The Youngest Known Female Serial Killer

Mary Bell was 11-years-old when she was diagnosed with a psychopathic personality disorder in the run up to her trial for killing two toddlers in 1968. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison but by the age of 23 she was free, living under a pseudonym as well as a court order giving her legal anonymity for life.

Bell was only 10 years old when she strangled a four-year-old named Martin Brown to death, after which she left disturbing notes for his family in which she confessed to the killing. Two months later, Bell killed a three-year-old named Brian Howe. She tried to strangle several other children, and said in the notes she continued to leave that she wanted to keep killing.

Mary Bell's mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Bell (née McCrickett), was often absent from home while travelling to Glasgow where she worked as a prostitute. Mary was her second child, born when Betty was 17-years-old. The identity of Mary's biological father is unknown, but Mary was led to believe that her father was William "Billy" Bell, a violent alcoholic and career criminal.

Mary was an unwanted child who experienced a life of neglect and abuse. According to her aunt, Isa McCrickett, when hospital staff attempted to hand the newborn Mary off to her mother for the first time, Betty Bell replied, "Take the thing away from me!"

Mary frequently suffered injuries in “household accidents” when she was growing up, which led her family to believe that her mother was either deliberately negligent or intentionally attempting to harm or kill her daughter. For instance, when Betty dropped her daughter from a first-floor window, or the time she fed her a bunch of sleeping pills, or when she sold Mary to a mentally unstable woman who was unable to have children of her own and Mary’s older sister, Catherine, had to rescue Mary and bring her back to her mother's house.

Despite her abuse of her child, Betty refused repeated offers from family to take custody of Mary. She is also alleged to have allowed and/or encouraged her clients to sexually abuse Mary in the mid 1960s, when Betty was working as a dominatrix. Mary's mother is reported to have actively participated in several of these sessions, including several in which she blindfolded Mary, restrained her hands behind her back, and forced her to perform oral sex on clients.

Both at home and at school, Mary exhibited numerous signs of disturbed and unpredictable behaviour, including sudden mood swings and chronic bed wetting. She is known to have fought often with other children, and to have attempted to strangle or suffocate other peers on several occasions. In once instance, she attempted to block a young girls’ airway with sand.

This violent behaviour made other children reluctant to socialize with young Mary. According to one classmate, her peers knew what sudden changes in Mary's demeanor meant, and when she began exhibiting certain mannerisms like shaking her head and staring, they knew she was about to become violent.

One child she spent her free time with was Norma Joyce Bell, the 13-year-old daughter of a next door neighbor, who she had became friends with. Despite the common surname, they were not related to each other.

Mary Bell and Norma Bell were seen playing with Brian shortly before he died. Both girls were evasive and gave initial statements that were contradictory but where they admitted to having played with Brian but denied having seen him after lunchtime. The next day, Mary told police she remembered seeing an eight-year-old boy playing with Brian that afternoon, and that she had also seen him hitting the boy.

She also remembered that the boy had been covered in grass and weeds as if he had been rolling in a field, and that he had a small pair of scissors. Mary told police, "I saw him trying to cut a cat's tail off with the scissors, but there was something wrong with them—one leg was broken or bent."

Detective Chief Inspector James Dobson believed that this was a self-incriminating statement; only the police knew that broken scissors were found at the scene. The boy she named was questioned, and it turned out he was at the airport with his parents on the afternoon in question, with numerous reliable witnesses able to corroborate his alibi.

Norma's mother, Catherine, testified that months prior to the killing of Brian Howe she had discovered Mary attempting to strangle Norma's younger sister, Susan, and that she had only released her grip after the girls father punched Mary.

At her trial, a child psychiatrist named Ian Frazer testified that although her capacity to know right from wrong was limited by her age, she was still capable of appreciating the criminality of the acts she was accused of committing.

Bell was initially detained in a series of “remand homes” before being transferred to a secure unit at young offenders institution where she was the only female inmate. Bell would later claim that she was sexually abused by a member of staff and several inmates while incarcerated at this facility.

In November 1973, at age 16, she was transferred again, and reportedly resented the transfer and unsuccessfully applied for parole. In June 1976, Bell was transferred again, this time to an “open prison,” and took a secretarial course at her new facility. Fifteen months later, in September 1977, Bell and another inmate, Annette Priest, absconded from the open prison into the company of two men in Blackpool, sleeping in various local hotels where Bell used the alias Mary Robinson.

Bell was arrested at the Derbyshire home of one of the men, Clive Shirtcliffe, on September 13, 1977, having dyed her hair blonde in an effort to disguise herself. She was returned to custody and lost prison privileges for 28 days. In June 1979, she was transferred to another open prison in an effort to prepare her for her eventual release into society. Beginning in November 1979, Bell worked under supervision first as a secretary, then as a waitress at a café.

Bell was released from prison in May 1980 at the age of 23, after almost eleven-and-a-half years in custody. She was granted anonymity (including a new name), allowing her to start a new life elsewhere in the country under an assumed identity. Upon her release, a spokesman is quoted as saying: "[Bell] wishes to be given a chance to live a normal life and to be left alone."

Four years after her release from custody, on May 25, 1984, Bell gave birth to a daughter who knew nothing of her mother's past until 1998, when reporters discovered Bell's location in a resort town on the Sussex Coast. This forced Bell and her 14-year-old daughter to leave their home and be driven to a safe house by undercover officers. Both mother and daughter later relocated to another part of the United Kingdom.

The right to anonymity that was granted to Bell's daughter originally only ran until she had reached the age of 18; in May of 2003, Bell won a court battle to have both her own anonymity, and that of her daughter, extended for life. This order was later updated to include Bell's granddaughter, born in January of 2009, who was referred to as "Z". The order prohibits the divulging of any aspects of their lives which may identify them.

In 1998, Bell collaborated with author Gitta Sereny to provide an account of her life before and after her crimes for Sereny's 1998 book Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell. Bell details the abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her dominatrix sex worker mother and her mother's clients. According to Sereny, Bell does not claim she was wrongly convicted and freely admits the abuse she suffered as a child does not excuse her crimes.