Mary Bell

Mary Flora Bell (born 26 May 1957) is a British woman who was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged four) and Brian Howe (aged three). Bell was 10 years old when she killed Brown and 11 when she killed Howe, making her one of Britain's most notorious child killers.

Early life

Bell's mother, Betty, was a prostitute who was often absent from the family home, travelling to Glasgow to work. Mary was her first child, born when she was sixteen years old. It is not known who Mary's biological father was, and for most of her life she believed it to be Billy Bell, an habitual criminal later arrested for armed robbery, who had married Betty some time after Mary was born.

Independent accounts from family members suggest strongly that Betty had attempted to kill Mary and make her death look accidental more than once during the first few years of her life.

Mary herself says she was subject to repeated sexual abuse, her mother forcing her to engage in sex acts with men from the age of five.

Bell grew up in the Scotswood area of Newcastle, an economically depressed area where domestic violence and criminal behaviour was commonplace. As a result, her previous crimes, including attacks on other children at school, vandalism and theft did not attract undue attention. Also, she had developed a reputation as a "show off", so her proclamation, "I am a murderer" was dismissed as just another one of her idle boasts.

The murders

On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Mary Bell strangled four-year-old Martin Brown in a derelict house. She was believed to have committed this crime alone. Between that time and the second killing, she and a friend, Norma Joyce Bell (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.

On 31 July 1968, the pair took part in the death, again by strangling, of three-year-old Brian Howe, on wasteland in the same Scotswood area. Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had later returned to his body to carve an "N" into his stomach with a razor; this was then changed using the same razor but with a different hand to an "M". Mary Bell also used a pair of scissors to cut off some of Howe's hair, scratch his legs, and mutilate his penis. As the girls were so young and their testimonies contradicted each other, the precise details of what happened have never been entirely clear.

An open verdict had originally been recorded for Martin Brown's death as there was no evidence of foul play—although Bell had strangled him, her grip was not hard enough to leave any marks. Eventually, his death was linked with Brian Howe's killing and in August 1968 the two girls were charged with two counts of manslaughter.

Conviction

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 taking their lead from her diagnosis by court-appointed psychiatrists who described her as displaying "classic symptoms of psychopathy". The judge, Mr. Justice Cusack, described her as dangerous and said she posed a "very grave risk to other children". 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 St. Helens, Lancashire — the same facility that would house Jon Venables, one of James Bulger's child killers, 25 years later.

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

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.

Life after prison

In 1980, Bell, aged 23, was released from Askham Grange open prison, having served 12 years. She was granted anonymity (including a new name) to start a new life with her daughter, who was born on 25 May 1984. Bell's daughter did not know of her mother's past until Bell's location was discovered by reporters and she and her mother had to leave their house with bed sheets 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. Any court order permanently protecting the identity of someone is consequently known as a "Mary Bell order".

In 2009, it was reported that Bell had become a grandmother.

Depictions in media

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), an in-depth biography based on interviews with Bell and relatives, friends and professionals who knew her during and after her imprisonment. This second book was the first to detail Bell's account of sexual abuse by her mother, a prostitute who specialised as a dominatrix, and her mother's clients.

The publication of Cries Unheard was controversial because Bell received payment for her participation. 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's brief prison escape was the basis for a Screen Two teleplay on the BBC, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1987), starring Joanne Whalley as the tough yet oddly innocent escapee who has come of age behind bars and goes looking for love in a seaside resort town.

Bell's case (as well as the murder of James Bulger) was used as the basis for a 1999 episode of Law & Order entitled "Killerz". Hallee Hirsh played the Mary Bell analogue. The story was reprised in a 2010 episode of Law & Order: UK entitled "Broken".

Bell's case was also used as the basis for an episode of the short-lived 2005 series The Inside entitled "Everything Nice". Jennette McCurdy played the Mary Bell analogue. The "Young Blood" episode of Deadly Women on the Investigation Discovery channel also depicted the Bell case.

Bell was also the basis for several songs written by extreme metal band Macabre on their 1993 album Sinister Slaughter, and is also the subject of the Perfume Genius song "Look Out, Look Out". The seminal industrial artist Monte Cazazza named one of his songs after Bell.

Bell's case was the basis for a short story titled "Blue Eyes" by Jay Caselberg that aired on Pseudopod on September 2nd, 2011.