THE MARY BELL CASE

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime case and today's dear number eight of ten days of terror if um you on my channel every single day up until Halloween Oh on Halloween I am doing a new true crime video every single day I've already said that I've said it a whole eight times at this point my brain is just kind of turned to mush but yeah if that sounds like something you're interested in if you want to see those true crime videos then make sure you subscribe to my channel so today we're gonna be talking about the notorious killer a ten year old girl named Mary Belle and this video again is gonna be more of a biography style I'm just gonna kind of take you through her life her murders what led her to do these things and yeah without that being said I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talked about in this video this is all just information that I have found on the internet and I'm compiling into one video so Mary florabelle was born on May 26 1957 in New Castle in England Mary's mother was named Betty and she was a prostitute working seven days a week mostly out of their own home but sometimes Betty would go elsewhere for work sometimes going up to Scotland for weeks at a time Mary's father was named Billy Bell he was an alcoholic he was well known to police for fighting and theft and for both of those reasons the father's crime and alcoholism and the mother's prostitution Mary never really got much attention from her parents at all Mary was Betty's first child born when she was only 17 years old and Betty was in no right mental state to look after a child and she knew that Betty had bipolar disorder and had attempted to kill Mary as an infant several times when Mary was just a couple of months old Betty threw her out of a second-story window at one point Mary accidentally consumed her mother's sleeping pills and got really ill although many people witnessed Betty giving Mary sleeping pills as sweets when she was just a toddler Betty asked several family members to take Mary off of her hands but all of them said no it was her child she had to look after Mary Bell grew up in a very poor town in New Castle called Scott's wood and it was still struggling after the war and many of its inhabitants and the I would known criminals Mary and all the other kids on the estate will left playing outside unsupervised from the edges of like to and up and there would be out on these streets unsupervised into the night especially if their mothers were prostitutes and weren't home to bring them home and almost every other household in this neighborhood had a prostitute working in mostly mothers and so like I said children as young as two were out playing until midnight sometimes in the pitch black with no supervision only maybe an older sibling so Mary's school friends recall her having a very quick temper one minute she'd be fine and then the next minute she would snap and become aggressive when Mary was just eight or nine years old the other girls in the playground would be too scared to play with her and they would run away if they saw her coming oh my Mary would snap it was very scary for the other girls her head would shake her eyes would go wide she'd have no emotional affairs and she would often grab people by the throat one of Mary's classmates recalled witnessing Mary choking out a younger girl her face was going bright red her lips will go in purple she was choking Mary was almost struggling to death until an older kid came over and separated them and the teachers at the school were very aware of Mary's violence kids would often come to the teachers saying that Mary had put cigarette out on the face she'd strangled them all sorts and although the teachers knew about it and sometimes even watched it happen Mary was very rarely punished and was just kind of allowed to carry on so at home Mary Belle was best friends with her next-door neighbor who was a girl two years older than her named Norma Bell although she was no relation to Mary Bell that was just quite a common surname Norma had some form of undiagnosed mental disability making her slightly slower than Mary and Mary just seemed to dominate her a lot even though Mary was the younger of the two two years younger she had a lot more common sense she had a lot more street smarts about whatever Mary said Norma did she could ask her to jump off of a bridge and people genuinely believed that Norma would do that with the right persuasion partly due to her disability but also partly due to Mary bells just very manipulative personality she could do that with anyone really eleventh nineteen sixty-eight ten year old Maryville and twelve-year-old nama bell picked up a local three year old boy and took him to buy some sweets and then an hour later that same boy was found walking alone on the streets dazed and bleeding so police and an ambulance were called the by medical recovery yet no action was taken against the girls and just the next day a local woman went to the police saying that Mary Belle had tried to strangle her daughter the daughters name was Pauline Hermann Mary Belle had been playing in a sandpit when all of a sudden Mary did that snap thing and just went aggressive Norma Pinder still and Mary had grabbed us by the neck and stalk like strangling us and then she was had a her and she and it's just getting the sound and then porn at me mouth and I couldn't go and quick enough in China stuff I fingers do basically to go further down and obviously I was terrified and I think Norma was a little bit framed don't you see what Mary was doing because Norma jumped up and by that time she had choked up now managed to struggle and get a free pen run home but once again nothing was done police didn't really seem to care about Mary's aggression but Pauline didn't tell police everything about the attack she only told police that she was strangled nothing about the sand being stuffed down her throat because Paul II was scared what Mary Belle might do to her if she found out that she told police the full story because obviously she was capable of horrible things already what more could she do had police known that bit about the sand they would have realized how violent and sadistic Mary Belle is and maybe some action would have been taken but like I said no action was taken and Mary Belle only got worse two weeks later on May 25th 1968 4 year-old Martin Brown was out playing on the streets with his friends it was quite tall for his age and well-built blonde curly hair blue eyes and eyelashes you've seen nothing lately it wasn't Angley who was always into mischief his running he's had a very cheeky face and he was mischievous like when did he say that they have a swimming pool in the bedroom when he filled a bottom drawer full award and were flooded buildings in the neighborhood and so the kids would often play in those and while Martin and his friends were playing in one of these abandoned houses one of his friends found him and thought he'd had an accident and so he ran and told his mother so Madison's mother ran to this abandoned house where there was already a huge crowd outside and this one man had Martin's limp body laid in his arms this guy he had Morton any sounds and he was gray and he felt cold so I took my Karthik and often to put it around him and this man was tears running down his face and I said is the or a this is I don't know I don't know and at that - ominous men just rushed paths grabbed him ruined pastures again and put him into the ambulance by year old Martin Brown was taken to the local hospital but he was pronounced dead on arrival due to the suspicious circumstances in which Martin died upstairs in an abandoned building alone police were called in at first they thought that maybe Martin had ingested some tablets on the top floor of this house that the previous tenant had left behind there were tons of theories maybe some want to defend him these tablets maybe he'd picked them up off the ground thinking that they were sweets it was also another theory because Martin was known to be afraid of stairs and heights it's thought that maybe someone helped him get up there and then when he looked down he died of shock but in Martin's post-mortem the pathologist couldn't find any cause of death at all and so it was determined that Martin Brown died of natural causes at four years old the next day on May 26th Marybel was playing over at Norma's house when Donna's father walked in and saw Mary trying to choke out his dog mary had her hands around Norma's throat she was going red and everything and so Norma's dad running and separated the two but he didn't think much of it he thought it was just a violent game that they were playing obviously he told them not to play it again because it was obviously dangerous but he had no idea how serious it really was for Mary and then the day after that on May 27th police were called to a local nursery that had been broken into over the weekend nothing was stolen from the daycare it just seemed as though someone had broken in just to trash it and make a scene however police did find four pieces of paper one of the pieces of paper said I murder so that I may come back the other pieces of paper were more rambly calling out the police they were using the F slur and they said things like we murder watch out and the last piece of paper said we did murder Martin Brown [ __ ] off you bastard presumably aimed at the police or the media or maybe even Matson himself so police just kind of disregarded this as a prank or just something to mess with police since the notes were written really badly there was spelling mistakes grammar mistakes and besides Martin's death was found to be from natural causes there was no sign of a murder that same day that the break-in was discovered Maribel went to school as normal and actually wrote about Martin Brown's death she wrote there were crowds of people outside an old house I asked what was the matter there has been a boy who had just laid down and died and underneath this story that she wrote Maribel drew a picture the picture was a four year old Martin lay dead with a work man coming over and discovering the body and next to Martin spotted there was a little bottle labeled tablet although Mary teachers didn't find this story in these pictures four weeks after she did them Martin's auntie actually used to babysit Marion Norma and so Martin's own mother June sometimes used to see them at her sister's house after Martin's death the girls always used to ask June how she was feeling if she makes to be a and she thought that was really sweet but they cared and that they were asking questions and before Martin was buried before his funeral Mary and Alma actually turned up at June's house and asked to see Martin and jaemin was really confused she knew that the girls knew that Martin was dead she didn't know why they were asking that so June reminded them that Martin was dead and that they can't see him to which Mary Bell said oh I know he's dead I want to see him in his coffin in the months following Martin's death a lot of work was done in the neighborhood to demolish abandoned buildings abandoned houses just to make planes safer for the kids and on July 31st 1968 Mary Norma and a bunch of other kids on the estate all gathered to watch these buildings being torn down and there the girls began playing with three-year-old Brian Howe and they eventually took him to a field to play there and that same night Brian was reported missing talk about duction begun circling around the neighborhood maybe he got lost maybe he got hurt and so a bunch of people all came out to help his mother search for him including Marian Alma who specifically helped Brian's mother and there was skipping and singing and dancing as they were Legion his mother all over the neighborhood that same night Brian's body was found in the field half-naked and obviously murdered chunks of his hair had been cut off and just thrown about his body he had a couple of stab wounds on his legs that seemed to have been made by the same scissors that it cut his hair all the brains actual cause of death was from strangulation and the stab wounds had actually been made after his death however it wasn't found for a while that his cause of death was strangulation because it seemed to have been done so gently it seemed as if the person that did it applied gradual pressure it wasn't an all at once strangulation and this led police to theorize that maybe it was someone much weaker possibly another child and among the stab marks on Brian's body it seemed as though there was an M carved into his stomach but in his postmortem it was found that this M was carved into his body in two parts so half of it was done at the time of death and half of it was done much later and he seems as though the first bit was an N and then it had been changed into an M so given the similarities between Brian's murder and the murder of Martin Brown police decided to reopen Martin Brown's case thinking that it probably wasn't natural causes now after a reinvestigation Martin's cause of death was changed to homicide and the two killings were linked and so police finally announced that they were looking for a killer probably a child and Marian Norma Bell seems to be very interested in the whole thing particularly Mary whenever I held or anyone else held a conference this one girl's face kept appearing listening intently toward everything that is being said you one couldn't miss her if you tried you sure she was so obvious pushing herself forward to listen to what was being said Mariama Bell were always in trouble they were always strangling people are taking random boys from the streets and Mary had even been bragging to all the girls in the playground that she'd strangled a little boy over the next few days police received several suggestions from neighbors and people that knew were to look into eleven-year-old Mary Bell who was actually only 10 years old at the time of the first murder and so police went to speak with Mary but her father Billy wouldn't let them talk to him and he even threatened to get the dog on them if they tried to get any closer to Mary but around that same time police got the break that they needed and why came forward to say that he actually witnessed Brian's murder this boy was nine years old but actually had the mental age of a four year old and so as he was witness in the murder he didn't quite realize the severity of it or what was going on until he eventually told his parents and that was when they got in contact with police and so this boy's parents took him to talk to police and he said that Mary Bell was saying that Brian how this little three year old boy actually had a sore throat and Mary said that she could soothe his sore throat if she could massage it and so she began to massage his throat and eventually just tightened the grip to the point where she strangled him to death and with this witness account police brought the two girls Mary and Norma Bell in for questioning so they were being questioned during the day in the evenings they would be sent into care away from their parents and away from each other so no one could talk to them or influence them or tell them to say certain things so beliefs got in contact with the girls schools and collected some of their books so that they could compare the girls hand right into the handwriting on those notes from the daycare and while the handwriting couldn't be confirmed to be the same it looked eerily similar to Mary Belle's handwriting and while they had the books police decided to just have a look through them to see if they could find anything strange and they did they found that story that Mary Belle returned and if you remember underneath that story Mary Belle drew a picture of Martin lid on the floor dead with a bottle of tablets next to him now this detail was never actually released to the media and so it was never printed in newspapers or anything so how would she know that unless she was at the scene and because police couldn't identify Martin's actual cause of death they just ruled it a homicide there's always the possibility that she could have fed in those tablets and that was the last bit of evidence that police needed to say that these girls were guilty of both murders and so in August 8 1968 both Mary and Norma Bell were charged with two murders the trial began four months later in the November where both girls profess their innocence and actually blend each other so at one point during the trial the judge asked Mary a bunch of questions all based on kind of witness testimonies things that people had told police about Mary and at one point the judge asked Mary if she'd ever strangled the pigeon to death because they had evidence that she had in the past and when she was asked that question Mary broke down she was crying inconsolably and the court just kind of waited for her to calm down but she wasn't coming down and so the trial actually had to be paused it quickly became apparent in this trial that Mary lacked basic human emotion and when she was in Martian ala when she seemed to be emotional it was very over-the-top very dramatic it seemed put on and she also didn't seem to understand the wit of her crimes I mean neither of the girls did they were just children but Mary especially she showed absolutely no remorse when asked about those nerves were left in the decade that police believed that she left she said that she did leave them there but it was only for a giggle and there weren't actually truthful and she didn't actually commit the murders because of her apparent lack of emotion Mary was examined by many different psychiatrists and they all came back with the same Diagnostics that Mary Bell was a psychopath so Norma Bell was actually acquitted of her role in the murders on the grounds that she was simple-minded and that she was led to do all of the things that she did by Mary Bell police believe that Norma didn't actually kill either of the boys she was just a witness and she just kind of went along with it and supported Mary but police believed that she couldn't understand the wit of what she was doing she couldn't understand the implications she couldn't understand what Mary was making a deal and so it wasn't her fault Mary Bell however was found guilty but not of murder she was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds that she was medically insane she was found to be a psychopath and because she was only 11 years old at the time of her sentencing and she was diagnosed with a mental disorder she was to be rehabilitated and rather than punished but she was too young to be sentenced under the Mental Health Act and sent to a psychiatric unit so instead Mary Bell was just sent to a boarding school Mary's mother Betty would visit her at this boarding school regularly although Mary always blamed her mother Betty for how she turned out one day Mary sent a letter to her mother Betty begging her to go to car and to take responsibility for Mary's killings Mary believe that if Betty went to court and told them all how she raised her daughter that there would no longer think that Mary was responsible because of how traumatic her childhood was Mary also believed that they were then imprisoned Betty and let Mary free which of course is not how that works Mary still committed the murder she still killed two little boys of course she's still gonna serve some form of time even if it's just a boarding school and Betty really broke down after the whole thing after realizing that her daughter was a murderer she became an alcoholic she became a nervous wreck she'd barely left the house no Betty are you saying that your daughter is innocent no I'm not saying she's innocent have you been very despairing sometimes and very despairing very very lot of under a lot of strain stress and grief for my daughter but people believe that this nervous breakdown was more to do with her own image and how people were viewing her as the mother of the murderer rather than over worried about her daughter who was the murderer people think that she didn't really care about Mary in this boarding school serving time or whatever now people think that she'd still just cared about herself and how she looked in the media but at the same time as this nervous breakdown and claiming to be so distraught over her daughter she still had no problem selling stories and letters and drawings that her daughter had done to the press every week after a few years Mary was put into an open prison which is basically a prison but with very little supervision prisoners are basically trusted to serve their own sentences sells out locked doors unlocked they were allowed out during the day if they've got employment but they're basically trusted to come back every day and serve their sentence in 1977 at age 20 Mary Bell actually escaped this open prison because it was very easy and it was believed that she actually left to go and lose her virginity anyway she was found and returned to the prison and lost her prison privileges for 28 days as punishment in 1980 after serving 12 years for her crimes 12 years for the murder of two little babies Mary Bell was deemed no longer a threat to the community and she was released she was given full anonymity and she is currently living her life now to this day under a different name and no one has any idea who she is five years after her release in 1984 on the 16th anniversary of the din that she killed Martin brown Mary Bell had a daughter the daughter was also granted anonymity until her 18th birthday and Mary never planned on telling her who she was or about her past or anything that was until reporters found the home that they both lived at when her daughter was just 14 years old Mary and her daughter actually had to leave the house with sheets over the head to protect their anonymity and because of this I decided to go to car and fight to get her daughter lifelong anonymity because like I said she'd only been given out on Amity until the age of 18 and reporters had seen her face at 14 years old so chances are four years from then she was still gonna look relatively the same and the courts agreed that Mary Belle's daughter probably wasn't going to be safe if she wasn't kept anonymous and so her anonymity has been stretched to her whole life and then in 2009 at age 51 Mary Belle became a grandmother and the anonymity stretched onto the granddaughter as well and that's pretty much it for this case but one interesting fact I found was that obviously there's been tons of books made on the Mary Belle case well for one of these books in particular the author actually paid Mary Belle to give like inside facts and things for this book and they actually paid a fifty thousand pounds Mary Belle got paid fifty thousand pounds for killing two little baby boys and then telling the story of it years later she got paid for doing that but yeah that completes this case thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed make sure you leave a thumbs up and subscribe down below if you want to see some more like this we've only got two days left of ten days of Tara now but I hope you stick around for those and obviously after this there's gonna be more true crown videos anyway and they're not just gonna stop and I'm planning something fun for Christmas if you follow me on Twitter you already know what that is and it's already got a name and I'm already really excited and ten days of Tara hasn't even ended yet and I'm already excited about my Christmas serie as well but yeah thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you tomorrow for a brand new true-crime video bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 2,320,006

Keywords: 2018, abducted, abduction, crime watch daily, disappearance, documentary, eleanor neale, eleanor neale 2, interview, killer, missing, mystery, now, serial killer, solved, solved disappearance, solved mystery, true crime, unsolved, unsolved disappearance, unsolved mystery, where is, mary bell, mary, bell, norma, female killers, deadly women, criminally listed, kendall rae, bella fiori, uk, england, english, british, daughter, britain's darkest taboos, dateline, netflix, serial killer documentary

Id: rNbva3nS89g

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018