[1] Around August 2, 1872, Ruth Ann Pomeroy and her children moved from their home in Chelsea to Broadway Street in the South Boston area.

[1] Six days later, on September 17, railway workers walking along the Hartford and Erie Line in South Boston stumbled upon Robert Gould, a five-year-old boy, who had been tied to a telegraph post near the tracks, beaten, and slashed by a knife.

[1] The 13-year-old Pomeroy confessed to the attacks, was found guilty, and sentenced to six years at the State Reform School for Boys in Westborough, Massachusetts.

[citation needed] The case of Commonwealth v. Pomeroy was heard in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (Suffolk County, Boston) on December 9th and 10th, 1874.

[citation needed] Pomeroy was pronounced guilty on December 10, 1874, with the jury's recommendation of mercy on account of the prisoner's youth.

On the evening of September 7, 1876, Pomeroy was transferred from the Suffolk County Jail to the State Prison at Charlestown, and began his life in solitary.

[4] In prison, Pomeroy claimed that he taught himself to read several foreign languages, including Hebrew; and one visiting psychiatrist found that he had learned German with "considerable accuracy".

He wrote poetry and argued with prison officials over his right to have it published, and he studied law books and spent decades composing legal challenges to his conviction and requests for a pardon.

[5] A prison warden reported finding rope, steel pens, and a drill that Pomeroy had concealed in his cell or on his person.

"[5] In 1917, with the support of District Attorney Joseph Pelletier,[6] Pomeroy's sentence was commuted to the extent of allowing him the privileges afforded to other life prisoners.

In 1929, by this time an elderly man in frail health, he was transferred to Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane,[4] where he died on September 29, 1932.