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00:00Hey guys, it's Bella. Welcome back to my channel. I hope you are all having an incredible day today.
00:05Today we're going to be covering another Mystery Monday case. We're going to be talking about
00:09Mary Bell. She was an 11-year-old serial killer. Mary Flora Bell was born on the 26th of May in
00:151957 in Newcastle, England. Her mother Betty Bell was a sex worker and she was only 17 years old
00:22when Mary was born. And the first thing she said when Mary was born was,
00:27take the thing away from me. It's unknown who Mary's biological father actually is,
00:32but just under a year after she was born, her mother Betty married a guy named Billy Bell
00:36and he served as a father figure to Mary and he was actually an armed robber, a career criminal,
00:42and an alcoholic. So safe to say Mary didn't have the best upbringing. And this is actually a really
00:47interesting case of Nature vs Nurture because you have to wonder how much responsibility her
00:51upbringing had in her committing the crimes that she did and if she would have committed them at all
00:56if she had a completely different upbringing because she had it rough growing up. Before we
01:00get into today's case, I just want to thank today's sponsor, Vessi. I am obsessed with my Vessi shoes.
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01:40But not only are these waterproof, but they're so incredibly easy to clean. Seriously, you just take
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02:07seriously the best and if you guys want to get a cheeky $25 off your order, you can click the link in my
02:13bio and use the code BELLA. So make sure you check that out. I will leave all of the information
02:18in the description down below and let's go ahead and get into the case. So Mary, Billy and Betty
02:23lived in a house that was constantly filthy at 70 White House Road in Scotswood. Scotswood at the
02:30time, and I'm not really sure what it's like now, but back in the 1960s, it was quite a poor area with
02:35a high rate of violent crimes and criminal behaviour. And White House Road was a street that had a high
02:42unemployment rate. It had a constant police presence because of the amount of sex work, drug activity,
02:47and domestic abuse issues. And despite all of the evident dangers for young children, Mary and all
02:53of the other kids on the street were just allowed to go out and play unsupervised from the ages of
02:58two and up. And they would play till all hours of the night, like they'd be out playing till midnight
03:02with no one there to supervise them. Betty, as I mentioned, was a sex worker. She specialized in
03:08sadomasochism, whippings, and stranglings. And allegedly, once Mary turned four years old,
03:13she would pass her out to her pervert sex work clients who would pay Betty to sexually abuse
03:20Mary. Betty had bipolar disorder, she was an alcoholic, and she just was not a nice person.
03:27Mary had been a chronic bedwetter and was actually scared of going to sleep out of fear that she might
03:32wet her bed because when she did, Betty would rub her face in it and sometimes she would even hang
03:38the mattress out for everybody in the neighborhood to see. Allegedly, she also tried to murder Mary
03:43several times. According to her family, Mary accidentally swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills
03:49and was really, really sick afterwards. And there was another occasion where Mary actually had to be
03:55hospitalized and have her stomach pumped, and she told the doctor that her mum had given her
04:00smarties. There was another occasion when Mary fell out of a two-story window, and allegedly Betty
04:08also tried to choke Mary out on occasion. She was constantly trying to get rid of Mary. She even gave
04:14her away to a total stranger one time. She was going to an adoption clinic. A woman came out of an
04:20interview room and she was sobbing because they wouldn't allow her to adopt a child. So Betty pushed
04:26Mary towards her, said, I was taking her here to be adopted anyway, you have her, and then she just
04:31left. Luckily, Betty's sister Isa was actually following them, so she ended up following the
04:36woman who took Mary, found out where she lived, went and told Betty's mother, and Betty's mother told her,
04:41if you don't go and get Mary back within the next two hours, I'm calling the police. So Betty went and
04:46got Mary back, and that was that. This woman had already bought Mary clothes, and she allowed Betty to
04:51keep the clothes that she had bought with Mary, and honestly, who knows? Mary might have had a better
04:55life if she had just been able to stay with this woman. Betty was constantly palming her off to
05:00friends and family and acquaintances, and Mary's aunt and uncle actually looked after her for the
05:05majority of the first six years of her life, and they even tried to adopt her, which Betty wouldn't
05:10allow. But she would still bring Mary there, say, I can't deal with her, I can't cope with her, you look
05:15after her, and she'd still come back and pick her up, despite their pleas to allow them to keep her.
05:21And it was just this constant cycle of her saying, nope, I can't cope with her, I don't want her,
05:26I can't deal with her, but then she'd still always come and get her again. It's like she wanted to get
05:31rid of her, but she also had this obsessive attachment to her. Growing up, Mary really struggled
05:36to make friends. She refused to bond with others, she was very cold and detached. When she was four
05:42years old, she actually did become friends with a five-year-old girl who lived on the same street.
05:46This little girl had also mentioned that she had seen Mary's mother give her smarties in the
05:51backyard. Unfortunately, though, this girl was hit and killed by a bus right in front of Mary when
05:57they were playing on the street together, which just would have been so incredibly traumatizing
06:01on top of everything else that Mary was dealing with at home. Mary was known at school to be a
06:07compulsive liar, a troublemaker, she had violent tendencies, and she had a really bad temper. Like,
06:13one minute she'd be totally fine, and then the next she would just snap and be really aggressive,
06:18and all of the other kids were scared to play with her. She was lonely, and the other kids teased
06:22her, and she was known to hit and kick and punch and just grab other kids by the throat. Mary did
06:29have one friend. Her name was Norma Bell, despite the fact that they weren't related. I think Bell
06:33might have been like a common last name, or it was just a coincidence, but they were next-door
06:37neighbors, and they were practically joined at the hip. Everything Mary did, Norma did,
06:43everywhere they went, they went together. Norma was two years older than Mary, but Mary was smarter,
06:48she had more common sense, and she was kind of the leader of the two of them. Like, whatever she said,
06:53Norma would do. I think Norma might have been, like, she was described as being simple. On the 11th of
07:00May in 1968, when Mary was 10 and Norma was 12, they took this little three-year-old boy named John to
07:07some sweets from the store. Not even an hour later, Mary and Norma took John, who was bleeding from
07:13the head, into the Delaville Arms pub, saying they found him beside some old sheds nearby. Police and
07:19an ambulance were called. This boy apparently fell from a ledge, and there were no repercussions for
07:25Mary and Norma, and the boy did make a full recovery. But Mary actually later admitted that she did push
07:30this boy off the ledge herself. The next day, on the 12th of May, there was another incident where three
07:36girls who were playing in the sandpit of the Woodlands Crescent daycare were attacked by Mary,
07:42unprovoked. Seven-year-old Pauline was playing in the sandpit with her two friends, six-year-old Susan
07:47and six-year-old Cindy, when Mary all of a sudden snapped, started literally strangling her and trying
07:53to shove sand down her throat. Norma pinned us down, and Mary had grabbed us by the neck and stopped
08:00like strangling us. And then she had her hand here, and she was getting the sand and then
08:06pouring at me mouth. And it couldn't go in quick enough, and she tried to stuff her fingers down.
08:11And I think Norma was a little bit frightened when she was seeing what Mary was doing, because Norma
08:17jumped up. And by that time, she had jumped up, and I managed to struggle and get free and run home.
08:23She went and did the exact same thing to Susan, and then she went over to Cindy, and she said,
08:27what happens if you choke someone? Do they die? And then she just put her hands around her throat
08:32and started choking her. Cindy apparently turned purple while this was happening, and the marks
08:37on Pauline's throat were apparently visible for three days after the attack. Pauline's mom did go
08:43to the police and report this, but nothing was done about it, and Mary's behavior continued to escalate.
08:48On the 25th of May in 1968, Martin Brown was four years old. He lived on 140 St. Margaret's Road with
08:55his younger sister Linda, his mother June, and his father Georgie. He was a mischievous little boy.
09:00He once decided he wanted a swimming pool in the bedroom, so he filled a drawer in like a chest of
09:06drawers with water, which ended up overflowing. But he was always smiling and laughing, he was very
09:11cheeky, and everybody that knew him loved him. On Saturday the 25th, he woke up at 6.30am as he
09:18normally would, and everyone else in the house was still asleep, because it was a weekend, and on weekends
09:23they like to sleep in, I get it. So he quietly went downstairs, he ate some cookies, he had some milk, he brought
09:30some up to his shared room with Linda, and fed some to her and her cot as well. He woke his parents up at about
09:369am for brekkie, and then he was just kind of out and about, doing his thing all day, because as I mentioned,
09:41children over the age of two in that area were allowed to just go and hang out and play in the streets with no adult
09:47supervision. At around 3pm, he went to his aunt's house to ask for a little bit of money, so he could
09:52go down to the local store called Dixon's to get a lollipop, and he left Dixon's at around 3.15pm.
09:58Now in the area, there was a bunch of like abandoned buildings and abandoned houses that the kids all
10:03used to go and play in. Basically, whoever is in charge of like, you know, getting buildings
10:08demolished and stuff, was demolishing a bunch of buildings and houses in the area, and then they
10:13just kind of, they left them all there. They left a bunch of just empty, abandoned buildings. At 3.30pm,
10:19so 15 minutes after Martin was last seen at Dixon's, these three boys were going around these abandoned
10:24buildings looking for some scrap wood. As these boys entered number 85, they went up to the second
10:29floor of the house and found Martin lying on his back with his arms outstretched and blood and saliva
10:35coming from his head. There were some workers who were working just down the road. They called out
10:39to them, and these workers ran over, saw Martin's body, and called an ambulance, and the ambulance
10:44arrived at 3.35pm. They attempted to give him CPR, but it was too late, and Martin was already deceased.
10:51There were no signs of a struggle, and there were no visible signs of injury to his body. There was a
10:56bottle of aspirin nearby, so at first they thought that maybe he thought it was candy and tried to eat it,
11:01and that's how he died. A post-mortem exam was done, but no cause of death could be determined, so police
11:08just believed that this was an accident and that he died from natural causes. Four years old, randomly, in an
11:14abandoned house, with blood and saliva coming from his mouth. Makes sense.
11:17There was a few theories, like he's maybe getting the top of the stairs and being frightened to come down
11:25because he once fell down the stairs when he was very little, and they said, well, he could have sort of
11:30get in a shock. The Scotswood community was outraged. They marched and protested to have these abandoned
11:37buildings and houses taken down because, you know, with no cause of death, they believed that this is
11:43why Martin died from playing in these dangerous abandoned buildings. And at the front of all of these
11:49marches was Mary Bell and Norma Bell, and they were smiling and giggling the entire time. The next day,
11:56on the 26th of May, Mary celebrated her 11th birthday with Norma at Norma's house, and Norma's dad ended up
12:03walking in on Mary strangling Norma's little sister. Take a shot for every time I just said Norma in that
12:09sentence. Norma, Norma, Norma. His daughter was going red as Mary was strangling her, and he ran in,
12:14separated them, but he didn't really think too much of it. He thought they were playing, like,
12:19some kind of violent game, and he just told them to cut it out and stop playing it. The day after
12:23that, on the 27th of May, a nursery in Scotswood was broken into and vandalized. Police were called.
12:30They found that nothing was missing or had been taken from the nursery. Someone had just broken
12:35in to trash it and leave a bunch of notes. There was, like, four notes left at the scene. One of the
12:40notes read, we did murder Martin Brown. Fuck off, you bastard. Another read, I murder so that I may come
12:46back. Another said, fuck off, we murder, watch out, Fanny, and the F slur. And the last one was pretty
12:52rambly. It said, like, you are my C because we murdered Martin, and it used the F slur again.
12:57There were a ton of spelling errors, grammatical errors, and the writing was pretty bad as well.
13:02It definitely looked like a child had written it. And because Martin's death was ruled an accident,
13:07they just kind of chalked this up to a dumb prank that some kids thought was funny.
13:12Over the next few weeks, Mary would constantly go to Martin's house and talk to his mother June
13:16and ask her how she was feeling, if she was crying over Martin, if she missed Martin, and
13:22she was always smiling and giggling as she did. She started asking to see Martin, and
13:27June said, no, sweetie, you can't see Martin, he's dead. And Mary responded and said, I know
13:32he's dead, I want to see him in his coffin. And she was just standing there smiling.
13:36June was just speechless that this little 11-year-old girl was standing there smiling, asking to see
13:42a dead baby, and she ended up just closing the door on her face.
13:46Nine weeks later, on the 31st of July, three-year-old Brian Howie was last seen playing with his dog
13:52on Whitehouse Road. When dinner time came around, his parents called out for him, but he didn't
13:57come home. They searched the neighborhood and couldn't find any signs of Brian, and soon
14:02enough, a bunch of people from the neighborhood came out and helped aid them in the search for
14:07Brian. And among those helping were Mary and Norma Bell, who looked way too happy to be
14:13looking for a missing three-year-old boy. They were singing and dancing and skipping.
14:19After the search party found no signs of Brian, the Howies ended up calling the police. The
14:24police searched well into the night, and at 11.10pm, they found three-year-old Brian Howie's
14:29body in a wasteland near his house, covered in green and purple weeds. It was immediately clear
14:36to police upon discovering his body that he was a victim of a homicide. There was bruising
14:40and scratching around his neck where he had been strangled, and he also had scratches covering
14:46his face and blood dripping from his mouth. Detective Chief Constable James Dobson was in
14:52charge of the investigation into Brian's murder, and he had actually been on the scene just
14:57weeks earlier when Martin Brown's body was found, and immediately he saw the similarities
15:01in the two cases. Detective Dobson determined there was no anger in the cuts to Brian's
15:06body. They were made with, like, a curious playfulness. A post-mortem exam was done, and
15:12it was determined that Brian was strangled to death between 3.30 and 4.30pm the day his
15:17body was discovered. The post-mortem exam found that he had three scratches on the right side
15:22of his neck and two scratches on the left side. There were a series of compression marks
15:26on his nose which suggested somebody had pinched both sides of his nose quite hard. His genitals
15:32had been cut, and there were six puncture wounds on his thighs and his legs. All of the marks
15:36on his genitals, his thighs, and his legs were only superficial wounds and had only punctured
15:42the skin. His hair had been cut, and the letter M had been carved into his stomach. Originally
15:47an N was carved into his stomach, but a little while after the murder, by possibly a different
15:53person, it seems that an extra line was added onto the N to make it into an M. It was determined
15:59that very little force would have been required to kill a three-year-old in this manner, and
16:03adults usually use a lot more force than is necessary, so the attacker was likely a child.
16:09Police then launched an investigation into the murder, and within the first 24 hours they
16:13visited over 1,000 homes, they interviewed over 1,200 children, and they gave all of these
16:19children's parents mimeographed questionnaires to fill out. Mary and Norma Bell were of course
16:24among the children who were interviewed by police, and they were actually visited multiple
16:29times because of their unclear and evasive answers. Dobson said he immediately thought
16:34Mary and Norma were sketchy because their answers and their stories kept changing, and they were
16:38just smiling the entire time as if it was all just a huge joke. In one of Mary's interviews
16:43with Dobson, she suddenly remembered some new information. She said on the day of Brian's
16:49murder, she had seen this eight-year-old boy, who was referred to as A, standing on Delaval
16:53Road with Brian. She said they'd been playing a lot, and that she had seen A hit Brian for
16:59no reason. She said he hit Brian around the face and the neck, and she also said that she
17:04had seen A playing with this silver-coloured pair of scissors which were, like, damaged in
17:08some way, like, there was something wrong with one of the legs of the scissors, it was, like,
17:12broken, or snapped, or something like that. And she said that she had seen A using these scissors
17:17to try and cut off a cat's tail. The sketchy thing about this is that scissors identical to that
17:22description were found near Brian's body, and this information hadn't been disclosed. There hadn't
17:28been photos taken of these scissors, police hadn't released this information to anybody, media hadn't
17:33gotten a hold of any of this information, so nobody in the public knew. Only the killer and the police
17:39would have known about them. And then they found out that the afternoon of Brian's murder,
17:44this boy A was actually at the airport with his family and couldn't be responsible for the murder.
17:49So Mary was looking super sketchy by this point, like, she had described these scissors that were
17:54found near Brian's body that nobody knew about besides the police and the attacker, most likely,
17:59and these scissors were believed to have been what made the puncture wounds and the cuts all over
18:04Brian's body. And on top of that, her and Norma's stories kept changing, and they were laughing the
18:08whole time like it was funny. And by this point, everyone else had pretty much been eliminated as
18:13a suspect, except for Mary and Norma. So on the 4th of August, Detective Dobson went and interviewed
18:18Norma for, like, the third or fourth time. In her previous statement, she said that she'd been playing
18:22with her brothers and sisters from 2 to 5 p.m., but other kids had actually said in their statements
18:28that they had seen her playing with Mary. Dobson brought this up with her, and he was like,
18:31look, I know you're saying this, but other kids said they saw you with Mary. And so Norma changed
18:35her story again, and she said, yeah, I was with Mary, and Mary actually took me to see Brian.
18:40After hearing this, Dobson took Norma down to the police station to get an official statement
18:44about it, and it was there that Norma specified that Mary had taken her to see Brian's dead body.
18:50She said that Mary had told her that she killed Brian, that she squeezed his neck and pushed up
18:55his lungs because that's how you kill somebody. She said Mary ran her fingers along his purple lips
19:01and said that she enjoyed it. She said Mary showed her a razor, lifted up Brian's shirt,
19:06and showed her the marks on Brian's stomach. She then hid the razor underneath a block and told
19:11Norma not to tell anybody. Dobson asked Norma if she could show him where the razor was hidden,
19:16and she agreed. So at 8.30 p.m., they went down to the area where Brian's body was found,
19:21and she pointed to this, like, concrete block. Dobson had a look underneath the block,
19:25and lo and behold, the razor was there. Afterwards, she was taken back to the police station to give
19:30an official statement. And then at 12.15 a.m. on the 5th of August, Dobson and two police
19:36constables went down to Mary Bell's home to bring her into the station for questioning.
19:40She was super defensive and agitated the whole time, and she actually threatened to call a
19:44solicitor, which is just so crazy to me, like this little 11-year-old girl threatening to call a
19:49solicitor. And when police told her that Norma had shown them the razor, she actually threatened to
19:54kill Norma as well, to Dobson. But they couldn't hold her, they didn't have any definitive evidence
19:59against her, and for all police knew, Norma could be lying about the whole thing and could just be
20:04trying to pin everything on Mary, when in reality, it could have just been Norma. So they had to let
20:08her go. Brian Howey's funeral was held on the morning of the 7th of August, and Detective Dobson
20:14attended so that he could kind of check out the crowd and see if anyone was looking sketchy,
20:18and he said this is when he knew Mary Bell was guilty. And this is a quote of what Detective Dobson
20:23said, Mary Bell was standing in front of the Howey's house when the coffin was brought out. I was
20:27watching her, and it was when I saw her there that I knew I did not dare risk another day. She stood
20:32there laughing, laughing and rubbing her hands. I thought, my god, I've got to bring her in. She'll do
20:38another one. So he made the decision to arrest Mary and Norma Bell that afternoon. He first arrested
20:43Mary and brought her in for questioning, and she tried to pin the whole thing on Norma, said she was the one
20:48who killed Brian. She said Norma squeezed his throat really hard, and that she tried to stop
20:53her and pull her shoulders back, but Norma went mad, she started screaming at her, and then she kind of
20:59threw Brian, and he hit his head and died. During Mary's interview, Dobson brought up Martin Brown,
21:05because as I mentioned, as soon as he saw Brian's body, he immediately thought the two cases were
21:11connected. He told Mary that he believed she and Norma had broken into the nursery and written the
21:16notes that were left there, and Mary admitted to it immediately, but pinned it all on Norma, said Norma
21:22wrote the notes, that Norma was the one who broke into the nursery. He couldn't do anything about it
21:27that night, because he needed more evidence to connect the two cases, but by 8pm that night, he did
21:33arrest Mary for the murder of Brian Howie, and then by 8.30pm, he also arrested Norma and charged her
21:41with Brian Howie's murder. They were then reprimanded at the Newcastle West End Police Station. By the 21st
21:46August, the investigation into Martin Brown's death was complete. They contacted the girls'
21:51school so they could get some of their books to compare the handwriting to the handwriting that
21:55was found on the notes that were found in the nursery break-in. Their handwriting was eerily
21:59similar, and it also seemed like they kind of alternated who wrote, like Mary would write a
22:04couple of words, and then Norma would write a couple of words, and so on and so forth. They said after
22:09this discovery that they had no doubt that it was Mary and Norma who broke into and vandalized the
22:15nursery. In one of Mary's school books, they also found a story that she had written the
22:19day after Martin had died. She wrote,
22:22There were crowds of people outside an old house. I asked what was the matter. There has
22:26been a boy who has just laid down and died. Underneath that story, she drew a picture of
22:31four-year-old Martin's body lying dead, a workman discovering the body, and near the body was
22:37a little pill bottle that was labelled tablet. The crazy thing about this is that the pill bottle
22:42that was found near Martin's body had never been publicly disclosed. Media hadn't gotten a hold of
22:47that information. Police had never disclosed that information. No photos had been taken of that
22:52pill bottle. The only people that would know about that pill bottle are the police, the three boys that
22:57discovered the body, and the killer, and the workmen who also called the ambulance. Another weird piece
23:02of information is that when Martin's body was discovered, Mary and Norma just so happened to show
23:09up a few minutes later. They also found out that Mary had spoken to the Howies and had told them
23:14that Norma had strangled Brian to death. And the fact that he died of asphyxiation was also not
23:21disclosed. This is something only the killer and the police would know. Grey fibers from one of Mary's
23:26dresses was found on the bodies of both victims. Fibers from one of Norma's dresses was also found on the
23:32body of Brian Howie. And so both girls were also charged with the murder of Martin Brown. The trial for the
23:38murders of Brian Howie and Martin Brown began on the 5th of December in 1968 at the Newcastle
23:44Assizes. During the trial, while most people considered Mary guilty, there was definitely
23:49some doubt about Norma's guilt, and Mary's family at the trial certainly didn't help. Her mother Betty
23:53constantly disrupted the proceedings by sobbing really loudly. She stormed out of the trial at one
23:59point, only to dramatically reappear just moments later. It just seemed like a soap opera, like she was
24:05just some really bad acting. Norma, on the other hand, was the third of 11 children. She had a much
24:10more sympathetic family. She reacted to evidence and testimony with a more childlike combination of
24:16fear and nervous tears, whereas Mary just looked emotionally blank and showed no remorse whatsoever.
24:22The two girls were very different in personality. Mary, very bright and sharp, and could answer back to
24:30the council when they questioned her. She could make quite witty little remarks. The other girl was not
24:36as bright, and I think was completely overawed by the setting. And in a sense, the court almost separated
24:43the two, and said, therefore, the bright one must have done it, and the duller one probably didn't.
24:49Because of her lack of emotion, Mary was actually examined by a number of psychiatrists,
24:53all of whom said she displayed psychopathic tendencies. On the 14th of December, after the
24:59trial ended, Norma Bell was acquitted on the grounds that she was manipulated by Mary into doing the
25:04things that she did. It was believed she didn't understand the weight of what she was doing because
25:09she was simple-minded, and that she couldn't understand what Mary was making her do. Mary was
25:15convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as she displayed classic symptoms
25:19of psychopathy. The judge described her as dangerous, and said she posed a very grave danger
25:25to other children. And she was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, which just
25:29kind of means indefinitely. Now, because this was such a crazy case, and Britain wasn't really used to
25:34having to incarcerate little 11-year-old girls for murder, they weren't really sure what to do with
25:39her. Mental hospitals were not equipped to take her, and she was too dangerous to put into homes for
25:45troubled children. And so she was sent to Red Bank's special unit in St. Helens, Lancashire, which was
25:51a reform school. It's actually operated exclusively for boys, but it was transferred into a co-ed school
25:57exclusively for Mary. Her mother Betty visited her regularly. Mary was always excited to see her mum,
26:02but afterwards she would act out aggressively and seemed disturbed. Betty also profited from Mary's
26:08notoriety. She sold her stories to tabloids, and she encouraged Mary to write letters and poems that could be
26:14sold to the press. And because of Betty, Mary was actually paid £50,000 for a story. Like a girl
26:21who murdered two young three and four-year-old boys got £50,000 for murdering them. Disgusting. But
26:27Mary always blamed her mother for how she turned out. Whilst Mary was in Red Bank, her mother received
26:32a letter blaming her for ruining her life. Please ma'am, put my tiny maid at ease. Tell judge and jury
26:41it on your knees. They will listen to your cry of please. The guilty one is you, not me. I'm sorry it has to
26:48be this way. We'll both cry and you will go away. Tell them you are guilty. Please. So then, ma'am,
26:56I'll be free. Your daughter may. Now, Betty, are you saying that your daughter is innocent?
27:03No, I'm not saying she's innocent.
27:08But something must have made her do these things.
27:11Yes, something possibly must have made her do these things.
27:15And what was it about her life and her family you think that could have driven her to these things?
27:19Maybe it's the arguments between my husband and myself. Might I have some inflict on her? I don't know.
27:29Have you been very despairing sometimes?
27:32Very despairing. Very, very lot of, under a lot of strain, stress.
27:39In 1970, Mary reported to a counsellor that she had been sexually assaulted by a housemaster,
27:44but her account was considered unreliable and dismissed, despite the fact that changes in staff
27:50were made shortly after. When she was 16 years old, she was transferred to Moor Court Open Prison.
27:56And an open prison is basically a prison where the prisoners are trusted to complete their sentences
28:00with minimal supervision. They're often not locked up in their cells, and prisoners can take up employment
28:06while serving their sentence, and can actually leave the facility to go to work.
28:10And then in 1977, at age 20, Mary escaped the prison to go and, like, hook up with some guy
28:16and lose her virginity. She was found, she was returned, and as punishment, she only received
28:2128 days without privileges. Three years later, in 1980, when Mary was 23 years old, she was released
28:28from prison and granted anonymity so that she could go and start a new life. On the 25th of May, 1984,
28:34on the 16th anniversary of Martin's murder, Mary had a daughter. Her daughter was also granted anonymity,
28:40until her 18th birthday. Mary never planned to tell her daughter who she was or about her past crimes,
28:46but when she was 14 years old, people actually found out who she was and where she lived, and they were
28:51having to leave the house wearing bedsheets. Because her daughter's anonymity was due to end when she was
28:5618 years old, Mary actually went to court to fight to get her lifelong anonymity, which she was granted.
29:02And then in 2001, when she was 51 years old, Mary became a grandmother, and the anonymity also
29:08stretched to her granddaughter. So tell me what you guys think about this case. Like, I feel like
29:13it's a really tough one. Apparently, Mary is fully reformed, which is why she was released. I don't
29:19think she should be in prison forever, because she had a horrific upbringing. She was only 11 years old,
29:24and apparently she's fully reformed. But at the same time, I feel like it could have been a little bit
29:29more than 12 years for murdering two little three- and four-year-old baby boys. I mean, imagine what
29:35their parents would have had to go through. They never got to live and experience life.
29:40And not only was it only 12 years, but she got to spend it in an open prison where she could easily
29:46just escape to go and get it on with her boyfriend. It just doesn't feel like justice is served. But let
29:52me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear what you think and discuss it in the comments down below.
29:55I hope you guys have an incredible day, and hopefully I will see you in my next video. Bye, guys!
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