Fiend: The Shocking True Story of Americas Youngest Serial Killer

It's nice to know that youthful murderers are not just a recent phenomenon. Jesse Pomeroy makes Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold seem like choirboys. Since Jesse was only fourteen, the governor commuted his sentence from death to life in solitary without parole. Doesn't sound like much of a commutation, does it? Harold Schechter's descriptions of Jesse's crimes were haunting. I particularly liked the last two sections -- Jesse's letters to Willie Baxter, and the account of his life in prison and many escape attempts. (Not that I blame him for trying.) I like learning about lesser-known murderers instead of everything Ted Bundy all the time. Yet another good book from Harold Schechter!

I have grown to really respect this author, for he never fails to deliver intelligent, well presented non-fiction horror. "Fiend"'s the fourth title of his I have read and probably my favorite. Even the most battle caloused true crime reader will get chills from the material presented here.While graphically recounting a nightmare of a prepubecent monster known as Jesse Pomeroy, the author applies this tragic tale of the late 1800's to the events of recent time. Here he successfully drives home the point that things really haven't changed all that much and "the good ol days weren't all that good". I found this concept to be even scarier than the lazy eyed boy sadist known as Pomeroy. Yikes!Two thumbs up, Harold! Please keep on writing.

To most people, the name Jesse Harding Pomeroy means nothing. But to the people of Massachussetts from the mid-1870s to the mid-1920s, and even beyond, it was the name of a monster. Jesse Pomeroy was one of the youngest people ever sentenced to death, and when his sentence was commuted, it was to solitary confinement for over forty years. His record of time in solitary is only equalled by the Birdman of Alcatraz. Still, when one considers the appalling cruelty and sadism of his crimes, including two particularly shocking murders of young children, it's very difficult to feel sorry for him. Pomeroy made a cameo appearance in Caleb Carr's _The Alienist,_ but Carr changed a few facts---for starters, Pomeroy was never, ever in Sing Sing, but served his sentence mostly at Charlestown Prison in Greater Boston. At a time when many people sigh for an imaginary lost Utopia in the past, when all children were good, it's salutary to see that so little has changed. Were Pomeroy to appear today and be caught, the terms of the controversies that would swirl around his head would hardly differ from those that actually did, back in the days of President Ulysses S. Grant. Serial killers, even child serial killers, are, unfortunately, nothing new, and neither are the scapegoats blamed, such as lurid popular entertainment. I have to say that if Pomeroy had been hanged, even at fourteen, the world would have been a bit better, cleaner place. Even hardened bleeding-hearts would have difficulty sympathizing with him much.

Harold Schechter is among my favorite True Crime authors because he brings a much-needed historical perspective to violent crime. Unlike other writers in this genre, Schechter mainly follows psychopaths and serial killers at the turn of the century. And if you thought contemporary America bred the worst violent criminals, Schechter will quickly remind you that our past was always worse than our present."Fiend" tells the story of Jesse Pomeroy, a boy who began to abduct and sexually torture small children in South Boston when he was only twelve, and eventually murdered his victims when he turned fourteen. And Pomeroy's crime wave started in 1871, shortly after the Civil War ended.After Pomeroy's arrest, newspaper editorials of that period quickly declared that America was in the midst of a violent "crime epidemic" that threatened to tear down the whole country -- just as they do today after every school shooting.And like today, critics blamed Pomeroy's behavior on violent entertainment. Today's scapegoats are horror films and video games. In Pomeroy's day, sociologists blamed dime novels about "Wild Bill Hickock" and "Indian Dan."And like today, outraged Americans struggled over how to appropriately penalize juvenile offenders. While many demanded that Pomeroy be executed to serve as a deterrent, others pleaded with the Massachusetts governor NOT to hang a 14-year-old boy. (Pomeroy was eventually sentenced to life in prison in an unusually cruel manner.)Like all of Schechter's previous works, "Fiend" is a very well researched, very disturbing book that zips along at a breathless pace. But it's still not as gruesome as Schechter's biography of Albert Fish, the elderly cannibal who stalked New York's children during the 1920s. "Deranged" recounts a psychosexual pathology so bizarre and unbelievable, Albert Fish made Jeffrey Dahmer appear sane by comparison.