The Shocking Case of Little Mary Bell Quiz

Answer: England

Scotswood lies about 275 miles north of London and at the time of the murders was populated with primarily working-class residents (Mary's own mother was a prostitute), and littered with abandoned and dilapidated buildings. This environment provided not only a grim backdrop for Mary's early childhood, but also a horribly apt setting for the grisly acts she committed.

Answer: An empty aspirin bottle

Investigators believed it was possible that the young Martin Brown had swallowed all of the aspirin in the bottle, and could find no signs of violence. There were no strangulation marks on the body either, however, it was later determined that Mary Bell had in fact strangled him to death with her bare hands.

As far as is known, she acted totally alone in this first murder. Perhaps her tender young hands were gentle enough to strangle him without leaving evidence.

Answer: That there was a "terrible playfulness" or "gentleness" about the murder.

When three year old Brian Howe was discovered under a few handfuls of brush in a construction site, his thighs had punctures and his genitals were partially skinned. Clumps of his hair had been cut and there was a letter "M" carved into his stomach with a razor.

It was as though there was a child playing absent-mindedly with the body after the murder. It is debated whether she acted alone in the second murder or if Norma Bell (not related) was an accomplice. She was quoted shortly after the murder as saying, "Brian Howe had no mother, so he won't be missed."

Answer: She was witnessed having a tea party with two dolls whom she named "Martin" and "Brian", after which she cut them in several places.

The other three are disturbingly true accounts of Mary's behavior following the murders. While she asked the odd questions of Martin's family, she was grinning the entire time and asked them cheerfully as if his death was a happy occasion.

Answer: no

Initially the ransacking of the school and the notes left behind were overlooked by investigators as a sick prank by youths in the town. Later in the investigation they were attributed to both Mary and Norma, and subsequent handwriting analysis would reveal that individual words in some of the notes were probably authored alternately by both girls. Most of the content in the notes is too offensive to be included here but can be viewed at the website referenced at the end of the quiz.

Answer: She wanted to stick needles into people because she liked hurting them.

Mary also revealed in her captivity that she was a chronic bed wetter and that her mother used to rub her face in her own urine when she messed the bed. She grabbed a stray cat by the neck and when a guard told her not to do so because it would hurt the animal, Mary replied that the cat couldn't feel it and that she liked hurting "little things that can't fight back." She also told a guard that murder "isn't that bad, we all die sometime anyway."

Answer: She was given some leniency under the conviction of guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.

In English law, diminished responsibility is used to give the judge sentencing discretion by effectively reducing the actual charge from murder to (voluntary) manslaughter. The alleged details of Mary's childhood indeed have come out since the trial so many years ago.

The daughter of an unknown father and a sixteen year old prostitute named Betty, who was absent from the house most of the time, she was led to believe that a habitual thief named Billy Bell was her father. There are unsubstantiated suggestions that Betty had tried to kill Mary early in her life and make her death look accidental, and Mary herself has claimed that she was a victim of repeated sexual abuse.

She states that her mother forced her into sexual acts with grown men as early as age five.

While growing up it was noted that she never cried when hurt and once witnessed her five year old friend get killed by a bus with almost no reaction. She also suffered several suspicious drug overdoses in early childhood that many believe were intentionally administered by her mother.

Answer: A reform school for boys

By the time of her incarceration, Mary had turned eleven but was still too young in the judge's opinion for prison. She was also unfortunately considered far too dangerous for institutions that were in place at the time for troubled children, and mental hospitals of the day were not equipped to take her.

She ended up in the Red Bank Special Unit, an all boy's reform school that had a high security division. The facility was adapted to accomodate Mary from February 1969 until November 1973. She was then transferred to a women's prison.

In 1977 she was transferred again to a less secure facility and escaped, lost her virginity, and was recaptured. She was then sent to a hostel a few months before her final parole.

Answer: 1980

After her 1980 parole, Mary became pregnant by a married man and decided to have an abortion. Later, after being granted anonymity and given a new identity, she met another young man and became pregnant again, but this time gave birth to the child in 1984.

Her daughter did not know of her sordid past until their location was discovered by the press. The original provision granted anonymity to her and her daughter until 2002 on the day of the daughter's 18th birthday. In 2003 the High Court extended this anonymity for life.

Answer: Whether she is truly rehabilitated or has presented an elaborate facade in order to preserve her freedom.

The vast preponderance of opinion from experts the world over is that pyschopathology, also referred to as sociopathology, is completely incurable. How Mary Bell seems to have reformed from a child killer into a loving mother without any formal pyschological intervention is questionable. To be sure, many sociopaths will routinely exaggerate childhood abuse to garner sympathy. Mary also showed no signs of remorse at the time of the murders and it is believed that with the symptoms she displayed as a child that she would not have stopped killing without intervention. The chilling fact is that at ten she was already acting as a serial killer. The world, however, will probably never know for sure if she is somehow better or merely showing an enormous amount of restraint and discipline.

Much of the information for this quiz was found at http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/bell/index_1.html and there is also a biography of Mary Bell called Cries Unheard written by Gitta Sereny. The website has a great amount of interesting facts and also several photographs of Mary Bell. The photo of her as a child at the time of the murders is especially eerie.