• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • NEWS+OPINIONS
    • NEWS TO US
    • COLUMNS
      • APPARENT HORIZON
      • DEAR READER
      • Close
    • LONGFORM FEATURES
    • OPINIONS
    • EDITORIAL
    • Close
  • ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
    • FILM
    • MUSIC
    • COMEDY
    • PERFORMING ARTS
    • VISUAL ARTS
    • Close
  • DINING+DRINKING
    • EATS
    • SIPS
    • BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU
    • Close
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CANNABIS
      • TALKING JOINTS MEMO
      • Close
    • WELLNESS
    • GTFO
    • Close
  • STUFF TO DO
  • TICKETS
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • ADVERTISE
    • Close

Dig Bos

The Dig - Greater Boston's Alternative News Source

EXCERPT: ‘THE WILDERNESS OF RUIN’

Written by DIG STAFF Posted April 15, 2015 Filed Under: FEATURES, Non-fiction

FT_WildernessOfRuin_728

From the book The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America’s Youngest Serial Killer by Roseanne Montillo

Copyright (c) 2015 by Roseanne Montillo. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

 

A junction not far from Dorchester Avenue and Forest Street in Boston had been given the benign name of Glover’s Corner, though it had quickly acquired a disreputable reputation and was nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah. It was an area teeming with taverns, billiard parlors, houses of ill repute, and gambling shacks. Sailors who found themselves on land for a few hours sought Glover’s Corner and the willing arms of the prostitutes who arrayed themselves at its perimeter like rotted fruit.

 

Glover’s Corner was not a place for the children. Instead, they headed to Savin Hill, a rocky outcrop near the beach. From there they could watch the boats and the doings of the Tuttle House, the first seaside motel in the area. Its owner, Joseph Tuttle, had renamed the place Savin Hill because of the many juniper (savin) trees that grew nearby. He thought its previous name, Old Hill, was not descriptive enough. But the trees weren’t what drew the children to the spot. They went there for the beaches, where they could splash in the waters or stroll along the banks.

 

On August 17, 1872, a very hot day, seven-year-old George Pratt walked leisurely across a small sandy patch of land bordering the waters. He was an unusually pale boy, and so small for his age that his mother often worried about letting him out on his own. It was so quiet that day that George thought he was alone as he began to meander near the water’s edge, stooping down every so often to collect shapeless pieces of driftwood that had washed up with the tide, shiny rocks for his collection, and empty seashells. He was so involved in his treasure hunt he did not notice the tall shape of a boy overcoming him until it was too late.

 

Some hours later, the authorities and local newspaper reporters picked up the story, as it had a ring of the familiar to it: the Boy Torturer had struck again, but he had not used a wooden stick to beat up his victim, as he had previously done. On this occasion he used a long sewing needle and had pierced the little boy’s limbs and genitals, drawing blood. Worse still, as the little boy pointed to his backside, the police noticed something even more disturbing: the Boy Torturer had bitten off a chunk of flesh from George’s buttocks and poured fresh seawater on the open wound; this had been done, the officers reckoned, in order to inflict additional stinging. And though he had followed his same routine, more or less, this assault was quite different because a geographical shift had occurred: it had happened not in Chelsea, as the earlier ones had, but on the beaches of South Boston.

 

But it was the torturer’s next victim that would give detectives the first clue into the assailant’s identity. Even though five-year-old Robert Gould was terrified during questioning, he still managed to recall something peculiar about his attacker: the big boy had a “funny” eye, he told the detectives. Funny, and as white as the marbles he played with.

 

JESSE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT had caused his marbled eye. He often blamed a bad batch of childhood smallpox vaccines, while Ruth Ann insisted he had suffered an infection when he was just a toddler. Either way, when strangers saw the whitish film over Jesse’s eye, they often reacted with repulsion. Some thought there was a “white lace curtain” covering the pupil, while his own father, Thomas Pomeroy, had taken such an aversion to the boy’s eye albinism that he often recoiled at his son’s face. Ruth Ann also mentioned that Thomas eventually thought of it as “the evil eye” and used his belt in an attempt to drive the devil out of Jesse. Many of the neighborhood boys and even the ones Jesse went to school with often mocked and teased him for it.

 

As a result, he had had very few friendships when the family lived on Bunker Hill Avenue, and that didn’t change when they moved to South Boston. Part of it was Jesse’s own fault. By age twelve, he had become so intensely withdrawn that he did not join the local games, nor did he make an effort to get to know those children beyond his own new neighborhood. Sometimes he silently appeared by the playground, as if he wanted to partake in the other kids’ games. He would mill about for a few minutes, then stare at the boys already playing an impromptu game of baseball until he finally shrugged his shoulders and, with a book in his hands, moved away to find a place of his own.

 

A local boy named George Thompson later acknowledged that Jesse did occasionally stay behind. He even took part in the “extravagant talk” the boys indulged in, talks of blood, scalping, and the roasting of Indians like “venison.” Thompson said the children talked in this manner because at the time Boston was in “a sea of excitement” over the awful deeds someone was perpetrating on little boys in Chelsea and South Boston. Neighborhood boys had heard the stories about the little boy who was beaten on Powder Horn Hill and another boy to be especially careful of a man with “red hair and beard.” In the fading twilight of summer, they spoke of this fiend as years later they would speak of the doings committed by Jack the Ripper, comparing the merits of their own monster to that of London.

 

But Jesse never contributed much to the conversations, his neighbor later recalled. For the most part he only listened. Nonetheless, one thing seemed to cheer up Jesse: a game of Scouts and Indians. He would stare spellbound as the boys took on their guises of Wild Bill, “who had killed thirty-nine Indians,” Buffalo Bill, Charlie Emmett, Texas Jack, Squirrel Cap. The Indians were often portrayed by the smaller and more defenseless children, those whose demeanor, Thompson went on, “generally deserved nothing but a good thrashing.”

 

Montillo will read from The Wilderness of Ruin on Wednesday, April 15 at 6pm in the Abbey Room at Central Library (BPL) in Copley Square, 700 Boylston St., Boston.

DIG STAFF
+ posts

Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.

  • DIG STAFF
    https://digboston.com/author/dig-staff/
    Upcoming: Taste Of Somerville Returns
  • DIG STAFF
    https://digboston.com/author/dig-staff/
    Inbox: “Largest Pizza Festival in NE Returns to Boston’s City Hall Plaza"
  • DIG STAFF
    https://digboston.com/author/dig-staff/
    Dig This: “Fire Walk With Me” After Party For Twin Peaks Diehards
  • DIG STAFF
    https://digboston.com/author/dig-staff/
    Inbox: Night Shift Beer Gardens Open This Week

Filed Under: FEATURES, Non-fiction Tagged With: 19th Century, Boston, Boy Torturer, Bunker Hill Ave, George Pratt, historic Boston, Jack the Ripper, Old Hill, Pomeroy, Powder Horn Hill, Roseanne Montillo, Savin Hill, serial killer, Tuttle House, Wilderness of Ruin

WHAT’S NEW

Massachusetts Bill, Victim Advocates Call For Coordinated Date-Rape Drug Response

Massachusetts Bill, Victim Advocates Call For Coordinated Date-Rape Drug Response

Report: Fewer Youth Transition Out Of Massachusetts Foster Care System

Report: Fewer Youth Transition Out Of Massachusetts Foster Care System

State Wire: Activists Urge Congress To Raise Debt Ceiling, Resist Spending Cuts

State Wire: Activists Urge Congress To Raise Debt Ceiling, Resist Spending Cuts

Dancing On Banana Peels: Life On Lifetime Parole In Massachusetts

Dancing On Banana Peels: Life On Lifetime Parole In Massachusetts

Justice Department Completes Vetting Of Rachael Rollins

Justice Department Completes Vetting Of Rachael Rollins

AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”

AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”

Primary Sidebar

LOCAL EVENTS

AAN Wire


Most Popular

  • AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”
  • Over Yondr: Are Cell Phone Pouches At Shows Liberating, Dangerous, Or Annoying?
  • Deep Cuts Brings Sandwiches, Craft Beer, And Live Music To Medford
  • Family Of Woman Killed By Commuter Rail Sues MBTA For Crash Records
  • Daring Greatly: TikTok Star Alden McWayne (aka Gucci Pineapple) On Scheming And Dreaming

Footer

Social Buttons

DigBoston facebook DigBoston Twitter DigBoston Instagram

Masthead

About

Advertise

Customer Service

About Us

DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an email blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: sales@digboston.com To reach editorial (and for inquiries about internship opportunities): editorial@digboston.com