New Britain Herald Newspaper, August 3, 1929, Page 13

’ How 2 Bous Love and Hate fougi Hor s A Famous Mind Specialist Probes the Secret Springsinthe Slapped Youth’s Revenge Tragedy “I loved her—I hated her!”"—Three Remarkable Photographs of the Murdarer, From Left to Right, Note First the Full, Sensual Lips, Then the Placid Countenance and Dull Eyes— and Last the Almost BOY KILLER 15-Year-Old Jimmy Deacons, Taken Impish Expression of Nonchalance with Which He Reacted to the Grave Charge. OW little divides the st of actual tragedy from the hs serious, half-playful that hover over childhood! Secret grudges, imagined afironts and indig- nities suffered at the hands of teachers, parents, playmates—these are common experiences of childhood, things viewed by adults with humorous tolerance. Then, suddenly, horrified parents read of a 15-year-old boy in Pennsy vania who kills his grandmother and is sent to the electric chair; of ear-old Vancent Rice murdering hi sweet- heart; 15-year-old Doro shooting her mother who inter with her “freedom”—and of 15-yes old Jimmy Deacons, who killed his charming young schoolteacher because he “loved and hated her.” Fathers and mothers of young peo- ple were particularly appalled and alarmed by this latest case, bringing to their minds, as it could not fail to do, the conflicts and petty quarrels with teachers that are part of the - table conversation of nearly eve: ily in which there are children of school age. - i Indeed, young Jimmy Deacons’ grue- somely brutal crime had its origin in an incident — intri v — which has a counterpart, no doubt, in the memories of many who will read this page. Jimmy threw paper w in class and teacher slapped him. did not, could not, forget; his youth- ful bitterness grew and rankled as the months passed, until it had rolled up an avalanche of tragedy for him—and for her. Whenever the life of a child like Jimmy Deacons is shattered against an act as frightful as his, it is inter- esting to examine the gradual factors that dragged him down. For the roots of such a crime almost always go d —almost always spring from obsc and poisonous seeds planted by cf incidents and flourishing in an stable and youthful imagination. As the gates of Jackson Pri closed behind Jimmy Deacons youngest inmate, for the rest of his natural life on a Winter afternoon not long ago, one of the officers in his escort murmured with some emo- tion: “Well, here we are, young man.” The boy murderer’s clear, hard eyes Michigan cou s decreed wi s all—in a colorless voice. v’s trial had been swi ce prompt in claiming her days after the youngster marm from her au her life with a he: wood he began serving h From first to last in t had been as calm as a’ disinterested S ator, nonchalantly chewing a wad im as he told police how he com- FAIR VICTIM Flossie Carter, Charming, Young, Well- Liked by Her Pupils, Who Met Death at the Hands of One of Her Youthful Charges Whom She Had Slapped Three Years Before. mitted the crime. Alienists gene Roe, prof sor of psycholo in Central Nor- mal School; Perry C. Robertson, medical superin- tendent in the State al for the iinal Insane, and Dr. Leon Duval told the Court that Jimmy was insane. Of sub-normal intelligence, per- and wracked by fierce cro; ur- of his unstable emotions. But And that meant that the law must its penalty, despite the tender of the eriminal. Society, say the After His Arrest. haps, mind specialists, should not be satis- fied with merel avenging the murde of Flossie Carter and with putting Jimmy Deacons where he cannot commit other crimes. It should also try to probe be- the superficial aspects of the and find out how the mind of the killer worked, from that first slap ago to the grim episode. is the province of modern psychology. Therefore Professor Will- iam M. Marston, noted lecturer and writer on the phenomena that occur in the dim half-world of the mind, has been asked to bring his experience and powers of analysis to bear upon the problem of Jimmy Deacons. Ago. TOGETHER An Exclusive Photograph Snapped Several Years Jimmy Deacons ls Teacher He Will One Day Kill. Tempered But Likeable Youngster, He Could Not Realize the Tragic Significance This Picture Would Have in the Future. Standing Beside the A Playful, Quick- Professor Marston has examined hundreds of having points in on with that of the child slayer. page he weighs the facts, the > boy, the background me was commited. From these he has drawn a number of conclusionk, which ought to be of value in the pre- vention of deeds such as Jimmy's. Unde: nd the criminal and ciety's problem is half solved. against wl 50~ Prof. Marston’s Analysis of the Lad Who Killed His Pretty Teacher By PROF. WM. M. MARSTON. (Lecturer in Psychology at Columbia University, Author of “Emotions of Normal People,” etc. OCIETY at large, and par- S ticularly teachers and par- ents, should pay profound attention to the lesson involved in the murder of Miss Flossie Carter, a beautiful young school teacher, near Sheridan, Mich., by her former pupil, fifteen- year-old Jimmy Deacon. The facts are, br that three years ago, when Jimmy was twelve years old, and in the fifth grade, Miss Carter, then aged twenty-four, slapped him because he threw paper wads at the other children. In a popular sense, he nourished for three ye resentment of this slapping, and finally, when opportunity presented, he killed her on a lonely road. He took a letter from her pocket and wrote a note on it saying she had killed herself. That night he went to the movies, appar- ently undisturbed by the crime. Wherein lies the true expla- nation of this emotional mys- tery ? First off, I will say that while he is probably feeble- minded, it is a crime that can be explained by present knowl- edge we have of the changes that take place in all boys about his age. His picture shows that he is probably of low mentality, with eyes rather too close together, and a mental test would pos- sibly indicate that he is deficient. The first thing that should be done with him is to give him a Stanford-Binet test to determine his intelligence. Under the present system in these States, examinations are often made of students, and when tests indicate they are slow, of moron mentality, or have unstable emotional con- trol, such students are referred to the proper mental authori- ties. The students are then sent to special schoo If just feeble-minded the igned to ungraded classes, where the teachers are competent ob- servers and on the lookout for peculiarities, or if the emo- tional instability is marked, they are sent to some State institu- tion until the period of adoles- cence is passed. This brings us to the true ex- planation of Jimmy's action. This boy was slapped at the age of twelve, the average age of puberty. The emotional devel- opment of boys and girls are of course different. When a boy’s glands begin to mature there is an added chemical or hormone thrown in that changes his whole emotional life. This hormone does two prin- cipal things. First, it increases his dominance, or male alert- ness. The male is character- ized by an aggressiveness and dominance, and when this is thwarted he is said to be “offended,” and to seek ‘“re- venge,” or compensation. That is, it keeps driving toward the assertion of the boy’s ego. This boy’s ego was seriously offended by the slap from the teacher. The slap made him appear a little boy. He would not have been offended if she had reproved him in such a man- ner to give him importance. As long as adolescence keeps this hormone in the blood his adolescence is going at a high pitch, so he would not forgive slight to his ego. The slight is always present, and he is driving to remove the slight. A boy at this age reacts to the slight drive just as does a cat if you shut its passage to an exit. The cat keeps on seeking to reach the exit, door or win- dow, and though temporarily stopped, it continues vrestless until it finally reaches the exit and gets out. This emotional condition of the boy is another form of the old compensation reflex built into the personality. This slight to Jimmy Deacons kept some- thing before him which he had not been able to clear from his h. When he saw his teacher is slight always came back to irritate him. Now we shift to the second effect of the hormone that de- velops in adolescence. This is described as captivation, or the urge to capture women in a sex way. It is an active sex drive. There’s an interesting difference here between boys and girls. Girls during adolescence, instead of de- veloping an active sex drive, or cap- tivation, tend to a passive sex drive, that s, they get a crush on their, fathers, mothers, other girls and boys. They strongly admire people of botlh sexes. But boys become hunters as their captivation de- velops. Now Jimmy’s teacher, Miss Carter, at the same time she de- feated his dominance, had aroused his captivation urge. She challenged him to capture her, of course, unconscious to herself. So, from that time, he loved her in a captivation sense. Jimmy Deacons felt an erotic wish to subdue her. That was most dangerous of all to her and to him, far more dangerous than the defeated dominance suffer- ing from the slap. The reason is that it made the woman irre- Translating the Speech of Birds, Insects and Primitive Men A PERFECTLY OBVICUS SIGNAL. The Pelican Says “I'm Hungry.” L INSECT CHALLENGE The Small but Somehow Sinister Praying Mantis, Shown in a Very Unusual and Interesting Photograph as It Challenges Its Love Rival to a Duel. Note the Uplifted Leg—ths Gauntlet Is Thrown! [ ants and-crickets of commur s and ¢ each other—the rudiments of what E ience h But now comes the first n that mysterious, crude and vet subtle language to n terms of the meaning in the cri love song and the lazy drone of After years of pain 3 y, of collaboration with other udents, Sir “ “GOOD | POLLEN “GOOD HONEY" BEE CODE Here, at Last, the Mysterious Dance Figures of the Common Honey Bee Are Decodified. At the Left, Prof. Paget Reproduces the Dance Figure Which Means “Good Honey,” and at Right, "Good Pollen.” rd Paget, BT, F. Inst. P, M. R. I, illu English student of speech, has startled his colleagues and ethod of r to that in the animal world the munication is quite sir n when the race wa hard is be i Frisch, who decl their+ fellow-ci found good nectar or good pollen by performing a little dance on the floor losely have the winged honey- makers been studied that the actual form of the dance has been discovered. Copyright, 1929, Ln: i oS - { ONE TWO THREE FOUR BIRTH OF NUMBERS This Shows How Numbers Were Born into Language from Lip Signals and Finger Gestures. They Are “One,” “Two,” “Three” and “Four.” Deriva- tion from a Crooked Finger, Pursed % Lips, Three and Four Raised Fingers, Is Plain. Whent a bee wishes to say that he is making good honey, his small mazurka take the form of three spring- figures joined (illustrated above) and when he wants to in- dicate good pollen he describes a figure of eight. The empis fly, on the other hand, has set ritual in his court- ship. He carries a large, egg- shaped parcel, containing a small- er dead fly, which he presents to his lady-love. This amounts to a formal proposal. There are birds, he goes on, that present their intended mates with samples of nesting materials. Such gestures form, he believes, the instinc- tive framework upon which our mod- ern speech has been reared through thousands of years. ' rnational Feature Rervics, Ine. Great Brilain Rights Reserved. 2 ARTIFICIAL THROAT. Sir Richard Paget Showing a Lecture Audience His Producing Vowel Sounds, and Explaining the Evolution of Speech from Insects to Man. Device for sistibly attractive to him. He couldn’t forget her, whereas he might have forgotten the slap had he not seen her after he left school. It might have taken some fresh humiliation to re- mind him of the slap. But once Jimmy Deacons felt an erotic interest in Miss Carter, that was bound to go on and on. It would make him have day dreams about her, imagine him- self a hero taking her into the woods and tying her to a tree, showing her how strong he was. This situation is illustrated in a normal way | police or boys playing Indian or prisoner, when they tie up smaller boy However, impelled by this ¢on-" tinuing erotic drive ‘to capture her, when Jimmy Deacons found the opportunity he did so. He asked her for a ride in her automobile. Ostensibly he was going to visit his muskrat traps. That much may have been true. But in the car near her, seeing how small and frail she was as compared to himself, imagining himself, too, much stronger than he was, as do all boys of this age, his day dreams came back on him. He would show her! Probably there wasn't the vestige of a thought of murder- ing her in his mind. He merely wanted to get her under his con- trol. 1t is likely he grabbed her by the hair, or her clothes. Natur- ally she resisted his attack, when he struck her, choked her, and then, as an afterthought, killed her with a stone or a hammer. Could Miss Carter have had the courage and the strength of character not to res:st him the tragedy would in all likelihood have not taken place. But her resistance turned his love back into the old channel of defeat marked by the slap. He was afraid of another defeat. This situation turned his cap- tivation urge into dominance entirely. Even then, had she let him carry her a little way, until she could have run a distance, that flight would have satisfied his dominance, proved to his ego thng he was physically her su- perior. In order to reassure parents I will say that neither the crime nor the attack would have taken place had the boy been normally intelligent. A nor- mally intelligent boy wouldn't have allowed his emotions to shift to such an unstable riot as were those of Jimmy Deacons. Nevertheless, it must be re- membered that the adolescent state of boys contains this zone of danger. P