Fiend (43 page)

In the final section of the report—labeled “Prognosis”—the authors made it clear that the vicious propensities of “moral degenerates” like Pomeroy could never be fully controlled, let alone eliminated. Once past a certain age, such beings were utterly immune to rehabilitaton. “To properly safeguard the community,” they declared, “close and continual custody is absolutely necessary.” There was no doubt in their minds that “if at large, [Pomeroy] would still be a menace to society in spite of his thirty-seven and a half years of solitary confinement.” That Jesse had not committed any atrocities since 1874 was a result of only one factor—“lack of opportunity.”

The doctors concluded with a cautious, carefully hedged recommendation that indicated just how dangerous they still considered the fifty-five-year-old prisoner to be. “We are of the opinion,” they wrote, “that some amelioration of the prisoner’s solitary confinement would be advantageous and that he might be allowed certain of the privileges that are enjoyed by other life-prisoners
provided absolutely effective measures be taken to prevent his escape.
If he could be induced to take up regular employment and if his yard-privileges could be extended—always under adequate supervision—life would be less irksome to him and possibly his mind might be diverted from his obsession with escaping and from continual legal contention about his rights. We should regard it, however, as a hazardous experiment in view of the fact that this besetting determination of his, which has been growing in strength ever since his commitment, has become a habit of mind and calls for the exercise of the utmost precaution.”

46

I am glad of this opportunity to show the world that I can behave myself because it may lead to further consideration and possibly a pardon. I know people think I am some sort of an animal thirsting for blood. I know that they think I will pounce on the first living thing I see, human or animal, and try to kill it. I have a normal mind. I am not deranged. I will prove it to you all.

—Jesse Pomeroy, January 24, 1917

R
uth Pomeroy’s feeling that—as she wrote to Fred High—“my time is short here” was not so much a premonition as an accurate appraisal of her condition. Always a tough and hardworking woman, she had been the proprietress of a lunchroom at 489 Neposet Avenue, near the terminal of the Bay State and Boston Elevated car lines, for many years. But a severe bout of double pneumonia in 1909 had shattered her health and forced her to close her business. Since that time, she had been residing in the home of her married granddaughter, Mrs. Walter Giddens, at 47 Pearl Street in the town of North Weymouth, Massachusetts.

By the late fall of 1914, Ruth had become so weak that—for the first time in nearly forty years—she was unable to make her monthly visit to Jesse. A few months later, during the first week of January, she was again stricken with pneumonia. “Aged and weakened with sorrow,” as the
Boston Globe
would report, “she could not fight the disease.”

On the afternoon of January 10, 1915, Ruth Pomeroy died in her sleep, without having realized her most “cherished hope”—that “before I passed away I might have my son with me once more.”

*  *  *

Even with his most ardent champion gone, the pressure to alleviate Jesse’s condition became more intense as 1916 approached.
September 7 of that year would mark the fortieth anniversary of his incarceration in Charlestown—a grim milestone not only for Pomeroy but for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as well. Never before in U.S. penal history had a human being been subjected to such a torturous stretch of solitary confinement.

True, there were some people who continued to protest any mitigation of his sentence. Interviewed by the
Boston Post,
James Bragdon—the former police officer who, in 1872, had collared Jesse for the series of child-assaults that had terrorized South Boston—declared that he would be “sorry to see” Pomeroy given any sort of liberty. “The mania which caused him to cut little children will never leave him,” said Bragdon, now a frail and wizened seventy-year-old, “and he will not be safe, even in a jail ward with men. No one will ever convince me that he will ever be normal or safe, and I think he should be kept in solitary confinement to the end of his days.”

For the most part, however, there was a growing clamor throughout the country for a commutation of Jesse’s sentence. In California, for example, an editorialist in the
Los Angeles Times
—noting with horror that Pomeroy was about to observe his fortieth year in solitary confinement (“in other words, his fortieth year spent in hell”)—exclaimed: “It does not seem possible that this is true. It appalls the soul to think of it. And in Massachusetts, above all places. Massachusetts, with its boasted intellectuality, its schools, its churches, its learnings, and the sacred codfish whirling in the winds of heaven on the spire of the old State House in Boston!”

The Literary Digest,
in its February 19, 1916, issue, equated Jesse’s forty-year immurement with the “barbarity [of] the Dark Ages” and reprinted an editorial from the
Kansas City Star
that vividly evoked Jesse’s appalling isolation from the world of the living:

Ever since the year of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pomeroy has lived within those stone walls, never walking out into the sunshine, never speaking to any one, never seeing a person from the outside world, except his mother, who has faithfully visited him once every two months. Within one hunded yards of his cell, the human tide of the great city of Boston has ebbed and flowed for nearly half a century, but he has never heard even a footfall of it. Mule-cars have given way to trolleys and the underground tubes; the telephone has come into general use, but he has never seen one.

The judge who tried him, the attorney general and district attorney who prosecuted him, the lawyer who defended him, the governor who spared his life and gave him a living death instead, all died years ago; he has survived nearly all who knew him. His keepers say he has read every one of the eight thousand books in the prison library, that he reads French, German, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, and that he is a superior mathematician, having educated himself, but that in all the forty years his face has never been seen to lighten with a smile.

Responding to this growing outcry, Governor Samuel McCall appointed a three-man committee to interview Pomeroy at Charlestown. Their visit took place on December 8, 1916. Arriving at the prison at around 2:45
P.M.,
they found Jesse enjoying his daily, fifty-minute walk in the prison yard under the scrutiny of an armed guard. He was escorted to an office in the Cherry Hill section, where the committee members—Councillors Richard F. Andrews and Timothy J. Buckley of Boston and Henry C. Mulligan of Natick—conferred with him for more than two hours.

Though Jesse’s attorney, Edwin J. Weiscopf, was also present at the meeting, it was Pomeroy himself who did most of the talking. Pleading with “all the eloquence of an able lawyer” (as one newspaper reported), he asked that he be granted, if not a full pardon, then at the very least “equal privileges with other inmates of the institution.” He requested that the “solitary features of his sentence be eliminated”; that a window be cut into the rear wall of his cell so that he could “get just a few more stray beams of God’s sunshine”; that the heavy oaken door that shielded him from view be removed; that he be allowed to participate in religious services and holiday entertainments, play ball, and mingle with the other men in the yard during exercise. He made it clear,
however, that—though he wished to be treated like the rest of the prisoners in all other ways—he drew the line at work. After so many years of idleness, he explained, he did not care to be employed in the prison shops. Instead, he “preferred to devote his time to reading and studying.”

To demonstrate that he had put his long incarceration to good use, Jesse gave a display of his shorthand technique (another skill he had mastered during his endless hours of solitary) and demonstrated his linguistic abilities. At the end of the meeting, he was informed that—though they “could hold out absolutely no hope for his pardon”—the councillors would “report favorably on his request for greater liberties.”

The following month, on January 17, 1917, while speaking before the Elms Hill Council, Knights of Columbus, in the Columbus Club of Dorchester, District Attorney Joseph C. Pelletier declared that—though he was against any form of pardon for Pomeroy—he supported “such commutation as would take him out of solitary.”

Exactly one week later, on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 24, the Governor’s special committee made a formal recommendation of clemency. That same evening, Governor McCall—acting “with the advice and consent of the Council”—signed an official order, commuting Jesse’s sentence from life in solitary to straight life imprisonment.

As one observer noted, Jesse’s four decades of “almost unbroken solitude” had been a punishment of epical proportions, “surpassing by several months the forty-year period during which the children of Israel were condemned to wander in the wilderness.” If a full pardon represented Jesse’s Promised Land, then—like Moses—he would never achieve his goal. Still, the fifty-seven-year-old prisoner had at least been granted a certain measure of freedom.

The commutation made headlines throughout New England and beyond. Every paper in Boston ran a front-page story on McCall’s action: “FREES JESSE POMEROY FROM SOLITARY CELL AT THE STATE PRISON” (the
Herald);
“POMEROY’S LONG TERM OF SOLITARY ENDED” (the
Post
); “POMEROY GRANTED GREATER FREEDOM” (the
Globe
). Even the
New York Times
took note of the story, running a piece headlined: “BAY STATE SOFTENS POMEROY’S PUNISHMENT. Removes
Famous Prisoner After 40 Years From Solitary Confinement to Ordinary Cell.”

Public reaction to the commutation was decidedly mixed. In the days immediately following McCall’s decision, his office was flooded with letters and telegrams, some of which roundly condemned him. One writer accused him of exposing the general prison population to a “bloodthirtsy animal” who was likely to “tear his fellow prisoners to pieces”; while another, with heavy-handed sarcasm, suggested that—since the governor and council were so intent on coddling Pomeroy—they might as well give him “a cradle and a nursing bottle.”

Most correspondents, however, praised the governor. His action (in the words of one South Boston man) had effaced a “terrible blot on the fair name of Massachusetts.” Indeed, a number of people urged McCall to go even further and set Pomeroy free. In a gesture that was widely reported in the press, one prominent Back Bay woman made it known that—should Jesse be granted a full pardon—she was prepared to employ him as her servant.

McCall himself had little to say about his decision, telling reporters that he “would rather have the act speak for itself.” Other officials were only slightly more forthcoming. “Pomeroy’s was a terrible crime,” declared Prison Commissioner Cyrus Adams, “but his has also been a terrible punishment. In view of his age and feebleness and his punishment of nearly forty-one years in solitary confinement, it seemed to me wise, just, and humane to recommend commutation of his sentence.” Warden Adams of Charlestown made it clear, however, that Jesse’s new liberties were entirely contingent on his good behavior and could be revoked at any time. “It is up to Pomeroy himself how long he enjoys the new privileges,” he told a group of reporters. “Should he fail to make good, it will be his fault alone. We will do the best we can for him.”

At first, Jesse seemed delighted with the news. The morning after the governor’s announcement, a mob of newsmen descended on the prison and were granted permission to interview Pomeroy, who expressed his gratitude “to the Governor, his special committee, my attorney, Edwin I. Weiscopf, and others for this consideration.” Speaking in a voice that sounded weirdly shrill and unnatural, as though rusty from years of disuse, Jesse declared his “ambition to live honest and law-abiding and so deserve the added privileges now granted me. I can see that this
opportunity to associate with fellow prisoners may lead to further favorable action. I will demonstrate that it is not dangerous for me to mingle with other men.

“God is good,” he continued. “I only wish my dear mother were alive to know that one further step has been granted toward my freedom. She hoped to see that day, but she is gone.”

Asked if he would pose for some photographs, Jesse responded with an enthusiastic, “Sure!” Throughout the shoot, he appeared to be in a buoyant mood. At one point, two of the cameramen asked him to turn in their direction. “Take it easy, boys,” Jesse cheerfully replied, “I can’t look both ways at once.”

The following day, every daily in Boston featured at least one front-page photo of the “world-famous lifer.” In some of these shots, Jesse stands stiffly in a corner of the yard. Wearing his lumpy three-piece suit, a loosely knotted tie, and a round, small-brimmed cap, he looks less like a hardened criminal than an old-time railroad conductor—a holdover (as indeed he was) from the era of Jesse James and the Dalton Gang. In other pictures, he poses awkardly at a roll-top desk. With a pen clutched in his hand and his jacket lapel adorned with an American flag pin, he looks like the world’s shabbiest bank manager. Still other pictures are close-ups of his profoundly unappealing face: the disconcerting eyes, the massive jaw, the bristling moustache, and the frowning, lipless mouth. In none of the photos does he look a day younger than sixty-five.