Kansas Charley The Story of a 19th-Century Boy Murderer Hardback - 2003

From the publisher

The award-winning historian of American girlhood turns to boys to explore the phenomenon of juvenile murderers through the prism of a remarkable, century-old case. Most Americans regard "kids who kill" as a problem unique to our era. But in historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg's important new work, Kansas Charley, she reminds us that it is, tragically, a long-standing dilemma. Through the moving tale of Charles Miller, Brumberg takes us into a world of poverty, tragedy, and abuse, of people and places that shaped Miller's behavior, his crime, and his punishment. Orphaned at the age of six, Charles Miller failed to find a safe home, and, at the age of fourteen, was riding the rails under the self-styled moniker "Kansas Charley." Then, on a September evening in 1890, when he was only fifteen, Miller shot and killed two other young men in a boxcar headed for Wyoming. Guilt ridden, Miller gave himself up. His trial lasted just three days, ending in a death sentence that resulted in his controversial 1892 hanging. Some Americans thought the boy's execution was barbaric while others hailed it as an act of justice. Brumberg tells Miller's story with clarity and compassion, suggesting that then, as now, the decision to execute was politically motivated. Kansas Charley brings vividly to life a thought-provoking chapter in the history of American juvenile justice. It also sheds light on our contemporary predicament, encouraging us to think about what it means for the United States to continue to uphold the juvenile death penalty in the twenty-first century.