43 Facts About Mary Bell

Mary Flora Bell was born on 26 May 1957 and is an English woman who, as a juvenile, killed two preschool-age boys in Scotswood, an inner suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1968.

In both instances, Mary Bell informed her victim that he had a sore throat, which she would massage before proceeding to strangle him.

Mary Bell was convicted of manslaughter in relation to both killings in December 1968, in a trial held at Newcastle Assizes when she was 11 years old, and in which her actions were judged to have been committed under diminished responsibility.

Mary Bell is Britain's youngest female killer and was diagnosed with a psychopathic personality disorder prior to her trial.

Mary Bell's alleged accomplice in at least one of the killings, 13-year-old Norma Joyce Bell, was acquitted of all charges.

Mary Bell was released from custody in 1980, at the age of 23.

Mary Bell has since lived under a series of pseudonyms.

Mary Bell was her second child, born when Betty was 17 years old.

For most of her life, Mary believed her father to be William "Billy" Bell, a violent alcoholic and habitual criminal with an arrest record for crimes including armed robbery.

However, she was a baby when William Mary Bell married her mother, and it is unknown if he is her actual biological father.

Mary Bell is known to have once sold Mary through an adoption agency to a mentally unstable woman who was unable to have children of her own, resulting in her older sister, Catherine, having to travel alone across Newcastle to reclaim Mary from this individual and return the child to her mother's home on Whitehouse Road.

Mary Bell was unsure of which one of the girls had actually pushed him.

However, Norma admitted Mary Bell had tried to "throttle" each of the girls, stating:.

On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Mary Bell strangled four-year-old Martin Brown in an upstairs bedroom of a derelict house located at 85 St Margaret's Road.

Mary Bell is believed to have committed this crime alone.

Norma then informed Dobson; Mary Bell had taken her to a "spot on the 'Tin Lizzie", at which point she had been shown Brian's body.

Mary Bell had then demonstrated to her how she had strangled the child.

On this occasion, she made a full statement in which she admitted being present when Mary Bell had actually strangled Brian.

Mary Bell admitted she and Norma had broken into the Woodland Crescent nursery the day after the killing of Martin Brown, defacing the property before the two had written the four handwritten notes.

The results of these tests revealed Norma was intellectually delayed and a submissive character who easily displayed emotion, whereas Mary Bell was a bright yet cunning character, prone to sudden mood swings.

Occasionally, Mary Bell was willing to talk, although she rapidly became sullen, introspective and defensive in nature.

The four psychiatrists who examined Mary Bell concluded that, although not suffering from a mental disorder, she suffered from a psychopathic personality disorder.

Mary Bell then outlined the prosecution's intention to illustrate the similarities between both murders, which indicated both boys had been murdered by the same perpetrator or perpetrators.

Mary Bell denied her co-defendant's accusations, insisting that although she had observed the body of Martin Brown at St Margaret's Road, she herself had never harmed the child, and that she and Norma had later asked the boy's mother to view his body as the two were "daring each other and one of us did not want to be a chicken".

Mary Bell conceded she had divulged to others her knowledge of Martin's death could "get Norma put straight away".

Norma's mother, Catherine, then testified that, several months prior to the killing of Brian Howe, she and her husband had discovered Mary Bell attempting to strangle Norma's younger sister, Susan, and that she had only released her grip on their daughter's throat after her husband had punched Mary Bell in the shoulder.

Mary Bell was cleared of murder, but convicted of the manslaughter of both boys on the grounds of diminished responsibility; Norma Bell was acquitted of all charges.

Mary Bell was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure; effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment.

Mary Bell was initially detained in a Durham remand home before being transferred to a second remand home in South Norwood.

Mary Bell was then transferred to Red Bank Secure Unit, a young offenders institution in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, in early 1969, where she was the only female among approximately 24 inmates.

Reportedly, Mary Bell resented her transferral to this facility, and, while incarcerated at HM Prison Styal, Mary Bell unsuccessfully applied for parole.

In June 1976, Mary Bell was transferred to Moor Court open prison, where she undertook a secretarial course.

Fifteen months later, in September 1977, Mary Bell again made national headlines when she and another inmate, Annette Priest, absconded from this open prison.

Mary Bell was returned to custody that evening; Priest was arrested in Leeds days later.

Mary Bell's penalty for absconding was a loss of prison privileges for 28 days.

Mary Bell was released from HM Prison Askham Grange in May 1980 at the age of 23, having served almost eleven and a half years in custody.

Mary Bell was granted anonymity, allowing her to start a new life elsewhere in the country under an assumed identity.

Four years after her release from custody, on 25 May 1984, Mary Bell gave birth to a daughter.

Mary Bell's daughter knew nothing of her mother's past until 1998, when reporters discovered Bell's then-current location in a resort town on the Sussex Coast, where both had been living for approximately 18 months.

Mary Bell has allegedly returned to Tyneside on several occasions in the years following her release.

Mary Bell is alleged to have lived in this location for a time.

The right to anonymity granted to Mary Bell's daughter following her birth was originally only extended until she had reached the age of 18.

However, on 21 May 2003, Mary Bell won a High Court battle to have her own anonymity, and that of her daughter, extended for life.