The Case Of Mary Bell

In December 1968 two girls who lived next door to each other - Mary, aged eleven, and Norma, thirteen - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling two little boys; Martin Brown, four years old, and Brian Howe, three. Norma was acquitted. Mary Bell, the younger but infinitely more sophisticated and cooler of the two, was found guilty of manslaughter. She evaded being branded as a murderer due to what the court ruled as 'diminished responsibility', but she was sentenced to 'detention' for life. Step by step, Gitta Sereny pieces together a gripping and rare study of a horrifying crime; the murders, the events surrounding them, the alternately bizzare and nonchalant behaviour of the two girls, their brazen offers to help the distraught families of the dead boys, the police work that led to their apprehension, and finally the trial itself. What emerges from this extraorindary case is the inability of society to anticipate such events and to take adequate steps once disaster has struck.

England's controversial #1 best-seller. What brings a child to kill another child? In 1968, at age eleven, Mary Bell was tried and convicted of murdering two small boys in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Gitta Sereny, who covered the sensational trial, never believed the characterization of Bell as the incarnation of evil, the bad seed personified. If we are ever to understand the pressures that lead children to commit serious crimes, Sereny felt, only those children, as adults, can enlighten us. Twenty-seven years after her conviction, Mary Bell agreed to talk to Sereny about her harrowing childhood, her terrible acts, her public trial, and her years of imprisonment-to talk about what was done to her and what she did, who she was and who she became. Nothing Bell says is intended as an excuse for her crimes. But her devastating story forces us to ponder society's responsibility for children at the breaking point, whether in Newcastle, Arkansas, or Oregon. A masterpiece of wisdom and sympathy, Gitta Sereny's wrenching portrait of a girl's damaged childhood and a woman's fight for moral regeneration urgently calls on us to hear the cries of all children at risk.

N December, 1968, Mary Bell, aged eleven, appeared before a criminal court in England, accused of murdering, Martin Brown, aged four, and Brian Howe, aged three. Mary was found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and was sentenced to 'detention' for life. What would induce a young child to murder two other young children? In this short book, Sylvia Perrini, looks at Mary's tragic life, her years in prison and life since prison.

What can drive a young and seemingly innocent child to kill? Murder is horrible enough when perpetrated by adults, and yet the concept takes on a whole new level of chilling morbidity when a murderer is revealed to be a young boy or girl. Is it the result of severe trauma manifesting itself in the most macabre of ways? Is it the progeny of some severe mental disorder? Or were they influenced by the actions of the people they grew up with? Most of the time, the answers to such a question are simple but no less horrific. Eleven-year-old Mary Flora Bell was tried and found guilty, in 1968, for the coldhearted murders of two very young boys - crimes which she committed without any hint of remorse. After her past and motives have been examined, hindsight asks the pressing question: Had Mary being a victim herself turned her into a killer? In this brand new expanded edition, the author sets out to discover what really happened to turn young Mary into an infamous killer. In addition to the previously printed material, you will find an all-new introduction and chapters filled with the author's never before published in-depth study into what made Mary angry enough to kill and her life after the crimes. From the details of her murders to the dark childhood she suffered, Mary Flora Bell's short, but horrific, time as a child serial killer will be analyzed in detail within Mary Flora Bell: The Horrific True Story Behind An Innocent Girl Serial Killer. Get your copy now and learn the tragic nature of a good girl gone bad and her road to redemption.

Retired police officer Kenneth W. Harmon and his family investigate the life of the young woman who they believed is haunting their house--a woman buried in their backyard who died of typhoid fever in the late 1800s.

Jonathan Paul goes behind the sensationalist headlines of 'child killers' to investigate why these crimes happen. He examines child homicide in today's violent, confusing world and contextualises it against the cruel unforgiving retribution of yesterday. Children are increasingly experimenting with drugs and committing offences, but there are those who commit the worst possible crimes: to end another person's life before their own could properly have begun. The cases are shocking but sometimes the path towards them is even more so. This is a fascinating exploration of disturbing events aimed at discovering what happens when childhood is trodden underfoot, and when and why kids kill.

The Holocaust and attempts to deny it, racism, murder, the case of Mary Bell. How can we include these and countless other examples of evil within our vision of a common humanity? These painful human incongruities are precisely what Raimond Gaita boldly harmonizes in his powerful new book, A Common Humanity. Hatred with forgiveness, evil with love, suffering with compassion, and the mundane with the precious. Gaita asserts that our conception of humanity cannot be based upon the empty language of individual rights when it is our shared feelings of grief, hope, love, guilt, shame and remorse that offer a more potent foundation for common understanding. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simon Weil, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch and Sigmund Freud, Gaita creates a beautifully written and provocative new picture of our common humanity.

A collaboration between distinguished physicists and philosophers of physics, this important anthology surveys the deep implications of Bell's nonlocality theorem.