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Children are often portrayed as the picture of innocence and naivety. So, when children commit brutal crimes – especially murders – there is often a mix of shock and disbelief among people. When it happens, each detail of those cases is followed by the media. Those crimes often raise passionate debates about what type of punishment those children can face, how they could have possibly had easy access to guns, and what lead them to commit the crimes. The question if children can be psychopaths has concerned specialists for decades. But we can notice a pattern in those children: most of them have a troubled early life and have faced all types of abuse, negligence, and violence. Unsurprisingly, some of the cases inspired books and movies. Elephant and We Need to Talk About Kevin are some examples who used mass shooting as inspiration. We selected a list of 9 of the most shocking cases of crimes committed by children and teenagers. Some of them were lead by revenge, other killers were motivated by curiosity or they just “felt like doing it.” All the names in the list were arrested and convicted, but due to their young age, some of them were released a few years after the crimes. Some cases were so emblematic that they were granted with new identities after leaving prison and getting a new chance. 1. Jon Venables And Robert Thompson therichest.com When Denise Bugler went to a shopping center with her 2-year-old son James Bulger, she thought it would be another ordinary day. However, she would not forget that day in February 1993. While they were shopping, the little boy was abducted and that was the last time she saw her son alive. Two days later, his body was found on a rail line. CCT Images from the shopping mall showed James going away holding the hand of Robert Thompson, who was 10 years old at the time. The little boy was tortured to death by Thompson and Jon Venables, also 10 years old. The police also suspected that James could have suffered sexual abuse, but it was never confirmed. Both boys were arrested and became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history and were in jail until they were 18 years old. Because of the case’s visibility, they received new identities after being released. 2. Mary Bell – Strangled Two Young Boys therichest.com Mary Bell made the headlines in 1968 when she was accused of strangling two young boys in the United Kingdom. The most shocking detail was that she committed the crime when she was 11 years old. Her first victim was Martin Brown,a 4-year-old boy. Just a day after her birthday, Bell strangled the boy in an abandoned house. Showing no regrets, she and a friend, Joyce Bell, broke into a nursery and left notes saying that Mary committed the crime. Despite having the same surname, the girls were not related. Only two months later, Bell found her second victim. Together with Joyce, she strangled the 3-year-old Brian Howe. The body was left in a wasteland, but Mary Bell was not finished. She returned later with scissors, carved an “M” on his chest, cut his hair and his penis. In 1968, Mary Bell was sentenced to 12 years of prison. During her trial, the press brought out the troubled family life of the girl: her mother was a 17-year-old prostitute, who tried to kill the girl in the past and the father was a thief. 3. Eric Smith therichest.com During the summer of 1993, a 13-year-old Eric Smith was biking to a day camp when he saw Derrick Robie, a 4-year-old boy, walking alone in the park. He approached the boy and took him to a wood nearby. There, Smith strangled the boy to death, smashed his head with a rock, undressed the body, and introduced a tree limb into the boy’s body. The body was found on the same day. Smith was arrested and the case shocked the whole country, because of the violence and the age of the killer. In 1994, Smith was convicted for a minimum of nine years (the maximum for killers his age). During the trial, the defense claimed that Smith suffered bullying at school for years and it could have motivated his anger. Years later, Smith wrote an apology letter to the family and read it on television. He was denied parole eight times since 2002. Smith can try again in 2018. 4. Graham Young therichest.com Graham Young had an unusual hobby when he was a teenager: the boy was fascinated with chemistry, especially poison and its effect on human bodies. He spent hours studying the subject in the library and when he was 14 years old, he decided that it was time to go beyond theory and started trying it on people. He started poisoning his family’s food in 1961. All his family started suffering from vomiting, stomach pains, and diarrhea. Later, Young revealed that he accidentally poisoned himself a few times since sometimes he could not tell which plate he put the poison in. His stepmother died in 1962 due to the constant exposure to poison. A teacher thought that Young’s interest in poison was suspicious and went to check out his desk: she found a large amount of poison, drawings of dead people, and essays about killers he admired. The teacher contacted the police and Young was sent to Broadmoor Hospital and was released nine years later. After that, he poisoned more than 70 people and was sent back to prison. 5.Jesse Pomeroy therichest.com Jesse Pomeroy had an extensive list of victims when he was 11 years old. He was sent to a reform school in 1859 because he caught and tortured seven small children. Although he didn’t kill anyone, he tied them up, took their clothes off, and poked pins in their bodies. Pomeroy was released for good behavior just a year and a half after he was caught. In 1959, the police found the body of Katie Curran, a 10-year-old girl, in the basement of his mother’s dress shop. He was arrested and convicted of a lifetime sentence. He spent most of his years in solitary and died in prison when he was 72 years old due natural causes. Pomeroy was also a suspect of the death of a four-year-old, who was mutilated and found in a bay. However, there was never enough proof that could link Pomeroy to the crime. 6. Edmund Kemper therichest.com In 1963, Edmund Kemper lived with his grandparents and after an argument with his grandmother, he shot her with a hunting gun and stabbed her several times. When his grandfather was arriving at home, he also shot him. Kemper was only 14 years old. The teenager called his mother to tell her what happened, she called the police and Kemper was arrested. When asked what motivated the crime, he just that he “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma,” and killed the grandfather because he didn’t want him to see the body. He was convicted, but his parole was accepted when Kemper was 21, against recommendations of psychiatrists. Kemper went to live with his mother, with whom he had a troubled relationship. He killed his mother and her best friend three years later. He had other victims and was fond of necrophilia and ate the flesh of one of the women he killed. He was convicted to a lifetime sentence. 7. Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson therichest.com Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson were 11 and 12 years old when they planned a crime that shocked the whole world. In 1998, Johnson managed to get his parents’ van and then went to Golden’s grandparents’ house. They loaded the car with guns that the grandfather used to keep unlocked and drove to their school. At the lunchtime, they pulled the fire alarm and opened fire against teachers and students. The aftermath is well known: four children were killed and ten people were wounded. Both boys were arrested and charged for the shooting. During the trial the student Cadance Porter revealed that Johnson joked about the shooting one day before. The boy said that he had “a lot of killing to do” and that they would know on Tuesday if they were destined to live or die. Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson were convicted and released a few years later. They are the only living U.S. mass school shooters who are not currently in prison. 8. David Brom therichest.com In 1988, the police arrested David Brom, then 16 years old, for killing his whole family in Minnesota. After a fight with his father, Bernad Brom, the boy used an axe to kill him, his mother Paulette, and his siblings Diane (14) and Rick (9). The only person who wasn’t killed was Joe (19), who wasn’t living at the house. The person who called the police was the administrator of Brom’s school after they heard a rumor among the students that the boy killed his family the night before. Brom was arrested the day after and according to the police, he didn’t resist, wasn’t confused and didn’t question why he was being arrested. The boy was charged with the first-degree murder of his family. Brom got a lifetime sentence and he can ask a parole when he is 70 years old. The song “David Brom Took An Axe” is about the case. 9. Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf therichest.com The media often referred to Cindy Collier (14) and Shirley Wolf (15) as “ baby-faced killers.” In 1983, their name made the headlines after they killed an 85-year-old woman in California. Before committing the crime, they knocked on several doors with different excuses: asking for directions, to use the phone, or asking for a glass of water. A witness said that he and his wife felt very uncomfortable with the girls’ presence and felt something was wrong with them. But they found Anna Brackett, 85, to be their perfect victim. Wolf strangled the victim and threw her on the floor and Collier stabbed her to death. Brackett’s son found her body just a few minutes after the girls ran away. The policed soon found the girls and in her confession Collier said: “To honestly tell you the truth, we didn’t feel any badness. Then after we did it, we wanted to do another one. We just wanted to kill someone. Just for fun.We both felt excited. I had done something I had never done before.” Credits: therichest.com Share this story on Facebook with your friends. Related: Unsuspected Celebrity Mugshots 12 Notorious Killers Who Found Love In Prison…And Got Married