MURDERER: Mary Bell

 A child is normally described as innocent and sweet but Mary Bell was anything but that. Before her 13th birthday, she was arrested for murder.

 Mary Bell was born on the 26th of May 1957 in Northumberland, England to a 17-year-old Elizabeth McCrickett and an unknown man. It is possible that Elizabeth got pregnant whilst she was working as she was a fairly well-known prostitute in the town. Mary’s aunt said that when Mary was born that Elizabeth was furious with the hospital staff when they tried to initiate the first touch between mother and baby. Elizabeth is said to have screamed at the staff “take that thing away from me!”

The family lived in Newcastle upon Tyne, which during the sixties had an urban renewal program that had houses marked for demolition and left the family that called the building home waiting on the council to rehome them. Kids would play on and around the work sites and on derelict houses that were barely cleared of the rubble by construction workers. One of the popular play spots was called Tin Lizzie by local kids, it was a large space of waste ground close to a railway and parallel to St. Margaret’s Road.

Their location in Newcastle didn’t stop Elizabeth from leaving her kids with her new husband William ‘Billy’ Bell to go up to Glasgow on work trips. William is noted as being a violent alcoholic with a laundry list of crimes on his record, one of the many crimes including armed robbery.

Throughout her childhood Mary suffered many injuries from “household accidents” but these would only occur whilst she was alone with Elizabeth. The family started to worry about the injuries and began thinking that Elizabeth was deliberately negligent or intentionally harming or trying to kill Mary, they began offering to take Mary from Elizabeth multiple times but Elizabeth would always refuse. Some of the most notable incidents are when Mary “fell” from a first-floor window, Elizabeth gave Mary sleeping pills and she even sold Mary to an unstable woman on the street. The last of the three affected Catherine’s safety as well since the older girl travelled across Newcastle to collect her little sister and then bring her back home.

There was an alleged story that during the mid-1960s, Elizabeth would allow and encourage her clients to abuse Mary in sadomasochistic sessions. Using her role as a dominatrix to persuade clients into doing what she said.

Outside of her home, Mary exhibited signs of her abuse in many different ways, a few of the most noticeable was her sudden mood swings and chronic bed wetting. At school, she would frequently fight other children both older and younger, attempting to strangle or suffocate them. Most times she would have her neighbour and best and only friend Norma Bell, same name but unrelated, around to help whilst harming the other children. Despite how she followed along with Mary, many people described the older girl as very shy and submissive, meaning that Mary was able to manipulate her into helping her. The first concerning act the two girls did was when they pinned another girl down in the sandpit and Mary tried blocking her trachea with sand.

Mary’s classmates from Delaval Road Junior School had learnt the tells when Mary was about to attack someone. Peers had noticed the way that Mary would shake her head side to side, her gaze turning steely and locked on one person. Whoever her stare was on would be her next victim.

The next severe attack was on Saturday, May 11th, 1968. A 3-year-old boy was found wandering around dazed and bleeding from his head in the vicinity of St. Margaret’s Road. The child later told the police that he had been playing with Mary and Norma atop a disused air raid shelter. He said one of the girls had pushed him from the roof to the ground, a 7ft fall in which he got a severe head laceration.

That same evening parents of three young girls called the police to report Mary for attempting to strangle their kids in the sandpit as they played. Both girls were interviewed about the call and the boy. Both Mary and Norma denied pushing the boy claiming that they discovered him bleeding heavily on the ground but that was all. Their matching stories differed when it came to the attempted stranglings. While Mary denied everything, Norma told the police what happened.

“Mary went to one of the girls and said ‘what happens if you choke someone, do they die?’ Then Mary put both hands ‘round the girl’s throat and squeezed. The girl started to go purple. I told Mary to stop but she wouldn’t. Then she put her hands around Pauline’s throat and she started going purple as well… another girl, Susan Cornish, came up and Mary did the same thing to her.”

Despite the violence and aggression that was shown that day, both girls got a warning for the violence but there was no punishment.

Things only continued to escalate, on May 25th, the day before her 11th bedroom. Mary took a young boy upstairs and strangled him, leaving his body in the same spot she killed him. Three young children found 4-year-old Martin Brown’s body in an upstairs bedroom of a run-down house at 15:30. He was laid on his back with his arms stretched above his head without any sign of violence aside from specks of blood and foam around his mouth. John Hall, a local workman, arrived at the home and attempted to perform CPR, whilst he was trying to revive Martin, Mary and Norma appeared in the doorway. John instantly shooed them out, not wanting the girls to see the body. The girls went next door to Martin’s aunt’s home, when Rita Finaly answered Mary told her what happened.

“One of your sister’s bairns has just had an accident. We think it’s Martin, but we can’t tell there’s blood all over him.”

The next day, Dr Bernard Knight conducted a postmortem examination but was unable to determine a cause of death. He was able to rule out poisoning by ingesting pills as the police found a bottle of pills near where Martin’s body was.

On May 26th Mary and Norma broke into a nursery on Woodland Cresent by peeling tiles off the roof and climbing in. Inside they tore up books, upturned desks and smeared paint and ink all over the building. They left notes in the building that were discovered by staff the next day. Some of the handwritten notes were as followed (f-slur has been censored but it was written multiple times);
“ I murder SO That I may come back “
“ WE did murder martain brown fuckof you bastard “
“ Fuch off we murder. Watch out Fanny and F****t “
“ You are mice Y Becurse we murdered Martain Go Brown you Bete Look out THERE are Murders about By Fanny and auld F****t you Screws “
Once again this crime was brushed aside, the police deeming it a tasteless prank.

The clear disconnect that Mary had to the world around her and the pain she had caused showed on the 29th of May, the day of Martin’s funeral. Mary and Norma were playing Chicken when they went to Martin’s home, knocking on the door and waiting for someone to answer, June, Matin’s mother, opened the door. The girls asked if they could see Martin leaving June to explain that her son was no longer with us. Mary responded to that “I know he’s dead, I want to see him in his coffin,”.

The inquest that was held over Martin’s death was returned with an open verdict on June 7th. That meant a coroner’s jury deemed the death suspicious but they did not have a cause.

Nobody was looking at Mary for the crimes and so she was free to go on to what happened on the 31st of July.

Brian Howe (3) was out playing with one of his siblings, the family dog and Mary and Norma. This collective was the last people to be seen with Brian alive. When he didn’t return his relatives and neighbours went out looking for where Brian had gone. At 11 pm his body was found by the search party on Tin Lizzie, in between two large concrete blocks.

The police noticed that there was a “deliberate but feeble” attempt to conceal the body by covering it with clumps of grass and weeds. There were signs of cyanosis on his lips, bruises and scratches on his neck and a pair of broken scissors by his feet.

The coroner concluded that Brian Howe was murdered by strangulation, by a child due to the relatively small force used and that he had been deceased for seven and a half hours before the discovery. It was found that the murderer, Mary, had squeezed the nostrils with one hand and with the other squeezed the boy’s throat. There were numerous puncture wounds on the boy’s legs done before death, clumps of his hair had been cut off, his genitals partially mutilated and there was a crude attempt to crave the letter ‘M’ on his stomach. The carving wasn’t done by scissors. On his clothes and shoes, grey and maroon fibres were found that didn’t match anything that he or any of his family owned.

Brian’s body sparked a massive man-hunt with over 100 detectives from Northumberland assigned to the investigation. In two doors the police had interviewed 1200 kids and Mary and Norma were both interviewed on August 1st. The police already knew that the girls were a part of the group that was last seen with Brian.

In the initial interviews, Norma was excitable whereas Mary was more observant and reserved. Both girls were evasive and contradictory to questions but both freely admitted to playing with the boy but that they didn’t see him after lunchtime.

On the 2nd, Mary was in her second interview with the police when she suddenly remembered that she had seen an 8-year-old local boy playing with Brian and he was even hitting him according to Mary. This local boy was covered in grass and weeds as though he’d been rolling in the dirt and he was also in possession of small scissors.
“I saw him trying to cut a cat’s tail off with the scissors but there was something wrong with them, one leg was broken or bent,”
Detective Chief Inspector James Dobson was convinced by that one statement that Mary was the killer since only the murderer and the police knew of the scissors. To make matters worse for Mary’s case the 8-year-old that she blamed was actually at Newcastle International Airport with his parents and many witnesses.

Norma’s parents contacted the police on the 4th telling them that their daughter had something to confess. DCT Dobson went to the home and formally cautioned Norma before he questioned the teen. According to Norma, Mary took her to a spot on Tin Lizzie where Brian’s body was. There Mary demonstrated what she had done to Brian to kill him, Norma said after this Mary confessed she had enjoyed strangling the boy and she described how she used a razor blade to try and carve his stomach. After the confession, Norma drew a picture of what she saw on Brian’s stomach before leading the police to a spot at Tin Lizzie revealing the razor blade. Her drawing matched the coroner’s description.

The next day, the police went to Mary’s home, where they questioned her about the new discoveries and the discrepancies that came up. Mary was notably defensive when she was questioned about the discrepancies in her story.
“You’re trying to brainwash me. I will get a solicitor to get me out of this.”

Norma was also questioned again on the 5th where she gave a full statement to the police. She was there when Brian was first attacked, stating that once the three of them were alone on Tin Lizzie was when it all began. Mary went “all funny” before she pushed the child into the grass and began to strangle him. When Mary ordered Norma to take over because her “hands were getting thick” Norma ran away, leaving Mary alone with a defenceless Brian.

After this confession, the police went through the girls’ clothes taking fibres from what they owned. It was found that the grey fibres were from a grey dress that Mary owned and the maroon fibres were from a skirt that Norma owned. The grey fibres were also found on Martin’s body officially linking the two crimes.

Brian Howe was buried on the 7th and DCI Dobson went to the Howe home watching as the boy’s coffin was brought out. He claimed that Mary stood outside the house watching.
“She stood there, laughing. Laughing and rubbing her hands. I thought ‘My God, I’ve got to bring her in. She’ll do another one’.”

The police arrested her and Norma at 8 pm that same day, formally charging them with the murder of Brian Howe. Norma broke down crying “I never. I’ll pay you back for this.” whereas Mary remained calm simply stating “that’s all right by me.”. Mary’s written statement insisted that the murder was actually done by Norma and not her but Mary did admit to breaking into the nursery.

Both girls went through psychological evaluations. Norma was deemed intellectually delayed and had a submissive personality that easily displayed emotion. Whereas they deemed Mary bright yet cunning and prone to sudden mood swings. 4 psychiatrists concluded Mary had no mental disorders other than a psychopathic personality disorder. Dr David Westbury is quoted saying;
“Her social techniques are primitive and take the form of automatic denial, ingratiation, manipulation, complaining, bullying, fight or violence.”

The trial went on for 9 days ending on December 17th. The jury spent three hours and twenty-five minutes deliberating what their verdict was. In the end, they decided that Norma should be acquitted of all charges Mary was cleared of murder but she was charged with manslaughter for both boys’ deaths. At the news Norma was up on her feet, clapping in glee but Mary, her mother and grandmother all broke down in tears. Judge Cusack described Mary as “dangerous” and a “grave risk to other children”, he sentenced Mary to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. In other words, Mary was sentenced to an indefinite amount of time locked up.

Mary eventually went on to live a quiet and calm life being granted full anonymity after she was released in May of 1980 at age 23.

(originally posted on medium.com/@natasha.leigh)