The Misery Machine - The Horrific Torture Killing of Kelly Anne Bates

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Due popular demand by our viewers, we recount the tragic death of Kelly Anne Bates - an English teenager who was murdered in Manchester, England at the age of 17 by her abuser and live in partner, James Patterson Smith, who was roughly 30 years her senior. She was tortured by him over a period of four weeks, including having her eyes gouged from their sockets up to three weeks before her death, before being bludgeoned over the head and drowned in a bathtub. The murder inquiry was headed by Detective Sergeant Joseph Monaghan of Greater Manchester Police, who said: "I have been in the police force for 15 years and have never seen a case as horrific as this." William Lawler, the pathologist who examined Bates' body, described her injuries as the worst he had seen on a murder victim.  Smith, with a history of violence and torture against former partners, denied murdering Bates but was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on 19 November 1997. This case has been compared to the Junko Furuta and Sylvia Likens case, and once again highlights the topic of bystander apathy. Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #podcast #documentary #truecrime  Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kelly_Anne_Bates https://www.manchestersfinest.com/articles/manchesters-vilest-murder-kelly-anne-bates/ https://allthatsinteresting.com/kelly-anne-bates-james-patterson-smith https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/smith-james-patterson.htm

there will be a content warning for domestic abuse and torture. Yes, and if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We're at like 750. 753. 753 subs now, so thank you to everyone that supported us so far. Thank you so much. It means a ton. But without further ado, the Kelly Ann Bates case.

Kelly Ann Bates was born on the 18th of May, 1978 in Hattersley, a small town in Tameside, which is 10 miles east of Manchester City Center. Her parents were Margaret and Tommy, and they were thrilled to be gifted with a beautiful child who would later grow into a confident and independent 14-year-old girl. Kelly was a kind and thoughtful teenager who had a strong relationship with both her mom and her dad, but the blissful family dynamic would soon fade away

when Kelly began dating a boy in 1992. This relationship would not only drive Kelly away from her family, but it would also lead her into the void. James Patterson Smith was an unemployed divorcee, living in the Gorton area of Manchester. Described by acquaintances as house-proud and well-groomed, he was a teetotaler and non-smoker. His first marriage had ended in 1980 after 10 years

because he had been violent towards his wife. His next relationship was with a 20-year-old to Tina Watson, who between 1980 and 1982, used as a punching bag, even subjecting her to severe beatings while she was pregnant with his child. She said, at first it was now and again, just a little tap, but in the end it was every day. He would smack me in the face or hit me over the head with an ashtray. He would kick me in the legs or between the legs. Watson managed to escape from the relationship during which Smith had also attempted to drown her while she was bathing.

When that relationship had came to an end in 1982, Smith then started seeing 15, year old Wendy Mauder's head, whom he had also abused. And one attack he held her underwater in the kitchen sink in an attempt to drown her. A couple things. House proud. Do you know what that means? I've never heard that term before. House proud. Yeah. Basically, I know what it means in a nutshell. Basically, you love your home. You keep it up nice. Takes care of his stuff and his things very well. They use it in the madness song. Oh, do they? Our house. Our mom, she's so house proud. Okay. I haven't listened to madness in a while. The other thing is, is that they live in Manchester in the greater Manchester area,

and he's dating a 15-year-old girl. Now, normally in a big city where things tend to be more progressive, though I'm not sure Manchester was that progressive at the time. I'm just doing comparison of 30 years ago compared to now. If somebody were to date a 15-year-old in a major city area, even in a not-so-major city area, I mean, I see people called out on Facebook for stuff like this with some frequency and I live in a smaller area where this stuff tends to happen in ways where you can get away with it more frequently.

But nowadays, I feel like there'd be a lot of visibility, a lot of call to attention here. This just wouldn't fly. But even back to the 80s, which wasn't that long ago culturally, somebody like this was able to get away dating a 15-year-old. I'd say because there was no social media for it to get around. Yeah, it's the visibility really is what it comes down to. It really does come down to visibility. That's like, I know a lot of people curse social media, and I get it. I have a lot of bad things I can say about social media,

but this is one of the good things is that it brings attention to things like this. The other thing is Tina Watson, I couldn't find much on her, but I believe she did bring the child to term. She just got out of there and... I couldn't find any info. Yeah. I didn't really look deep, though. I feel if she had lost the child, it would have been mentioned.

So my assumption with her is that she got away from Smith and had the child and has full custody. That's my assumption. I would assume so. All the sources that I looked in didn't really get too deep into the other two women that were abused. And in general, there's not a ton of info here on the circumstances surrounding it. So just keep that in mind if you have questions that we don't answer. Some things I've dug a lot and haven't been able to get any answers for. So in 1993, Smith began grooming Kelly and Bates when she was only 14 years old, having met her while she was babysitting for friends. Approximately two years later, when she had left school, Bates moved in with Smith. She was concealing the age difference between them from her parents,

Tommy and Margaret Bates. Bates's mother said of her first meeting with Smith after the two had started living together, quote, as soon as I saw Smith, the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I tried everything I could to get Kelly Ann away from him. Kelly actually told her parents she was dating a boy called Dave Smith, whom her parents assumed was a boy from her school at first. However, her parents were shocked when they discovered the Dave was really a 32-year-old man. Furthermore, when her boyfriend became more possessive of Kelly Ann, Margaret found out that Dave was really James Patterson Smith, and he was in fact 48 years old.

Although she had left Smith briefly because of arguments with him, she was, once more living with him at Fernival Road by the end of November of 1995. Her parents noticed bruises on her, which she explained away as being the result of accidents. My goodness, if my parents saw all the bruises on me, due to all my accidents, they might think something at the contrary. I know some people, it tends to be women. I don't know many men who are easily bruised, but I've known a lot of women who are easily bruised for one reason or another.

My poor calves have so many of these huge bruises that I can't explain half. the time. I have the big one where I like fell in the tub, but yeah, I'm klutzy. Anywho, she became increasingly withdrawn and in December 1995 resigned from her part-time job. In March of 1996, her parents received cards purportedly from her for their anniversary and birthdays, but only Smith had written in them. When Bates' brother had tried to see her at her house, Smith said that she wasn't home. When a concerned neighbor asked to see her, she was briefly shown Kellyanne from an upstairs window in the home. On April 16th, 1996, Smith reported to the authorities that he had accidentally killed his

girlfriend during an argument in a bathtub, claiming that she had inhaled water and died following his attempts at resuscitation. He also claimed that she often pretended to be unconscious. Police went to Smith's address and found Bates' naked body in a bedroom. Her blood was found throughout the house, and a post-mortem examination revealed over one, 150 separate injuries on her body. During the last month of her life, she had been kept bound,

sometimes tied by her hair to a radiator or furniture, or by her neck by way of a ligature. The murder inquiry was headed by Detective Sergeant Joseph Monaghan of the Greater Manchester Police, who said, I have been the police force for 15 years, and I have never seen a case as horrific as this. William Lawler, the home office pathologist

who examined her body, said in my career I have examined almost 600 victims of homicide I have never come across injuries so extensive the following injuries were found on Bates's body scalding to her butt in her legs burns on her thigh caused by the application of a hot iron a fractured arm multiple stab wounds caused by knives forks and scissors stab wounds inside her mouth crush injuries to both hands mutilation of her ears nose eyebrows mouth lips and genitals wounds caused by his spade in pruning shears both eyes had been gouged out by his hands jesus later stab wounds to the empty sockets oh my goodness partial scalping yeah what i could not find is and i didn't even see like the later

stab wounds to the empty eye sock and i always forget that he gouged the the eyes out. I want to know how much of this is post-mortem, and I couldn't really find. I don't think any of it was post-mortem. I think that he just did this to her in her last month. Maybe. I mean, when you get both eyes gouged out, obviously you can not die from that, but if you're getting stab wounds to the empty sockets, like, that can send you into shock and kill you. Yeah. The pathologist determined that her eyes had been removed not less than five days and not more than three weeks before her death. Okay.

Yeah, she had been starved, having lost around 45 pounds in weight, and not received water in several days before her death. Peter Open Shaw, the prosecutor in Smith's trial, said, quote, it was as if he deliberately disfigured her, causing her the utmost pain, distress, and degradation. The injuries were not the result of one sudden eruption of violence. They must have been caused over a long period and were so extensive and so terrible that the defendant must have deliberately and systematically tortured the girl. The cause of death was drowning. Immediately prior to which she had been beaten about the head with a shower head. Open Shaw said that, quote, her death must have been a

merciful end to her torment. So some sources I've heard, like obviously I'm not a biologist. I don't know these things and I have both of my eyes, but it's said that the area behind your eyeballs and the eye socket is just full of nerves. It is. So getting stabbed in there, getting pressed there, water going into it must have been absolutely horrific. That's why I was saying what I understand because of those nerve clusters. And again, I don't have a medical background in this, but what I had read is that if you were to take enough force behind the eyes after your eyes were removed, it's likely to send a person into shock could potentially kill them. That was my understanding.

I couldn't imagine. Just based on the migraines that I have, I couldn't imagine someone playing around back there. It's a migraine of unimaginable proportions would be putting it lightly. What hatred and ghastly sadism to go this far with somebody, how much effort that takes and how you have to push through obviously somebody in unimaginable amounts of pain, You try to comprehend just what kind of person that is. And it's just one that is beyond reason.

And I just don't understand how neighbors didn't know this was going on or hadn't send a wellness checkover. We've done cases like this before, Junco Furuda, Sylvia Likens. There's a few things they have in common. But one of the more troubling ones is, why weren't the police called? why didn't the neighbors care? Obviously, what was going on would have made quite a bit of noise.

It's hard to muffle. I mean, from what I understand, the parents couldn't do anything and neighbors couldn't do anything due to the age gap because 16 is the legal age of consent, even though there was a prior relationship. She was now of age, and they couldn't really do anything

about her moving out or moving in with him or leaving her job, etc. Because if it's anything like in America, you can legally drop out of school at the age of 16, your own accord. So at that point, while she's not a legal adult, she has enough legalities in the space where she can do this and she can't be reported missing and all of the stuff. But if they're

hearing sounds of assault going on, something could have been done. Especially where you have a situation where you have this older man with a flurry of much younger woman. Had he had prior convictions? This is something I couldn't find either. I couldn't find if he had been convicted prior to this, or if these former lovers had come forward after Kellyanne was killed. That could be quite likely that that was the case. It's hard to say. Especially where this is the 80s, they're younger. There's also a child involved. Maybe they just wanted to get out. Smith denied the murder, claimed Bates, quote, would put me through hell winding me up, end quote. He also claimed that Bates had taunted him about his dead mother and had a bad habit of

hurting herself when asked to explain why he had blinded, stabbed, and battered bates. He said she had dared him to do it, challenging him to do her harm. What? Christ. I only really saw this in high school where, you know, a girl has screamed at somebody in the hallway, hit me, I know you won't do it. Hit me. It's usually trashier people that do things like that.

But who's going to be like, yeah, I bet you won't gouge my eyes out? What the fuck? Yeah, I'm sure she dared you to do all that. No, from all accounts, she was a very happy-go-lucky person. Yeah. Again, compared to the other two cases I mentioned, you have the sweetest, most carefree women falling into just pure evil. Very sad. Gillian Mezzie, I think I said that right.

It's either Gillian or Gillian. Yeah, okay, they're British. It's probably Jillian. I think of Gillian from New Order. A consultant psychiatrist told the court that Smith had, quote, a severe paranoid disorder with morbid jealousy and lived in a distorted reality. The jury at Manchester Crown Court took one hour to find 49-year-old Smith guilty of Bates's murder.

That is fast. If you all aren't familiar with juries, that's fast. I'm fairly certain they probably already knew what they were going to say, just had to get through the formalities and paperwork out there in their little back room. I think the quickest I ever heard was 30 minutes or something like that. So sentencing him to life imprisonment, the judge, Mr. Justice Sox recommended that Smith serve a minimum term of 20 years. He stated, this has been a terrible case, a catalog of depravity by one human being upon another. You are a highly dangerous person.

You are an abuser of woman, and I intend, so far as it is in my power, that you will abuse no more. From what I understand, I'm pretty positive at this point in time. There was no death penalty in England. I think there hadn't been the death penalty there for quite a long time. For those wondering, why was he not given the death penalty for this? This is why. Minimum of 20 years, I don't know the court system there that much if you can't just give someone life without parole there. I don't know for sure.

I mean, you look at Harry Roberts who killed three cops. I don't know many murders over in England, but this is the one that comes to mind. And he was paroled after 50 years or something like that. And over here, in America, if you kill a cop, just one cop, Good luck getting parole. Good luck. I don't think it happens. You're probably going to be just put to death if you kill a cop.

Or you get life. But Harry Roberts killed three of them. And from what I understand was unrepentant and was released as an old man finally. He's kind of a legend and lad culture. And lad culture. Because if cops come into the football club, they'll start chanting Harry Roberts as our friend. He kills coppers. There's videos online if you want to see that stuff.

But anyways, if somebody's from across the pond and wants to chime in. in and give us more information about how the justice system works over there in a case like this because it is kind of weird to not see life without parole. Leave us a comment or send us a email Misery Machine Podcast at gmail.com. This might be our first British true crime case. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, so we should probably do more of that and we'll learn a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, we've done European before, but not and Eastern European, just not, not England.

That's weird. Anyways, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We are. The jury were provided with professional counseling to have. help them deal with the distress of seeing the photographs of Bates's injuries and sickening violence of the case. One thing that I want to mention is that I saw an interview, this is a little while ago, I saw an interview with Kellyanne Bates's mother, who said that at one point she was in the same room as Smith. I don't know if she was over visiting or if he was with Kelly at their house, but she said

there was a point where his back was turned to her and there was a kitchen knife on the table and she had this overwhelming urge to pick it up and stab him to death. She said she had never felt anything like this in her life, but she had an extreme urge to do it and she resisted it, but she looks back and realizes that that was the moment she could have saved her daughter's life and she says she regrets it even if it would have cost her her life in return for it. And It's just so sad. Nobody should blame somebody for not killing a person in cold blood like that. But I really feel for her mother.

I really understand the want to. For having that on her conscious. Because while she should hold no blame of her own, I can understand where that guilt would come from regardless. And again, I'm not a parent myself, but I can certainly see the connection there. That was an interesting part of that case that I remember. This is quite a sickening one. Y'all really wanted us to do this. Perhaps one day when we head to Manchester, we can go check out her gravestone.

Yes. Yeah, Manchester is a place that I do want to visit. Manchester has a lot of history, musically, and otherwise to me. Definitely. And it is a place I will visit one day, provided Europe will let Americans travel again. But I'm pretty sure her graves marked. Oh, yeah, it's very big. Okay.

It's a pretty good, like, little memorial. It's not, like, massive or anything like the Sylvia Likens one. But I got some pictures that we will put in the YouTube slideshow. You probably should do the Arkshire Ripper. You can make a whole bunch of new order references. Yeah, I can because Peter Hook was a suspect. Yes. Yeah, we'll do more British stuff.

But yeah, keep up with the suggestions. There's not a whole lot more to this. Again, the circumstances surrounding it, Smith's life growing up and how he was raised, that stuff I could not find. So anybody that knows anything like that, maybe you know people connected to the case. You have stories. Leave us a comment. Send us an email.

This didn't happen too long ago. this would have taken place. She would have been in her 40s right now, early 40s. Yeah. Like I was a freshman in high school and this happens. I, for some reason in my mind, think that they weren't together for very long, but they were together for three years, which isn't a super long time, but it's a super long time when you're a 14 year old girl. Oh, absolutely it is. But I guess in my mind, when I think of this case, I always think that she was only living with him for a matter of months before he snapped, but it wasn't the case. So you just have to wonder what life was like for her. During that time. Yeah, because I'm sure it wasn't wine and roses at any point.

I wonder if there was a period of time where it was. Because you have to think, you know, she's a girl. And by girl, I mean, like a teenage girl, she can kind of go back to her parents' house whenever she wants to. Some people just feel I can't. Yeah. I would feel like that maybe he was charming at first, but then as soon as she moved in, that's when things changed. Yeah, I'm definitely not trying to make it seem like victims of assaults don't have regrets about leaving or it's difficult to leave. It is very difficult to leave. I found myself in that situation before as well. Where I find it's more difficult for adults is you have so much invested in your home, possibly kids, animals, job, things of that nature which make it harder to leave on top of all the emotional reasons.

When you're a teenager, you don't have all of that and you can just up and uproot. So what I'm thinking is there had have been some period of time where, he was at least charming to keep her there for that long. It's possible, but you also have to understand. And, you know, I've felt this myself. I've known a lot of people that resign themselves to this, men and women. When you're younger, you think there's no way I can do any better than this. I can understand that.

You don't know what else is out there. And even in the age of social media, it was hard to feel like I had other options. I could go elsewhere. You really feel like it's this or nothing. She might have thought she had it good because you have this, like, older man who, by their accounts is good looking. I didn't find him good looking in the pictures I found, but could be British good looking. And I don't know what the culture is for Manchester at the period of time, but I can tell you from a small town perspective, a country small town perspective, which I admit

is radically different than Manchester. But back then, and even to an extent when I was in school, they would push girls to marry older men to ensure that they would be taken care of because chances are these men already had stable jobs and their lives were together. And a lot of people coming from poverty just want to see their children taking care of. That could be very well the case. Yeah, I probably thought that she hit it big with this older man who had a nice house. I mean, they said he was house proud. I'm assuming he had a decent house.

Yeah, I'm assuming he had some money and he had kept his house and his things looking very nice. It's the only thing I can think of. He didn't seem like a slob by any stretch, but he's. certainly was a psychopath. It's really sad when you see cases like this because you can connect the cultural moors to these things in different ways like we just did with how they would marry younger girls off to older men just to make sure they were taken care of and you just wonder what was different culturally. It's really easy to look back in times like this with the cultural lens that we have now in 2020. I'm sure some of you were like, well, she could have just left. She had all

these things like why didn't people intervene but even though 30 years ago well 25 years ago i've got to keep the 90s so i keep forgetting how it gets further and further away from us even though it's that many years ago which isn't that long all things considered culturally things were quite different and there were certain societal pressures and standards in place and again i can't speak for manchester but i knew how things were growing up things i saw things i heard the stories that people told me and I can't help but wonder if any of those things were similar for Kellyanne Bates. But that's all I got. That's all I've got.

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