Hey guys it’s bella today we’re going to be covering another mystery monday case we’re going to be talking about mary belle she was an 11 year old serial killer mary florebell was born on the 26th of may in 1957 in newcastle england
Her mother betty bell was a s*x worker and she was only 17 years old when mary was born and the first thing she said when mary was born was take the thing away from me it’s unknown who mary’s biological father actually is but just under a year after she was born her mother betty married a guy named billy bell and he served as a father figure to mary
he was actually an armed rubber a career criminal and an alcoholic so safe to say mary didn’t have the best upbringing and this is actually a really interesting case of nature versus nurture because you have to wonder how much responsibility her upbringing had in her committing the crimes that she did and if she would have committed them at all if she had a completely different upbringing because she had it rough growing up
So mary billy and betty lived in a house that was constantly filthy at a 70 white house road in scottswood at the time and i’m not really sure what it’s like now but back in the 1960s it was quite a poor area with a high rate of violent crimes and criminal behavior and white house road was a street that had a high unemployment rate it had a constant police presence because of the amount of s*x work drug activity and domestic abuse issues
despite all of the evident dangers for young children mary and all of the other kids on the street were just allowed to go out and play unsupervised from the ages of 2 and up and they would play till all hours of the night like they’d be out playing till midnight with no one there to supervise them betty as i mentioned was a s*x worker she specialized in sadomasochism whippings and stranglings and allegedly
Once mary turned four years old she would pass her out to her pervert s*x work clients who would pay betty to s*xually abuse mary betty had a bipolar disorder she was an alcoholic and she just was not a nice person mary had been a chronic bed wetter and was actually scared of going to sleep out of fear that she might wet her bed because when she did betty would rub her face in it and sometimes she would even hang the mattress out for everybody in the neighborhood to see allegedly
She also tried to murder mary several times according to her family mary accidentally swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills and was really really sick afterwards and there was another occasion where mary actually had to be hospitalized and have her stomach pumped and she told the doctor that her mum had given her smarties there was another occasion when mary fell out of a two-story window and allegedly
Betty also tried to choke mary out on occasion she was constantly trying to get rid of mary she even gave her away to a total stranger one time she was going to an adoption clinic a woman came out of an interview room and she was sobbing because they wouldn’t allow her to adopt a child so betty pushed mary towards her said i was taking her here to be adopted anyway you have her and then she just left luckily betty’s sister isa was actually following them so she ended up following the woman who took mary found out where she lived went and told betty’s mother and betty’s mother told her if you don’t go and get married back within the next two hours i’m calling the police
So betty went and got married back and that was that this woman had already bought merry clothes and she allowed betty to keep the clothes that she had bought with mary and honestly who knows mary might have had a better life if she had just been able to stay with this woman betty was constantly palming her off to friends and family and acquaintances and mary’s aunt and uncle actually looked after her for the majority of the first six years of her life and they even tried to adopt her which betty wouldn’t allow but she would still bring mary there say i can’t deal with her i can’t cope with her you look after her and she’d still come back and pick her up despite their pleas to allow them to keep her and it was just this constant cycle of her saying nope i can’t cope with her i don’t want her i can’t deal with her but then she’d still always come and get her again it’s like she wanted to get rid of her but she also had this obsessive attachment to her growing up mary really struggled to make friends she refused to bond with others she was very cold and detached when she was four years old she actually did become friends with a five-year-old girl who lived on the same street this little girl had also mentioned that she had seen mary’s mother give her smarties in the backyard unfortunately though this girl was hit and killed by a bus right in front of mary when they were playing on the street together which just would have been
Incredibly traumatizing on top of everything else that mary was dealing with at home mary was known at school to be a compulsive liar a troublemaker she had violent tendencies and she had a really bad temper like one minute she’d be totally fine and then the next she would just snap and be really aggressive and all of the other kids were scared to play with her she was lonely and the other kids teased her and she was known to hit and kick and punch and just grab other kids by the throat mary did have one friend her name was norma bell despite the fact that they weren’t related
i think bell might have been like a common last name or it was just a coincidence but they were next-door neighbors and they were practically joined at the hip everything mary did norma did everywhere they went they went together norma was two years older than mary but mary was smarter she had more common sense and she was kind of the leader of the two of them like whatever she said norma would do i think norma might have been like she was described as being simple on the 11th of may in 1968 when mary was 10 and norma was 12 they took this little three-year-old boy named john to go and get some sweets from the store
not even an hour later mary and norma took john who was bleeding from the head into the delaval arms pub saying they found him beside some old sheds nearby police in an ambulance were called this boy apparently fell from a ledge and there were no repercussions for mary and norma and the boy did make a full recovery but mary actually later admitted that she did push this boy off the ledge herself
the next day on the 12th of may there was another incident where three girls who were playing in the sand pit of the woodlands crescent daycare were attacked by mary unprovoked seven-year-old pauline was playing in the sandpit with her two friends six-year-old susan and six-year-old cindy when mary all of a sudden snapped started literally strangling her and trying to shove sand down her throat norma pinned us down and mary had grabbed us by the neck and start like strangling us and then just had a hand here and she’s getting the sand and then pouring at my mouth and it couldn’t go on quick enough and she’s trying to stuff her fingers down and i think norma was a little bit frightened when she’d seen what mary was doing because norma jumped up and by that time she had jumped up and i managed to struggle and get free and run home she went and did the exact same thing to susan
then she went over to cindy and she said what happens if you choke someone do they die and then she just put her hands around her throat and started choking her cindy apparently turned purple while this was happening and the marks on pauline’s throat were apparently visible for three days after the attack pauline’s mum did go to the police and report this but nothing was done about it and mary’s behavior continued to escalate on the 25th of may in 1968 martin brown was four years old he lived on 140 saint margaret’s road with his younger sister linda his mother june and his father georgie he was a mischievous little boy he once decided he wanted a swimming pool in the bedroom so he filled a drawer in like a chest of drawers with water which ended up overflowing
but he was always smiling and laughing he was very cheeky and everybody that knew him loved him on saturday the 25th he woke up at 6 30 am as he normally would and everyone else in the house was still asleep because it was a weekend and on weekends they like to sleep in i get it so he quietly went downstairs he ate some cookies he had some milk he brought some up to his shared room with linda and fed some to her in her cot as well he woke his parents up at about 9am for brekkie and then he was just kind of out and about doing his thing all day because as i mentioned children over the age of two in the area were allowed to just go and hang out and play in the streets with no adult supervision at around 3pm
he went to his aunt’s house to ask for a little bit of money so he could go down to the local store called dixon’s to get a lollipop and he left dixon’s at around 3 15 p.m now in the area there was a bunch of like abandoned buildings and abandoned houses that the kids all used to go and play in basically whoever is in charge of like you know getting buildings demolished and stuff was demolishing a bunch of buildings and houses in the area and then they just kind of they left them all there they left a bunch of just empty abandoned buildings at 3 30 p.m so 15 minutes after martin was last seen at dixon’s these three boys were going around these abandoned buildings looking for some scrap wood as these boys entered number 85 they went up to the second floor of the house and found martin lying on his back with his arms outstretched and blood and saliva coming from his head there were some workers who were working just down the road they called out to them and these workers ran over saw martin’s body and called an ambulance and the ambulance arrived at 3 35 pm they attempted to give him cpr
but it was too late and martin was already deceased there were no signs of a struggle and there were no visible signs of injury to his body there was a bottle of aspirin nearby so at first they thought that maybe he thought it was candy and tried to eat it and that’s how he died a postmodern exam was done but no cause of death could be determined so police just believed that this was an accident that he died from natural causes four years old randomly in an abandoned house with blood and saliva coming from his mouth makes sense there was a few theories like he’s maybe getting the top of the stairs and and being frightened to come down because he once fell down the stairs when he was very little and they said we could sort of get in a shock the scotswood community was outraged they marched and protested to have these abandoned buildings and houses taken down because you know with no cause of death they believed that this is why martin died from playing in these dangerous abandoned buildings
at the front of all of these marches was mary bell and norma bell and they were smiling and giggling the entire time the next day on the 26th of may mary celebrated her 11th birthday with norma at norma’s house and norma’s dad ended up walking in on mary strangling norma’s little sister take a shot for every time i just said norma in that sentence his daughter was going red as mary was strangling her and he ran in separated them but he didn’t really think too much of it he thought they were playing like some kind of violent game and he just told them to cut it out and stop playing it the day after that on the 27th of may a nursery in scotswood was broken into and vandalized police were called they found that nothing was missing or had been taken from the nursery someone had just broken in to trash it and leave a bunch of notes there was like four notes left at the scene one of the notes read we did murder martin brown
off you bastard another read i murder so that i may come back another said
off we murder watch out fanny and the f slur and the last one was pretty rambly it said like you were micey because we murdered martin and it used the f slur again there were a ton of spelling errors grammatical errors and the writing was pretty bad as well it definitely looked like a child had written it and because martin’s death was ruled an accident they just kind of chalked this up to a dumb prank that some kids thought was funny over the next few weeks mary would constantly go to martin’s house and talk to his mother june and ask her how she was feeling if she was crying over martin if she missed martin and she was always smiling and giggling as she did she started asking to see martin and june said no sweetie you can’t see martin he’s dead and mary responded and said i know he’s dead i want to see him in his coffin
she was just standing there smiling june was just speechless that this little 11 year old girl was standing there smiling asking to see a dead baby and she ended up just closing the door on her face nine weeks later on the 31st of july three-year-old brian howie was last seen playing with his dog on white house road when dinner time came around his parents called out for him but he didn’t come home they searched the neighborhood and couldn’t find any signs of brian and soon enough a bunch of people from the neighborhood came out and helped aid them in the search for brian and among those helping were mary and norma bell who looked way too happy to be looking for a missing three-year-old boy they were singing and dancing and skipping after the search party found no signs of brian the howie’s ended up calling the police the police searched well into the night and at 11 10 pm they found three-year-old brian howie’s body in a wasteland near his house covered in green and purple weeds it was immediately clear to police upon discovering his body that he was a victim of a homicide there was bruising and scratching around his neck where he had been strangled and he also had scratches covering his face and blood dripping from his mouth detective chief constable james dobson was in charge of the investigation into brian’s murder
he had actually been on the scene just weeks earlier when martin brown’s body was found and immediately he saw the similarities in the two cases detective dobson determined there was no anger in the cuts to brian’s body they were made with like a curious playfulness a post-mortem exam was done and it was determined that brian was strangled to death between 3 30 and 4 30 pm the day his body was discovered the post-mortem exam found that he had three scratches on the right side of his neck and two scratches on the left side there were a series of compression marks on his nose which suggested somebody had pinched both sides of his nose quite hard his genitals had been cut and there were six puncture wounds on his thighs and his legs all of the marks on his genitals his thighs and his legs were only superficial wounds and had only punctured the skin his hair had been cut and the letter m had been carved into his stomach originally an n was carved into his stomach but a little while after the murder by possibly a different person
it seems that an extra line was added onto the end to make it into an m it was determined that very little force would have been required to kill a three-year-old in this manner and adults usually use a lot more force than is necessary so the attacker was likely a child police then launched an investigation into the murder and within the first 24 hours they visited over 1 000 homes they interviewed over 1200 children and they gave
all of these children’s parents mimeograph questionnaires to fill out mary and norma bell were of course among the children who were interviewed by police and they were actually visited multiple times because of their unclear and evasive answers dobson said he immediately thought mary and norma was sketchy because their answers and their stories kept changing and they were just smiling the entire time as if it was all just a huge joke in one of mary’s interviews with dobson she suddenly remembered some new information
she said on the day of brian’s murder she had seen this eight-year-old boy who was referred to as a standing on delaval road with brian she said they’d been playing a lot and that she had seen a hit brian for no reason she said he hit brian around the face and the neck and she also said that she had seen a playing with this silver colored pair of scissors which were like damaged in some way like there was something wrong with one of the legs of the scissors it was like broken or snapped or something like that and she said that she had seen a using these scissors to try and cut off a cat’s tail
the sketchy thing about this is that scissors identical to that description were found near brian’s body and this information hadn’t been disclosed there hadn’t been photos taken of these scissors police hadn’t released this information to anybody media hadn’t gotten a hold of any of this information so nobody in the public knew only the killer and the police would have known about them and then they found out that the afternoon of brian’s murder this boy a was actually at the airport with his family and couldn’t be responsible for the murder so mary was looking super sketchy by this point like she had described these scissors that were found near brian’s body that nobody knew about besides the police and the attacker most likely and these scissors were believed to have been what made the puncture wounds and the cuts all over bran’s body and on top of that her enormous stories kept changing and they were laughing the whole time like it was funny and by this point everyone else had pretty much been eliminated as a suspect except for mary and norma
so on the fourth of august detective dobson went and interviewed norma for like the third or fourth time in her previous statements she said that she’d been playing with her brothers and sisters from two to five pm but other kids had actually said in their statements that they had seen her playing with mary dobson brought this up with her and he was like look i know you’re saying this but other kids said they saw you with mary and so norma changed her story again and she said yeah i was with mary and mary actually took me to see brian after hearing this dobson took norma down to the police station to get an official statement about it and it was there that norma specified that mary had taken her to see brian’s dead body she said that mary had told her that she killed brian that she squeezed his neck and pushed up his lungs because that’s how you kill somebody
she said mary ran her fingers along his purple lips and said that she enjoyed it she said mary showed her a razor lifted up brian’s shirt and showed her the marks on brian’s stomach she then hid the razor underneath a block and told norma not to tell anybody dobson asked norma if she could show him where the razor was hidden and she agreed so at 8 30 pm they went down to the area where brian’s body was found and she pointed to this like concrete block dobson had a look underneath the block and lo and behold the razer was there afterwards she was taken back to the police station to give an official statement and then at 12 15 am on the 5th of august dobson and two police constables went down to maribel’s home to bring her into the station for questioning she was super defensive and agitated the whole time and she actually threatened to call a solicitor which is just so crazy to me like this little 11 year old girl threatening to call a solicitor
and when police told her that norma had shown them the razer she actually threatened to kill norma as well to dobson but they couldn’t hold her they didn’t have any definitive evidence against her and for all police knew norma could be lying about the whole thing and could just be trying to pin everything on mary when in reality it could have just been normal so they had to let her go brian howie’s funeral was held on the morning of the 7th of august and detective dobson attended so that he could kind of check out the crowd and see if anyone was looking sketchy and he said this is when he knew mary bell was guilty and this is a quote of what detective dobson said mary bell was standing in front of the howie’s house when the coffin was brought out i was 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 so he made the decision to arrest mary and norma bell that afternoon he first arrested mary and brought her in for questioning and she tried to pin the whole thing on norma said she was the one who killed brian she said norma squeezed her throat really hard and that she tried to stop her and pull her shoulders back but norma went mad she started screaming at her and then she kind of threw brian and he hit his head and died during mary’s interview dobson brought up martin brown because as i mentioned as soon as he saw brian’s body he immediately thought the two cases were connected he told mary that he believed she and norma had broken into the nursery and written the notes that were left there and mary admitted to it immediately but pinned it all on norma said norma wrote the notes that normal was the one who broke into the nursery he couldn’t do anything about it that night because he needed more evidence to connect the two cases
but by 8 pm that night he did arrest mary for the murder of brian howie and then by 8 30 pm he also arrested norma and charged her with brian howie’s murder they were then reprimanded at the newcastle west end police station by the 21st of august the investigation into martin brown’s death was complete they contacted the girls school so they could get some of their books to compare the handwriting to the handwriting that was found on the notes that were found in the nursery break-in their handwriting was eerily similar and it also seemed like they kind of alternated who wrote like mary would write a couple of words and then norma would write a couple of words and so on and so forth they said after this discovery that they had no doubt that it was mary and norma who broke into and vandalized the nursery in one of mary’s school books they also found a story that she had written the day after martin had died
she wrote there were crowds of people outside an old house i asked what was the matter there has been a boy who has just laid down and died underneath that story she drew a picture of four-year-old martin’s body lying dead a work man discovering the body and near the body was a little pill bottle that was labeled tablet the crazy thing about this is that the pill bottle that was found near martin’s body had never been publicly disclosed media hadn’t gotten a hold of that information police had never disclosed that information no photos had been taken of that pill bottle the only people that would know about that pill bottle are the police the three boys that discovered the body and the killer and the workmen who also called the ambulance another weird piece of information is that when man’s body was discovered mary and norman just so happened to show up a few minutes later they also found out that mary had spoken to the howie’s and had told them that norma had strangled brian to death and the fact that he died of asphyxiation was also not disclosed this is something
only the killer and the police would know gray fibers from one of mary’s dresses was found on the bodies of both victims fibers from one of norma’s dresses was also found on the body of brian howie and so both girls were also charged with the matter of martin brown the trial for the murders of brian howie and martin brown began on the 5th of december in 1968 at the newcastle assassins during the trial while most people considered mary guilty there was definitely some doubt about norma’s guilt and mary’s family at the trial certainly didn’t help her mother betty constantly disrupted the proceedings by sobbing really loudly she stormed out of the trial at one point only to dramatically reappear just moments later it just seemed like a soap opera like she was just some really bad acting norma on the other hand was the third of 11 children she had a much more sympathetic family
she reacted to evidence and testimony with a more childlike combination of fear and nervous tears whereas mary just looked emotionally blank and showed no remorse whatsoever the two girls were very different in personality mary very bright and sharp and could answer back to the council when they questioned her she could make quite witty little remarks the other girl was not as bright and i think was completely overawed by the setting and in a sense the court almost separated the two and said therefore the bright one must have done it and the duller one probably didn’t because of her lack of emotion mary was actually examined by a number of psychiatrists all of whom said she displayed psychopathic tendencies on the 14th of december after the trial ended
norma bell was acquitted on the grounds that she was manipulated by mary into doing the things that she did it was believed she didn’t understand the weight of what she was doing because she was simple-minded and that she couldn’t understand what mary was making her do mary was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility as she displayed classic symptoms of psychopathy the judge described her as dangerous and said she posed a very grave danger to other children and she was sentenced to be detained at her majesty’s pleasure which just kind of means indefinitely now because this was such a crazy case and britain wasn’t really used to having to incarcerate little 11 year old girls for murder they weren’t really sure what to do with her mental hospitals were not equipped to take her and she was too dangerous to put into homes for troubled children and so she was sent to red banks special unit in saint helens lancashire which was a reform school it’s actually operated exclusively for boys but it was transferred into a co-ed school exclusively for mary her mother betty visited her regularly
mary was always excited to see her mum but afterwards she would act out aggressively and seemed disturbed betty also profited from mary’s notoriety she sold her stories to tabloids and she encouraged mary to write letters and poems that could be sold to the press and because of betty mary was actually paid 50 000 pounds for a story like a girl who murdered two young three and four-year-old boys got fifty thousand pounds for mattering them disgusting but mary always blamed her mother for how she turned out whilst mary was in red bank her mother received a letter blaming her for ruining her life please ma’am put my tiny mind at ease tell judge and jury on your knees they will listen to your cry of plays the guilty one is you not me i’m sorry it has to be this way we’ll both cry and you will go away tell them you are guilty please so then mom i’ll be free your daughter me now betty are you saying that your daughter’s innocent no i’m not saying she’s innocent but something must have made her do these things yes something possibly must have made her
do these things what was it about her life and her family you think that could have driven her to these things maybe it’s the arguments between my husband and myself my i had some inflict on her i i don’t know have you been very despairing sometimes and very despairing very very lot of under a lot of strain stress in 1970 mary reported to a counselor that she had been s*xually assaulted by a house master
but her account was considered unreliable and dismissed despite the fact that changes in staff were made shortly after when she was 16 years old she was transferred to moore court open prison and an open prison is basically a prison where the prisoners are trusted to complete their sentences with minimal supervision they’re often not locked up in their cells and prisoners can take up employment while serving their sentence and can actually leave the facility to go to work and then in 1977 at age 20 mary escaped the prison to go and like hook up with some guy and lose her virginity she was found she was returned and as punishment she only received 28 days without privileges three years later in 1980 when mary was 23 years old
she was released from prison and granted anonymity so that she could go and start a new life on the 25th of may 1984 on the 16th anniversary of martin’s murder mary had a daughter her daughter was also granted anonymity until her 18th birthday mary never planned to tell her daughter who she was or about her past crimes but when she was 14 years old people actually found out who she was and where she lived and they were having to leave the house wearing bed sheets because her daughter’s anonymity was due to end when she was 18 years old mary actually went to court to fight to get her lifelong anonymity which she was granted and then in 2001 when she was 51 years old mary became a grandmother and the anonymity also stretched to her granddaughter so tell me what you guys think about this case like i feel like it’s a really tough one apparently mary is fully reformed which is why she was released i don’t think she should be in prison forever because she had a horrific upbringing she was only 11 years old and apparently she’s fully reformed but at the same time i feel like it could have been a little bit more than 12 years for murdering two little three and four-year-old baby boys i mean imagine what their parents would have had to go through they never got to live and experience life and not only was it only 12 years but she got to spend it in an open prison where she could easily just escape to go and get it on with her boyfriend
it just doesn’t feel like justice is served but let me know your thoughts i’d love to hear what you think and discuss it in the comments down below i hope you guys have an incredible day and hopefully i will see you in my next story bye guys