Mary Flora Bell ; May 26, 1957 , Newcastle upon Tyne , England ) is a British minor killer who was convicted in December 1968 for the murder of 4-year-old Martin Brown (killed May 25) and 3-year-old Brian Howe (killed July 31 with the help of a sibling friend, Norma Bell, 13 years old). Bell was released in 1980 and has since been living under a different name.
| Mary bell | |
|---|---|
| Mary flora bell | |
| Birth name | Mary Flora Bell |
| Date of Birth | May 26, 1957 (aged 62) |
| Place of Birth | Newcastle upon Tyne , England , UK |
| Citizenship |  Great Britain |
| Occupation | Criminal |
| Father | Unknown |
| Mother | Betty McCrickett |
| Children | Daughter |
Before the killings
Mary, nicknamed May, was born to 17-year-old prostitute Betty Bell (née McCrickett). Mary was her first child. The biological father remained unknown. Mary herself for a long time believed that it was Billy Bell - a criminal who was later convicted of armed robbery, but a special investigation showed that Bell married Betty after Mary was born. Mary grew up in Scottswood , the economically depressed area of Newcastle . At school, she attacked other children, committed acts of vandalism .
Betty had mental disabilities since childhood - for example, for many years she refused to eat with her family, unless she was put food in a corner under an armchair. Betty was engaged in prostitution and was often away from home, working in Glasgow . In addition to Mary, she had three more children. Before the birth of her eldest daughter, Betty made an unsuccessful attempt to poison herself with pills. Later, her relatives testified that Betty tried several times to kill Mary during the first years of her life, and trying to make it so that Mary's death seemed an accident. One independent witness admitted that he saw Betty give her daughter sleeping pills under the guise of sweets. Mary herself during interrogations said that she was repeatedly subjected to sexual violence, because Betty forced her to engage in sexual acts with men from the age of four [1] .
Murders
May 25, 1968, the day before the 11th birthday, Mary Bell strangled 4-year-old Martin Brown in an abandoned house. It is believed that she committed the murder alone. Then Mary and her namesake friend, 13-year-old Norma Joyce Bell (1955–89), one night smashed an institution in Scottswood, leaving inscriptions like “ I'm killing and I'll be back soon .” The police did not focus on this incident, considering it an ordinary hooligan rally.
On July 31, 1968, Mary and Norma strangled 3-year-old Brian Howe in a wasteland all in the same part of Scottswood. According to police reports, Mary later returned to his body, cut the letter M with a razor on the child’s stomach, and the letter N on her right hand (the first letters of them with Norma Names), scissors scratched his genitals and cut off a tuft of hair.
In August of that year, Mary and Norma were charged with two manslaughter.
Court and conclusion
Norma Bell was acquitted on December 17, 1968, at the Newcastle Field Jury Session, and Mary Bell was convicted of two manslaughter with extenuating circumstances due to limited liability. Such a circumstance was the diagnosis of psychiatrists appointed by the court - a psychopathic deviation, the symptoms of which are the lack of remorse for the committed acts and the inability to plan their consequences. At the trial, Mary stated that she killed “only for the pleasure of killing” [2] .
As a result, Mary was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. Initially, she was held in a red bank special shelter for asocial children in the St. Helens district of Lancashire county (after 25 years, John Venables was one of the killers of 3-year-old James Bulger in this shelter), where he was the center of great attention of the British press and even German Stern Magazine. Betty often gave interviews about her daughter and even showed letters to reporters, which, according to her, were written by Mary.
When Mary Bell was 18 years old, she was transferred to a prison with minimal supervision of More Court. In September 1977, she tried to escape from there, but was eventually caught and lost all privileges for 28 days.
For a while, Bell lived in the Camberlow Lodge Women's Prison House in South Norwood.
Liberation and later life
Bell's last place of detention was the Askam Grange Open Prison in North Yorkshire , where Mary, 23, was released in 1980, after 12 years in prison. So that she could start life from scratch, she was issued documents in a new name, and also provided complete anonymity.
A few years later, on May 25, 1984, she had a daughter, who for a long time did not know anything about her mother’s past. However, in 1998, Bell's place of residence was discovered by reporters, after which the mother and daughter, having covered their heads with sheets, were forced to leave their home.
The anonymity received by Mary after her release was also valid for her child, but was temporary. According to the original decrees, her term was limited to the period of minority, which means that after the 18th birthday the girl should have been expelled from the program. However, on May 21, 2003, Bell won the case in the Supreme Court, which decided to grant them and her daughter lifelong anonymity.
In 2009, it was reported that Bell had become a grandmother.
Notes
- ↑ Killer Children , Look At Me . Date of treatment July 27, 2017.
- ↑ Mary Bell found guilty of double killing . news.bbc.co.uk. Date of treatment July 27, 2017.
Links
- Information on Mary Bell's crimes
- Interview with Gitta Sereny, 1998 - with LNL's Phillip Adams
Literature
- Sereni, Gitta . Cries Unheard . Macmillan, London, 1998. Hardback ISBN 0-333-73524-2 ; paperback ISBN 0-333-75311-9
- Sereni, Gitta. The Case of Mary Bell (1972)