Nash and his workers did what they could to dispel the odor. They propped open the five tiny windows spaced around the basement walls, and gave the foul little water closet a thorough cleaning. The excavation work helped, too. Within days of beginning the job, McGinnis and O’Connell had torn down most of one outer wall, letting in plenty of fresh air. They also dug up part of the hard-packed dirt floor, releasing the aroma of newly turned earth into their work area. By the second week of July, the two laborers had largely forgotten about the stink.
And then, on Saturday, July 18, they uncovered its source.
It was McGinnis who actually made the discovery. He was still hard at work at around 5:00 P.M., demolishing a wall in the far corner of the cellar where the ash-and-refuse pile lay. At one point—weary from his long day of labor—he took an errant swing, striking the heap with his pick blade. Something small and spherical went flying into the air. McGinnis, who caught only a glimpse of the object as it sailed to one side, assumed it was an old tin bowl or water dipper, discolored with rust.
The next blow of his pick dislodged a large chunk of the wall, which dropped into the ashes. As McGinnis raised his implement again, he glanced down and noticed something odd that had been exposed by the falling debris. Frowning, he bent to take a closer look—then let out a startled cry.
The thing sticking out of the ashes was a skeletal human forearm, black with putrefied flesh and partially clothed in decaying fabric.
McGinnis staggered back a few steps. As he did, he caught sight of the small, rounded object he had taken for a rusty bowl. It took him a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. When the realization hit him, he dropped his pick, stumbled upstairs, and ran off to find James Nash.
The round, dirt-covered object was a small human skull. Tufts of wavy brown hair still clung to the cranium in patches.
McGinnis and his employer were back within minutes, along with Officer John H. Foote of the Sixth Police Station. Using a shovel, Foote carefully uncovered the entire remains, which (as the Boston Post would later report) “emitted a disgusting odor—for there was still something left of the intestines.”
A short while later, three other men arrived at the scene—Captain Dyer, Patrolman Thomas Adams, and Coroner Ingalls. Adams, who had been deeply involved in the search for Katie Curran, required only a glance at the corpse’s green-and-black-plaid dress to identify the victim. The ten-year-old girl who had been missing for months—ever since she had left home one spring morning in search of a new schoolbook—had just been found under a fetid ash heap in the cellar of the shop that had once been the workplace of Jesse Harding Pomeroy.
23
If the Pomeroy boy had fallen at this time into the hands of an average assembly of citizens of ever quiet Massachusetts, the chances are that he would have been torn limb from limb, like some furious beast which had fallen among those upon whom he had preyed.
—Anonymous, The Life of Jesse H. Pomeroy, The Boy Fiend (1875)
For John and Katherine Curran, the months since their little girl vanished had been a time of unremitting torment—made even worse by the rumors that they themselves were at the bottom of the terrible mystery. It was hard enough to live with the horror of Katie’s disappearance. Having to endure the public’s wholly groundless suspicion that she had fallen victim to her own father’s religious zeal made the situation that much more agonizing.
Knowing full well that the story was a bigoted lie, the Currans could only imagine what had really happened—and by the beginning of summer, they had given up hope that their daughter would ever be found alive. They knew how much she loved to wander by the wharves. For the parents of South Boston, the nearby waters of Dorchester Bay were an ever-present danger that had claimed the lives of many local children.
It was dreadful to think of their pretty ten-year-old girl dying that way. But after so much time without a hint of her whereabouts, they had begun to resign themselves to the likelihood that Katie had fallen into the water and drowned. Though her loss would scar their hearts forever, the lapse of four months had (as one newspaper put it) “begun somewhat to assuage the poignancy of their grief.”
And then, at around 6:00 P.M. on Saturday, July 18, Officer Thomas Adams knocked on their door.
He did not break the awful news right away, saying only that some evidence relating to Katie had just been discovered, and that their presence was needed at once. Still, the stricken parents must have guessed the truth. By the time they descended into the dismal basement of the house across the street, Mrs. Curran was already trembling violently.
Captain Dyer led them to a remote corner of the cellar, as far away as possible from the spot where a group of policemen stood in grim silence around the ash heap. First, Dyer showed Mrs. Curran a soiled scarf that she instantly recognized as the one her daughter had been wearing on the morning of her disappearance. Next, she identified the old-fashioned jacket, or sacque, Katie had thrown on just before leaving the house. As Mrs. Curran examined this garment, sounds of barely stifled anguish began to arise from deep within her throat. When Dyer finally held out a rotting scrap of Katie’s black-and-green-plaid dress, the heartsick woman let out a groan and fainted.
She revived a minute later. Leaping to her feet, she sprang toward the ash pile and attempted to break through the cluster of policemen blocking her way. “Let me see her!” she screamed. But the officers held her back. Her husband came up behind her and, taking her by the shoulders, led her back across the cellar. Sobbing convulsively, Mrs. Curran begged Captain Dyer to let her take her daughter’s body home. As gently as possible, he explained why he could not honor her request. The child’s remains had to be examined by a specialist. Arrangements had already been made to transport it to J. B. Cole’s undertaking parlor. But the captain promised that every care would be taken with the body.
Dyer, of course, had another reason for refusing Mrs. Curran’s plea. After four months in the cellar, her daughter’s corpse was in such unspeakable shape that the mere sight of it would have been more than either parent could bear. But, of course, Dyer said nothing about this to the Currans.
At last, the sorrowing woman allowed her husband to lead her back home. As she mounted the cellar steps, she threw back her head and cried out: “If only she had drowned! Anything but a death like this!”
* * *
The bustle of activity at 327 Broadway—the comings-and-goings of the police, the entrance of the Currans in the company of Patrolman Adams, the arrival of reporters who had gotten wind of the story—alerted the neighborhood residents that something dramatic had happened. Within the hour, a large and increasingly restive crowd had gathered outside the building. When the Currans finally reemerged—the grim-faced husband with his arm around his wailing, barely ambulatory wife—the sight of the devastated couple confirmed the rumor that had already spread through the crowd: that the body of the missing Curran girl had been unearthed in the cellar of Mrs. Pomeroy’s former shop.
All at once, the crowd let out an angry roar and surged across the street. Men and boys snatched stones, trash, and mud from the gutter and began pelting the Pomeroy house, while others cried out angrily for vigilante justice. It seemed, as one newsman reported, “as if the excited mass of humanity would wreak its vengeance on all the Pomeroy family. Had not restraint prevailed, Judge Lynch would, undoubtedly, have held high carnival at this time.”
By that time, around 6:00 P.M., Chief Savage had been notified of the developments in South Boston and was on his way to Station Six. The moment he arrived, he dispatched a contingent of officers to the Pomeroy home. While several of the men stood guard outside, keeping the clamorous mob at bay, two others—Officers Bragdon and Foote—entered the house and asked Jesse’s mother to accompany them to the police station.
With her usual sullenness, Ruth Pomeroy refused to cooperate, folding her arms across her chest and declaring that “she could not imagine what she was wanted for.” The officers—indicating t
he commotion outside—explained that they were taking her into custody as much for her own safety as for any other reason. Mrs. Pomeroy simply glanced out the window and muttered curses at the mob.
His impatience rising, Foote finally announced to the ill-tempered woman that they were there to arrest her “on suspicion of being connected to a felony.” Mrs. Pomeroy sputtered indignantly, uttered a few more curses, and glowered at the officers. But in the end, she was taken away.
A short while later, a pair of officers named Mountain and Deveny were sent back to the house to await the arrival of Jesse’s brother, Charles, who was out delivering his evening papers. As soon as Charles returned from his route, he, too, was arrested and taken to Station Six.
In the meantime (as the Boston Globe reported) “a strong detail of men remained posted at Mrs. Pomeroy’s house, as rumors were current throughout the evening that her home and all it contained would be destroyed by the outraged populace.”
* * *
At approximately 8:00 P.M., Chief Savage—accompanied by Chief of Detectives Jason W. Twombly—arrived at the Charles Street jail to interview Jesse. Dressed in his shabby street clothes and wearing his usual surly expression, Jesse was led into Sheriff Clark’s office and seated across a table from the two officials.
“Do you know who I am, Jesse?” Savage began by asking.
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Mr. Savage.”
“What do you think I came to see you about?”
Jesse shrugged. “The dead boy, I guess.”
“No, Jesse,” said the chief. “I have come to tell you that the body of Katie Curran has been found in your mother’s cellar. She was murdered and buried down there. I came to ask if you knew anything about it.”
“No,” said Jesse. “I don’t.”
“I see,” Savage said, regarding the boy closely. “Jesse,” he continued after a moment, “can you guess where her body was found?”
Jesse only shook his head.
Concealing his exasperation at the boy’s stubborn reticence, Savage asked: “Jesse, where do you put your ashes that come from burning coal?”
“Down in the cellar,” Jesse answered matter-of-factly.
Folding his hands on the table, Savage leaned forward and—speaking in an even voice—said, “Jesse, your mother and brother have been arrested for the murder. Now can you tell me anything that will throw light upon the subject?”
If Savage was hoping that this intelligence would give the boy a jolt and loosen his tongue, he was disappointed. Keeping his unnerving gaze fixed directly on Savage, Jesse coolly replied: “No. I can’t.”
For a long moment, the chief simply stared back at the coarse-featured boy—at the oversized head, the bulldog jaw, the pallid eye. Then, slapping his hands on his thighs, he rose from his chair and motioned to Twombly, who quickly got to his feet. With his subordinate following close behind, Savage turned on his heels and strode from the room, leaving the sullen young felon to brood on the bad news.
* * *
By nine o’clock the following morning—Sunday, July 19—an immense crowd had already gathered outside the Pomeroy house, which remained guarded by a large detail of policemen. Unable to vent their wrath against the property of the detested family, several dozen people swarmed along Broadway, as though bent on storming the police station, seizing Ruth Pomeroy, and stringing her up. They were met by a line of officers, who quickly dispersed the infuriated mob.
Throughout the day, people came to gawk at the house where the little girl’s body had been found. By late afternoon, according to the Boston Post, the murder scene had been “visited by thousands of men and women, many of whom expressed themselves very forcibly regarding the disposition they would like to make of the whole Pomeroy clan.” Scandalous stories about Ruth Pomeroy circulated among the crowd—that she was a woman of shockingly loose morals; that she revelled in the sight of blood and liked to frequent the Brighton slaughterhouses; that she had spewed vicious curses at the mothers of her son’s little victims.
Other rumors were bandied about and immediately picked up by the papers. South Boston suddenly seemed to be populated by young children who had barely escaped from the murderous designs of Jesse Pomeroy. Several months earlier (according to one widely reported story), Jesse—who was alone in his brother’s shop—had looked out the window and spotted two little girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. Going to the door, he had beckoned to the girls and—handing them a few coins—persuaded them to run across the street to the grocers and buy him some oranges. When the children returned with the fruit, Jesse was in the rear of the store, lowering the window-curtains. The little girls immediately became suspicious and, “instead of entering the shop, tossed the oranges into the place and ran away, greatly frightened.”
Another neighborhood child, a nine-year-old girl named Minnie Tappan, claimed that, shortly after Katie Curran’s disappeared, Jesse had asked her to come into his store, “as he had some papers for her brother which he wished her to carry to him.” Minnie, however, had been so alarmed by the strange look on Jesse’s face that she had immedatiely turned and dashed for home—“whereupon he became enraged and chased her down the street, threatening to drag her back into the store whether she would or not.”
How much truth there was to any of these claims is, of course, an open question, since sensational crimes have a way of generating overheated—and often hysterical—mass fantasies. Still, the newspapers could not resist plastering their front pages with these and similar stories, titillating readers with lurid speculations about the dreadful fate that would surely have befallen “the little innocents, had they been induced to enter the store on those occasions.”
* * *
In the meantime, the remains of the “little innocent” who really had fallen into Jesse Pomeroy’s clutches had been transferred to J. B. Cole’s undertaking establishment, where—starting at approximately two o’clock on Sunday afternoon—the autopsy took place. The examination was conducted by a pair of physicians, Drs. E. A. Gilman and Hugh Doherty, and viewed by Coroner Richard M. Ingalls and his jury.
The flesh of the upper body was so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine the precise nature and extent of the wounds that had been inflicted on the child. Her skull, which Charles McGinnis had inadvertently struck while excavating the cellar, was completely separated from the body—but the doctors couldn’t say whether it had been severed by her killer or by the blow from McGinnis’s pickaxe. Still, there were unmistakable signs that the child had been brutally slashed about the neck.
The lower body was in a substantially better state of preservation than the upper. As a result, the doctors were able to discover a critical—and thoroughly appalling—fact. Whoever murdered Katie Curran had sliced open her dress and undergarments with a sharp implement—presumably the same weapon used to cut her throat. Then—in an apparent frenzy of bloodlust—he had savagely mutilated the ten-year-old girl’s lower abdomen, thighs, and genitals.
24
I felt bad that they were arrested, and I resolved to do all I could to get them out, so I kept in mind that proverb, “One may as well be hanged for stealing a sheep as for stealing a lamb,” altering it to suit my case: “One may as well be hanged for killing one as two.”
—Autobiography of Jesse H. Pomeroy
Early Monday morning, Chief Savage—having given Jesse two days to mull things over—returned to the Charles Street jail. Chief of Detectives Twombly had asked to come along, but Savage—believing that the boy might speak more freely if no one else was present—thought it best to handle the interview by himself.
As before, the meeting took place in Sheriff Clark’s office. This time, however, instead of confronting Jesse across the table, Savage seated himself directly beside the boy.
“Jesse,” Savage solemnly began,“I have come to give you one more chance to clear your mother. It seems to me that you must know something about the little girl, and I would like you to tell m
e the facts of the case.”
For a moment, Jesse—head bowed, hands clasped on his lap—did not answer. Then, he slowly looked up at the older man and said: “Well, Mr. Savage, I killed her, but I don’t want to say how.”
“Jesse,” the chief said firmly, “that just won’t do. You must tell me how you killed her.” He paused for a moment, then, in a voice full of calm but compelling authority, asked: “Now, at what time did you open the store?”
After a brief silence, Jesse softly replied: “At half past seven.”
Savage nodded in encouragement. “And exactly what happened after that?” he asked.
“Well,” Jesse began, “the little girl came into the store, and I was standing over near the far end of—” All of a sudden, he broke off his recitation and said, “I have made a little drawing of the store. It is in my cell, if you will let me go get it.”
“All right,” said Savage. Stepping to the door, he beckoned to the jail-keeper, who escorted Jesse from the office. Several minutes later, Jesse returned with a small piece of notepaper that he laid out on the table in front of Savage. Sketched on the sheet was a simple floor plan of the cellar and store. Pointing out the various locations as he spoke—and displaying no more emotion than if he had been describing a typical workday—Jesse proceeded to relate the events of that ghastly morning back in March, when he had slaughtered the ten-year-old girl who had wandered into his store in search of a notebook.
When Jesse was done, Savage regarded him in silence for a long moment. Then—speaking in a tone that suggested he only had the boy’s best interests at heart—he said: “Jesse, this is an important case. I would like to write down exactly what you said, so as to get the facts of the case just right when I speak to the jury of inquest this afternoon.”
“I don’t want to want to have it in the papers,” Jesse said warily.
Fiend Page 12