Jesse Pomeroy was a real-life serial killer. He is the youngest person in the state of Massachusetts to be convicted of murder in the first degree, being only 15 years old at the time of his conviction in 1874. When Pomeroy was 12 years old there were reports of boys around the ages of 8-10 being lured into alleys and other remote areas and assaulted by a boy around Pomeroy's age, however no one was ever arrested. The attacks were noteworthy because of the extreme amount of brutality used by the assailant. The young boys were beaten by hand, a belt and, in at least two of the attacks, a knife. Some of the boys were physically scarred permanently. Pomeroy's parents moved to South Boston when he was 13 and soon-after attacks on young boys started there. Pomeroy was arrested in connection with the attacks and was found guilty in Juvenile Court and sentenced to five years at a reform school for boys, but he was paroled back to his mother's custody when he was 14. Two months later a 10 year-old girl went missing and the body of a mutilated four-year-old girl was found in a nearby salt marsh. Pomeroy was immediately arrested for the murder of the four-year-old girl and the kidnapping of the 10 year-old even though there was no evidence linking him to either crime. The remains of the older girl were found a short time later in the basement of his mother's dress shop and Pomeroy was charged and convicted on two counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to death but because of his young age the Governor refused to sign Pomeroy's death warrant, his death sentence was commuted and he was given life in solitary confinement in prison without the possibility of parole. During his time in prison Pomeroy tried to escape on over a dozen occasions, one occasion caused him to lose an eye when he tried to blow a hole in his cell wall by igniting a gas pipe that ran through it. Pomeroy never did manage to escape and eventually died in prison in 1932 at the age of 72.
