Children Who Kill

June 1, 2003
It is a rarely acknowledged fact that children are capable of crimes as heinous as those committed by adults. In this deeply disquieting book, the author profiles 13 killers between the ages of 10 and 17. The author begins with the story of Jesse Pomeroy, the Boston boy who, at the age of 12, began by torturing younger children and a couple of years later graduated to homicide. That was in 1873. Later, she writes about Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the two 10-year-old Liverpool boys who achieved worldwide fame by luring toddler James Bulger from a shopping mall and murdering him. The subjects of this book are boys and girls who, for a variety of reasons, found the dark side of themselves far earlier than most people. The author keeps the editorializing to a minimum, preferring to let the plain facts speak for themselves. It's a good plan: the book is downright chilling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)