Brian's older sister, Pat, grew worried when she couldn't find her little brother, who always played close to the house. Mary and Norma offered to help her look for the toddler, all the while knowing exactly where he was. During their search, Mary pointed to a pile of large concrete blocks, suggesting he could be there. Pat insisted her little brother never played there, and their search continued. However, Brian's body was there. At about 11 pm, the Newcastle police found his body. He had been strangled to death, a large "M" carved into his stomach; he had puncture wounds on his thighs and his genitals had been partially skinned. A pair of scissors lay nearby, along with a razor blade. The police remarked that his wounds appeared to be terrifyingly playful.
Mary and Norma stood out the most to the police investigating the murder. Mary was very evasive, and Norma seemed excited by the murder, smiling during her questioning as though it was a joke.
Brian Howe was buried on August 7, 1968. The lead detective on the case, Detective Dobson, was at the funeral, which was held at the Howe's home. When the coffin was brought outside, he saw Mary standing in front of the house, laughing and rubbing her hands together. This seemed rather suspicious and disconcerting behavior to the detective, he thought that perhaps the mysterious death of 3-year-old Martin Brown just a few weeks earlier could also have been murder, and so both Norma and Mary were brought in for interrogation.
Norma had been questioned once before the funeral, and she claimed that Mary had told her that she killed Brian, and led her to the body. At that time, she stated that Mary described the murder to her, saying she squeezed his neck and pushed his lungs up, and that she had enjoyed it. When they questioned Mary about this, she was quite evasive, and lied very well. When told there was reason to believe that she was on the blocks with Norma, due to the statement from a neighboring man claiming he had yelled at some children playing over there to get away, and saw the two girls leave, Mary simply said "he must have had very good eyesight". The detective asked her why that was, ready to catch her in a lie. She said "because he was... clever to see me when I wasn't there". Afterwards, she refused to make any more statements, claiming that Norma was a liar and always tried to get her into trouble. She was permitted to leave, but after her behavior at the funeral and additional testimony from Norma, she was brought back in.
At this point, she admitted to being present when Brian died, but implicated Norma as the one responsible for his death. She told them that she had "helped" Pat search for her brother and pointed her in the direction of his body because she wanted her to "have a shock". There was some truth to her statement, but it was, for the most part, an attempt to blame Norma for the murder.
Martin Brown's death was then investigated as a homicide. Though, even before his death, other children had been hurt by Mary.
On May 11, 1968, a 3-year-old cousin of Mary's was found behind some empty sheds near a pub, bleeding from the head. He was, of course, found by Norma and Mary. According to the girls, he had "fallen" off of a ledge. Mary later admitted to pushing him off.
A day later, 3 girls playing by the nursery were attacked by Mary, with Norma standing nearby. One girl said that Mary had put her hands around her neck and squeezed hard, then took her hands off and did the same to another of the girls, Susan. The police were called, and Norma stated that Mary walked over to the girls and asked, "what happens if you choke someone? Do they die?" then Mary began choking her until she went purple. Norma said she then ran off and left Mary, and that she had stopped being friends with her. According to the official report on May 15, the girls had been warned as to their future conduct. Ten days later, Martin was killed. He was found on the ground floor of a condemned house with an open bottle of aspirin nearby. There were no signs of assault, and the death was ruled as accidental.
Mary and Norma's behavior was disturbing to the Brown family over the next couple of weeks. They would ask his aunt prying questions, such as, "do you miss Martin? Do you cry for him?" Martin's mother, June, was also bothered by the girls. One day, she heard a knock at the door, and opened it to find Mary standing there. She asked if she could see Martin, and June told her she was sorry, but Martin was dead. Mary replied, grinning, "oh, I know he's dead. I wanted to see him in his coffin". June, speechless, slammed the door on her.
The day after Mary's eleventh birthday, during which she had tried to strangle Norma's little sister and was stopped by their father, the teachers at the Day Nursery had arrived to find that the school had been broken into. They discovered four very disturbing notes on the floor. They read as follows:
"I murder so that I may come back."
"fuch of we murder watch out Fanny and Faggot."
"we did murder Martain Brown Fuck of you Bastard."
"you are micey Becurse we murdered Martain Go Brown you Bete look out THERE are Murders about By FANNYAND and auld Faggot you Screws."
Police filed the notes away as a sick joke, and Mary would later admit to writing them "for a giggle".
A few days later, a boy at the nursery had witnessed Mary attack Norma, and had only laughed when he heard her scream "I am a murderer!" Mary was known to be a show-off, and so the boy did not take her seriously.
The two girls were finally taken away and charged with the murders. The trial only lasted nine days, and the court ruled Norma not guilty on both counts of Manslaughter, and Mary was found guilty due to Diminished Responsibility, meaning that she was not entirely aware of her actions due to psychopathalogical tendencies. She would be incarcerated for an indeterminate amount of time.
Norma was later sentenced to three years of probation on breaking and entering charges, and was placed under psychiatric evaluation.
No one was sure where to place Mary. Prison was not a suitable choice for an eleven-year-old, and she certainly could not be placed at a home for troubled children, so she was placed in an all-boys facility.
During her psychiatric evaluations, it became apparent that her mother was probably the element that drove her to become a young sociopath. In fact, the first thing she said after Mary's birth was, "get that thing away from me!" Had I been the obstetrician delivering Mary, I would have taken her away right then and had her adopted to a family that wanted a child. Sadly, such is not the case, and Mary was subjected to a very painful childhood as a result.
Betty (her mother) was a prostitute, and constantly trying to get rid of Mary, leaving her with relatives only to come back weeks later and reclaim her. They never wanted to let Mary go back with her mother, but there was really nothing they could do. When Mary was still a baby, Betty brought her into an adoption agency and left her with a woman who had just been denied the right to adopt as she was moving away to Australia. Betty's sister had followed her and soon found the woman to whom Mary had been given, and who had already bought new dresses for the infant.
When Mary was just two years old, she was refusing to bond with others, and was already displaying a cold and detached demeanor. She never cried when she got hurt, and she would violently lash out at others, including an uncle whose nose she broke when she smashed it with a toy.
Some of the worst abuse she suffered were a series of drug overdoses, starting when she was just one year old, most likely administered by her mother. How else would an infant ingest so many foul-tasting pills? At the age of three, she and her little brother were found eating some blue pills mixed in with some candy their aunt had brought for them. After this, her sister offered to adopt Mary, but Betty refused and broke off all contact with her family.
In another overdose case, Mary had eaten several iron pills. She lost consciousness and her stomach had to be pumped. These overdoses probably played a huge role in Mary's sociopathology, as drug overdoses in a developing child can cause serious brain damage, which is a common trait among most serial killers.
These near-death experiences were undoubtedly all orchestrated by Betty. This behavior is indicative of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, which means that a mother derives satisfaction from the sympathy she receives when something terrible happens to her child. Most women suffering from this disorder wind up killing their children, and some have even killed all of their children.
The absolute worst abuse Mary was subjected to was her mother's use of her as a "sexual prop" for her johns.
Mary was released from prison in 1980 at the age of 23. She miraculously reformed from a sociopathic child killer into a loving mother. Her daughter was born in 1984, and she was not aware that her mother was the famous Mary Bell until she was a teenager. She did not resent her mother for what she had done, and was only happy to know the truth. Today, they have been granted anonymity, and their whereabouts are unknown. I hope they have both escaped public scrutiny and are both living happy, quiet lives. Mary deserves nothing less for what she endured as an infant.
I don't blame her for what she did to those toddlers, and neither should you. Had she been raised in a more loving home, she never would have done such a thing. She was incarcerated at the appropriate time, as she probably wouldn't have broken the murderous habit had she not been caught at such a young age. Mary's life is a horror story with a happy ending, and that makes me smile, just a little.
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