The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder CasesGoddard, Henry Herbert
Science
The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases
Goddard, Henry Herbert
Crime -- Case studies; Murder -- Case studies; Offenders with mental disabilities -- Case studies
In 1907, assume when the defendant was ten years of age he went to live in
the Bronx, where he lived for two years and attended school during this
period. At one time he took two little girls to a piece of woods and
started to take their clothes off, and when asked why he did it, said he
was going to play Indian and that Indians were naked.
On one Sunday afternoon he was observed in a group of children eating mud
pies, and the children were calling him "Loonie" and were telling him to
eat another one.
During these two years that the defendant lived in the Bronx he was
observed to tease children. He would take a little boy's wagon and run
away with it. He would take his hat and throw it over a neighboring
fence. He would take the caps of girls and toss them over fences, pull
their curls, take away their hoops when they were rolling hoops, and take
the ball away when they were playing ball. He would do these things quite
often. On one afternoon he was brought home with a gash on his right
temple. It was bleeding and at least one inch in length. He stated that he
had received it from a fall from a stone wall while he was playing
"thief." On another occasion he chased a young girl who was stopping at
the house around the room with a table knife because she was trying to
correct him because he ran home from school without her. He did not
attempt anything against that girl again, although she remained in the
room the balance of the day.
In 1910 defendant's father moved from the Bronx, to Poland, and brought
the defendant with him, and the defendant attended the Poland School which
he entered in April of 1910, and there remained until February or March,
1913. After leaving school defendant worked in a knitting mill in Newport
from about the first half of April until the second half of May, 1913,
when he ran away and went to Ilion. At Ilion he was found working by his
father and Mr. Frank Newman wiping dishes in the hotel. He was then taken
home. In the middle of August, 1913, the defendant again ran away, this
time to Albany, and stated that while he was there he had been shot at two
or three times by a policeman and was arrested. From Albany the defendant
again went to Ilion, where his father and Frank Newman again found him at
the same hotel, and when he saw them, he said that they were "swindlers."
At another time the defendant ran away to Herkimer, in the summer of 1912,
and he stated that he had gone to the moving pictures. He said that he
went to the store, the Poland Union, and bought a can of beans and a bunch
of bananas for his trip to Herkimer. He left in the afternoon and did not
return until the following afternoon, when he said that he ate the bananas
going along the track before he ate the beans because he was afraid the
bananas would melt. He said he ate the beans at night, opening the can
with a nail, and ate them with a nail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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