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| Full Name: | Mary Flora Bell |
| Gender: | Female |
| Race: | Caucasian |
| Birth: | May 26, 1957 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom |
| Death: | --- |
| Cause of Death: | --- |
| Nicknames: | --- |
| Murder Toll: | 2 murdered victims (also choked others) |
| Murder Time Frame: | May 1968 - July 1968 / Age 10 at first murder, 11 at last murder |
| Murder Locations: | United Kingdom - Newcastle upon Tyne, England |
| Preferred Prey: | Children |
| Modus Operandi: | Strangulation, mutilation |
| Victim Disposal: | Left them where they were murdered |
| Signature: | Carved an "M" into the stomach of a victim with a razor, left notes about the murders |
| Trophies: | --- |
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 Martin Brown Male - Age 4 Death: May 1968 |
 Brian Howe Male - Age 3 Death: July 1968 |
"All that mattered was to lie well."
"Murder isn't that bad, we all die sometime anyway."
"What would be the worst that could happen to me? Would they hang me?"
"He called me a murderer and I grabbed his hair and smashed his face into his dinner."
"What happens if you choke someone, do they die?" - What she said before attempting to strangle a girl.
"Oh, she doesn't feel that, and anyway, I like hurting little things that can't fight back." - What she said after being told not to hurt a cat, that she had grabbed by the neck.
"...because then I can stick needles into people. I like hurting people." - What she said about wanting to be a nurse.
"We went - er - Norma says, 'Are you coming to the Nursery?' I says, 'yes, howay then,' because we had broken into it before. We were being destructful, but it was all in fun. We thought it would be a great big joke." - Explaining why her and her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), had broken into a school and left notes there.
On saturday I was in the house. and my mam sent Me to ask Norma if she would come up the top with Me? we went up and we came down at Magrets road and there were crowds of people beside an old house. I asked what was the matter. there had been a boy who Just lay down and Died.
- What she wrote in her notebook, about the murder of victim Martin Brown.
"I am a murderer! That house over there, that's where I killed..." - What she bragged to other children.
"I'll show you where it is." - What she said to victim Martin Brown's aunt, offering to take her to his body.
"Do you miss Martin? Do you cry for him?" - What her and her friend asked victim Martin Brown's aunt, while grinning.
"Oh, I know he's dead. I wanted to see him in his coffin." - What she said to victim Martin Brown's mother, while grinning.
"We were daring each other and one of us did not want to be a chicken or something." - Her reason for asking to see victim Martin Brown in his coffin.
"I know something about Norma that will get her put away straight away. Norma put her hands on a boy's throat. It was Martin Brown. She pressed and he just dropped." - What she told victim Brian Howe's family (before she killed him), blaming her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), on victim Martin Brown's murder.
"...because I had an argument with Norma that day and I couldn't think of nothing else to say." - Why she told the Howes that her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), had killed victim Martin Brown.
"I squeezed his neck and pushed up his lungs, that's how you kill them. Keep your nose dry and don't tell anybody." - What she supposedly told her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), about killing victim Brian Howe.
"Are you looking for your Brian?" - What she asked Pat Howe (victim Brian Howe's sister), when she was looking for him.
"He might be playing behind the blocks, or between them." - What she said to Pat Howe (victim Brian Howe's sister), when they were looking for him. His dead body was laying between the cement blocks.
"He would have to have good eyesight. Because he was clever to see me when I wasn't there. I am going home... This is being brainwashed." - What she told police in response to a man seeing her and her friend run from the area where victim Brian Howe was murdered.
"Is this place bugged?" - What she asked police, while being interrogated about the murder of victim Brian Howe.
"I am making no statements. I have made lots of statements. It's always me you come for. Norma's a liar, she always tries to get me into trouble." - What she told police, while being interrogated about the murder of victim Brian Howe.
"Brian Howe had no mother, so he won't be missed." - What she said about killing victim Brian Howe.
I, Mary Flora Bell wish to make a statement. I want someone to write down what I have to say. I have been told that I need not say anything unless I wish to do so, but that whatever I say may be given in evidence.
Signed, Mary F. Bell
Brian was in his front street and me and Norma were walking along towards him. We walked past him and Norma says, 'Are you coming to the shop Brian?', and I says, 'Norma, you've got no money, how can you go to the shop? Where are you getting it from?' She says, 'Nebby.' Little Brian followed and Norma says, 'Walk up in front.' I wanted Brian to go home, but Norma kept coughing so Brian wouldn't hear us. We went down Crosshill Road with Brian still in front of us. There was this colored boy and Norma tried to start a fight with him. She said, 'Darkie, whitewash, it's time you got washed.' The big brother came out and hit her. She shouted, 'Howay, put your dukes up.' The lad walked away and looked at her as though she was daft.
We went beside Dixon's shop and climbed over the railings, I mean, through a hole and over the railway. Then I said, 'Norma, where are you going?' and Norma said, 'Do you know that little pool where the tadpoles are?' When we got there, there was a big, long tank with a big, round hole with little holes round it. Norma says to Brian, 'Are you coming in here because there's a lady coming on the Number 82 and she's got boxes of sweets and that.' We all got inside, then Brian started to cry and Norma asked him if he had a sore throat. She started to squeeze his throat and he started to cry. She said, 'This isn't where the lady comes, it's over there, by them big blocks.' We went over to the blocks and she says, 'Ar - you'll have to lie down' and he lay down beside the blocks where he was found. Norma says, 'Put your neck up' and he did. Then she got hold of his neck and said 'Put it down.' She started to feel up and down his neck. She squeezed it hard, you could tell it was hard because her finger tips were going white. Brian was struggling, and I was pulling her shoulders but she went mad. I was pulling her chin up but she screamed at me.
By this time she had banged Brian's head on some wood or corner of wood and Brian was lying senseless. His face was all white and bluey, and his eyes were open. His lips were purplish and had all like slaver on, it turned into something like fluff. Norma covered him up and I said, 'Norma, I've got nothing to do with this, I should tell on you, but I'll not.' Little Lassie was there and it was crying and she said, 'Don't you start or I'll do the same to you.' It still cried and she went to get hold of its throat but it growled at her. She said, 'Now now, don't be hasty.'
We went home and I took little Lassie home an all. Norma was acting kind of funny and making twitchy faces and spreading her fingers out. She said, 'This is the first but it'll not be the last.' I was frightened then. I carried Lassie and put her down over the railway and we went up Crosswood Road way. Norma went into the house and she got a pair of scissors and she put them down her pants. She says, 'Go and get a pen.' I said 'No, what for?' She says, 'To write a note on his stomach,' and I wouldn't get the pen. She had a Gillette razor blade. It had Gillette on. We went back to the blocks and Norma cut his hair. She tried to cut his leg and his ear with the blade. She tried to show me it was sharp, she took the top of her dress where it was raggie and cut it, it made a slit. A man came down the railway bank with a little girl with long blonde hair, he had a red checked shirt on and blue denim jeans. I walked away. She hid the razor blade under a big, square concrete block. She left the scissors beside him. She got out before me over the grass on to Scotswood Road. I couldn't run on the grass cos I just had my black slippers on. When we got along a bit she says, 'May, you shouldn't have done that cos you'll get into trouble' and I hadn't done nothing, I haven't got the guts. I couldn't kill a bird by the neck or throat or anything, it's horrible that. We went up the steps and went home. I was nearly crying. I said, 'If Pat finds out she'll kill you, never mind killing Brian cos Pat's more like a tomboy.' She's always climbing in the old buildings and that.
Later on I was helping to look for Brian and I was trying to let on to Pat that I knew where he was on the blocks, but Norma said, 'He'll not be over there, he never goes there,' and she convinced Pat he wasn't there. I got shouted in about half past seven and I stayed in. I got woke up about half past eleven and we stood at the door as Brian had been found. The other day Norma wanted to get put in a home. She says will you run away with us and I said no. She says if you get put in a home and you feed the little ones and murder them then run away again.
I have read the above statement and I have been told that I can correct, alter or add anything I wish, this statement is true. I have made it of my own free will.
Mary Flora Bell (signed at 6:55 pm)
- Her official statement to police, about the murder of victim Brian Howe.
"That's all right with me." - What she told police after being charged for the murder of victim Brian Howe.
"...woman up in the gallery smiles at me, but I don't smile back. It isn't a smiling matter. The jury wouldn't like it if I smiled, would they?" - What she said to a police officer, about being in court.
"She would not dare, because I would turn around and punch her one." - When asked if she was afraid her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), might kill her.
"We never talked about anything except doing terrible things and being taken away." - What she said her and her friend, Norma Bell (no relation), talked about as children.
"I think I was inventing a twin who might have done what I really did." - What she said later on, about the murders she committed.
"I'm not angry. It isn't a feeling, it is a void that comes, it's an abyss. It's beyond rage, beyond pain, it's a draining of feeling. I didn't intend to hurt Martin, why should I have? He was just a wee boy who belonged to a family around the corner." - What she said later on about killing victim Martin Brown.
"What I had to do was, yes, continue to fight the system, but I had to graduate from being a prisoner to being a con, and that meant that rather than being open and angry, I had to be closed and crafty." - What she said about being switched from a mostly male reform school, to an all-female facility.
"It was the idea of not being me." - What she said about asking a doctor for a sex change.
"He said he was determined to show me I wasn't a lesbian. It was hard for me not to think of sex as dirty." - What she said about a married man that got her pregnant.
"But if I think that almost the first thing I did after twelve years in prison for killing two babes was to kill the baby in me..." - What she said about getting an abortion, from her first pregnancy.
"If there was something wrong with me when I was a child, there wasn't now. I felt that if they could X-ray me inside, they could see that anything broken had been fixed." - Claiming she was a changed person after giving birth to her child in 1984, from her second pregnancy.
"As time went on, my nightmare was the press. I never could understand what they wanted from me."
"But what I want most of all is a normal life."
 Cries Unheard Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell Author: Gitta Sereny Pub. Year: 2000 |
 The Case of Mary Bell A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered Author: Gitta Sereny Pub. Year: 1995 |
