When you hear the phrase serial killer, the names of criminals that come to mind are difficult to call people, knowing what they did.
There are more terrible cases in history when children became ruthless killers.
One of them is the story of Mary Bell, an eleven-year-old British girl sentenced to life imprisonment in 1968.
This little girl was convicted in December 1968 after she confessed to multiple murders.
She was only ten years old when she committed her first crime.
How could a child with an angelic appearance become a killer?
In May 1957, a 16-year-old prostitute named Betty Bell gave birth to a girl.
For unknown reasons, she, being completely devoid of maternal instinct, did not abandon the child.
In Mary’s period life would have been much better than in her parents’ house.
Mary lived with her mother Betty on Uthouse Mouth in Scott’s Foot, an economically depressed area of Newcastle.
Until the 1960s, many areas of New Castle, including Scott Foote himself, were built up with townhouses, built in the 19th century for the working social class, brick two-story cottages.
In the 1960s, these townhouses began to be demolished to make way for modern apartment buildings, which is why local children often played in those houses that were occupied but not demolished, or played in the vacant lots created after the demolition of the houses.
Mary never missed her mother, because only in her absence did she feel safe.
Betty had mental problems since childhood, for example, for many years she refused to eat with her family unless food was placed in a corner under her chair.
Betty was involved in prostitution and was often away from home, working in Glasgow. In addition to Mary, she had three more children.
Mary was an unwanted child and before her birth, Bethy made an unsuccessful attempt to poison herself with pills.
In Aunt Mary’s case, Isa McCricket testified at her trial that during her early childhood, Mary was repeatedly injured in domestic accidents when left alone with her mother.
Which led relatives to believe that Betty was trying to kill her daughter, and trying to make Mary’s death turn out to be an accident.
One day, around 1960, Betty simply threw her daughter out of the first floor window.
One independent witness admitted that he saw Betty giving her daughter sleeping pills under the guise of candy.
Another time, when Mary was still a baby, Bayti sold her to a mentally unstable woman who could not have children of her own.
Betty’s other sister, Katherine, personally ran all over New Castle until she found her niece and brought her home.
At the same time, Betty, for unknown reasons, categorically refused requests from her relatives to place Mary under their care.
Mary herself, during interrogation, said that she was repeatedly subjected to sexual violence because Bethie forced her to participate in sexual acts with men from the age of four.
There is another proposal: the crazy mother suffered from Munchausen syndrome and wrote down her daughter’s illnesses in order to attract the attention of others.
However, it is known for certain what death looks like, the future killer learned at the age of five, when her friend died before her eyes.
Knowing about further events in the life of Mary Bell, we can assume that death did not frighten her, but, on the contrary, charmed her.
Outwardly, Mary was very sweet, but neighbors and school teachers began to notice strange things about her even before she became a killer.
The daughter of a prostitute, Betty, was withdrawn, aggressive and very simple, because these are not signs of a mental disorder.
Marie studied at school and there and at home Mary attacked other children, both girls and boys, whom she tried to strangle.
She engaged in acts of vandalism and repeatedly exhibited signs of disturbing behavior, including sudden mood swings or chronic sleep incontinence.
One of Mary’s classmates later testified that by that time they had all become accustomed to Mary’s unpredictable behavior, to the point that not only by her motor skills alone, but they learned to determine that Mary was intending to attack someone and would attack them.
Because of this, the other children were very reluctant to play with Mary, and the only one she had a friendly relationship with was their neighbor’s 13-year-old daughter, Norma Joyce.
On May 11, 1968, an accident occurred with one of the boys who lived next door to Mary.
A three-year-old child fell from the roof of a one-story building and miraculously survived. Of course, no one thought then that the accident was Mary’s doing. Although Mary was nearby at the time of the incident.
Three days later, three women contacted the local police department with a complaint about a strange girl.
They claimed that Mary was aggressive and even tried to strangle their daughters. The police officer did not take the concerns of the concerned mothers seriously.
On May 25, the day before her birthday, Mary strangled four-year-old Martin. It happened in an abandoned house.
The witness to the murder was Norma Bel, Mary’s namesake. She also became, to some extent, an accomplice in the crime.
But it is believed that Norma Bell did not participate in this and was not even present.
A local worker named John Hall arrived on the scene and attempted to resuscitate the child. But to no avail.
Mary took it upon herself to find Martin’s aunt and said that she knew where Martin was and that he was covered in blood due to the accident.
The poor woman unwittingly followed her nephew’s killer to the crime scene.
The following days she was tormented by Mary and Norma, who asked about how sad the family was, whether his mother missed him, and in the end, Aunt Martina one day stopped opening the door for them.
The child killer came up with a version that her friend came up with. Martin was beaten by unknown boys, as a result of which he died.
True, this version confused the police a little. There were no signs of violence on the body of the deceased, and a bottle of sleeping pills lay next to him.
Law enforcement officials decided that death was the result of an accident. A four-year-old boy accidentally took sleeping pills. It happens to everyone.
Very soon another strange thing happened, which was impossible not to pay attention to.
On the day of Martin’s funeral, Mary appeared at his house. The door was opened by an inconsolable mother. The girl said that she wanted to look at the deceased.
The woman slammed the doors in her face, and soon forgot about the strange guest.
The mother of the murdered boy remembered this incident only two months later, when the second terrible crime was committed.
It is interesting that Mary and Norma did not particularly try to hide their guilt; once they even told the neighboring children that they were involved in Martin’s death.
This information reached adults, but they considered the girls’ statement a manifestation of an unhealthy fantasy.
In class, Mary drew a picture of a boy lying in exactly the same position as Martin.
Although Marie was not the only child who knew how Martin died. She was the only one who drew the crime scene.
Although it looks strange, her teacher did not suspect anything because she knew that the children had heard about the incident.
Mary’s attacks on other children and her boasting continued. At one point, she pointed to the house where Martin’s body was found.
She told the neighborhood kids that this was the same place where she killed someone. But the children just laughed and they attached importance to it.
On May 26, 1968, when Mary was eleven years old, she attacked Norma’s younger sister.
She behaved so cruelly and inappropriately that Norma’s father had to kick her out of the house.
She started to spiral out of control after Martin Brown’s funeral.
Mary, eager to be the center of attention, turned to her best friend Norma and viciously attacked her. She scratched her face and kicked her in the head.
After finishing the attack, she said she was ready to kill again. The children who saw the attack ignored the threat, as Mary liked to overdramatize everything.
In one photograph taken during a demonstration by local residents in an attempt to persuade the government to demolish abandoned buildings to prevent more deaths, two girls can be seen holding a placard.
One of them was Mary. The young killer stepped in to stay involved in the incident.
Experts believe that killers do this to remove their narcissistic ego and keep the hype about the murder going for as long as possible.
Although no official criminal investigation began after Martin Brown’s death.
A doctor examining the body told officers it looked like a child had strangled him to death.
Without any signs of violence, since the child’s hands are much smaller and weaker than those of adults.
On the same day that Norma’s sister was attacked, the girls snuck into a kindergarten in Udden Cressens.
They entered through the slate roof, tearing off the tiles. And they destroyed it, tore up books, overturned tables, and smeared ink and poster paints everywhere.
As they left, they left behind four different inscriptions with strange content and grammatical errors.
The police considered the incident as tasteless and childish hooliganism.
If these guilty pleas had been taken seriously, at least the other child’s life would have been spared.
On July 31, 1968, Mary and Norma Bell committed murder again. By strangling three-year-old child Brian Howe.
That is, it was committed two months after the death of Martin Brown.
In a vacant lot not far from the same place where their first victim was killed.
After the boy was killed, the girls went back to cut out the letter H on the boy’s stomach with a razor blade, which they then changed to an M.
Mary also used scissors to cut off the boy’s hair, scratch his legs and severely mutilate his genitals.
Since the girls were small, their testimony constantly contradicted each other and no one will ever know for sure what happened that day.
After the murder of the second child, the police began to realize that the letters left at the kindergarten were not pranks at all, but by someone confessing to the murder of Martin Brown.
The discovery of Brian Howe’s body sparked a large-scale manhunt. More than a hundred detectives from across North Bering were involved in the investigation.
And by the second of August, more than 1,200 children had been interrogated. Norma and Mary were interrogated on the first of August.
During the interrogation, Norma showed agitation, while Mary was attentive but silent.
Although both girls were evasive and inconsistent in their initial statements, they freely admit that they played with Brian on the day of his death, but denied that they saw him that afternoon.
The next day, Mary was questioned again, and she said that on July 31 she saw a local eight-year-old boy playing with Brian, and removed him several times.
In addition, she stated that she also remembered that this boy was covered in grass and weeds, as if he was rolling around in a field, and that he had a small pair of scissors with him.
Then Mary reported that she once saw this boy try to cut off the cat’s tail with these scissors, but failed because the scissors were broken.
As soon as senior detective inspector James Dobson read Mary’s testimony, he immediately came to the conclusion that Mary might be the killer.
The eight-year-old boy Mary was talking about was quickly interrogated and found to have a strong alibi for July 31st.
And only the police knew about the presence of broken scissors at the murder scene.
Norma was interrogated again, and she confessed everything. According to Norma, Mary told her that she liked to strangle children and mutilate the body of a three-year-old child.
Over a period of time, each girl accused the other of the murders.
Norma’s parents issued a statement in which they tried to explain that it was Mary who was violent and Norma should not be held responsible for it.
On 17 December 1968, at the Newcastle Assizes and Assizes, Norma Bell was acquitted and Mary Bell was convicted of two counts of manslaughter, with mitigating factors due to diminished responsibility.
This circumstance was the diagnosis of court-appointed psychiatrists, a psychopathic deviation whose symptoms are the lack of remorse for the actions committed and the inability to plan their consequences.
At the trial, Mary stated that she killed only for the pleasure she received from killing.
As a result, Mary was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment with the possibility of release only when the authorities decide that she does not pose a danger to society.
Before her trial, Mary was held in Durham and South Norwood detention centers.
After the trial, she was initially kept in a special shelter for antisocial children.
25 years later during this period Jon Venables, one of the murderers of two-year-old James, was imprisoned.
Where he was the center of much attention from the British press and even the German magazine Stärm.
Betty quite often gave interviews about her daughter and even showed journalists letters that, according to her, Mary wrote.
She later claimed that when she was 13 years old, she was raped by several other prisoners and a staff member.
Mary stayed in this special shelter until November 1973.
After which, when she turned 16, she was transferred to Steele prison in Cheshire.
Mary was vehemently against the transfer and unsuccessfully applied for parole.
When Mary turned 18 in June 1976, she was sent to Moore Cord Minimum Supervision Prison, where she took secretarial courses.
15 months later in September 1977, Mary and fellow prisoner Annette Briest escaped.
Both spent the next few days in the company of two young men in Blackwood or spending the night in various local hotels, where Mary used the pseudonym Mary Robinson.
After which Pris and Bel fled. Annette went to Leeds, and Mary, along with one of the guys, Clave Shircliffe, went to his home in the county of Darbeshev, where she was completed on September 13th.
By that time, in an attempt to disguise herself, she had dyed her hair blonde.
That same evening she was returned to prison, where she lost all privileges for 28 days.
Annette Preece was detained a few days later.
For a time, Mary lived in the Cumberlaw Catch Women’s House of Convicts in South Norwood.
Mary’s last place of detention was Askham Grange open prison in North Yorkshire, where she was transferred in June 1979 in order to prepare her for return to society.
While there, Mary worked as a secretary and waitress in a cafe at Yra Cathedral.
And from there, 23-year-old Mary was released in May 1980, after 12 years in prison.
So that she could start life with a clean slate, she was given documents under a new name and was also given complete anonymity.
A few years later, on May 25, 1984, she gave birth to a daughter, who for a long time knew nothing about her mother’s past.
However, in 1998, Mary Bell’s residence was discovered by reporters in Susex, after which mother and daughter, covering their heads with sheets, were forced to leave their home under the supervision of undercover police officers.
The anonymity Mary received after her release was valid for the child, but was temporary.
In connection with the original resolution, its validity period was limited to the period of minority, which means that after the girl turned eighteen, she had to be excluded from the program.
However, on May 21, 2003, Mary won her case in the Supreme Court, which similarly granted her daughter a lifetime of anonymity.
In January 2009, it was reported that Mary had given birth to a granddaughter who was similarly included in the lifelong anonymity program.
Does Mary Bell deserve to live the rest of her days as a normal person, with a normal family, or should there be no forgiveness for the man who killed children.
Please comment below and as always, take care of yourselves and each other.