Mary Bell

Bell's mother Betty (née McCrickett) was a prostitute who was often absent from the family home, travelling to Glasgow to work. Mary (nicknamed May)[3] was her first child, born when Betty was 17 years old. It is not known who Mary's biological father was. For most of her life she believed it to be Billy Bell, a habitual criminal who was later arrested for armed robbery, but she was already a baby when Bill married her mother.[4]

Independent accounts from family members strongly suggest that Betty had more than once attempted to kill Mary and make her death look accidental during her first few years of life. Her family was suspicious when Mary "fell" from a window, and when she "accidentally" consumed sleeping pills. On one such occasion, an independent witness saw Betty giving the pills to her daughter as sweets.[4] Mary herself says she was subjected to repeated sexual abuse, her mother forcing her from the age of four to engage in sexual acts with men.[5]

After the "fall" Mary experienced, it was reported that she had suffered brain damage as a result, but now this damage is attributed to childhood abuse from her own mother. Mary had damage to her prefrontal cortex, an area associated with voluntary movements and decision-making.[5]

On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Mary Bell strangled 4-year-old Martin Brown in a derelict house.[3] She was believed to have committed this crime alone. Between then and a second killing, she and a friend, Norma Joyce Bell (1955–1989; no relation), aged 13, broke into and vandalised a nursery in Scotswood, leaving notes that claimed responsibility for the killing. The police dismissed this incident as a prank.[6]

On 31 July 1968, the two girls took part in the strangulation death of 3-year-old Brian Howe on wasteland in the same Scotswood area.[3] Police reports concluded that Mary Bell later returned to his body to carve an "M" into the boy's abdomen and used scissors to cut off some of his hair, scratch his legs, and mutilate his genitals.[7]

On 17 December 1968, at Newcastle Assizes, Norma Bell was acquitted but Mary Bell was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The jury took their lead from her diagnosis by court-appointed psychiatrists who described her as displaying "classic symptoms of psychopathy". The judge, Justice Cusack, described her as dangerous and said she posed a "very grave risk to other children".[8] She was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment. She was initially sent to Red Bank secure unit in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire – the same facility that would house Jon Venables, one of James Bulger's killers, 25 years later.[3][9]

After her conviction, Bell was the focus of a great deal of attention from the British press and also from the German magazine Stern. Her mother repeatedly sold stories about her to the press and often gave reporters writings she claimed to be by her daughter. Bell herself made headlines in September 1977 when she briefly escaped from Moor Court open prison, where she had been held since her transfer from a young offenders institution to an adult prison a year earlier.[10] Her penalty for this was a loss of prison privileges for 28 days.[11]

For a time, Bell also lived in a girls' remand home at Cumberlow Lodge in South Norwood (in a house built by Victorian inventor William Stanley).[12][13]

In 1980, 23-year-old Bell was released from Askham Grange open prison after serving 12 years and was granted anonymity (including a new name), allowing her to start a new life. Bell allegedly came back to Tyneside on several occasions and had lived there for some time after her release.[14][15] Four years after finishing her sentence she had a daughter on 25 May 1984. The girl knew nothing of her mother's past until reporters discovered Bell's location in 1998 and the pair had to leave their home with bedsheets over their heads.

Bell's daughter's anonymity was originally protected only until she reached the age of 18. However, on 21 May 2003, Bell won a High Court battle to have her own anonymity and that of her daughter extended for life.[16] Consequently, any court order permanently protecting the identity of a convict in Britain is sometimes known as a "Mary Bell order".[17] The order was later updated to include Bell's granddaughter (b. January 2009), who was referred to as "Z".[18] Bell's current whereabouts are unknown.

Bell is the subject of two books by Gitta Sereny: The Case of Mary Bell (1972), an account of the killings and trial, and Cries Unheard: the Story of Mary Bell (1998),[19] an in-depth biography based on interviews with Bell and relatives, friends and professionals who knew her during and after her imprisonment.[20] This second book was the first to detail Bell's account of sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, a prostitute who specialised as a dominatrix, and her mother's clients.[21]

The publication of Cries Unheard was controversial because Bell received payment for her participation.[22] The payment was criticised by the tabloid press, and Tony Blair's government attempted to find a legal means to prevent its publication on the grounds that a criminal should not profit from his or her crimes, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

Bell is one of thirteen child killers reported on in the book Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-teen and Teenage Killers by author Carol Anne Davis, published in 2004.[23]

• Murder of James Bulger, the murder of a 2-year-old child committed by two ten-year-old boys in 1993
• Eric Smith, who at the age of 13 killed a 4-year-old boy in 1993
• Edlington attacks, the attempted murder of two boys by two other boys aged 10 and 11 in 2009
• Parker-Hulme murder case, which was the basis for the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures
• Son of Sam law, a law designed to keep criminals from profiting from the publicity of their crimes

• Crime Library entry
• Interview with Gitta Sereny, 1998 – with LNL's Phillip Adams