Mary Bell
Mary Flora Bell is an English woman who, as a juvenile, killed two preschool-age boys in Scotswood, an inner suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1968. Bell committed her first killing when she was ten years old. In both instances, Bell informed her victim that he had a sore throat, which she would massage before proceeding to strangle him.
Bell was convicted of manslaughter in relation to both killings in December 1968, in a trial held at Newcastle Assizes when she was 11 years old, and in which her actions were judged to have been committed under diminished responsibility. She is Britain's youngest female killer and was diagnosed with a psychopathic personality disorder prior to her trial. Her alleged accomplice in at least one of the killings, 13-year-old Norma Joyce Bell, was acquitted of all charges.
Bell was released from custody in 1980, at the age of 23. A lifelong court order granted her anonymity, which has since been extended to protect the identity of her daughter and granddaughter. She has since lived under a series of pseudonyms.
Early life
Mary Bell's mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Bell, was a well-known local prostitute who was often absent from the family home, frequently travelling to Glasgow to work, and simply leaving her children in the care of their father—if he was present in the household. Mary was her second child, born when Betty was 17 years old. The identity of Mary's biological father is debated. For most of her life, Mary believed her father to be William "Billy" Bell, a violent alcoholic and habitual criminal with an arrest record for crimes including armed robbery. However, she was a baby when William Bell married her mother, and it is unknown if he is her actual biological father.Mary was an unwanted and neglected child. According to her aunt, Isa McCrickett, within minutes of Mary's birth, her mother had resented hospital staff attempting to place her daughter in her arms, shouting: "Take the thing away from me!"
As a baby, toddler, and young child, Mary frequently suffered injuries in household accidents while alone with her mother, which led her family to believe that either her mother was deliberately negligent, or intentionally attempting to harm or kill her daughter. On one occasion in about 1960, Betty dropped her daughter from a first-floor window; on another occasion, she plied her daughter with sleeping pills. She is also known to have once sold Mary through an adoption agency to a mentally unstable woman who was unable to have children of her own, resulting in her older sister, Catherine, having to travel alone across Newcastle to reclaim Mary from this individual and return the child to her mother's home on Whitehouse Road.
Despite her negligence and abuse of her child, Betty refused repeated offers from her family to take custody of Mary, whom she—as a dominatrix—is alleged to have begun allowing and/or encouraging several of her clients to sexually abuse in sadomasochistic sessions by the mid-1960s. Mary's mother actively participated in several of these sessions, including several in which she blindfolded her daughter with a stocking before restraining her hands behind her back and forcing her to perform oral sex upon her clients.
Temperament
Both at home and at school, Mary exhibited numerous signs of disturbed and unpredictable behaviour, including sudden mood swings and chronic bed wetting. She is known to have frequently fought with other children — both boys and girls — and to have attempted to strangle or suffocate her classmates or playmates on several occasions. On one occasion, she is known to have attempted to block the trachea of a young girl with sand. This violent behaviour made many children reluctant to socialise with Mary, who would frequently spend her free time with Norma Joyce Bell, the 13-year-old daughter of a next door neighbour, with whom she had become acquainted in early 1967. Although the girls shared the same surname, they were not related.According to one classmate at Delaval Road Junior School, by 1968 she and her peers had become accustomed to the sudden and marked changes in Mary's behaviour, and when she began exhibiting distressful mannerisms — including shaking her head and forming a steely gaze — her peers instinctively knew she was to become violent, with the focus of her stare being the individual she would attack.
Initial assaults
On Saturday 11 May 1968, a three-year-old boy was discovered wandering dazed and bleeding in the vicinity of St. Margaret's Road, Scotswood. The child later informed police he had been playing with Mary Bell and Norma Bell atop a disused air raid shelter when he had been pushed from the roof to the ground, inflicting a severe laceration to his head. He was unsure of which one of the girls had actually pushed him. The same evening, the parents of three small girls contacted police to complain that both Mary and Norma had attempted to strangle their children as they played in a sandpit.That evening, both girls were interviewed about these incidents. Both girls denied any culpability for the air raid shelter incident, claiming they had simply discovered the boy, bleeding heavily from a head wound, after he had fallen. Further questioned about the attempted strangulation of the three young girls, Mary denied any knowledge of the incident. However, Norma admitted Mary had tried to "throttle" each of the girls, stating:
Police notified the local authority of the incidents and of Mary's violent nature, but due to their age, both girls were simply given a warning. No further action was taken.
Killings
Background
In the 1960s, Newcastle upon Tyne experienced a significant urban renewal project. Many inner boroughs of the city saw Victorian-era terraced slums demolished in order that modern houses and flats could be constructed, although several families resided in buildings earmarked for demolition as they awaited rehousing by the council.Local children frequently played in or close to the derelict houses and upon the rubble-strewn expanses of land razed and partially cleared by contractors. One of these locations was a large expanse of waste ground located close to a railway line known to local children as "Tin Lizzie". The street which ran parallel to this expanse of waste ground was St. Margaret's Road.
Martin Brown
On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Bell strangled four-year-old Martin Brown in an upstairs bedroom of a derelict house located at 85 St. Margaret's Road. She is believed to have committed this crime alone. Brown's body was discovered by three children at approximately 3:30 p.m. He was lying on his back with his arms stretched above his head. Aside from specks of blood and foam around his mouth, no signs of violence were visible upon his body. A local workman named John Hall soon arrived on the scene; he attempted to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to no avail.As Hall attempted CPR, Mary Bell and Norma Bell appeared at the doorway to the bedroom. Both were quickly shooed out of the house; the two knocked on the door of Martin's aunt, Rita Finlay, and informed her: "One of your sisters' bairns has just had an accident. We think it's Martin, but we can't tell because there's blood all over him."
The following day, Bernard Knight conducted a post-mortem upon the body of Martin Brown. Knight was unable to find any signs of violence on the child's body, and thus was unable to determine the child's cause of death, although he was able to discount the investigators' theory the child had died of poisoning through ingesting tablets. An inquest on 7 June returned an open verdict.
Intervening incidents
On Mary's 11th birthday, 26 May, she and Norma broke into and vandalised a nursery in nearby Woodland Crescent. The two entered the premises by peeling tiles off the slate roof; they tore books, upturned desks, and smeared ink and poster paints about the property before escaping. The following day, staff discovered the break-in and vandalism and immediately notified the police, who also discovered four separate notes that claimed responsibility for Martin Brown's murder. One of these notes stated: "I murder SO That I may come back"; another read: "WE did murder martain brown fuckof you bastard"; a third note simply read: "Fuch off we murder. Watch out Fanny and Faggot." The final note was the most complex, reading: "You are mice Y Becurse we murdered Martain Go Brown you Bete Look out THERE are Murders about By Fanny and auld Faggot you Screws." The police dismissed this incident as a tasteless and childish prank.Two days later, on 29 May, shortly before the funeral of Martin Brown, in a game of chicken, both girls called upon the house of his mother, June, asking to see her son. When June Brown replied that they could not see her son because he was deceased, Mary replied: "Oh, I know he's dead; I want to see him in his coffin."
Brian Howe
On the afternoon of 31 July 1968, a three-year-old named Brian Howe was last seen by his parents in the street outside his house playing with one of his siblings, the family dog, and Mary Bell and Norma Bell. When he did not return home later that afternoon, concerned relatives and neighbours searched the streets without success. At 11:10 p.m., a search party discovered Brian's body between two large concrete blocks upon the "Tin Lizzie".The first policeman to arrive at the scene observed that a "deliberate but feeble" attempt had been made to conceal the body, which was covered in clumps of grass and weeds. Cyanosis was evident upon the child's lips, and several bruises and scratches were evident upon his neck. A pair of broken scissors lay close to his feet.
The coroner would conclude that Brian had died of strangulation, and that he had been deceased for up to seven-and-a-half hours before the discovery of his body. The killer had evidently squeezed Brian's nostrils closed with one hand as he or she had gripped his throat with the other. Numerous puncture wounds had been inflicted to the child's legs before death, sections of his hair had been cut from his head, his genitals had been partially mutilated, and a crude attempt had been made to carve the initial "M" into his stomach. The relatively small amount of force used to murder the child led the coroner to conclude the killer was another child.
Numerous grey and maroon fibres were discovered upon Brian's clothing and shoes. These fibres did not source from any clothing within the Howe household, and had been transferred to the child by his killer.