Further reading for Jesse Pomeroy/ Issei Sagawa:
Fiend: The Shocking True Story Of America’s Youngest Serial Killer
We start off with a good ole fashion young murderer.
Jesse Pomeroy was born in Charlestown, Mass in 1859 he was the second born son to Thomas Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman, his brother Thomas Pomeroy was two years older. He may have gone on to commit heinous crimes, but his early childhood and family were pretty normal. The one thing that my have had hand in the horrors that Jesse would go on to commit, was the fact that his father quit his labor job at the Boston Naval Yard in order to enter the butcher business.
Jesse as a baby was very sickly, they weren’t sure exactly what the illness was but by the time he was seven months old he seemed to have recovered however he was left scrawny and frail. Everyone except his mother, seemed to notice a strangeness about Jesse, they couldn’t put a finger on it but they knew there was something off about the boy. He rarely played with other children in the neighborhood preferring to spend his time reading, and at school he was just a run of the mill student not standing out in any way.
There was a local story that at the age of five Jesse stabbed a cat and and threw the body into the river, but most issues did not start until his teen years. Like most criminals, people like to point out the issues that may have led to Jesse’s serial killer ways, for Jesse it seems to have started a with a severe case of pneumonia during which he spent most of his delirious, after that even his mother said that he was “not well”.
It was around the time that Jesse was 12 that several young boys were one at a time enticed to remote areas and attacked by a slightly older boy. No one was ever arrested at that time but the attacks were extremely brutal, the boys were beaten with fists and belts, and in at least two attacks, a knife. Eventually Jesse would be arrested and had his case tried in juvenile court.
At the age of 14, Jesse was paroled back to his mother in South Boston where a 10 year old girl, Katie Curran went missing. A matter of months later, the mutilated body of a four year old Horace Millen was found on the marsh of Dorchester Bay. The police immediately searched out Jesse, and would find Katie Curran’s body in the basement of his mother’s dress shop.
In the end Jesse lived out his days in the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Followed by a Cannibal killer
Issei Sagawa is a Japanese murderer and cannibal who was known for killing, mutilating, cannibalizing and raping the corpse of Renee Hartevelt in Paris in 1981. After two years of pre-trail detention he was found to be legally insane and deported to Japan.
Episode 116
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