"Brian Howe had no mother, so he
won't be missed." -- Mary Bell
[A Note
From Birdy: Sorry folks I’ve lost my
translation program L, however
I did add the Translation gadget to this Blog. Unfortunately it may take me a
few weeks to regain all the programs that I’ve lost due to my inactivity, in
the meantime, however, I will publish as many articles as I can to try and
catch up].
Prelude:
"Are you looking for your
Brian?" asked Mary Bell. Brian's sister, Pat, was worried about the
missing toddler, who should have been home by now. A small, three-year-old boy
with fair hair, Brian Howe usually played close to home. Mary and her best
friend, Norma, eagerly offered to help search for him. They led Pat through the
neighborhood, looking here and there, all the while knowing exactly where
Brian was.
They crossed the railroad tracks to the
industrial area, where the kids of Scots wood often played among construction
materials, old cars, and dangerous wreckage. Pat was worried -- only a few
weeks ago little Martin Brown was found dead inside of a condemned house. Mary
pointed to some large concrete blocks. "He might be playing behind the blocks,
or between them," she said.
"Oh no, he never goes there,"
insisted Norma. In fact, Brian lay dead between the blocks. Mary wanted Pat to
discover her dead brother, Norma later said, "because she wanted Pat Howe
to have a shock." But Pat decided to leave. The Newcastle Police would
find his body at 11:10 later that night.
Terrible Discovery
Brian was found covered with grass and
purple weeds. He had been strangled. Nearby, a pair of broken scissors lay in
the grass. There were puncture marks on his thighs, and his genitals had been
partially skinned. Clumps of his hair were cut away.
The wounds were bizarre: "There was a
terrible playfulness about it, a terrible gentleness if you like, and somehow
the playfulness of it made it more, rather than less, terrifying," said
Inspector James Dobson. Brian's belly had been signed "M" with a
razor blade. This cut would not be apparent until days later. It appeared that
someone had imprinted an "N", and that a fourth mark was added (by a
different hand?) to change the "N" into a "M".
In this summer of 1968, Scots wood, an
economically depressed community 275 miles north of London, was in a state of
panic. Police flooded the community, interviewing kids between the ages of
three and fifteen. The adults wondered if Martin Brown's "accident"
was also murder. "We were real nervous," said Martin's aunt,
"but the kids themselves felt it too."
The suspicious behaviour
Among the children who stood out as
suspicious to the investigators were eleven year old Mary Bell and thirteen
year old Norma Bell (no relation). Mary was evasive and acted strange. Norma
was excited by the murder, remembers one authority. "She was continually
smiling as if it was a huge joke." As the investigation narrowed on Mary,
she suddenly "remembered" seeing an eight year old boy with Brian on
the day he died. The boy hit Brian for no reason, she claimed. She had also
seen the same boy playing with broken scissors. But that boy had been at the
airport on the afternoon Brian died.
By revealing that she knew about the
scissors, which was confidential evidence, Mary implicated herself. She
described them exactly: "like silver colored and something wrong with the
scissors, like one leg was either broken or bent." It was becoming clear
that either Mary, Norma, or both, had seen Brian die. And one of them was
probably the killer.
Brian Howe was buried on August 7th.
Detective Dobson was there: "Mary Bell was standing in front of the Howe's
house when the coffin was brought out. I was, of course, watching her. And it
was when I saw her there that I knew I did not dare risk another day. 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."
Police are closing in:
"All that mattered was to lie
well." -- Mary Bell (as an adult)
Before Brian's funeral, Dobson questioned
Norma again. She now claimed that Mary told her she killed Brian, and brought
her to see his body at the blocks. Mary told Norma "I squeezed his neck and
pushed up his lungs that's how you kill them. Keep your nose dry and don't tell
anybody." When she saw Brian, Norma knew he was dead. "His lips were
purple. Mary ran her fingers along his lips. She said she had enjoyed it."
That night, Norma was taken to the police station to give an official
statement.
Norma's story shocked the police, who
wasted no time in picking up Mary Bell at 12:15 that night. Her intense-blue
eyes were bleary, but she kept her wits. "She appeared to see herself in a
sort of cliche scenario of cops-and-robbers film: nothing surprised her and she
admitted nothing," Dobson told Gitta Sereny, who has written extensively
on the case.
"I have reason to believe that when
you were near the blocks with Norma," said Dobson. "A man shouted at
some children who were nearby and you both ran away from where Brian was lying
in the grass. This man will probably know you."
"He would have to have good
eyesight," she responded. "Why would he need good eyesight?"
Dobson said, ready to catch her in a lie. "Because he was . . ." Mary
said, after a moment, "clever to see me when I wasn't there." She
stood up. "I am going home. . . This is being brainwashed." But
Dobson wasn't about to let her go. At one point Mary asked, "Is this place
bugged?" In the end she refused to
budge. "I am making no statements. I have made lots of statements. It's
always me you come for. Norma's a liar, she always tries to get me into
trouble." At 3:30 am Mary was permitted to leave. Dobson second-guessing
himself. But after seeing Mary's behavior at Brian's funeral, and gathering
additional testimony from Norma, he brought Mary back into the station. "She
was very apprehensive," said Dobson. "She gave me the impression that
she knew the time of reckoning had come." Mary now admitted to being
present when Brian died, but her "confession" took a bizarre turn.
The statement of Mary:
"I couldn't kill a bird by the neck
or throat or anything, it's horrible that. -- Mary Bell
The following is Mary Bell's official
statement.
I, Mary Flora Bell wish to make a
statement. I want someone to write down what I have to say. I have been told
that I need not say anything unless I wish to do so, but that whatever I say
may be given in evidence. Signed, Mary
F. Bell
Brian was in his front street and me and
Norma were walking along towards him. We walked past him and Norma says, 'Are
you coming to the shop Brian?' and I says, ' Norma, you've got no money, how
can you go to the shop? Where are you getting it from?' She says, 'Nebby' (Keep
your nose clean). Little Brian followed and Norma says, 'Walk up in front.' I
wanted Brian to go home, but Norma kept coughing so Brian wouldn't hear us. We
went down Cross hill Road with Brian still in front of us. There was this
colored boy and Norma tried to start a fight with him. She said, 'Darkie,
whitewash, it's time you got washed.' The big brother came out and hit her. She
shouted, 'Howay, put your dukes up.' The lad walked away and looked at her as
though she was daft.
We went beside Dixon's shop and climbed
over the railings, I mean, through a hole and over the railway. Then I said,
'Norma, where are you going?' and Norma said, 'Do you know that little pool
where the tadpoles are?' When we got there, there was a big, long tank with a
big, round hole with little holes round it. Norma says to Brian, 'Are you
coming in here because there's a lady coming on the Number 82 and she's got
boxes of sweets and that.'
We all got inside, then Brian started to
cry and Norma asked him if he had a sore throat. She started to squeeze his
throat and he started to cry. She said, 'This isn't where the lady comes, it's
over there, by them big blocks.' We went over to the blocks and she says,
'Ar--you'll have to lie down' and he lay down beside the blocks where he was
found. Norma says, 'Put your neck up' and he did. Then she got hold of his neck
and said 'Put it down.' She started to feel up and down his neck. She squeezed
it hard, you could tell it was hard because her finger tips were going white.
Brian was struggling, and I was pulling her shoulders but she went mad. I was
pulling her chin up but she screamed at me.
By this time she had banged Brian's head
on some wood or corner of wood and Brian was lying senseless. His face was all
white and bluey, and his eyes were open. His lips were purplish and had all
like slaver on, it turned into something like fluff. Norma covered him up and I
said, 'Norma, I've got nothing to do with this, I should tell on you, but I'll
not.' Little Lassie was there and it was crying and she said, 'Don't you start
or I'll do the same to you.' It still cried and she went to get hold of its
throat but it growled at her. She said, 'Now now, don't be hasty.'
We went home and I took little Lassie home
an all. Norma was acting kind of funny and making twitchy faces and spreading
her fingers out. She said, 'This is the first but it'll not be the last.' I was
frightened then. I carried Lassie and put her down over the railway and we went
up Crosswood Road way. Norma went into the house and she got a pair of scissors
and she put them down her pants. She says, 'Go and get a pen.' I said 'No, what
for.' She says, 'To write a note on his stomach,' and I wouldn't get the pen.
She had a Gillette razor blade. It had Gillette on. We went back to the blocks
and Norma cut his hair. She tried to cut his leg and his ear with the blade.
She tried to show me it was sharp, she took the top of her dress where it was ragged
and cut it, it made a slit. A man came down the railway bank with a little girl
with long blonde hair, he had a red checked shirt on and blue denim jeans. I
walked away. She hid the razor blade under a big, square concrete block. She
left the scissors beside him. She got out before me over the grass on to Scots
wood Road. I couldn't run on the grass cos I just had my black slippers on.
When we got along a bit she says, 'May,
you shouldn't have done cos you'll get into trouble' and I hadn't done nothing
I haven't got the guts. I couldn't kill a bird by the neck or throat or
anything, it's horrible that. We went up the steps and went home, I was nearly
crying. I said, if Pat finds out she'll kill you, never mind killing Brian cos
Pat's more like a tomboy. She's always climbing in the old buildings and that.
Later on I was helping to look for Brian
and I was trying to let on to Pat that I knew where he was on the blocks, but
Norma said, 'He'll not be over there, he never goes there,' and she convinced
Pat he wasn't there. I got shouted in about half past seven and I stayed in. I
got woke up about half past eleven and we stood at the door as Brian had been
found: The other day Norma wanted to get put in a home. She says will you run
away with us and I said no. She says if you get put in a home and you feed the
little ones and murder them then run away again.
I have read the above statement and I have
been told that I can correct, alter or add anything I wish, this statement is
true. I have made it of my own free will.
/s/ Mary Flora Bell (signed at 6:55 pm)
Mary's statement had some partial truths but
for the most part was a transparent attempt to blame Norma. Dobson formally
charged Mary Bell with the murder of Brian Howe. "That's all right with
me," she replied. He then arrested Norma Bell, who in anger to the charge,
declared, "I never. I'll pay you back for this." The girls were
incarcerated at the Newcastle West End police station. Their upcoming trial
would attract the attention of a fascinated, yet horrified nation.
The child victim: 3 year old Martin Brown
"There has been a boy who Just lay
down and Died." -- Mary Bell's
notebook
Investigators now looked at the mysterious
death of Martin Brown as a homicide. In fact, Mary Bell's behavior after
Martin's death was so flagrant, it was a wonder she hadn't been apprehended
sooner. Perhaps Brian Howe's life would have been spared. But, as one local boy
said, everyone knew Mary was a "show-off," and her screams "I am
a murderer!" had simply been laughed at. Even before Martin's death, other
children were being hurt by Mary.
On May 11, 1968, a three-year-old boy was
found behind some empty sheds near a pub, bleeding from the head. He was found
by Norma Bell and Mary Bell. The boy was a cousin of Mary's. He had
"fallen" off a ledge, landing several feet below. Mary would later
admit to having pushed him over the edge.
The following day, three girls who were
playing by the Nursery were attacked by Mary, with Norma nearby. One of the
girls said that Mary "put her hands around my neck and squeezed hard. . .
. The girl [Mary] took her hands off my neck and she did the same to
Susan." The police were soon called. Norma stated that "Mary went to
the other girl 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 then ran off and left Mary. I'm not friends with her
now."
According to the official report on May
15, "The girls Bell have been warned as to their future conduct." Ten
days later Martin Brown was killed.
The search is on, we must find martin”
Martin was last seen at approximately 3:15
pm, and was discovered at 3:30, lying on the floor of a boarded-up house. Three
boys were foraging for some scrap wood had found the child on his back next to
a window, with blood and saliva trickling down the side of his cheek and chin.
Panicked, they called out to the
construction workers outside, who remembered giving little Martin some biscuits
earlier that day. They raced up the stairs and tried to revive him, but Martin
was already dead.
One of the boys noticed Mary Bell and a
friend coming toward the house, and stopped directly below the window.
"Shall we go up?" said Mary. They squeezed through boards to get inside.
Mary had brought Norma to show her that she had killed Martin. But they were
told to go away.
The girls then went to find Martin's aunt
to tell her that there had been an accident, that they thought it was Martin,
and that there was "blood all over." "I'll show you where it
is," said Mary to the distraught woman. Strangely, the police could not
find any signs of violence. A bottle of aspirin was nearby -- perhaps he ate
them all. There were no visible strangulation marks or any other marks on the
child, and therefore the authorities believed his death was accidental. The
Criminal Investigation Department was not called in. The official report on
Martin Brown declared the "cause of death open." But the Scots wood
community couldn't simply let go of the tragic death, so they marched and
protested against the dangerous conditions of the condemned buildings in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the true menace of Scots wood, Mary and Norma, were giving Martin's
aunt the creeps with their prying questions. "They kept asking me, 'Do you
miss Martin?' and 'Do you cry for him?' and 'Does June miss him?' and they were
always grinning. In the end I could stand it no more and told them to get out
and not to come back."
Martin's mother June Brown was also
bothered by the girls. After hearing a knock, June opened the front door to
find Mary standing there. "Mary smiled and asked to see Martin. I said,
'No, pet, Martin is dead.' She turned round and said, 'Oh, I know he's dead. I
wanted to see him in his coffin,' and she was still grinning. I was just
speechless that such a young child should want to see a dead baby and I just
slammed the door on her."
Mary's ominous behaviour was by no means
exclusive to Martin's grieving family. On Sunday, the day following Martin's
death, Mary celebrated her eleventh birthday by trying to throttle Norma Bell's
younger sister. Fortunately, Norma's father saw Mary's stranglehold on the
girl. "I chopped Mary's hands away," he said, "and gave her a
clip on the shoulder."
But the day wasn't over yet. The next
morning the staff at the Day Nursery at Woodlands Crescent would make a
chilling discovery.
The murderous messages:
"Look out THERE are Murders
about" -- note found in vandalized nursery
On Monday morning, May 27 the teachers at
the Day Nursery, on Woodlands Crescent at the end of Whitehouse Road, arrived
to find the school ransacked. School supplies were strewn about recklessly, and
cleaning materials had been splattered on the floor. But the most disturbing
discovery was the four scribbled notes left behind:
"I murder so THAT I may come
back" "fuck of we murder watch out Fanny and Faggot" "we
did
murder Martain brown Fuck of you Bastard" "You are micey y Because we
murdered Martian Go Brown you Bete Look out THERE are Murders about By FANNYAND
and auld Faggot your crews"
Police took the notes back to the station
and filed them away as a sick joke. Mary would later admit they wrote the notes
"for a giggle." Because this wasn't the first break-in at the
Nursery, the school installed an alarm system. That same morning, Mary Bell
drew a picture in her notebook of a child in the same pose as that in which
Martin Brown had been found, with a bottle near him with the word
"TABLET.." There was a man walking toward the child.
It read, "On Saturday I was in the
house, and my mam sent Me to ask Norma if she Would come up the top with me? we
went up and we came down at Magrets Road and there were crowds of people beside
an old house. I asked what was the matter. there had been a boy who Just lay
down and Died." Mary's notebook entry did not strike the teacher as odd,
although she was the only student who wrote on Martin's death.
On Friday of the same week, the
newly-installed alarm sounded off at Nursery. Mary Bell and Norma Bell were
caught red-handed, but denied breaking in before. Released to the custody of
their parents, a date was set for them to appear at Juvenile Court. A week
later, Mary attacked Norma near the Nursery sandpit. A boy saw Mary scratch her
friend and kick her in the eye, but only laughed when he heard Mary scream,
"I am a murderer!" She pointed in direction of house where Martin
Brown was found. "That house over there, that's where I killed . . ."
Since Mary was well known as a show-off, he didn't take her ominous bragging
seriously. Toward the end of July, before Brian Howe's murder, Mary visited the
Howe household, and declared "I know something about Norma that will get
her put away straight away." She told them her secret: "Norma put her
hands on a boy's throat. It was Martin Brown -- she pressed and he just
dropped." To make her point, she grabbed her own throat in a choking
gesture, then left. It would be a few days later that Mary would strangle the
Howe's own child. This insatiable need to "show and tell" her deadly
crimes would be acted out upon another innocent babe.
The trio is caught:
"Murder isn't that bad, we all die
sometime anyway."-- Mary Bell to one of her guards
The first night in their small jails cells
in Newcastle West End police station, the girls were restless. "They kept
shouting to each other through the doors," said one of the police women
who watched the children. The police station was not accustomed to housing
child offenders, and they had to make provisions as best as they could.
"We finally told them to shut up. At one moment I heard Mary shout out
angrily about her mother." Mary,
who had been a chronic bed wetter, was terrified of going to sleep, for fear
that she might mess her bed. "I usually do," she confided. At home,
Mary's mother severely humiliated her whenever she wet the bed, rubbing her
daughter's face in the pool of urine, said Mary, years later. She then hung the
mattress outside for the entire neighbourhood to see.
During the course of her incarceration,
the women guards got to know Mary better, describing her as confident,
intelligent and "cheeky." Some of Mary's casual comments would shock
the police women, but others saw her as a scared little girl who had no
comprehension of the enormity of her actions. In the middle of the night Mary
would "bolt upright." Mary's hostility had an almost naive quality:
while tightly grabbing a stray cat by the neck, a guard told her not to hurt
the cat. Mary allegedly replied, "Oh, she doesn't feel that, and anyway, I
like hurting little things that can't fight back." In another incident, a
police woman said that Mary said she'd like to be a nurse, "because then I
can stick needles into people. I like hurting people." If her parents were
somehow responsible for young Mary's behaviour, she would not talk about it.
She had been taught to keep quiet, especially around authority figures. Her
father, Billy Bell, had lived with the family, but the children (Mary and her
younger brother and sister) were instructed to always call him
"uncle," so that their mother could collect government assistance.
Billy Bell was a thief, and the mother, Betty Bell, was a prostitute who was
often away in Glasgow on "business." Because of the family's shady
vocations, Newcastle Welfare authorities knew very little about Mary's family.
One detective who visited Mary's home described it as having "no feeling
of a home, just a shell. Very peculiar . . . the only life one felt was that of
a big dog barking."
Was it because Mary was unresponsive that
the psychiatrists found her "psychopathic"? If she had broken her
silence and told them of her abusive home life, would she earned a more
sympathetic analysis? "I've seen a lot of psychopathic children,"
said Dr. Orton, the first to see her
during her incarceration. "But I've never met one like Mary: as
intelligent, as manipulative, or as dangerous." During the murder trial,
Mary's behaviour would do little to harvest sympathy.
"Well, that was a very naughty thing
to do, wasn't it, to think of killing little boys and girls and talk about
it?" -- Prosecution's question to Norma Bell
Mary Bell and Norma Bell were brought to
trial for the murder of Martin Brown and Brian Howe at the Newcastle Assizes
Moothall on December 5th 1968. The trial would last nine days.
The media attention, although mild by
today's sensationalist standards, was generating increasing interest as the
trial progressed -- by the final day the press was everywhere. Despite attempts
to make the court proceedings less threatening to the children, both Norma and
Mary were bewildered. Mary appeared to be attentive, but later admitted the
whole thing was a "blur."
Prosecutor Rudolph Lyons opened the trial
by suggesting that whoever murdered Brian Howe also killed Martin Brown. Lyons
methodically recounted the suspicious behaviour of both girls at the scene of
Martin's death, how they plagued the mourning family with their morbid
questions, and how they vandalized the Nursery the next day, leaving notes that
amounted to a confession. For Norma, these notes were the most damaging to her
innocence. Handwriting analysis had verified that Norma written the "I murder
so that I may come back" note. If Norma was truly innocent, why would she
participate in these dreadful scribblings?
How did Mary know that Martin had been
asphyxiated? asked Lyons. This was not public knowledge, yet she demonstrated
to the Howes how Martin was strangled. Forensic evidence also implicated Mary
-- grey fibers from one of her wool dresses were discovered on the bodies of
both victims. Fiber's from Norma's maroon skirt were found on Brian's shoes.
Although there were doubts about Norma's guilt, Mary was considered guilty by
most. According to Gitta Sereny, who was at the trial, the issue at stake was
whether Mary was a sick little girl or a monster, a "bad seed."
Mary's family presence at the trial
certainly didn't help her case. Her mother Betty Bell disrupted the proceeding
with all her wailing and sobbing, her long blond wig slipping off her head.
Like a poorly-played character in a lurid soap opera, she stormed out during
the trial, only to dramatically reappear moments later. Her father Billy Bell
sat quietly, ignoring his wife's spectacles.
Mary, who Sereny described as very pretty
and intelligent, with dark hair and sharp blue eyes, which "in anger
looked emotionally blank." Observers in the courtroom, wrote Sereny, were
"watching her with a horrified kind of curiosity." For such a
"manipulative" and "cunning" little girl, Mary knew nothing
about attracting sympathy. At one point Mary told a police officer how a
"woman up in the gallery smiles at me, but I don't smile back. It isn't a
smiling matter. The jury wouldn't like it if I smiled, would they?"
Testimony of Norma:
Norma, on the other hand, was surrounded
by a much more sympathetic family. She was the third of eleven children, and
reacted to evidence and testimony with a more childlike combination of fear and
nervous tears (Mary disdained crying as a sign of weakness.
Norma was the first to take the stand. Her
defense lawyer, R. P. Smith, asked her about the day Martin Brown was murdered,
how Mary poked her head through the fence (the girls were next door neighbors)
and said, "There's been an accident," and took her to the abandoned
house were Martin's body had just been discovered. "Mary wanted to tell
Rita there had been an accident. . . . and something about blood all over
something," said Norma, excitedly.
For the prosecution, Norma was an
important witness to Mary's violent disposition. "Did [Mary] ever show you
how little boys or girls could be killed? Did she ever show you that?"
When Norma answered "yes," Lyons responded, "Well, that was a
very naughty thing to do, wasn't it, to think of killing little boys and girls
and talk about it?" Norma agreed.
The night before her testimony, Mary asked
a policewoman of meaning of word "immature." "'The lawyer said
Norma was more immature,' she'd said. "Would that mean that if I was the
more intelligent I'd get all the blame?'"
On the sixth day Mary was called to the
stand. The room buzzed with anticipation, according to Sereny: "The public
and press galleries were very full, the only day when the atmosphere in the
court -- unlike all the other days -- was faintly tinged with that morbid
fascination one associates with certain types of murder trials."
Mary was composed and brimming with
rationale. Why did Mary ask to see Martin Brown in his coffin? "We were
daring each other and one of us did not want to be a chicken or something. . .
." she explained. On drawing in her school notebook Martin's body with an
incriminating knowledge of the crime scene: "Rumors," she said.
"People were just saying there was a bottle of tablets and things spilled
out of them. It was just to make it look better and that." She had told
the Howes that Norma killed Martin "because I had an argument with Norma
that day and I couldn't think of nothing else to say." Mary got the idea
that Norma killed by strangulation from TV: "You see that on the
television, on the 'Apache' and all that."
Handwriting experts said that the notes
were written with both girls' handwriting. In fact, every single letter had to
be examined separately, because Mary and Norma had alternated writing (they
called it "joining writing."). Norma testified that the idea to write
the notes came about in Mary's bedroom, where they were drawing with a red biro
pen. Norma said "Mary wanted some notes written . . . to put in her
shoes." Mary wanted them for the Nursery break-in.
While Mary conceded that the notes were a
"joint idea" to write, she insisted it was Norma's idea to take them
to the Nursery. "We went--er--Norma says, 'Are you coming to the Nursery?'
I says, 'yes, howay then,' because we had broken into it before." She
admitted "we were being distrustful," but it was all in fun. "We
thought it would be a great big joke." Mary was supposed to be
"Faggot," and Norma was "Fanny."
Furthermore, Mary insisted, Norma wanted
"to get put away," and asked Mary to run away with her. They had run
off together before. When asked why Norma wanted to run away, Mary weirdly
answered, "Because she could kill the little ones, that's why," she
said, her voice getting shriller, "and run away from the police."
Despite their accusations against each
other, the girls had an unfathomable connection. During the trial, according to
Sereny, "their heads turned toward each other, their eyes locked, their
faces suddenly bare of expression and curiously alike, they always seemed by
some sort of silent and exclusive communion to reaffirm and strengthen their
bond."
Yet they had their moments of betrayal:
"They shook their heads incredulously or furiously at what one or the
other said; they turned abruptly, glaring at each other when hearing themselves
quoted as having accused the other of something outrageous; and they commented
audibly -- in Norma's case with tears and desperate cries of 'No, No'; in
Mary's case with loud and furious remarks -- about and against each other's
evidence." Eventually the judge prohibited contact between the two girls during
the trial.
Both denied any responsibility for Martin
Brown, but both acknowledged they had been together with Brian on the day he
died. According to Mary, a maniacal Norma strangled Brian. When asked if she
was afraid that Norma might kill her, Mary boldly replied, "She would not
dare -- Because I would turn around and punch her one."
Norma's grim version of the events,
however, were closer to the truth: "May [Mary's nickname] told Brian to
lie down," and then "started to hurt him." Norma demonstrated
how Mary pinched Brian's nose. He started turning purple and tried to push
Mary's hand away. "When she was really hurting him she said, 'Norma, take
over, my hands are getting thick.'"
But Norma left, she tearfully claimed,
while Brian was still alive. She then went to her friend's house, where they
made pom-poms (an odd activity after witnessing murder.) If Norma was truly
disturbed by Mary's behaviour, why did she return with Mary to make marks on
Brian's body? Mary brought scissors with her because she wanted "to make
him baldy." She also had a razor blade to cut into Brian's belly.
The jury’s verdict:
"What would be the worst that could
happen to me? Would they hang me?" -- Mary Bell
The conviction was obvious -- Mary would
get either Murder or Manslaughter. Although there was more sympathy for Norma,
it was still unclear how severe her punishment, if any, would be. The defense
needed to show that Mary was disturbed, and couldn't help herself, nor
understand the enormity of her actions.
After the children's testimony, the defense
called the psychiatrists who had examined Mary. Dr. Robert Orton testified that
"I think that this girl must be regarded as suffering from psychopathic
personality," demonstrated by "a lack of feeling quality to other
humans," and "a liability to act on impulse and without
forethought."
Legally, this was an question of
"Diminished Responsibility." Judge Cusack explained the concept to
the jury: "In 1957 there was an Act of Parliament and it said that . . .
'where a person kills, or is a party to the killing of another, he shall not be
convicted of Murder if he was suffering from such abnormality of mind (whether
arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind, or any
inherent causes, or induced by disease or injury) as substantially impaired his
mental responsibility for his acts."
The closing arguments
When the time came for the closing
arguments, the prosecution characterized Mary as a fiend. Poor Norma was
herself a victim of "an evil and compelling influence almost like that of
the fictional Svengali," said Lyons. "In Norma you have a simple
backward girl of subnormal intelligence. In Mary you have a most abnormal child,
aggressive, vicious, cruel, incapable of remorse, a girl moreover possessed of
a dominating personality, with a somewhat unusual intelligence and a degree of
cunning that is almost terrifying."
In attempting to rescue Mary from being
cast off as a demonic "bad seed," the defence posed broader
questions: Why did this happen? What made Mary do it? "It is . . . very
easy to revile a little girl, to liken her to Svengali without pausing for a
moment to ponder how the whole sorry situation has come about. . ."
The jury, which consisted of five women
and seven men, took under four hours to return a verdict. Norma was thrilled
when she was found "not guilty" of Manslaughter on both counts. Mary
Bell was found "guilty of Manslaughter because of Diminished Responsibility"
in both Martin's and Brian's death. Justice Cusack pronounced a sentence of
"Detention for Life" while Mary cried, uncomforted by her family. Her
detention would be for an indeterminate amount of time.
Norma Bell was later given three years’
probation for breaking and entering the Woodlands Crescent Nursery, and placed
under psychiatric supervision.
Mary’s ultimate incarceration:
"He called me a murderer and I
grabbed his hair and smashed his face into his dinner."
-- Mary Bell
Because Britain was not used to
incarcerating little girls who murdered, the question of where Mary should be
placed sent everyone scrambling. Prison was out of the question for an
eleven-year-old. Mental hospitals weren't equipped to take her. She was too
dangerous for institutions that housed troubled children. Eventually, the
precocious murderess ended up in "all boys" facility. There would be
problems down the road when puberty hit.
Mary's incarceration is fascinating
because at some point she apparently "reformed." When she was
released at age 23, she went on with her life and had a daughter of her own.
She claims to be a completely different person than the
"psychopathic" child killer she once was. Can a violent sociopath be
cured? Was it possible that, at age eleven she was still psychologically
pliable? Was there a "moral awakening," as author Gitta Sereny
suggests? Or is she putting on a really good act? Sociopaths are experts at
duplicity. In any case, her experience while incarcerated is worth reviewing.
Mary Bell was housed at the Red Bank
Special Unit from February 1969 until November 1973. Red Bank was a reform
school, a portion of which was high security. By most accounts the institution
was a well-designed and reasonably comfortable facility, with a supportive staff,
headed by James Dixon, a former Navy man who was known for his strong moral
influence. Mr. Dixon provided structure and discipline for Mary, and she came
to respect and love him.
If Mary had been in the stranglehold of an
evil, immoral mother, Mr. Dixon filled the role of the benevolent, strong
father figure which was lacking in her life. She loved Billy Bell (who was not
her biological father, but was in her life from the beginning) but as a thief,
he was not an ideal role model. When he was convicted of armed robbery in 1969,
his visits to Mary ended.
Mary's mother was a disciplinarian, but
not the kind generally advocated for family situations. As a prostitute with a
specialty, she "disciplined" her clients with whips and bondage,
claimed Mary. But Betty Bell did make some provisions: "I always hid the
whips from the kids," she said. Betty
visited her daughter often, and Mary eagerly awaited to opportunities to see
her mother, but she always appeared disturbed afterwards and acted out
aggressively, according to the Red Bank staff. One doctor wanted Betty's visits
to stop, but to suggest that a mother be kept from her daughter, was
unthinkable in that era. The staff at Red Bank hated the overly dramatic and
manipulative Betty. "She 'played' at being a mother," said one
teacher.
Betty Bell profited from her daughter's
notoriety, selling her story to the tabloids, and encouraged her daughter to
write letters and poems that could be easily peddled to the press. Betty wanted
her daughter to see how much she suffered as the mother of a famous juvenile
murderer, said Mary: "Jesus was only nailed to the cross, I'm being
hammered," complained Betty.
The philosophy of Red Bank was to focus on
the present. Dwelling on past experiences was detrimental, and therefore Mary
Bell's upbringing and eventual murders were not adequately acknowledged. One
psychiatrist thought Mary was blocking out her troubled past, and was being
discouraged from making any attempts to discover why she killed. "There is
in her an extraordinary inner intensity. . . a neediness one can neither really
understand nor handle," he said. She went through many counselors, very
few of which got to know her well. She was manipulative and picked fights with
the boys, and claimed to have had a twin sister named "Paula"
("I think I was inventing a twin who might have done what I really
did," she said later.) In 1970, Mary reported to a counselor she
had been sexually assaulted by a housemaster, but her account was considered
unreliable (although changes in staff were made soon hereafter.) Later, in
1972, she began "provoking the boys" and snuck into the boys'
dormitory at night. She wounded herself with self-inflicted cuts. At sixteen
she was moved to a prison, which was a traumatic experience not only for the
confused and angry teenager, but for the staff as well, particularly Mr. Dixon.
"There can be little doubt that this
transfer was destructive for Mary," wrote Sereny in Cries Unheard. Mary
had to adjust from a mostly male atmosphere at Red Bank to a full women's
facility at Styal. She was a rebellious prisoner and was frequently punished,
but soon adapted:
"What I had to do was, yes, continue
to fight the system, but I had to graduate from being a prisoner to being a con,
and that meant that rather than being open and angry, I had to be closed and
crafty." She also decided to go "butch." When her mother heard
this she said, "Jesus Christ, what next? You're a murderer and now you're
a lesbian."
A consultant child psychiatrist, who did
weekly group therapy sessions at Styal, observed that "[Mary] went a long
way toward persuading her world that she was masculine. She strutted. . . and
making up as if she had stubble on her face," and "rolled up
stockings in the shape of male genitals and pointed this out to me in class. I
think she wore these all the time." She would later ask a doctor for a sex
change, but was denied ("It was the idea of not being me," she said.) After being transferred to a less secure
facility in 1977, Mary escaped. She, was picked up, along with a fellow
escapee, by two young men. In her brief time out, Mary lost her virginity. The
guy she slept with later sold his story to the tabloids, and claimed she
escaped from jail so she could get pregnant. "As time went on, my
nightmare was the press," said Mary. "I never could understand what
they wanted from me."
Mary was moved to a hostel a few months
before her parole in 1980, and she met a married man who got her pregnant.
"He said he was determined to show me I wasn't a lesbian," she said.
"It was hard for me not to think of sex as dirty." When she found out
she was with child, she had a moral crisis of sorts: "But if I think that
almost the first thing I did after twelve years in prison for killing two babes
was to kill the baby in me. . ." But Mary felt she had no choice.
She is free at 23:
"Mary has made herself into two
people for her own sake." -- Mary's probation officer
Mary Bell was released May 14, 1980, and
stayed in Suffolk. Her first job was in the local children's nursery, but the
probation officers deemed this inappropriate work for her. She took waitress
jobs, and attended a university, but was too discouraged to stick with it.
After moving back in with mother, she met a young man and became pregnant.
There was great concern over whether the woman who had murdered two children
should be able to become a mother herself, yet she fought for the right to keep
her child, which was born in 1984.
Mary claims to have a new awareness of her
crimes from the birth of her child. She was allowed to keep the child, who was
technically a ward of the court until 1992. "If there was something wrong
with me when I was a child, there wasn't now. I felt that if they could X-ray
me inside, they could see that anything broken had been fixed," she
insisted.
Somehow, Mary Bell had made a transition,
without appropriate psychiatric treatment, from a child killer to loving
mother. Her years in reform school and prison yielded sexual abuse and drug
addiction, yet she claims to have a new moral consciousness and deep sorrow for
her crimes. Could this be possible? Can we believe, as Gitta Sereny wrote, in
the "possibility of metamorphosis"? Mary Bell had become, for the
author, "two people -- the child and the adult."
She eventually met a man and fell in love,
then settled in a small town. But the probation officer had to inform the local
authorities of her presence, and soon the villagers were marching through the
street with "Murderer Out!" signs. She lived in constant fear of
being exposed.
When attempting to explain what was going
through her mind as a child, particularly during violent outbursts, Mary only
partially acknowledged her behaviour, and has trouble confessing to the
compulsion to choke other kids. Instead, she often describes her violence as
hitting or pulling: "I put my hands around her ears or her hair or
something like that."
As far as killing Martin Brown, Mary's
version of events keep changing, from being an accident to a unexplainable
compulsion. She said she had a fight with her mother, and for the first time
hit back. When she "pressed" on Martin's neck, she recounts a vague
blankness: "I'm not angry. It isn't a feeling . . . it is a void that
comes .. . .it's an abyss . . . it's beyond rage, beyond pain, it's a draining
of feeling," she said. "I didn't intend to hurt Martin; why should I
have? He was just a wee boy who belonged to a family around the corner . .
."
Yet Mary still implicates Norma in having
some responsibility in Brian Howe's death. "The weaker makes the other
stronger by being weak," she said, in defence of being the
"stronger" one.
The making of Mary Bell
"Take that thing away from me!" --
Betty Bell, responding to the birth of her daughter Mary (Mary's Mother)
In the saga of Mary Bell, mother Betty has
been portrayed as the primary villain and culprit to her psychopathology. Betty
Bell was born in Glasgow in 1940, and was described as a deeply religious
child. "We all thought she was going to be a nun," said her mother.
She liked "religious things," remembered her sister. "She always
drew nuns, and altars and graves and cemeteries."
According to the family, there was no
excessive punishments or abuse, but for some reason Betty began to drift away.
When her father died, "Betty was demented," said Isa, Betty's sister.
Betty threw tantrums, staged a drug overdose, and in 1957 she gave birth to
Mary Flora Bell. Mary's father would remain a mystery. Mary's brief childhood was a nightmare of
abandonment and drug overdoses. Betty was anxious to get rid of her daughter --
she would drop her off with relatives, yet would always come back despite the
family's pleas to let them keep her. In 1960 Betty brought Mary to an adoption
agency, giving her to a distraught woman who wasn't allowed to adopt as she was
moving to Australia. "I brought this one in to be adopted. You have
her," Betty Bell said, leaving Mary with the stranger. Her sister Isa had
followed Betty, and soon found the woman, who had already bought new dresses for
Mary.
At two years old, Mary was refusing to
bond with others -- she was already behaving in a cold and detached manner.
Mary never cried when hurt, and began lashing out violently, smashing uncle's
nose with a toy. Her mother's erratic rejections and reunions didn't help.
Mary witnessed her five-year-old friend
get killed by a bus. This devastating event must have further retarded her
ability to bond with others. In 1961, Mary started kindergarten. "She was
almost always naughty," said her teacher, who once saw Mary putting her
hands around the neck of another child. When told not to do that, Mary said,
"Why? Can it kill him?" She was lonely, and other kids teased her.
She kicked, hit and pinched the other kids, and told "tall stories all the
time."
The most disturbing abuses came from
Mary's frequent drug overdoses, which were likely administered by her mother.
When Mary was one year old, she nearly overdosed after taking some pills that
were hidden in a narrow nook inside a gramophone. It seemed impossible that the
baby could reach the pills, and strange that she would eat so many of the
"acid-tasting" medication. When Mary was three she and her brother
were found eating "little blue pills" along with the candy their aunt
Cath had brought for them. (Betty said, "they must have taken the bottle
out of my handbag.") Cath and husband offered to adopt Mary, but Betty
refused to let the child go, and soon broke off contact with her family.
In the most serious overdose, Mary
swallowed a bunch of "iron" pills belonging to her mother. She lost
consciousness and her stomach had to be pumped. A young playmate, as well as
little Mary herself, said Betty Bell gave Mary the "Smarties" candy
that made her sick. Overdoses, particularly for a developing child, can cause
serious brain damage, a common trait among violent offenders.
Betty Bell was a drama queen and loved to
play the martyr. She may have suffered from "Munchausen by Proxy
Syndrome," thriving on the attention over her little daughter's tragic
"accidents." This syndrome, first described in 1977, is characterized
by caregivers who intentionally injure, suffocate, or poison their child for
the sympathy of others. The "MSBP" mother usually had an unwanted
child, or is unmarried. This may explain why Betty, despite the harm she caused
Mary, always wanted her back.
Mary was later resentful of her mother's
excessive complaints over her own sufferings, in fact she seemed more bothered
by this tendency in her mother than the sexual abuse. This compulsive need for
dramatic sympathy is illustrated by one incident: Betty tearfully told her
sister that Mary had been run over by a truck, which generated an abundance of
attention and sympathy. The next day Betty admitted that it was untrue; Mary
was with friends who had temporarily adopted her.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy, if true, are
Betty's use of Mary during her prostitution. In what she calls "one of the
worst cases of child sexual abuse I have ever encountered," Sereny
recounts the horrors that Mary had to endure as her mother's sexual prop. No
other relatives, including Mary's younger brother, were aware of this abuse, or
would confirm it. Yet this would certainly help to explain Mary's erratic behavior.
If she had been violated herself, the need to violate others might incite her
to the abuse of her own little victims.
Mary’s psychological portrait:
"Manipulation of people is [her]
primary aim" -- Dr. Westbury after
examining young Mary
Did she outgrow her need to kill?
At her trial, a psychiatrist who had examined
Mary testified that she exhibited the classic symptoms of psychopathology (or
sociopathology) by her lack of feeling toward others. "She showed no
remorse whatsoever, no tears and no anxiety. She was completely unemotional
about the whole affair and merely resentful at her detention," reported
Dr. Orton. "I could see no real criminal motivation."
Mary's abusive mother, her genetic
wild-card of a father, and physical damage likely incurred by the repetitive
drug overdoses all contributed to her sociopathology. Her inability to bond
with others in a loving manner was twisted into a bonding process based on
violent aggression. Mary responded to others based on how she herself had been
treated. When a mother is a source of fear for a child, some cope by developing
protective mechanisms against the outside world, which, for the developing
sociopath, is a constant threat. Of course, not all children raised in abusive
situations become sociopaths. Genetic factors and neurological damage also play
a role. If a child is subjected to all of these conditions, the forecast can be
deadly.
Would Mary have become a serial killer?
She certainly showed no signs of being
satiated after murdering Brian. She was violent toward animals, a chronic bed
wetter until her adult years, and while she hadn't set fires, she did destroy
property in her brief career as a murderer. Those familiar with these
"triad" of symptoms that characterize serial killers will also
recognize that she probably wouldn't have stopped killing if unapprehend. Mary
preyed on victims weaker than herself, and after the murders interjected
herself into the crime investigation.
"Living in a fantasy world" is
fine for children, but for psychologically disturbed violent offenders, the
phrase rings ominous. Mary and Norma fantasized about being criminals and
escaping to Scotland. "We built it up and up until -- it now seems -- We
kept hoping we'd be arrested and sent away," she said. "We never
talked about anything except doing terrible things and being taken away."
Medical experts do not believe that
sociopaths can be "cured." They are generally resistant to therapy,
which Mary had proven to be throughout her incarceration. Some do speculate
that aggressive tendencies quiet down with age. Perhaps Mary is better. We
cannot know for sure.
As a child, Mary was described as very
manipulative and intelligent. As an adult, being interviewed by Gitta Sereny, she
overly performs her sorrow, even to the writer's suspicions: "Her recovery
from these terrible bouts of grief, however, was astoundingly quick, and at
first these rapid emotional shifts raised doubts in me."
"Only one thing overrides them
all," she writes of Mary's tragic experiences, "the discipline she
has created inside herself in order to give her daughter a normal life."
Both Sereny and Mary are quick to demonize Betty Bell as a mother, and elevate
Mary in the role of mother redeemed. But something doesn't sit right with this
simple reversal. Mary displays too much of the "drama queen" flair
she picked up from her mother, and we must wonder how successful she has been
at purging Betty Bell from her psyche.
Mary allowed Betty to be part of her life,
even living with her after she was released from prison, despite her continued
abuses. She wanted her own daughter to meet Granny. Betty prostituted her
daughter in every conceivable way. She first sold off Mary to her
"johns," then sold her sad story to the tabloids. We cannot know the
extent of Betty's damage to her daughter. Throughout Cried Unheard, Mary has
demonstrated herself to be very unreliable. There is certainly reason to lie
and exaggerate her mother's abuses, which many sociopaths do to gain sympathy
and justification for their behaviour. Betty is dead now, and no one else has
collaborated the worst of the allegations. But perhaps the silence was the
product of another, more repressed era, before child sexual abuse was openly
discussed as it is today.
Postscript: Cries Unheard
"But what I want most of all is a
normal life." -- Mary Bell
When Cries Unheard was published in 1998,
it ignited a firestorm over criminals profiting from their deeds. Mary was paid
for her efforts, which infuriated so many that Prime Minister Tony Blair
publicly decried her pay. Laws were written to prevent others, including serial
killer Dennis Nilsen, from doing the same. Mary's hope for the book was to
"set the record straight." She thought that if she told her story,
the media would leave her alone. Sereny,
however, says the book was written for the benefit of Mary's child, yet she too
was damaged by its publication. With the renewed media interest in Mary,
reporters laid siege on her house. Her teenage daughter learned her mother was
the infamous Mary Bell as the family evacuated their home, with blankets over
their heads, dodging the flash bulbs and shouts from the media. But Mary says
her daughter has accepted her mother's identity, and forgives her. "But
Mum, why didn't you tell me? You were just a kid, younger than I am now,"
she said, according to Mary.
Perhaps the value of Cries Unheard is the
attempt to unravel the "whys" of violent behaviour in children, which
is becoming an alarmingly common occurrence. In some ways, Mary Bell is an
anomaly. She strangled her victims with her hands, instead of the now
alarmingly typical shooting spree. Whether Mary's story can prevent the abuse
of other children remains to be seen. It is an extraordinary cautionary tale of
a child's capacity for violence. If it is true that children are blessed with
an intrinsic goodness, it can also be a very fragile blessing.
As always, stay safe !
Bird
***
