The Horrific Story of an 11 Year Old Serial Killer — Mary Bell
The case that shocked North East England in 1968
On May 24, 1968, Martin Brown, four years old, was found dead in Scotswood, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, that raised eyebrows.
But people and police took it for an unwanted accident so no meaningful action was taken. But after a few weeks, another brutal murder spread panic in the area when the dead body of three years old Brian Howe was found on July 31, 1968.
This alerted the parents to protect their children. The police also started their investigation to find the murderer. The brutal killings shocked the people as both the children were strangled to death and their necks squeezed.
No one knew who could be that serial killer or why he had done so. More shocking was the fact that the murderer had cut Brian’s hair, mutilated his legs and genitals, as well as curved “M” in his abdomen with a razor blade.
A little background
A certain level of thinking coupled with emotions and feelings triggers every action.
Generally, we guess that children would think about play and entertainment all the time. They wouldn’t indulge in serious or heinous acts by nature. But contrary to our guesses, sometimes, some derelict children think about nasty things such as killing others. Among such pitiful children was Mary Bell.
When she was 11 years old, she was obsessed with killing and acted on her thought without reasoning the consequences of her actions. She strangled 4 years old Martin Brown in an abandoned house on 25 May 1968 and killed him brutally.
The police, accordingly, found notes that claimed the killing but they took it for a prank and didn’t follow it. However, she did not stop there. She took the life of another angel, 3 years old Brian Howe, on July 31, 1968; and left his body in an industrial area of Scotswood region where children often used to play.
This time, the murder was more brutal and nasty. She not only strangulated the child but also cut his hair with scissors, wounded his thighs, and mutilated his genitals with a blade.
Not only that, but, according to the police reports, she had an accomplice — Norma Joyce Bell, a 13-years-old girl (the last name is the same for both the girls but they had no relation). When they killed the victim, they left his body there and went away. Later on, they returned to the place and curved the first letters of their names on the belly of the victim. Initially, it was believed the Norma curved ’N’ on the victim’s belly that was later on amended by Mary from ’N’ to ‘M’.
Police investigation
The horrific killing spread panic in the general public and the police department started the investigation process to find out the serial killer.
The police collected the initial information about the area, and possible criminals, as the suspect could be anyone. During the process, they focused more on the children in the area and questioned them about the recent murder cases. Of all the children, two girls — Norma and Mary Bell — appeared to act strangely.
When Norma was questioned about the murder, she was smiling and expressed her excitement at the murder story. The detective noticed that Norma is not reacting to the questions naturally and is trying to feign something else as she took the story as a joke.
On the other hand, Mary Bell also tried to be evasive and reacted strangely to the questions asked of her. She even went on to add more stories to it that confirmed the suspicions of the police.
During the investigation, at one point, she said that she had seen the victim playing with another eight year old boy in the area where the accident happened. At another point, she claimed that the 8 years old was having scissors. The police inquired about it and found that on the day of Brian’s murder, the boy, who was blamed by Mary, visited the airport.
During the investigation, the police didn’t share the information about scissors but Mary Bell mentioned it in her story that implicated her. The police readily understood that Mary knew about the murder. But they waited a bit longer to confirm it.
During Brian’s funeral, a police detective was observing Mary Bell’s behavior. The detective found strange things. When they brought out Brian’s coffin, she was standing outside his house, smiling and rubbing her hands that showed disgust and excitement. This led to the urgency of avoiding any future mishap. The police re-investigated Norma, Mary’s friend, immediately. This time, the revelations were shocking.
This is what Norma told the police
When Norma was investigated again, she disclosed the secrets of Mary and informed them of how the murder was committed.
According to Norma, Mary took her to the abandoned house to show her Brian’s body. There she told her how she squeezed Brian’s neck and how she enjoyed it.
When the police arrested Mary, she said that Norma was lying and making trouble for her. Her evasiveness made it difficult to fully confirm the murderer as she blamed Norma for the murders. Nonetheless, the police arrested them both and put them on trial.
During the trial, the police searched for more information and found additional evidence. They searched a nursery school after two days of Martin’s death where they found written notes, scribbled childishly that claimed; “I murder so that I may come back”. Another note claimed; “We did murder Martin Brown”. Later on, Mary admitted that she wrote those notes.
Accordingly, other children also overheard her that day screaming and pointing to the house while saying that; “I am a murderer and that’s where I killed”. During her confinement before trial, she was also overheard by female guards saying strange things such as; “I like hurting little things that can’t fight back”. Earlier, she was not taken seriously, but owing to her weird behavior, psychiatrists labeled her as psychopathic.
Reasons for her strange and behavior
When we came to know that she killed innocents at quite the young age of 11, our minds ask questions as to why she chose that way?
What led her to commit such grave crimes without remorse. These and other related questions can be answered once we get into her early life.
Since her very young age, she was known to be intelligent, manipulative, aggressive, and had a habit of lying. According to her family, when in kindergarten, she tried to squeeze a classmate’s throat by wrapping her hands around her.
She also showed extreme anger and responded violently to her family too. However, she was pushed into this situation by her bad experiences in life since she was a toddler.
According to her family, her mother, Betty, was suffering from a Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), a mental disorder in which a patient tries to injure her child. When Mary was born, her mother said to throw her away and was eager to give her to relatives. She even once gave her away to a woman who was denied adoption but her aunt rescued her timely. At the age of two, she grew into a detached, empty, and silent creature.
Her mother was a prostitute and craved attention. She didn’t want to divide the attention she got from her clients and for that purpose, she put Mary on drug overdoses to keep her asleep all the time.
According to her family, Betty didn’t care if her daughter would die of a drug overdose. Sometimes, Betty offered her to her clients even at the age of four and five, however, her family didn’t collaborate this allegation. If this was the case, it might have caused extreme physical and mental trauma and the nightmarish experiences may account for her strange behavior.
Another event that is said to have augmented her miseries and made her life more tragic is that she watched her five years old friend overrun by a bus. So, the occasional sexual abuse by her mother’s client, loneliness, lack of friends, a best friend’s horrible death coupled with the genetic problems have made her psychopath.
Her trial and sentencing
During the trial, both the girls blamed each other for the murders. But the detectives noticed that they shared warmth for each other even after implicating each other during the trial.
That’s why the court called for their psychological check-up. The psychologists found that Mary’s mind was not sound and showed symptoms of psychopathy.
During the trial, the court found that the real culprit is Mary Bell. So, on 17 December 1968, the court acquitted Norma and Mary was convicted of murders in line with the English law of diminished responsibility. Justice Cusack, the judge who pronounced their judgment, expressed his great concerns about the future of the children of the area and said that she is a “very grave risk to other children”. Thus she was imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure, a legal term that refers to the indefinite and undetermined length of prison.
In September 1977, almost nine years after her imprisonment, she successfully escaped from Moor Court Open Prison. The incident happened when she was transferred from the young offender institutions to a grown-up prison when she reached adulthood.
But, to her bad luck, the police immediately caught her and put her back in the prison. Despite her escape history and previous record of being a serial killer, she was formally released in 1980 — serving 12 years of sentence in the prison.
At the time of her release, she was 23. The court granted her anonymity to hide her identity to avoid difficulties in life. She was granted a new life with a new name.
The aftermath
The new life, freedom, and the new name gave her the security to live peacefully.
She even married and gave birth to a beautiful daughter after four years of her release in May 1984. She is said to have lived in Tyneside for some time as well but then changed her place. She was always changing her places to avoid getting known.
In 1998, some reporters discovered her whereabouts and went to her house. According to an eyewitness, the couple left their dwelling in a hurry, covering their faces in bedsheets to avoid getting known by the reporters. Till that time, Bell’s daughter did not know about her mother’s past but the reporters exposed her mother’s secrets.
Mary was worried about the incident that happened. Because her daughter’s identity was originally protected until she reached 18 years of age. Mary appealed to the court again to protect her daughter’s identity protection for life, and she won the High Court battle for her daughter on May 21, 2003. The court granted them both lifelong anonymity.
After her case, it became a law. Now, when the British court granted lifelong protection to anybody, it is known as the ‘Mary Bell order’. The court, later on, updated the order to include the granddaughter of Mary Bell in January 2009 by referring to her as ‘Z’. This completely protected the identity of her family. Still, no one knows where Mary Bell lives.
Various writers and journalists wrote about her. Famous among them is Gitta Sereny, who wrote two books about Mary Bell. The first one is The Case of Mary Bell (1972) that narrates the story of the killing and Bell’s life during trial and prison.
The other one, Cries Unheard: the Story of Mary Bell (1998), recounts the in-depth biography of Mary Bell through her interviews. The book also covers the interviews with her relatives and people who knew her throughout her life.
The second book caused much uproar in the public and the government tried to ban it because Bell received money for the interviews and according to law, a criminal cannot benefit from his/her crime stories. However, despite the opposition, the book was published in 1998.
