Every Town - One Of The Youngest Killers Ever - Mary Bell - The Tyneside Strangler

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

From the moment her mother gave birth to her, Mary Bell’s life has been accompanied by pain and death which led her to destruction throughout her childhood. At the age of 11, Mary had committed a pair of killings in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK in the span of just two months. She was dubbed “The Tyneside Strangler” for this and her story is a sad and terrifying as it shows what can happen to a child that’s been mistreated. 💥 Watch On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries🎧 Our Other Podcast: https://scarymysteries.buzzsprout.com💥 Exclusive Podcasts: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579/subscribe 💀 Follow Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💀 Follow Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg👁 Follow Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald💥 Follow Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial🗣 Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

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At the age of 11, Mary committed a pair of killings in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK and the span of just two months. She was dubbed a Tynside Strangler for this, and her story is a sad and terrifying one, as it shows exactly what can happen to a child that's been mistreated. I'm Andrew Fitzgerald. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to another episode of Everytown, where today we had across the pond of the UK and learn about Mary and her life

and how the way she was raised undoubtedly turned her into a strange, withdrawn, and manipulative killer. Mary Bell came into this world on May 26, 1957 when her mother, Elizabeth Betty McCricket Bell was just 17 years old. Betty had her own issues. She was a sex worker who roamed the streets. It was often away from home as she traveled to Glasgow for business. Mary was Betty's second child and she never wanted her in the first place.

Mary's aunt recalled that in the hospital when the doctors went to place the newborn in her mother's arms, she shouted at them to get this thing away from me. Mary was neglected at home to say the least. She grew up thinking her biological dad was a man named Billy Bell who had married her mom shortly after Mary was born. Although whether he was or wasn't has never been determined or at least share with the public. Billy was a violent alcoholic and habitual criminal, who had a long rap sheet that included armed robbery. The kids were instructed to always call him Uncle Bill so that their mother could collect government assistance.

At home, Betty mistreated her kids in humiliating ways. If ever married wet her bed, her mom would rub her face in it before hanging the mattress outside for the whole neighborhood to see. This only made her more nervous to do so, and so she would wet the bed frequently. Mary's sad childhood undoubtedly had a great impact on her. The unwanted child would often get dropped off with relatives for long periods of time. The family members would ask if they could keep her,

knowing the situation back home, but for some sick and twisted reason, Betty kept coming back at some point and taking her daughter. It almost seemed like some sort of punishment to the entire family. In 1960, when Mary was just three years old, Betty brought her to an adoption agency and gave her to a woman planning to move to Australia. But Betty's aunt Isa came in last minute and retrieved her niece. The neglected girl's brief childhood was a nightmare of abandonment and even drug overdoses, which Betty may have done intentionally or unintentionally. When Mary was just one,

she nearly overdosed after taking some pills hidden in a nook inside a turntable. It seems unlikely that the young Mary would find them, let alone could reach the pills, and strangely would eat so many of the acid-tasting tablets. When she was three, she and her brother were found eating little blue pills along with the candy their aunt Kathy had brought for them.

Betty said, They must have taken the bottle out of my handbag. Kathy and her husband offered to adopt Mary, but Betty again declined, and soon broke off contact with her family. In one instance of a most serious overdose, Mary swallowed numerous iron pills belonging to Betty that caused Mary to lose consciousness, and she had to have her stomach pumped. A young playmate and Mary herself said Betty gave her daughter the Smarties candy that made her sick.

Overdoses, as one can imagine, particularly for a developing child can cause serious brain damage, which is a common trade among violent offenders of the world. But really, what could have prodded Betty Bell to mistreat her daughter in such a horrific way? Well, experts touted Betty was a drama queen who loved to play the martyr. She may have suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, which is characterized by caregivers, often parents, who intentionally injured, suffocate or poison their child to gain people's sympathy. Furthermore, a MSBP mother usually acts like this

towards an unwanted child and or is unmarried. And this would then perfectly explain why Betty, despite the harm she caused Mary, always wanted her back. But still, perhaps, there was an even deeper reason why Betty couldn't let go over child, despite despising her. According to later, accounts told by Mary herself, her mother began to use her for sex work when she was just four years old. although other family members couldn't confirm or deny this.

Yet, this would certainly help to explain Mary's erratic behavior and would be very much in line with how Betty had always treated her. By 10 years old, Mary had shown signs of strange and unpredictable behavior such as sudden mood swings and violent tendencies. In school, she was not well-liked and fought with other children often, even attempting to suffocate her classmates. These episodes of violence isolated Mary from the other girls, kids, of course, and so she turned a 13-year-old Norma Bell, the daughter of her neighbor,

to find friendship. Although both girls were surnamed Bell, they weren't related, but frequently spent time with one another. Her classmates at Delavall Road Junior School knew Mary was prone to fits of anger, and she had developed a reputation as a sort of show-off. So her proclamation one day at school of, I am a murderer, was dismissed as just another one of her idle boast. But soon, the day came when she made sure no one doubted her ever again. Mary seemed to have a fetish of sorts with strangling kids who were helpless and easily overpowered by her. On May 11th of 1968, she and Norma became suspects when a three-year-old toddler was found roaming around bleeding in the vicinity of St. Margaret's Road and Scotswood where the girls live.

This child later informed police he was playing with Mary and Norma on top of a derelict air raid shelter when he was suddenly pushed seven feet from the roof to the ground, resulting in a severe laceration to his head. But he was unsure whether it was Mary or Norma, who actually pushed him. That same evening, Mary Norma were also the subject of some parents' complaints to police that their three little girls were almost strangled by the pair as they played in a sandpit. When interviewed by the police about the incidents, both girls pleaded innocent to the boys' case, but claimed they saw him bleeding after a serious fall. As for the three girls, they allegedly strangled.

Mary once again denied knowing it while Norma admitted seeing Mary trying to choke each girl until they turned purple. Norma told Mary to stop it, but she wouldn't. Local authorities were informed of the incidents and Mary's violent actions, but they were simply giving a warning due to their age, and the incident was written off just like that. After all, how dangerous really could a 10-year-old girl be? May 26, 1968 was Mary's 11th birthday, and perhaps to mark this milestone in her uncanny young life,

she decided to kill a 4-year-old kid the day before. She strangled Martin Brown in an upstairs bedroom of an abandoned house on St. Margaret's Road. Martin was last seen at 3.15 p.m., and was discovered at 3.30 lying on the floor of the neglected house. Blood and saliva were trickling down his face and the three boys who found Martin asked for help from some of the construction workers outside who tried to revive the child. While a workman attempted to resuscitate Martin, which didn't succeed, Mary and Norma appeared in the bedroom's door of the house but were quickly issued away. And then they knocked on the door of Martin's aunt, Rita Finlay, and informed her, one of your sister's children just had an accident.

We think it's Martin, but we can't tell because there's blood all over on. When an autopsy was conducted the next day, the doctors didn't find any sign of violence on his body, so the cause of death was undetermined. And the investigator's theory that Martin died of poisoning by ingesting tablets was discounted by the doctor as well. Soon after, Martin's mother, June Brown, had an extremely uncomfortable interaction with the girls, but one day they knocked on her door. June opened it up to find Mary standing there and according to the mother. Mary smiled and asked to see Martin.

I said, no pet, Martin is dead. She turned around and said, oh, I know he's dead. I wanted to see him in his coffin. And she was still grinning. I was just speechless that such a young child would want to see a dead baby. I just slammed the door on her. And Mary's ominous behavior was not exclusive only to Martin's grieving. family. The day following Martin's death, as mentioned, Mary celebrated her 11th birthday.

She did so by trying to strangle Norma Bell's younger sister. Fortunately, Norma's father saw Mary's grip on the girl. I chopped Mary's hand away, he said, and gave her a clip on the shoulder. But the birthday wasn't over yet. The next morning, the staff at the day nursery at Woodland's Crescent would make a chilling discovery. On May 27th, teachers at the nursery found the rooms ransacked and vandalized. But the most disturbing discovery were cryptic notes left behind with the first part leaving a threat. I murder so that I may come back. And another note saying,

We did murder Martin Brown. Fuck off, you bastard. The police dismissed these notes as a prank committed by a child. Mary would admit much later that they wrote the notes for a deal. giggle. But definitely the next act of killing, Mary did, wasn't a joke, and became connected with the death of Martin, which finally led to Mary's 11-year stint in jail. In the afternoon of July 31st, 1968, a three-year-old toddler named Brian Howe was last spotted by his parents outside his house, playing with his sibling, the family dog, as well as Mary and Norma.

An alarm was raised when Brian didn't come home later that afternoon, so his family and their neighbors went out in search for him. When Brian's sister went looking for him, Mary and Norma offered to help. They searched the neighborhood with everyone, and Mary even pointed out the concrete blocks that hit his body. But Norma quickly said he wouldn't be there. After all, they were looking for someone they thought was alive, and so Brian's sister moved on.

Eventually, though, at around 11.10 p.m., his body was discovered. Stuff between two large concrete blocks located close. to a railway line known to local children as Tin Lizzie. When Brian's body was finally found, the neighborhood panicked. Two little boys were now dead in a matter of just months. Immediately police interviewed local children, hoping that they had seen something that would lead them to a suspect or anything really. The policeman, to arrive on the scene first,

noticed that Brian's body was consciously covered in grass and weeds. His face had turned a bluish-purple hue. The cause of his death was strangulation, as concluded by the coroner. Brian had been dead for more than seven hours before his body was discovered. The coroner further established that the killer had evidently squeezed tightly his nostrils closed with one hand while the other strangled his throat. Moreover, there were wounds inflicted on his legs. His hair had been cut, and worst of all, he had been partially mutilated.

They were shocked when the coroner's report returned, as Brian's blood had cooled. A mark appeared on his chest like someone had used a razor blade to carve the letter M into his torso. Police also noted that the lack of force in the attack suggested Brian's killer might have been a child. The murder of Brian sparked a large-scale investigation, which involved hundreds of detectives and 1,200 children being interviewed. And two of those questioned by the police on August 1st were Mary and Norma. At first, Norma seemed excited about the interview while Mary was reserved. and kept to herself. Initially, they were evasive and had contradicting statements,

but they soon admitted to having played with Brian on July 31st, but denied seeing him after lunchtime. But it was Mary's follow-up interview the following day that told the authorities everything they needed to hear. She had concocted a story about seeing an eight-year-old boy playing with Brian and hitting him on that afternoon. She also remembered the older boy being covered in grass and weeds as if he had rolled in a field.

Mary said the boy had a pair of scissors with him, as well, which she elaborated on. I saw him trying to cut a cat's tail off with the scissors, but there was something wrong with them. One arm of the scissors was broken or bent. Without knowing it, Mary had incriminated herself because her statement convinced Detective Chief James Dombson that Mary was the actual killer. as the broken pair of scissors was confidential information found at the crime scene.

And since the eight-year-old boy she had mentioned, carrying them, was actually at the Newcastle International Airport on July 31st, with numerous witnesses able to verify this. The evidence was now hard to deny. Three days after that interview, Norma then expressed her wish to confess everything about Brian's death. She said Mary had taken her to the crime scene and demonstrated as she strangled Brian and how it gave her pleasure. She enjoyed engraving the M for Mary on the kid's torso, which matched Norma's drawing to the corner. She would then go on to confess that she was actually present during the killing that Mary committed. And gray fibers belonging to the clothes of Mary and Norma were also discovered on Brian's body by a forensics expert, thereby strengthening the authorities' case.

With the escalating evidence, Mary and Norma were formally charged with Brian Howe's murder on August 7, 1968, to which Mary replied, That's all right by me. Well, Norma broke down while saying, I never, I'll pay you back for this. Then Mary was bold enough to write a statement admitting she was present during Brian's murder, but insisted that it was Norma who killed him.

She also confessed to the vandalism she and Norma had done at Woodland Crescent Nursery. The two underwent psychological evaluations with a test revealed that Norma was intellectual, actually delayed and a submissive character who easily displayed emotion, whereas Mary was a bright yet cunning character, prone to sudden mood swings. Occasionally, Mary was willing to talk, although she rapidly became sullen, introspective, and defensive in nature.

The four experts concurred that Mary may not have suffered from a mental disorder, but she had psychopathic personality disorder. In December, they then went on trial for the debts of Martin Brown and Brian Howes and both pleaded not guilty to the charges. A child psychiatrist testified that Norma's mental age was eight years and ten months, that although her capacity of knowing right from wrong was limited, she was capable of appreciating the criminality of the act she was accused of committing. Her lawyer also argued that there was no real evidence against Norma except for Mary's unfounded accusations against her. While Norma was acquitted, Mary was convicted of manslaughter,

on the grounds of diminished responsibility. This, after considering the diagnosis from the psychiatrist. The judge furthermore described Mary as dangerous and a grave threat to other children. She was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, effectively an indefinite prison sentence, until the court decided otherwise. She was initially sent to the Red Bank Secure Unit in St. Helens in Lancashire, The press continued to hound her, especially in 1977 when she briefly escaped, Moore Court Open Prison.

And for that, she was penalized 28 days of losing prison privileges. After becoming Britain's youngest female killer, Mary Bell, at 23 years old, was released from Ascombe Grange, open prison in 1980, having served 12 years. She was granted anonymity, including a new name to start a new life with her daughter, born four years after her release. Miss Bell's daughter didn't know of her mother's past until their location was discovered by reporters. They had to leave their house with bedsheets covering their heads. Bell's daughter's anonymity was originally protected only until she reached 18.

However, on May 21st of 2003, Mary won a high court battle to have her own anonymity and that of her daughter and granddaughter extended for life. Now, any court order permanently protecting the identity of someone, is consequently known as a Mary Bell order. Indeed, Mary Bell remains protected by the British government today. But despite the anonymity she has, you have to wonder if Mary Bell can ever truly be at peace with such a vicious criminal past.

Perhaps she's moved on. Perhaps she still has a desire to kill, but this we may never know. While she may be living a relatively normal life, we'll always remember her for what she truly is. Britain's youngest female killer, The Tineside Strangler. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown.

If you enjoyed it, remember to check out our other podcast called Scary Mysteries. And if you want to watch all the Everytown videos we have, go to our Scary Mysteries YouTube channel to check those out. Thanks for tuning in. And remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary strange and mysterious stories. Because you never know.

Maybe your town. will be next.