Britian's Youngest Female Killer: Mary Bell

WEBVTT

1
00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:42.399
Distress. Nineteen sixties, Newcastle upon
Tyne, the withering, dying neighborhood of

2
00:00:42.439 --> 00:00:48.200
Scottswood, became the scene of extremes. A new age of renovation and industry

3
00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:54.640
had the council knocking down and rebuilding
streets of old Victorian terrace houses, leaving

4
00:00:54.759 --> 00:01:00.960
rows of derelict empty buildings as the
home for some of Britain's poorest family With

5
00:01:00.039 --> 00:01:04.319
nowhere to go, some of those
families moved into the houses marked for demolition.

6
00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:11.519
Others became the playground for neighborhood children
left unattended for hours at a time

7
00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:17.519
as their parents struggled to make ends
meet. One of those children was Mary

8
00:01:17.560 --> 00:01:22.280
Bell or May As she went by
in the neighborhood. A dark haired,

9
00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:26.719
blue eyed ten year old girl was
pretty and seemed sweet. She had a

10
00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:30.120
spark in her eye that spoke of
her intelligence, but the warm and unassuming

11
00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:37.640
mask she wore hid a myriad of
suffering. Elizabeth Bell was only seventeen years

12
00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.159
old when she had her second child, Mary Bell, and by then Elizabeth

13
00:01:42.319 --> 00:01:47.560
was already living life on the edge. She was a sex worker who sometimes

14
00:01:47.599 --> 00:01:52.000
would leave her children for days on
end to travel up to Glasgow and work,

15
00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:55.359
but that was just the tip of
the iceberg when it came to what

16
00:01:55.519 --> 00:02:00.519
was really going on inside the Bell
household. Relatives noticed that May May would

17
00:02:00.519 --> 00:02:05.239
often end up injured after she'd spent
time alone with her mother, a mother

18
00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:08.719
who, by some accounts, was
rumored to suffer from Munchausen's by proxy.

19
00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:14.719
But maybe this case would have turned
out differently if May had only suffered from

20
00:02:14.759 --> 00:02:20.199
a few bumps and bruises. But
unfortunately, Elizabeth had made her feelings about

21
00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:23.680
May clear from the very start,
and it only headed downhill from there.

22
00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:30.120
Accounts from the hospital staff say that
when May was born, Elizabeth began shouting

23
00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:35.520
and screaming, refusing to hold her
child and instead ordering staff to get that

24
00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:39.520
thing away from her. From then
on, May was constantly in harm's way.

25
00:02:40.039 --> 00:02:45.560
Her mother reportedly once tried to kill
her by making her overdose on sleep

26
00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:53.000
medication. Another time, relatives watched
as Elizabeth air Quotes accidentally dropped the infant

27
00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:59.879
May out of a first story window. May was left permanently injured after that,

28
00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:04.240
with brain damage to her frontal lobe
that may have affected her ability to

29
00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:09.599
make decisions and control her emotions.
There is one more account of Elizabeth's attempts

30
00:03:09.639 --> 00:03:14.159
to get rid of May, and
that was when she sold her child to

31
00:03:14.199 --> 00:03:17.800
a mentally ill woman on the other
side of Newcastle. The woman had been

32
00:03:17.879 --> 00:03:23.400
unable to have children of her own
and took up Elizabeth on her offer to

33
00:03:23.479 --> 00:03:28.800
buy may Bell. May was only
reunited with her family because her older sister

34
00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:34.439
made the journey across Newcastle to go
and get her back herself. When May

35
00:03:34.599 --> 00:03:38.759
was only four years old, Elizabeth
found a new way of exploiting her youngest

36
00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:44.199
daughter. With her family constantly asking
for Elizabeth to hand over care of May

37
00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:49.159
to them, Elizabeth chose to go
in a different direction entirely, and that

38
00:03:49.319 --> 00:03:53.960
only involved more and more abuse.
Elizabeth often brought clients home with her,

39
00:03:54.280 --> 00:04:00.919
and she began actively encouraging them to
live out their sick fantasies with her four

40
00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.840
year old daughter. May was tied
up, blindfolded, and often forced to

41
00:04:04.879 --> 00:04:12.319
perform acts on her mother's clients,
abuse that would continue well throughout the nineteen

42
00:04:12.439 --> 00:04:16.639
sixties. When May was around eight
years old, classmates and teachers noted that

43
00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:23.199
her behavior became more aggressive and more
violent. She'd switch from being a seemingly

44
00:04:23.319 --> 00:04:29.480
perfect and happy child one moment to
attacking her classmates the next The other children

45
00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:32.560
knew to be afraid whenever May went
quiet and got what they later described as

46
00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:38.639
a cold, steely look in her
eyes. May would then stare intently at

47
00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:43.519
one of the other children around her
and eventually end up violently attacking them.

48
00:04:43.879 --> 00:04:47.160
May often went for the throat.
She was caught numerous times trying to strangle

49
00:04:47.199 --> 00:04:53.000
the other children, and reportedly one
time held down another girl and stuffed sand

50
00:04:53.240 --> 00:04:58.360
into her mouth. The only one
who seemed exempt from May's attacks was an

51
00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:02.199
older girl in neighbor Norma Joyce Bell. These girls were not related, but

52
00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:06.000
had the same last name and a
good few other things in common too.

53
00:05:06.839 --> 00:05:12.639
Norma was twelve but developmentally challenged,
and she had a mental age of around

54
00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:16.040
eight years old, making her a
good friend for another girl who had a

55
00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:20.920
hard time fitting in at school.
In May nineteen sixty eight, when May

56
00:05:21.120 --> 00:05:26.399
was ten years old, a three
year old boy turned up in the neighborhood,

57
00:05:26.560 --> 00:05:30.480
dazed and confused and bleeding from a
wound in his head. He claimed

58
00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:33.639
that he'd been out with May and
Norma and had been playing on top of

59
00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:38.920
an old air raid shelter when one
of the girls had pushed him. He'd

60
00:05:38.920 --> 00:05:42.879
followed about two meters and split his
head, and though they couldn't say exactly

61
00:05:42.920 --> 00:05:46.040
which one of the girls had pushed
him, he wasn't the only child to

62
00:05:46.040 --> 00:05:50.360
make a complaint about them that day. Later that evening, three other families

63
00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:56.279
contacted the police to say that their
children had been attacked by May and Norma.

64
00:05:57.120 --> 00:06:00.959
According to testimonies, including from May
and Norma themselves, the children had

65
00:06:00.959 --> 00:06:04.879
all been playing in the sand pit
when May decided she wanted to find out

66
00:06:04.879 --> 00:06:11.040
if someone could die from strangulation.
She then began strangling one of the other

67
00:06:11.079 --> 00:06:15.680
girls until her face turned purple.
Then she moved on to the second girl

68
00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:18.480
and did the same, and she
did the same again when a third girl

69
00:06:18.519 --> 00:06:24.360
approached the sand pit to see what
was going on. May denied everything,

70
00:06:24.759 --> 00:06:29.720
but Norma openly admitted what had happened. The police, not quite sure what

71
00:06:29.839 --> 00:06:32.959
to do when everyone involved in the
attack was so young, gave both May

72
00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:39.120
and Norma a warning and moved on. A week later, and a day

73
00:06:39.160 --> 00:06:44.720
before May's eleventh birthday, the authorities
were called yet again when the body of

74
00:06:44.759 --> 00:06:48.600
a four year old boy was discovered
in one of the abandoned houses in Scottswood.

75
00:06:49.319 --> 00:06:54.399
Three other local children had found his
body while playing, and after hearing

76
00:06:54.439 --> 00:06:58.600
the news, a local workman rushed
to the scene and attempted to resuscitate the

77
00:06:58.600 --> 00:07:03.199
boy. He was still performing CPR
when first responders came, and someone else

78
00:07:03.279 --> 00:07:09.800
arrived shortly behind him. May and
Norma appeared at the door to the bedroom

79
00:07:10.040 --> 00:07:13.639
where the four year old boy was
lying flat on his back, his arms

80
00:07:13.639 --> 00:07:17.680
stretched out above his head, foam
and blood speckles around his mouth. The

81
00:07:17.759 --> 00:07:21.600
girls were quickly ushered from the room, only to run across to the neighbor's

82
00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:26.720
house and knock on the door.
One of your sister's bairns has just had

83
00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:30.519
an accident, they told Rita Finley. We think it's Martin, but we

84
00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:34.199
can't tell because there's blood all over
him. The boy was Martin Brown,

85
00:07:34.519 --> 00:07:40.199
and his autopsy revealed no certain cause
of death. A day later, a

86
00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:45.079
local nursery was broken into and vandalized. The perpetrators left notes that read,

87
00:07:45.199 --> 00:07:49.839
quote, I murder so that I
may come back, and we did murder

88
00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:56.839
Martin Brown. Investigators chalked it up
to a childish but cruel prank. Two

89
00:07:56.920 --> 00:08:01.240
days later, May and Norma showed
up at the brown household asking to see

90
00:08:01.279 --> 00:08:05.360
him. May specifically said that she
wanted to see him in his Coffin the

91
00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:09.360
same summer, in nineteen sixty eight, the police were called out yet again

92
00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:15.680
to another horrific scene. The body
of three year old Brian Howe was discovered

93
00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:20.600
crudely hidden behind two cement blocks out
in the slums. The last people to

94
00:08:20.600 --> 00:08:24.439
be seen with him alive were none
other than May and Norma. He'd been

95
00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:30.959
strangled, his genitals partially mutilated,
there were puncture marks on his legs,

96
00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:35.639
his hair had been cut in places, and a crude m had been carved

97
00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:41.240
into his stomach. During interviews,
Norma seemed agitated and on edge. May

98
00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:46.799
was calm and collected. They told
investigators that they'd been out playing with Brian

99
00:08:46.919 --> 00:08:50.480
that morning but hadn't seen him since
lunch time. In a following interview,

100
00:08:50.840 --> 00:08:54.519
May claim to have later seen Brian
with another eight year old boy who had

101
00:08:54.519 --> 00:09:00.480
a pair of scissors with him,
and she sealed her fate. The police

102
00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:03.279
had determined that the numerous puncture wounds
on the boy's legs had come from a

103
00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:07.240
pair of scissors that had also been
found at the scene, but they had

104
00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:11.919
not released that information. Just yet
to the public. If May felt the

105
00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:16.879
need to include information about a pair
of scissors to the police, they figured

106
00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:20.320
it was because she knew that scissors
had been involved in the murder. A

107
00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:26.360
few days later, investigators received a
call from Norma's family claiming that she was

108
00:09:26.440 --> 00:09:31.039
ready to confess. Norma then said
that May had taken her out to Brian's

109
00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:35.000
body after May had already strangled him. Then showed Norma how she'd killed the

110
00:09:35.039 --> 00:09:39.000
boy and where she'd hidden the pair
of scissors and a razor blade that the

111
00:09:39.039 --> 00:09:46.440
investigators had previously missed. Both girls
were then arrested. At the trial,

112
00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:50.399
the girls turned on each other,
both claiming that the other one had actually

113
00:09:50.399 --> 00:09:54.240
been the one to kill both victims. Before the defense teams changed tracks and

114
00:09:54.279 --> 00:10:00.679
went into damage control. Norma's developmental
issues and mental age became came a huge

115
00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:05.480
factor. Her lawyers claimed that she
was afraid of her violent friend and was

116
00:10:05.559 --> 00:10:09.600
easily led astray, even though she
was the older of the two girls.

117
00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:13.039
May's team said that May had tried
to stop the attacks, but because Norma

118
00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:16.279
had been an older and bigger girl, there was nothing that she could do.

119
00:10:18.120 --> 00:10:22.639
May was also psychologically examined and was
found to have a psychotic personality disorder.

120
00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:28.279
Her history of documented physical, psychological, and sexual abuse painted the picture

121
00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:33.320
of the troubled and disturbed life May
had been living up until then, and

122
00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:41.360
it influenced her sentencing. May was
imprisoned indefinitely for manslaughter charges and Norma was

123
00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:46.320
released. May went from institution to
institution until she was twenty three years old,

124
00:10:46.679 --> 00:10:58.759
when she was released after spending over
eleven years behind bars. That's ten

125
00:10:58.799 --> 00:11:03.360
mins Murder for today, brief and
binge abul true crime. I'm Joe the

126
00:11:03.399 --> 00:11:07.399
host, and thank you so much
for taking the time to listen to the

127
00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:11.240
podcast. If you're new, make
sure you hit subscribe to ten Minute Murder

128
00:11:11.639 --> 00:11:16.120
anywhere that you're listening to this podcast
right now, and follow along on social

129
00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:18.200
media to see the pictures of what
we talk about here on the podcast.

130
00:11:18.480 --> 00:11:22.399
If you've got a question, if
you've got a case, suggestion, or

131
00:11:22.440 --> 00:11:24.080
just something in general you want to
tell me, you can do that by

132
00:11:24.120 --> 00:11:30.240
sending me an email Joe at ten
minute Murder dot com. And speaking of

133
00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:33.799
here's one of those emails. Hey, Joe, I just wanted to take

134
00:11:33.799 --> 00:11:35.840
a second to tell you how much
I enjoy the podcast, especially as a

135
00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:41.519
neurodivergent person. The corny jokes and
quips at the end also help, and

136
00:11:41.559 --> 00:11:45.399
then she goes on to tell me
about a story that she'd like for me

137
00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:48.320
to cover. It looks very interesting
anyway, Thanks for the great podcast.

138
00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:52.919
I look forward to hearing the cases
you research each week. And while I'm

139
00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:56.559
here, I'm curious about something.
How do you keep your research and your

140
00:11:56.679 --> 00:12:01.320
everyday thoughts separate? If I binge
too many true crime podcasts, which is

141
00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:03.639
another reason I like this one,
only ten minutes of suspense, I worry

142
00:12:03.639 --> 00:12:07.080
that someone is in the house ready
to bludgeon me to death at any time.

143
00:12:07.159 --> 00:12:11.240
The dog lifts her head off the
bed in the middle of the night.

144
00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:15.720
Really, how do you do it? That's Jen f in Shimokin,

145
00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:18.879
Pennsylvania. Gen First of all,
thank you so much for taking the time

146
00:12:18.919 --> 00:12:24.559
to reach out and to also send
that case idea for me. But how

147
00:12:24.600 --> 00:12:28.240
do I keep my everyday thoughts separate
from the research that I do? Simple

148
00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:33.000
answer is I don't. I try. I definitely try. I've documented on

149
00:12:33.399 --> 00:12:37.840
this podcast before that I get nightmares, and the only way that I can

150
00:12:37.879 --> 00:12:43.879
really almost guarantee that that doesn't happen
when I've spent a lot of time either

151
00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:48.039
doing the podcast or research for the
podcast is stand up comedy. I listen

152
00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:54.159
to a lot of stand up comedy
on Spotify or on SiriusXM, or I'll

153
00:12:54.200 --> 00:12:56.159
put it on on Netflix, a
special that's on Netflix before I go to

154
00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:01.679
bed, and that usually will keep
me out of that mental space as I'm

155
00:13:01.679 --> 00:13:05.360
falling asleep, where I won't have
a nightmare. And then aside from that,

156
00:13:05.519 --> 00:13:11.039
not outside of the nightmares, I'll
just take breaks from researching true crime

157
00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:13.840
cases. I have to take breaks
every now and then because I can't do

158
00:13:13.960 --> 00:13:18.080
it every single day, because I
mean, that would put me in a

159
00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:20.200
really dark place if I even attempt
to do that, So I don't attempt

160
00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:24.240
to do that. So I take
breaks and I listen to stand up comedy.

161
00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:26.759
That's the TLDR of that. Thanks
again, Jen for your email.

162
00:13:26.799 --> 00:13:30.279
If you've got an email that you
want to send me, Joe at ten

163
00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:33.679
Minute Murder dot com and that's going
to do. It's another ten Minute Murder

164
00:13:33.759 --> 00:13:35.759
podcast episode. I'll see you in
the next one. Bye.