Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Having rediscovered the thrill of killing, Pomeroy was not satisfied to leave it there and went in search of his next victim. In April 1874, he lured four-year-old Horace Millen to the nearby harbour. In his frenzy Pomeroy inflicted an excruciating death on the toddler and killed him by eventually slicing through his windpipe. When the tiny body was discovered, the police were in no doubt that this was the work of the strange boy with the marble eye. Pomeroy was found at home and was taken into custody despite his mother’s anguished protests. She promised her son that he would soon be home again, but that would be the last night that Jesse Pomeroy would ever spend in the family house.

  When he eventually had to come face to face with what he had done, Pomeroy broke down and admitted to killing Horace Millen. He wept and pleaded with the police not to tell his mother, adding, ‘Please put me somewhere, so I can’t do such things.’

  Some time after his arrest, the body of Katie Curran was discovered when the new tenant of the shop decided to do up the basement. Jesse Pomeroy now stood accused of two murders and it looked as though the fourteen-year-old boy would be the youngest person ever executed in the state of Massachusetts. The only way Pomeroy could escape the death penalty was if he was proved to be insane.

  Although Pomeroy had freely admitted to the killings, just two months before he went to trial he changed his statement and denied having anything to do with either murder. A psychiatrist made a full report on the state of Pomeroy’s mind and reported that although he could discriminate between right and wrong, he would always be a threat to society and needed to be permanently denied his freedom. He finished his report by saying that, in his opinion, Jesse Pomeroy was insane.

  However, the prosecution placed their doctor on the stand, who contradicted the psychiatrist’s report. He described Pomeroy as a deeply manipulative and cunning boy who was ‘totally free of any mental defect’. On this evidence the jury found Pomeroy guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder, for which the mandatory sentence was death by hanging. A weeping Jesse Pomeroy was then led out of the court to await his execution.

  a reprieve

  Although capital punishment was normally carried out fairly swiftly in nineteenth-century America, there was so much controversy about performing such a punishment on a teenager, that his execution was delayed. Eventually his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, on the condition that he served the remainder of his time in solitary confinement. He spent forty-one years locked away in his own concrete cell with only one visitor, his mother Ruth. Finally, in 1917, four decades later, Jesse Pomeroy was taken out of his solitary cell and allowed to move freely among the other inmates. Most of the men who had been there a long time knew of the infamous Jesse Pomeroy, but gradually, as the inmates changed, his notoriety dwindled. By 1929, the now seventy-one-year-old Pomeroy was starting to suffer from health problems and he was moved from Charlestown prison to Bridgewater prison farm where it was felt he could receive better medical care. Pomeroy’s eyes stared out of the window of the car as they travelled to Bridgewater, showing no sign of emotion whatsoever, hardened over the years by solitude from a world he knew nothing about. Two years later, Pomeroy died, the once fiendish killer who ended up as one of the loneliest people in the entire world.

  Jessica Holtmeyer

  Kimberly Dotts was a rather shy teenager who attended Clearfield High in a small, rural Pennsylvanian town. She was a rather overweight fifteen-year-old with learning disabilities and was always eager to try and make friends. Kimberly’s search for friends put her in touch with a group of kids who hung out together and called themselves the ‘Runaway Gang’. Her introduction to the gang came from a fellow classmate, fourteen-year-old Dawn Lanager, who invited Kimberly to a sleepover on the night of May 8, 1998. Kimberly’s parents were pleased for their daughter when she told them excitedly about the invitation. The following day, Kimberly returned home briefly and just before leaving told her seven-year-old sister not to say anything because she was ‘running away’ with some friends.

  Kimberly’s nightmare began on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 10, 1998. Jessica Holtmeyer, a second-year student, was an exceptionally intimidating teenager, who loved to make fun of people and showed a particularly mean streak. She was a devil-worshipper who self-harmed with razors, and loved to frighten other kids by pulling out a knife. She was covered in tattoos, with the numbers ‘666’ behind her left ear, being the sign of the devil. She also had a self-tattoo on her right forearm of a pentagram, one on the back of her neck saying ‘Kurt Cobain 1967–1994’ and her boyfriend’s name on her shoulder. In fact it could be said that Jessica Holtmeyer had pure evil flowing in her blood and, like many other teenage killers, had started off by torturing animals. In her early teenage years she had placed six feral cats into a bin liner, set fire to it and then thrown it into a river. On another occasion, she strangled a poodle dog to death with its own lead.

  plans to run away

  When Jessica was sixteen, she started to hatch plans to run away from home with a group of six friends. The plan was to travel to Florida and Jessica gathered her friends at her grandparents’ house on the morning of May 10, 1968. When they arrived at the house, Jessica was sitting in the lounge watching a videotape of the horror film Scream, in which a girl is found hanging from a tree. She turned to her friends and said, ‘It’d be fun to hang someone,’ to which remark she got a mixed reaction. What Jessica didn’t know at the time, was that the gang had invited Kimberly Dotts to join them.

  When the doorbell rang, Jessica got up to open the door, but almost slammed it shut again when she saw who was standing there. Jessica turned to her boyfriend, Aaron Straw, and said, ‘What is she doing here? You know I don’t like her.’

  Tracy Lynn Lewis, a distant cousin of Kimberly’s, agreed with Jessica that she didn’t want Kimberly around and it was left to Dawn to try and calm the situation as the tension started to mount. Eventually Kimberly was allowed in the house and the gang finished watching the rest of the film.

  When the film had finished the gang hung around town for a few hours and then went to the house of twenty-two-year-old Mike Jarrett. Jarrett had a blue Dodge van and had agreed to drive them out of Clearfield, but before he was prepared to leave he told them he needed a rest before making the journey that night. To pass the time the gang hitched a lift into Shiloh, where they planned to break into some cabins owned by hunters to steal money and food for their journey. Among their booty were some bottles of whisky, a few sparklers and a length of nylon rope which Jessica decided would come in useful.

  Jessica and Tracy were kindred spirits in their hatred towards Kimberly, especially when Tracy called her cousin a ‘snitch’ for getting her into trouble over drinking at a party. They talked of dumping her from their adventure, but decided instead to talk the rest of the gang into following them to a clearing in the woods known as Gallows Harbor. It had got its name from a nineteenth-century lynching and had become a popular place for Clearfield kids to gather, and so Kimberly happily followed her new-found friends deep into the woods.

  the initiation

  Jessica led them to a clearing in the woods and announced to the group that she wanted to test Kimberly’s loyalty to the gang. She proudly showed the nylon rope that she had stolen from one of the campers and then turned to fourteen-year-old Theresa Wolfe to make the rope into a noose. Jessica and Tracy grabbed the noose and looped it loosely around Kimberly’s neck. Jessica started laughing and dragged Kimberly round for several minutes like a dog, until she lost her balance and fell into a patch of mud. Kimberly started to cry loudly, which seemed to make the situation worse as Jessica just dragged her face down through the dirt. The rest of the gang just stood by and watched, laughing as Jessica made a fool out of the unfortunate girl.

  Eventually Jessica tired of the game and took the rope off Kimberly’s neck. She passed the rope to her boyfriend, Aaron, and asked him to throw it over a branch of a tree which was about 14 ft off the ground.
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  Tracy announced that anyone who wanted to go to Florida had to put their head through the noose and so the initiation ceremony began. The first people to volunteer were Theresa and Dawn’s boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Patrick Lucas. To show that he wasn’t scared Patrick slipped his head through the noose, laughing nervously as he did it. Jessica and Aaron gripped the end of the rope, but were careful not to pull too tightly. Theresa did the same thing, followed by a Clearfield junior by the name of Clint Canaway. As the gang started to realise that nothing was going to happen, they relaxed and giggled, aware that Jessica was just playing an amusing game.

  Tracy then turned to her cousin, Kimberly, and said, ‘See Kimmie . . . there’s nothing to be afraid of. Now it’s your turn.’ Kimberly had no reason not to trust her new friends and she stood while Jessica placed the noose round her neck. However, this time Jessica and Aaron used all their strength to pull on the rope, until Kimberly was lifted off the ground. Kimberly’s hands immediately went to her throat to try and release the pressure, but all the colour drained from her face as she flailed erratically. The gang watched on in horror as Kimberly started to convulse, but not one person came to her aid. Tracy, Jessica and Aaron, on the other hand, were finding it all highly amusing and started to fall about with laughter. All of a sudden the gang heard the sound of a truck in the distance and dropped the end of the rope in panic. Kimberly fell to the ground with a thud and landed in a heap, crying and gasping for breath.

  Most of the gang were relieved that Kimberly’s torture was over, with the exception of Jessica, who informed her friends that she hadn’t finished with her yet. Not wanting to be a part of what Jessica had in store, four of the gang – Clint, Dawn, Patrick and Tracy – left the clearing. With half the gang now walking off into the woods, Jessica resumed her torment on poor Kimberly, while the remainder of the gang looked on in amusement. Jessica and Aaron placed the noose around Kimberly’s neck for a second time and pulled tightly on the rope. Again the poor girl thrashed around desperately trying to get air, but her face turned blue and she went into convulsions. As Kimberly’s body went completely limp, Jessica and Aaron let go of the rope and let her fall to the ground.

  Theresa walked over to Kimberly’s lifeless body to see whether she was still alive. They kicked her and poked her with a stick but got no response. In the end Theresa, Jessica and Aaron started to cover Kimberly’s body with some dry brush, believing her to be dead. Then, all of sudden, Kimberly’s body twitched, making the three of them jump back in shock. Then she coughed and started to gasp for air, desperately trying to hang on to life.

  Jessica was not happy that she had not managed to kill Kimberly, and picked up a large rock and dropped it onto her head. She continued to do this until Kimberly’s head resembled a crushed watermelon. Theresa and Aaron just stood with their mouths agape, not quite believing what they had just witnessed. Theresa was crying and said, ‘Why did you do that Jessie? You’ve killed her!’

  Jessica just stared at her friend and, showing no emotion whatsoever, replied, ‘That’s what snitches get!’

  They helped Jessica cover the body under a pile of twigs and leaves and just walked away swearing each other to silence. As they met up with the rest of the gang Theresa cried, ‘I wouldn’t go back there, you guys. They just killed Kim!’

  OFF TO FLORIDA

  An hour later the gang, with the exception of Jessica who had changed her mind at the last minute, were back in Mike Jarrett’s van laughing and joking as they headed off towards Florida. They were accompanied by Mike’s friend, John Appleton, and as they drove further away from Gallows Harbor they felt their spirits lift. Before leaving they had made a pact with Jessica that no one would ever breathe a word about what had happened to Kimberly, and agreed to tell the same fabricated story. They agreed to say that they had last seen Kimberly on the morning of Sunday, May 10, when they had dropped her off on their way down south.

  On Monday, May 11, Jessica attended her classes at school as if nothing untoward had taken place. The rest of the gang – Tracy, Clint, Patrick, Aaron, Theresa, Mike and John were almost halfway to their destination.

  In the meantime Kimberly’s parents were beside themselves with worry and decided to post flyers around the town, asking if anyone had seen their daughter.

  On May 13, the remainder of the gang arrived in Florida and Mike, John and Tracy dropped them off at one of their friends’ houses and then headed back towards Clearfield. It was on the journey home that Tracy told the two boys about what had happened at Gallows Harbor. Just nine days after Kimberly Dotts went missing, John Appleton went to the police and told them the story of what had happened. After the police recovered the body of Kimberly, Jessica and Tracy were taken in for questioning and the others were quickly expedited from Florida.

  Because of the amount of publicity surrounding the case, Jessica’s lawyers asked if the trial could be held in another town. The hearing eventually took place in Bloomsburg, which was 105 miles away from Clearfield. Back in Clearfield, all the locals had already made up their minds that Jessica was guilty, and there were cries that she should be hung up by the neck, to suffer the same way as her hapless victim had.

  sentencing

  In August 1998, Patrick Lucas was sentenced to six months in a juvenile detention centre for breaking into the hunting camp and for conspiracy. Dawn Lanager, fourteen, and Theresa Wolfe, fifteen, were both given separate trials. Dawn, the girl who actually enticed Kimberly into joining the gang, was given probation and was released on the day of the trial. Theresa, who helped make a noose out of the rope that Jessica had stolen, was sentenced to six months in prison.

  Tracy Lewis, the oldest in the group at twenty-four, was already on parole for another minor offence, and was given a five- to twenty-year sentence for aggravated assault.

  Clinton Canaway, eighteen, was placed in a juvenile detention camp and had to be put on suicide watch because he felt so guilty for not trying to stop the hanging.

  As for Jessica Holtmeyer, seventeen, and Aaron Straw, nineteen, they were sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of ever being paroled. Thanks to Kimberly’s parents, Jessica did not receive the death penalty. Just after the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder, Kimberly’s father said, ‘I believe everybody deserves a second chance.’ These were brave words from a man whose daughter had not been given a second chance.

  Joshua Phillips

  On November 3, 1998, eight-year-old Madlyn ‘Maddie’ Clifton went missing after going outside to play in the quiet neighbourhood of the Lakewood section of Jacksonville, Florida. Her frantic mother phoned the police and, with the aid of hundreds of volunteers, they scoured the area. Joshua Phillips, who was fourteen at the time, grabbed his own torch and helped the police and neighbours search for the little girl.

  As there were no leads and no clues to Maddie’s whereabouts, her disappearance was featured on the America’s Most Wanted television show on November 7, in the hope that someone would come forward with some information. The search went on for several days and a $100,000 reward was posted for any information leading to an arrest. Flyers bearing Maddie’s photograph were handed out throughout the neighbourhood and also at the grounds of the local football club, the Jacksonville Jaguars. As each new enquiry led the police to yet another dead end, the FBI became involved in the search for Maddie. However, despite the rigorous investigation nothing turned up, that is until November 10, seven days after she disappeared.

  THE UNTHINKABLE

  Joshua’s mother had decided to make a start on clearing her teenage son’s bedroom because, despite constant nagging, he had made no effort to tidy it up. Shaking her head at the mess in front of her, Melissa didn’t know where to start. She was about to pick up some clothes that were scattered on the carpet when she noticed a wet mark at the corner of her son’s bed. Joshua slept on a waterbed and his mother wondered whether it had started to leak when she discovered the corner of the mattress was also wet. She lifte
d the mattress to try and determine how serious the leak was, and as she peered underneath noticed a white sock lying near the leg of the bed. She pulled on the sock but it was stuck fast and she also noticed some black tape holding the frame of the bed together. She wondered whether the bed had been leaking for some time, and if her son had made an attempt to repair it. As she pulled the tape from the leg, she felt something cold and wet touch her skin and it made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Unable to see what it was, Melissa went into another room to fetch a torch. Nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to find. Entombed under the waterbed was the body of a young girl.

  Melissa’s first reaction was to phone her husband at work, but when she failed to get an answer she knew she had to go and find a policeman to tell him what she had found. Very white and shaking like a leaf, she walked out of the house and down the road to where a policeman was still making house to house enquiries.

  While the police went inside the house to investigate her grim discovery, Melissa sat hunched up in the back of a police car, dreading the thought of what was in store for her family.