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bigger boy approached and asked Robert if he wanted to go see some soldiersmarching in a parade. Robert, who had never seen a parade before, eagerly agreed.
    Leading Robert to the railroad line, the bigger boy had marched him along the tracks a considerable distance. Eventually, Robert began to grow tired and confused. He couldn’t see any soldiers. In fact, he couldn’t see anybody else at all; he seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. He was just about to ask his companion how much farther they had to go, when—with a startling cry—the big boy set upon Robert, stripping off all his clothes and tying him to a pole.
    Pulling out two knives, one much larger than the other, the older boy had danced gleefully around the boy, spouting filthy words and slashing his victim on the head, under the eyes, and behind each ear. Then he had placed the blade of the bigger knife against Robert’s throat and said, “You will never see your mother and father anymore, you stinking little bastard, for I am going to kill you.”
    Robert could feel the sharp edge of the blade pressing against his windpipe. All at once, however, his tormentor cursed, dropped his knife, and ran—evidently scared away by the approaching railroad workers, who came upon the bound and bleeding child just a few moments later.
    That Robert Gould had become the eighth victim of the diabolical “boy torturer” seemed indisputable. Everything about the crime paralleled the previous outrages. There was, however, a single and very significant difference between this case and the others. Unlike all the preceding victims—who had been too terrorized, traumatized, or simply unobservant to recall any distinguishing features of the culprit—Robert had noticed a peculiar physical detail. Questioned by an officer named Bragdon, the five-year-old described his assailant as a “big bad boy with a funny eye.”
    “Funny in what way?” Officer Bragdon asked gently.
    Robert—who, like other children, loved to play marbles—explained that his attacker had an eye like a “milkie.”
    “A milkie?” asked Bragdon.
    A marble that was all white, the little boy explained, like the color of milk.
    Robert Gould’s observation would prove to be a breakthrough. For the first time, the authorities possessed a criticalclue to the identity of the bloodthirsty juvenile who had been terrorizing Boston for the better part of a year. By the following day, some newspapers were already referring to this shadowy figure by a new and unsettling nickname. He was no longer the “boy torturer. He was the “boy with the marble eye.”

8

If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
—Matthew 6:23
    T he precise cause of Jesse Pomeroy’s disfigurement is hard to determine, since contemporary accounts differ. According to one source, he developed cataracts soon after his birth. Another states that he suffered from a severe childhood illness that left him with corneal scars. A third insists that his eye became ulcerated from a virulent facial infection. And several claim that a violent reaction to a smallpox vaccination left him half-blind.
    All that can be said with certainty is that, from a very young age, his right pupil was covered with a pale, lustreless film, as though (in the words of one boyhood acquaintance) there was “a white lace curtain” pulled over it. It is also the case that this albino eye rarely failed to have a powerful effect on others. Many people (including, according to certain accounts, his own father) could barely look at it without a shudder. To others—primarily the bigger, crueler boys in the neighborhood—his “marble eye” made him an object of ridicule and contempt.
    Of course, it was not only Jesse’s unsettling appearance that made him seem so peculiar to his peers. It was his eccentric behavior, too. Years later—after Jesse had achieved such notoriety that the newspapers never tired of running stories about his life and