Read BORN TO BE KILLERS (True Crime) for Free Online

awareness of the crimes she committed. She was allowed to keep the child, who was technically made a ward of the court until 1992. She eventually met a man and fell in love, settling in a small town. However, her probation officer had to inform the local authorities of her presence, and very soon the villagers were marching through the street with banners showing ‘Murderer out!’ signs. Apparently she had lived in constant fear of the moment when her true identity would be exposed, and her past continues to haunt her.
    Medical experts do not believe that sociopaths can ever be ‘cured’. They are normally resistant to therapy, which Mary proved during her internment. Some experts consider that it is possible that aggressive tendencies begin to quieten down with age – perhaps Mary is better but that is something that no one can be really sure about.

The Boy Fiend

     
By the age of fourteen Jesse Pomeroy had killed two people, one male and one female. Prior to those murders, Jesse sexually and physically assaulted at least seven other male children. Jesse was a cruel child who revelled in the pain and terror of his victims.
     
    Jesse Pomeroy was born on November 29, 1859, in South Boston. Jesse developed a mysterious illness shortly after his birth which left him with a noticeable scar in the white of his right eye, which later helped in the capture of the miniature madman. The absence of an iris and pupil gave the boy an evil aura even before his ghastly acts became public.
    Because Jesse’s appearance made him stand out from other children, he was an easy target for ridicule by others in his neighbourhood. Apart from his almost pure white right eye, he had a larger-than-normal sized head with overly large ears that stuck out noticeably. Add to this the fact that he very rarely smiled, preferred to play on his own, and suffered from epileptic-style shaking episodes, it was easy to see why he didn’t fit in and found it hard to make friends.
    Jesse was the second son of Charles and Ruth Pomeroy. They came from a lower-middle-class family in the Chelsea section of Boston. Jesse’s home life was far from happy. His father, Charles, was a heavy drinker with a mean temper, and he was known to have violently beaten Jesse with a horse whip after he discovered his son had been playing truant from school. The young Pomeroy children lived in dread of being taken behind the outhouse in their garden, because this meant they would receive a severe beating which often ended in bloodshed. Before each beating their father would strip his children naked, and this act could possibly have contributed to Jesse forging a link between sexual satisfaction, pain and punishment. Jesse later emulated his father’s cruelty on his young victims.
    Jesse’s evil side first came out when he started to torture animals. The family had owned a couple of birds but they both mysteriously ended up dead, with their heads twisted completely off their bodies. His mother had her suspicions and after Jesse was discovered torturing a neighbour’s kitten, she decided it would be unwise to allow another pet into their home. Jesse soon tired of his persecution of animals and turned his attention to human targets, apparently selecting victims that were smaller than himself. His attacks had an eerily familiar pattern – he acted out and enhanced exactly what he had experienced at home.
     
    HIS VICTIMS
     
    His first known victim was four-year-old William Paine. In December 1871, two men were climbing up Powder Horn Hill near the Chelsea Creek in South Boston. As they passed a small cabin they heard a whimper. On approaching the cabin, the sound grew louder and they discovered it was coming from a small child. They went inside the cabin and were completely sickened by what they saw. Billy was hanging by his wrists from a rope tied to the centre beam of the cabin. He was half-naked and only semi-conscious. The