further talk they agreed that Sean would have to acquire his own gun.

  For the next few weeks, Sean said that he’d kill the man that night or the next day – but he always found an excuse not to do it. Rob kept asking him why nothing had happened and Cheryl begged him to act soon. Sean felt sorry for the pretty teenage cheerleader who often arrived at school with black and blue marks on her. He wanted to protect Cheryl and he wanted Rob to stop pressuring him. So when Michael gave him his rifle to look after, he went to a wooded area for target practice. Later he loaded it with five bullets and went to kill James Pierson, a man he’d never met.

  The murder

  On 5th February 1986 Sean left his house in the early morning and made his way to the Pierson’s bungalow. He hid behind a tree and nervously watched their front door. At 6.20am it opened and James left the house and walked towards his truck. Sean raised the .22 rifle and shot him in the back of the head. James fell to the ground – but he was still moving. Overwhelmed with hatred, Sean raced up and fired another four shots into the dying man.

  The corpse lay there until Cheryl let the dog out. She saw her father lying on the path and ran to get a neighbour. At first everyone assumed he’d slipped on the ice – but when the police turned the body over, they saw all the blood and the expended bullet casings scattered around.

  Cheryl alternated between calmness and tears, which soon turned to nightmares. She believed in life after death, so feared that her father’s ghost might visit her. She said in the speech she wrote for his funeral that she believed one day she’d see him again.

  Sean went on to school as if nothing had happened and Rob gave him some of the thousand dollars he’d taken from James Pierson’s safe. Sean bought some jewellery for his new girlfriend, who he’d only been seeing for a week. Everyone thought that Sean was the same as usual and had no idea that he’d just become a killer. But soon afterwards he started to run a very high fever and took to his bed.

  Arrest

  Meanwhile the police were looking for the killer. They heard that James Pierson was planning to cut his son Jimmy out of his will, so they started to lean on the teenager as a likely suspect. He finally told the police that it was Cheryl who’d wanted their physically-abusive father dead. Cheryl had asked Jimmy to arrange a contract killing, but Jimmy had said that she should just endure the physical abuse as he had then get out when she was eighteen.

  The police went on to talk to Rob, who eventually admitted everything. They then arrested Cheryl and Sean. Sean’s girlfriend said that she’d stand by him and he soon bought her an engagement ring.

  For the first time in her life, Cheryl told adults – the police – about the fact that her father had been having sex with her. The police believed her but James’s mother and sister did not. They said that he might have touched her inappropriately in play but that he would never have had full intercourse.

  Cheryl added that she was carrying her father’s baby and that he knew this and had been trying to arrange an abortion for her. But she soon had a miscarriage – and tests on the foetus proved that the baby was Rob’s.

  The trial

  There was further damaging evidence against Cheryl at the trial when her ten-year-old sister JoAnn – now living with James’s mother who didn’t believe the allegations of abuse – wrote a letter to the jury. She said that she’d often seen Cheryl lying on top of her father, but hadn’t seen her father reciprocate.

  Incest experts were quick to point out that sexually abused children are encouraged by their abusers to be highly seductive. In other words, it was likely that Cheryl was doing what her father insisted of her. And JoAnn had previously told a neighbour that ‘Daddy slept with Cheryl last night’ and the neighbour testified to this at the trial.

  Cathleen’s friends also came forward to say that James was always hitting the children and pulling their hair and punching them. They’d seen him touching Cheryl’s bottom and he’d asked a neighbour ‘doesn’t she have a nice pair of tits?’

  A neighbour reported that Cathleen’s stepfather had seen James and Cheryl in bed together under the sheets, with Cheryl lying on top of her father. A regular babysitter at the house said that James would grab her and that it was clear he held women in low regard.

  Cheryl herself said that her father had made her masturbate him after her mother became ill – but that after her mother died the abuse had increased to include intercourse. She said that she’d wanted to kill him because she feared he was about to start abusing JoAnn. Cheryl was often out at cheerleading practice and her father had started to wrestle with JoAnn the way he had with her.

  An alternative explanation was that Cheryl knew she was expecting Rob’s baby and was terrified. After all, her father hit her for virtually nothing, so what would he do when he knew she was with child?

  But an expert on child sexual abuse testified that she’d spent time with Cheryl since her arrest and that the teenager did fit the profile of an incest survivor. She said she came to her conclusion by looking at Cheryl’s physical state, the testimony of witnesses, photographs of the family, the profile of James Pierson and Cheryl’s account of what had taken place.

  And the judge noted that most of the witnesses in court had suspected that Cheryl was being abused by her father – but only her teenage friend had actually done the right thing by telling a responsible adult. That is, she’d told her guidance teacher but the teacher had not done anything.

  The sentence

  Ultimately, the judge believed Cheryl’s account of what had happened and said that she’d been subjected to repeated acts of intercourse by her father. She collapsed on the floor before the sentence was read out and had to be revived and helped into a chair. The judge said that she must serve six months in jail then remain on probation for five years.

  There was much less to debate at Sean’s trial. The prosecution said that he was a cold-blooded killer who had shot James Pierson for financial gain. They also alleged that he was a drug addict. Sean’s defence said that if the motive had been financial he’d have asked for much more cash. They offered psychological reports which said that Sean had believed he was the only person who could help Cheryl, who was clearly in a very bad way. They also admitted that Sean had a lot of pent up rage against father figures, as his mother had constantly criticised both of his fathers and generally had a poor opinion of men. By now, Sean’s mother and her latest boyfriend were arguing a lot – and Sean’s remaining brother would later leave his mother’s house to live with his dad.

  Sean was found guilty of manslaughter and given the sentence of twenty-four years in jail with the proviso that he serve at least eight of them. Rob, whose testimony had been vital, was put on probation for five years.

  A new start

  Cheryl didn’t cope well in jail, losing a lot of weight and generally feeling ill. She was desperate to spend time with those relatives who were still supportive. Ironically, the many rules she faced in prison – that she could only wear certain clothes and was forbidden perfume and makeup – were identical to those she’d faced at home.

  Fourteen weeks later she was freed and immediately became engaged to Rob. In October 1988 they married in church.

  Update

  Rob and Cheryl went on to have a child. When a journalist made enquiries six years later, the family were still together. Sean Pica fared less well – his girlfriend soon broke off their engagement and during his first year in prison he got into an altercation with another prisoner and was moved to a different jail, a move which made it much more difficult for his family to visit him. Photographs show that he changed a great deal in prison, turning from a cute, beatle-haired youth into a shaven-hea
ded and sad-faced young man.

  4 I am, I said

  Peter George Dinsdale (aka Bruce Lee)

  Peter was born on 31st July 1960 to single mother Doreen Dinsdale. He was born with a partially paralysed and withered right hand and leg. His mother, who lived in Manchester, England, was a prostitute. His father is unknown.

  Within weeks of his birth, Doreen was back on the game and he was shut away and ignored whilst she entertained her clients. A year later she gave birth to a daughter, Sharon. Both children ended up in local authority care.

  Peter first went into an orphanage at age three or four when his mother deserted him. The authorities could see that he hadn’t been adequately nourished and was very unkempt, small for his age and exceptionally thin. His hair was raggedly cut and was a dirty blonde shade, his eyes were sad and his expression haunted. He had received so little attention that his diction and speech were poorly developed for his years. His IQ would variously test at between 68 and 75, in the educationally subnormal range.

  The neglected boy stayed in the orphanage for a year or so men the authorities tried to reunite him with his mum. The reunion was a failure. She alternately ordered him about or told him to hide away as she didn’t want her clients to know that she had ‘a crippled kid.’ At nights she’d walk the streets and he’d do the same, perhaps hoping to find her. Ill clad and underfed, he mentally retreated into his own little world. The recognised signs of neglect include constant hunger, emaciation, a lack of social relationships and increasingly destructive tendencies. Peter had all of them.

  Returned to the orphanage within weeks, Peter became increasingly withdrawn. A second attempt was made to unite him with his mother when he was six, but this too failed abysmally. Doreen’s increasing dependence on alcohol and her own unhappy childhood rendered her incapable of loving and nurturing her bewildered son. Social workers could see that the little boy was becoming increasingly anti-social and disturbed.

  Peter’s mother presumably thought of herself as bad and projected that badness onto her offspring. Over time the constant cruelty and neglect began to change the child’s way of viewing himself and the world.

  A punitive philosophy

  Dorothy Rowe (writing in her book The Successful Self) has explained how a child’s mindset is changed by abuse. At first the child recognises that the parent who hits or mocks him is bad. But that is too terrifying a notion to live with, for it means that he is totally at the mercy of a bad person. So he changes his viewpoint to believe that the parent is good and he is bad and deserves to be hurt. This gives him back the illusion of control. But if the violence recurs again and again, the juvenile redefines the hurt so that he still believes he is bad – but determines that when he grows up he will punish others who are equally bad.

  The increasingly punitive-minded Peter attended a school for handicapped children but he felt different to his schoolmates. They went back to loving homes each night whereas he returned to the functional briskness of council care. Here he was sexually abused by persons unknown, probably older male inmates. He’d later say that they used him sexually from the time he was small. Sadly, the abuse of such handicapped children is commonplace. In a study of over 40,000 disabled American children, 31% of them had been maltreated, often in the first five years of life.

  Intellect

  With so much abuse to contend with, Peter found it hard to concentrate in school and though he learned to read and write, his spelling was very poor and he used language badly. The lack of nourishment and lack of stimuli that he’d received as a baby and a toddler may well have affected his growing brain. That said, he liked human biology and maths classes and enjoyed his trips to school on the bus.

  Peter had by now been diagnosed as epileptic, but his anti-epilepsy medication kept the convulsions at bay. Unfortunately his partial paralysis meant that he limped with his right leg and held his right hand high and crooked across his chest, which made him look intellectually challenged. As a result, the local boys called him Daft Peter and often laughed at him.

  But though Peter would never become scholarly, he was blessed with a native cunning. He’d found that when he shared his secrets with others they told someone else – so he learned the art of silence. The outside world was so untrustworthy that he preferred to live inside his own head.

  During these formative years, Peter saw a bonfire for the first time and found it excited him. By nine he had become obsessed with fire.

  First serious arson attack

  When Peter was nine he lit a fire in a shopping arcade, causing £17,000 worth of damage. No one suspected the small disabled boy. Peter watched till the flames got out of hand then hurried away. He continued to play with matches and seek out bonfires and had dreams about people burning in flames that he’d created, but it was another four years before he killed for the first time. His first murder victim – and several of his later murder victims – were physically handicapped. He’d fallen out with them at school, or simply felt jealous that they had pleasant homes to go to, so determined to exact a terrible revenge…

  Not so happy families

  The local authorities were still trying to forge a relationship between Peter and his mother, so sometimes sent him home for trial weekends. When he was eleven his mother married. From then on these weekends included a stepfather called Lee who he described as ‘alright.’ Often when he went home for the weekend, his mother and stepfather would be partying and he’d be expected to entertain himself as best he could. Trying to join in, the eleven-year-old went around the house finishing off all the beer cans, something he’d first done as an undernourished toddler. As a result he soon built up a remarkable tolerance for alcohol and could drink without getting drunk. At night he couldn’t sleep and would wander about the house or the darkened streets. The location of these streets would vary because his mother moved from Manchester to Hull and had several addresses within each city – but the lack of care he received didn’t vary. Peter simply didn’t have a childhood.

  The first murder

  In June 1973 the twelve-year-old was living with his mother in Hull and tensions were high. In the middle of the night, he left the house and went walking around the town. Soon he made his way to the home of a six-year-old epileptic handicapped boy who travelled on the school bus with him. Peter entered the house by an open window and set the property on fire.

  Both parents and their children suffered from severe smoke inhalation and the parents sustained injuries as they helped their able-bodied children escape by jumping from an upstairs window. But, despite Herculean efforts, they were unable to reach their handicapped child and he died.

  It took firefighters two hours to bring the blaze under control, after which they carried out the six-year-old victim in a body bag. Twelve-year-old Peter was now a murderer.

  Sexual identity

  On the streets, with his paraffin and his matches, he was in charge – but at school and in his local authority home Peter was still an obvious target for older boys who wanted sexual satisfaction. One man went to jail for having sex with the adolescent boy. In time, Peter would become more predatory and would persuade younger boys to ‘muck about’ (as he put it) with him. Though aware that these were homosexual acts, he told anyone who asked that he wasn’t gay.

  The second murder

  Four months after killing the six-year-old boy, Peter was ready to set another fire. The date was 12th October 1973. This time he chose the house of an elderly recluse who lived in squalor. He entered the home by a window in the early morning and saw the man sleeping in his chair. Peter lit a fire then raced out of the door. The seventy-two-year-old man, a semi-invalid, died from smoke inhalation. He had refused the help of social services and bravely maintained his independence, only to be killed by a deeply disturbed child.

  The third murder

  Less than a fortnight later the teenage Peter crept into a pigeon loft, possibly planning to torture or steal the birds. The pigeon fancier found Pet
er lurking there and hit him. Peter ran off, shouting that he would kill the man.

  A few days later he strangled most of the pigeons. Then he crept into the owner’s house and poured paraffin on the thirty-four-year-old as he slept. His victim, clothes on fire, raced into the street and collapsed. He mumbled something about ‘why would anyone do that?’ to a neighbour then lapsed into unconsciousness, spending the next seven days in hospital in a coma before he died. The blaze was assumed to have started when some clothes drying by the fireplace went up in flames. Yet again, no one suspected an arson attack.

  The fourth murder

  Either Peter didn’t start a fire for the following fourteen months, or he did but didn’t give the police details. All that’s known is that on 23rd December 1974 he entered the house of an eighty-two-year-old female. He went into her bedroom and saw her lying in bed. He lit a fire in the corner of the room and the unfortunate woman burnt to death. It’s unlikely that he knew her. He simply hated what she stood for – someone with a home and a family. The unwanted boy loved fire and despised the people it destroyed.

  The fifth murder

  Another eighteen months elapsed before he started another lethal fire. It was June 1976 when he went to a house which included a seven-year-old spastic girl who went to the same special school as he did. Peter entered by an unlocked back door and heard someone moving about upstairs – the girl’s grandmother who was putting the child’s one-year-old brother to bed. Peter quickly started a fire in a downstairs cupboard and left