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00:00She was a sweet church lady in a small Louisiana town.
00:07She had been raised Catholic and she had literally memorized the Bible.
00:13She was active in the Church of Christ where they were lifetime members.
00:18They had their own people.
00:20This kind soul often took care of people who were in need.
00:24She had different men that lived with her from time to time.
00:27You know, men kind of tough on their luck to a certain degree.
00:31So when she lost her home, it was big news in their small town.
00:36The fire department thought that there was some evidence of arson.
00:40And less than a week later, one of her charity cases died under mysterious circumstances.
00:47You got a dead person laying on the floor with his hair singed on his head.
00:52That sends up questions.
00:54When police dig deeper, a pattern emerges in the Good Samaritan's past.
01:00There were rumors circulated.
01:03She had been associated with five or six people that all died.
01:07Some of these individuals, when they died, were buried like almost within hours of the next day.
01:14Could this devout Christian woman be the devil in disguise?
01:19You hear other people say that she had an evil streak in her.
01:23You can see it in her eyes.
01:24She can look at you like she could kill you.
01:27May 11, 1984.
01:46May 11th, 1984. It's a warm spring day in Rapides Parish, Louisiana when 64-year-old Lynette Bell and
01:57her daughter Susan enter the Pineville Police Station to report an emergency. She had different
02:03men that lived with her from time to time, you know, men kind of tough on their luck to a certain
02:09degree. Lynette Bell said that Mountville Townley had been living with her for a while. He said
02:17Mr. Townley had been drinking all night, was real sick, had a bad heart and died of a heart attack.
02:23She also didn't have a telephone so she wasn't able to reach the police.
02:31When the officers return with Lynette to her home,
02:34they find 43-year-old Mountville Townley lying dead on the living room floor.
02:45Police notify the coroner's office and take a look around the apartment to verify Lynette's story.
02:52You got a dead person laying on the floor and then you see where he's been sick and he'd been
02:56vomiting in a tub and the first thing you would think, well, this is just a drunk that died.
03:01Everywhere he'd go, he'd have a bucket with him, puking in it, but he was always drinking, so.
03:09The other thing that was interesting is they found a whiskey bottle.
03:12Here was a man who was supposed to be a drunk, but why was a whiskey bottle hidden
03:16behind a dresser in Lynette's bedroom?
03:21For investigators, the scene begins to feel staged.
03:25Was it really the alcohol that made Townley's heart give out?
03:33I knew M.V. Townley, and when I heard about him dying over there in Pineville,
03:38I thought, you know, he was a street-tough guy.
03:42I could imagine him getting shot in a bar or a knife fight or a cutting or something like that.
03:48But I just couldn't imagine this.
03:53They determined that Mr. Townley's death was a little bit suspicious.
03:58It just didn't look right.
04:01If there's any questionable circumstances, an autopsy is performed.
04:06As investigators finish processing the scene, they turn to Lynette for more answers.
04:12Mountville Townley was a manual laborer, best known around town for his hard living.
04:23He had done a lot of, like, working-class jobs.
04:27He'd worked on an oil rig, he was a mechanic, he was a truck driver,
04:30and he had an off-again, on-again relationship with his wife.
04:33And at the time, his life had kind of taken a downward turn.
04:39Townley and his wife had five children together.
04:42But his drinking problems tore their relationship apart.
04:46Luckily, a member of his church decided to take him in
04:50and give him a chance to turn his life around.
04:53A kind-hearted widow named Lynette Bell.
04:57My grandmother did love to help people.
04:59She did it on a daily basis.
05:02There were, you know, people around in the neighborhood that did need a little help,
05:07and she was always willing to do that.
05:09She had been raised Catholic.
05:12Her father was a devout Catholic.
05:15And she had literally memorized the Bible.
05:19She was a life of the party.
05:22And she was well-spoken and educated enough to where she always had something positive
05:28to contribute to the conversation.
05:31She was active in the Church of Christ, where they were lifetime members.
05:35They had their own pew to go to church every Sunday.
05:38She had some status in the community, probably known by most everyone there.
05:48Lynette played the piano in our church.
05:51She used to give piano lessons to stuff to all the kids around Glenmore.
05:54Vincent, my grandfather, is a very successful building contractor
05:58and had built a lot of architectural homes around Alexandria and Glenmore.
06:04He had probably been smoking cigarettes for 60 years when he passed away from lung cancer.
06:10After her husband's passing, she welcomed in several community members who needed help over the years
06:19and developed a reputation for her generosity.
06:23Mount Bill Townley was the most recent of her many boarders.
06:28She could sure tell when someone needed something, and she was the first one to deliver on it.
06:33Outside of the apartment, Townley's death seems to hit Lynette hard.
06:42They'd only known each other for a few months, and it's just the latest setback she's suffered this week.
06:49Lynette tells police that five days earlier, on May 6th, her house in Glenmore nearly burned to the ground.
06:57Luckily, no one was there.
07:00Lynette's home in Glenmore.
07:01She'd had it for over 20 years, and her second husband, Vincent Bell, had built that,
07:05and so she had moved in an apartment because the house had burned down.
07:10Strangely, Lynette's daughter, Susan, is unable to give a statement at all.
07:17When I first saw Susan, I didn't know whether she was over-medicated
07:22or whether it was just a mental condition that she had.
07:25They were kind of wondering, hey, what's really going on here?
07:31Investigators returned to the station to dig further into the situation.
07:37And when the coroner's initial report comes in, it only raises more questions.
07:42The autopsy report states that his hair was singed and his beard was singed.
07:47I think they would find it suspicious because she had told them that their house caught fire,
07:52that there was nobody at the house, but they had seen that his hair was singed.
07:57What is the connection here?
07:58Coming up, the investigation into Townley's death puts the focus on his helping hand
08:07and turns up a lot more than police bargained for.
08:12He was bothered by the tenor of...
08:15...that she had lived with, been married to.
08:17He died under suspicious circumstances.
08:19Police in Pineville, Louisiana, are investigating the death of 43-year-old Mountville Townley.
08:3964-year-old Lynette Bell, who had been supporting Townley through recent hard times,
08:44says he drank himself to death.
08:47But autopsy results make detectives suspect there's more to the story.
08:53She had told the investigators that the house had just caught on fire and nobody was there.
08:58But then they've got this evidence that here this man is, and he's dead, and his hair is cinched.
09:04When investigators follow up with the Pineville Fire Department,
09:08they learn that fire marshals have their own suspicions.
09:11The fire department thought that there was some evidence of arson.
09:15The fire marshals were called in to investigate the fire.
09:20They found two areas, I think, one in a bathroom and maybe one in a bedroom.
09:26They could tell this is where the fire started in an effort to try and burn the building down.
09:31And when they gathered initial statements from witnesses at the scene,
09:35Townley's appearance puts his name at the top of their suspect list.
09:39Here's a guy with his hair singed on his head and his beard.
09:44That sends up questions.
09:46They gave him a date to come do an interview with him.
09:49And before the interview, he was dead.
09:53To seasoned detectives, it's hard to believe that's a coincidence.
09:58Arson is fairly common for insurance profit.
10:01It happens about in 14% of arson cases.
10:04People will commit arson to collect insurance money.
10:08But Pineville police know Mountville Townley wouldn't be the beneficiary for any insurance policy.
10:15Any payout would go directly to the homeowner, Lynette Bell.
10:29Lynette was born in Longleaf, Louisiana, in 1919.
10:33The only daughter of George and Vesta Kirby.
10:38Our father was the superintendent of the mill and ran things around there.
10:42Her mom was a school teacher and played piano also.
10:45And that's where she learned music.
10:48Most every man at that time had worked at some point in that sawmill for Mr. Kirby.
10:53And Ms. Kirby taught everybody.
10:55So these people were known and well thought of in town.
10:58People thought that he was a very upstanding citizen.
11:02But behind the scenes, Lynette had told her children over the years that he was abusive.
11:06If her father was an alcoholic and if there was some abuse there, it could have led her to kind of see relationships with men as being this type of love-hate relationship.
11:16There was some sort of abuse that my grandmother claimed had been inflicted on her by her father.
11:25And I'm not sure what that is in detail.
11:28I know that my grandmother would have panic attacks.
11:31It caused her a lot of mental anguish throughout her life.
11:36After graduating high school in 1936, Lynette attended Louisiana College.
11:42She met my husband's father there, Arnold Guy.
11:48He was a theology major.
11:51Lynette and Arnold were married in 1940.
11:54And within a few years, they had two sons, Kirby and William.
11:58But their relationship began to sour.
12:03They were always at odds with one another.
12:06It's one of these relationships where it's a big chemical romantic thing and then it's not.
12:12So they had their problems and Lynette came away from it just despising him.
12:19Back in the 40s, if a woman was at least bit off the track when she's nervous, let's give her something.
12:25So that's essentially what happened to her.
12:27She always had some sort of benzodiazepine, you know, valium or librium or some kind of tranquilizing thing to take when she got real upset.
12:39In 1948, two years after the birth of their second child, Arnold decided to build a new house.
12:52Lynette wound up falling in love with the handsome contractor, Benson Bell.
12:56She and Benson got along like gangbusters.
13:02She always thought he looked like Humphrey Bogart.
13:05Well, he thought she looked like Betty Davis.
13:08They had this big, passionate love affair.
13:11And they went to Lake Tahoe, I believe, and got a divorce and were married.
13:18They were married in 1950.
13:19At that point, Lynette pretty much gave her two sons to her mother and father, Raves.
13:27My grandmother remarried Vincent Bell, my grandfather, and had two girls, my mom and her sister Susan.
13:37Her first son, Bill, was, I think, old enough to go to college by then.
13:41But Kirby stayed with my great-grandparents.
13:49The older daughter, Debbie, was in 52.
13:52Susan was born in 56.
13:54She was always the petted, pampered, much-beloved youngest child.
13:59For nearly two decades, the Bells seemed to have the perfect life.
14:04But in 1972, Lynette's world fell apart when Benson was diagnosed with lung cancer.
14:13To make matters worse, Lynette's father had recently died, and her mother was sick as well.
14:21Ms. Kirby passed away in April of 1972.
14:27Vincent passed away in August.
14:29She lost her father, her mother, and then her husband.
14:35So, yes, it was a trifecta of pain, I suspect, for her.
14:39She was probably heartbroken.
14:42Loved ones saw a swift and dramatic change in Lynette's personality.
14:48It was like daylight and dark.
14:51I mean, you're going along at 111, and all of a sudden, boom, you're down here doing this other thing.
14:55She went around to the bars and met old drunks that didn't have no family or nothing and brought them home with her.
15:02That's what she did.
15:06Her family became worried when Lynette suddenly started making big life changes without warning.
15:12In November of 1975, she married Billy Johnson.
15:21It was always anecdotal for us to find out these things were going on.
15:27I'd see them in bars, and we'd all sit together and drink, carry on.
15:32They shot pool at them different little old bars and stuff around there.
15:35My husband confronted his mother about her activities, and she was very defensive and irate with him.
15:44Don't you ever come back here and try to tell me what to do?
15:49You know, this caused a big rift in their relationship.
15:53In May of 1976, just six months after marrying Lynette, Billy collapsed while out drinking at a pool hall.
16:02Billy Johnson, he died in 76 because of death.
16:08It was cardiac.
16:09It was hard problems.
16:12His daughter called us several days later just highly irate because Lynette didn't go to the funeral.
16:19We thought that was strange.
16:22I think to have that many losses at once was probably very traumatic for her
16:26and very hard for a person like her to cope with.
16:29She was sort of going through a downward spiral.
16:31Lynette Bell is dealing with the death of her husband for the second time in her life.
16:48There was no investigation at the time because there wasn't really any pattern that anyone saw.
16:52It was just an isolated incident.
16:55After Billy Johnson, Lynette shared her home with a man named Ira Butter.
16:59They broke up in January of 1977, and Ira was found dead in his apartment less than three months later.
17:12There's alcoholism in the family, acute alcoholism.
17:15He was a Navy veteran, and he had actually lost an arm in a factory incident, and he later died of kind of mysterious causes.
17:26They said, again, he was alcohol poisoning.
17:29In December of 1977, less than a year after Ira's death, Lynette married local fisherman Clifford Reeves.
17:41I met Lynette through Clifford Reeves, my uncle.
17:46He was more or less a crook.
17:51And he did lots of things.
17:54He got caught robbing and stealing and stuff like that.
18:00He was in a lot of penitentiaries at an early, early age.
18:05And he went from one penitentiary to the next.
18:10For two years, the unlikely couple lived a happy life together.
18:15It was a lot of fun to be around.
18:19They partied a lot.
18:21Went out to bars and stuff like that.
18:25People were delighted to see Mr. Reeves bring this lady in.
18:30You know, she was the life of the party.
18:32She laughed, she talked, everybody liked her.
18:34But my husband was bothered by the tenor of the gossip that was going around town about her.
18:46My mom was going to college, and I started staying with her full time when I was three or four.
18:53They were together all the time.
18:55We did a lot of blackberry picking.
18:57But there were dark rumors circulating about their happy relationship.
19:02There were rumors circulating in the community about Ms. Bell, about her husband's or significant others dying.
19:12Maybe they had been poisoned.
19:13Maybe you shouldn't eat at her house.
19:16Folks do those things to each other just for a gag.
19:20You know, put something in someone's food.
19:22Me and Debbie would be over there and she'd be, they'd be eating.
19:27And they'd come in there and tell us, don't eat no blackberry cobbler tonight.
19:32It started a little more benign like that, if you want to call it that, with Clifford, you know.
19:39She put diet pills in his red beans and rice.
19:44She did put some speed in his blackberry cobbler, too.
19:49Clifford Reeves had made comments that he felt like Lynette was poisoning him.
19:54I think he even told me one time, he said, I think she's putting it in pea soup.
19:59But he never made a formal complaint.
20:05But in November of 1979, Reeves became sick after eating a meal Lynette prepared for him.
20:13He told me it was poison because I didn't know whether to believe him or not.
20:17I said, take him on to the doctor.
20:20They called from the hospital and he had died.
20:27Despite his claims about Lynette, the initial autopsy attributed his death to congestive heart failure.
20:34And there wasn't enough evidence to charge her with any crime.
20:38That's just community gossip, which didn't amount to a thing.
20:42Reeves is the fourth man to die in Lynette's life in less than eight years.
20:50Besides collecting on Vincent Bell's modest pension,
20:54none of the deaths resulted in any kind of financial benefit for Lynette.
20:58She quietly moves on.
21:01And just two years after Reeves' demise, Lynette befriended a couple at church in 1981,
21:07Earl and Blanche Campbell.
21:09They were, you know, older folks.
21:12They seemed older than my grandmother.
21:16She had been friends with Blanche for years and years.
21:19And same thing, they cooked together.
21:22She kept getting sicker and sicker.
21:24And she got more and more sort of upset because over time she was just not feeling right.
21:29She finally died of what they thought was just natural causes.
21:32Blanche had been dead for less than a year when rumors began to circulate that Lynette was involved with Earl.
21:41Probably six months later, Earl moved in with Lynette.
21:46But on September 18, 1982, Earl unexpectedly passed away.
21:53Earl Campbell went up to his house where he lived in Forest Hill and sat down under the tree and shot himself.
21:59They tried to blame her for that also.
22:06His death was officially ruled an apparent suicide by the sheriff's department.
22:11And Lynette was never implicated in Blanche or Earl's deaths.
22:15But she did wind up profiting from them.
22:19She ended up with his house and his truck and his boat and sold it all.
22:23Maybe he left a will or something.
22:25I ain't sure.
22:26I ain't sure.
22:29Ten years, six deaths, and several of them under mysterious circumstances.
22:38Was Lynette Bell the most unlucky woman in Louisiana?
22:42Or was there something sinister going on?
22:45To detectives investigating the death of Mountville Townley,
22:50Lynette's history seems to have revealed a pattern.
22:53The pattern from the very beginning to Mr. Tanley is that she picked people that had chemical dependency issues of one nature or another, alcohol and drugs.
23:06She encouraged their dependencies or their alcohol dependencies.
23:11And they seemed to all be treated the same way by Ms. Bell.
23:15Lynette really did have a pattern of liking people who were down on their luck.
23:20And it's certainly possible that this was a way of love and hate, of loving these men and of hating them.
23:28The initial autopsy had been inconclusive.
23:31But based on what they've learned about Lynette's past,
23:35they send a sample of Townley's blood to the crime lab for additional testing.
23:39So, none of the deaths were ever investigated, but if you think about it, these are all troubled men.
23:45They've all got alcohol problems, and then all of a sudden, things are starting to add up, and the pattern is starting to emerge.
23:53You know, police always play hunches a lot.
23:55You just, you have gut feelings about things, and sometimes they work out.
24:00Mountville Townley's arsenic level was about 30 times that of a normal human being, which resulted in his death.
24:13There were also traces of arsenic in the whiskey bottle found at Lynette's apartment.
24:20We had physical evidence that he had been poisoned.
24:23So, you know, there was, somebody administered that poison, and all facts, hints, everything pointed to Ms. Bell.
24:37Coming up, investigators take a look at Lynette's closest allies, her family.
24:44She said the old pool would be out of his misery for long now.
24:48It contains 1% arsenic, which is certainly enough to kill somebody.
24:52And investigators make an unprecedented move that sends shockwaves through the community.
24:59It was not common, and it was absolutely a big deal.
25:03It was a pretty gruesome scene to be there and watch.
25:09Investigators armed with Mountville Townley's toxicology report and details about Lynette Bell's past
25:27suspect she might be the one who poisoned him.
25:30She had been associated with five or six people that all died.
25:36Basically, every man that had been her significant other that she had lived with, been married to,
25:41had died under suspicious circumstances.
25:48To build their case, investigators try again to question Lynette's daughter from her relationship with Venson Bell.
25:55Well, the first time that Susan and Lynette went into the police station, Susan was completely out of it.
26:05And then Susan was even worse and was just, like, blatantly had, like, serious drug problems.
26:10Unable to get anything out of Susan, detectives drive across town to speak with Lynette's older daughter, Debbie.
26:21Debbie is reluctant to say anything at first, but she does come to her sister's defense.
26:28According to her, their mother is partially to blame for Susan's decline.
26:33According to Debbie, when Susan was a baby, she had hip problems, and the mom would ply her with medications even then.
26:41And that any time something happened, she would give her, like, some types of medications.
26:46Lynette always described her as being nervous.
26:49So when she was upset or crying or wanted something, well, then she would, she had her own little supply of nerve pills.
26:58Me and Debbie would go to her house sometimes, and I got to be friends with her other daughter, Susan.
27:03So I started going over there and visiting with them a lot.
27:06Lynette would give her pills.
27:08Susan would get messed up on them.
27:10And the night Townley died, Debbie admits to investigators that she saw Lynette drug someone else.
27:23Me and Debbie was sitting at her house, and Mount Bell and Lynette came over.
27:28His hair was burnt, and his beard was burnt on one side.
27:30He had a bucket in one hand and a bit of whiskey in the other hand.
27:36They sit down for about five minutes with us, puking in a bucket.
27:43He asked Debbie if he could go lay down in her son's bed.
27:46He went and laid down in the bed.
27:52While he was back there in the bed, Lynette picked his bottle up, took a clear bottle out of her purse,
27:58poured some of it in his whiskey bottle, and shook it up and set it back down.
28:06Said the old fool will be out of his misery for long now.
28:09Debbie, she didn't think anybody would ever believe Debbie.
28:15She thought she had total domination over those people.
28:21Debbie, I feel like, was afraid of her mother.
28:23And also, there was a good part of Debbie, I believe, that knew that her mother was doing wrong,
28:30and, you know, she needed to help get it stopped.
28:34Debbie is able to provide a detail that proves she's telling the truth.
28:40Debbie knew the name of it.
28:42Singletary's was the name of the poison.
28:45It's very uncommon.
28:47It contains 1% arsenic, which is certainly enough to kill somebody.
28:50They got a bottle of it, and brought it back, and showed it to Debbie.
28:58And Debbie said, that's what Mama's using.
29:00That's it.
29:01That's exactly what she's using.
29:06Investigators find evidence that indicates Lynette's motive for killing Townley was simple.
29:12Greed.
29:14Lynette planned or wanted her house burned, I think maybe for $10,000 worth of insurance.
29:20She didn't want to go to the trouble trying to sell it, but she thought she'd burn it down,
29:25get the insurance money, and be through with it.
29:28Mountville Townley and Miss Bell set her house on fire.
29:33It was an arson.
29:34It was an arson to gain money.
29:38She was afraid that he was going to turn her in.
29:41After he died, she told several people, dead men tell no tales.
29:50She put the arsenic and the whiskey to get rid of him, so he couldn't talk about burning her house down.
30:01Detectives already have enough for an arrest warrant.
30:04But before the interview is over, Debbie drops another bombshell.
30:09There were several other occasions where she witnessed Singletarers be administered to people,
30:15and several occasions where Miss Bell had admitted that she administered Singletarers to some of the people that died of arsenic poison.
30:24And it wasn't really over a lot of money.
30:27I mean, it's not like a million-dollar policy that was taken out and killed.
30:31She just didn't like one.
30:32Had investigators uncovered Louisiana's first female serial killer?
30:39Trust me, there are evil people in this world, and Lynette Bell was one of them.
30:45Detectives investigating Lynette Bell have just received the breakthrough they need from her own daughter.
31:03If her statements are accurate, police are now able to connect Lynette to the murder weapon.
31:09Her poison of choice was arsenic.
31:13Lynette Bell told her daughter that she had poisoned both Reeves and Campbell.
31:21On two separate occasions, she told them that.
31:23So there was a confession from Miss Bell to her daughter that she had actually poisoned both of them.
31:30Clifford Reeves, he had been going around, you know, and telling people over and over that he was being poisoned.
31:41It's clear that Reeves suspected what Lynette was doing to him.
31:46And police now wonder if Campbell might have realized it as well just before the end.
31:51It was obvious that something was wrong with Earl.
31:55You know, he was sick all the time, puking, just like Mountville, telling him, puking in a bucket.
32:01You could tell something was wrong with him.
32:03He killed himself and shot himself in the head with a shotgun before he actually died from the arsenic poison.
32:11Presumably because he was so sick that it was easier to kill himself than suffer.
32:21No autopsy was performed at the time.
32:24The same is true for several of the other men.
32:28Some of these individuals, when they died, were buried, like, almost within hours of the next day.
32:34I mean, they were put in the grave, puking.
32:36Johnson, Reeves, Townley, and Campbell.
32:43And those are just the ones that were known about.
32:46There may have been others.
32:49Debbie was telling me she's poison on me, you know.
32:52I pretty much believe Debbie.
32:54I wouldn't need a drink or nothing at her house.
33:01Investigators realize there's only one way to know for sure.
33:04Lynette told people, dead men tell no tales.
33:09But what if they could?
33:12We had enough statements from witnesses that would have given us the probable cause to ask for the bodies to be exhumed.
33:21On July 12, 1984, Pineville Police opened six graves.
33:26Those of Clifford Reeves, William Johnson, Ira Butter, Blanche and Earl Campbell, as well as Venson Bell.
33:35It was not common, and it was absolutely a big deal.
33:40Obviously, back in the 80s, the newspapers were a big part of a small community.
33:45And once we exhumed the bodies, you know, the press was there.
33:49Unfortunately, a lot of those coffins had been disturbed by Mother Nature.
33:56Just water and things that go on, and they did not hold together very good when they were brought out of the ground.
34:03It was a pretty gruesome scene to be there and watch.
34:11Arsenic remains in the hair and the fingernails forever.
34:14I mean, it never goes away.
34:15The body can be nothing left but hair and fingernails, and arsenic will still be frozen.
34:21The results of those tests give investigators the concrete evidence they need to prove what they already suspected.
34:34Clifford Reeves died of arsenic poison.
34:39His levels were significantly elevated, and the opinion of the pathologist was,
34:46is that it was a chronic poison rather than an acute poison.
34:49And part of that has to do with the condition of different body organs and things such as that.
34:55Earl Campbell also had lethal levels of arsenic in his system, confirming what Debbie told them.
35:02McCormick said there's no question that person would have died.
35:09Detectives now have physical evidence that in addition to Townley,
35:13Reeves and Campbell all had abnormal levels of arsenic in their system.
35:17But the results on the remaining four bodies are inconclusive.
35:22We were unable to confirm that any of them died of arsenic poison.
35:26Some indications that it did, but we're unable to confirm that.
35:30And one unexpected result stands out to investigators.
35:35Vincent Bell had actually had some level of arsenic,
35:38but he had also died of a particular kind of cancer, of lung cancer, which could also mimic that.
35:45I think everybody was a bit surprised when they found that Vincent Bell had traces of arsenic,
35:51because everybody thought that that was sort of her one love.
35:55On August 21st, 1984, police arrest Lynette Bell and indict her on one count of attempted murder
36:03and two counts of second-degree murder.
36:06Her bond is set at $200,000, the highest ever in Rapides Parish at the time.
36:13But can the prosecution convince a jury that this little old lady is a serial killer?
36:20No one expected that, not her attorney or anyone.
36:26She knew that you had to pay for your sins.
36:28The investigation into the death of 43-year-old Mountville Townley
36:45has taken detectives down a dark and twisted path.
36:50At the end of it is Lynette Bell, a woman once thought to be a good Samaritan,
36:55now charged with killing at least three men.
36:59Lynette was indicted on second-degree murder for Townley and Reeves,
37:04and then she was also indicted for attempted second-degree murder for Earl Campbell.
37:11Earl Campbell killed himself before he died of arsenic poison,
37:14but we had significant evidence the reason he killed himself was because of the arsenic poison.
37:19And that's why we filed the attempt murder charge on her for Mr. Campbell.
37:25In order to make sure any conviction I received was nice and clean and would survive an appeal,
37:32I decided to separate out count one, try it, using the arson as other crimes evidence,
37:38and if necessary, come back and try the other two together later on.
37:43You had an eyewitness, saw her pour the poison in the whiskey and saw him be drinking,
37:49and the forensics said that he had arsenic in his body, and that was a cause of death.
37:57What more could you ask for?
38:01While Lynette maintains her innocence, a guilty verdict for Townley's murder would mean a life sentence.
38:08But the prosecution's star witness is beginning to get cold feet.
38:12Miss Bell's daughter, who was the primary informer of all these acts that she had committed,
38:19she told us how afraid she was a mother to the point of where the police had to put her up
38:24so that her mother couldn't find her.
38:27After she told the story, when she began to realize that she might have to testify,
38:33actually go to court and testify against her mother,
38:36she became a lot less accessible and a little bit more difficult.
38:41The trial was postponed so many times.
38:45You know, they schedule it, postpone it, schedule it, postpone it.
38:49It went on for years and years.
38:54In 1985, while Lynette sits in jail awaiting trial,
38:59tragedy strikes the family once again when her daughter Susan suddenly passes away.
39:04She didn't make it to 30 years old.
39:08You know, just physical problems from all those hard years of living.
39:15Susan died in 1985 before the age of 30.
39:18And it's unclear how she died.
39:23She was upset.
39:24She tried to hide it, but what can you do?
39:27You know, she just said she was sorry that she didn't want to be there and she wanted to come home.
39:34Lynette's trial is finally set to begin in the fall of 1988.
39:39But on September 22nd of that year, she surprises everyone by entering a guilty plea.
39:46Lynette cited the reason that she pleaded guilty was because she was sick
39:50and she just didn't want to keep going through this trial that might make her worse.
39:53And she also said she was trying to protect her daughter Debbie from having to testify her at a trial.
39:57She knew that you had to pay for your sins and that the things that you do wrong,
40:04they come back and you will pay for them and you have to, you know, square up with that at some point in your life.
40:13That resolution which we reached was that she would plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter
40:18and the judge would determine what the sentence would be.
40:22After her guilty plea, the court ordered a pre-sentence investigation,
40:26which was conducted by Probation Officer Mike Wim.
40:30He called her evil and thought she was the devil incarnate and didn't get much better after that.
40:36Once the defense saw that, they realized that their sentence is likely to be more than they expect.
40:43So they filed a motion to withdraw the guilty plea based on the fact that Ms. Bell allegedly did not know what she was doing
40:52because she had suffered a series of many strokes.
40:56Lynette is released on bond while awaiting a decision from the judge.
41:01So I asked my investigator, Mike Rogers, to follow her.
41:06And the day before the sentencing, he followed her all morning long,
41:10where she walked down some steps from a second floor apartment,
41:14got into a car, drove to the grocery store, parked in the parking lot,
41:20got a grocery cart, went in, shopped, came back out with the grocery cart.
41:24Then she drove home and carried them up the stairs.
41:27The next day, she came to court in a wheelchair, said she couldn't walk.
41:34She couldn't even put on her own bra.
41:35In which time, I produced the photographs that Mr. Rogers had taken.
41:41The judge denies Lynette's request to withdraw her plea,
41:45sentencing her instead to the maximum penalty allowed.
41:49She was sentenced to 21 years at hard labor.
41:58Lynette's reign of terror was finally over, but the question remained.
42:02How does a 68-year-old Christian woman turn into a cold-blooded killer?
42:10There was really no motive other than she was just mean and didn't like men.
42:17My theory is that she's evil.
42:21She's an evil serial killer.
42:23She mistreated these men terribly.
42:26She used them up and she killed them.
42:28She just seemed like she enjoyed abusing them.
42:33When people are serial killers or killers in general, there's a specific target.
42:38And the target that Lynette generally chose was these men who were down on their luck.
42:43She was put in on this facade of being this church-going good person
42:48who is reaching out to these men.
42:50She was a predatory killer.
42:52I would like to be an advocate for my mother-in-law
42:56and to say something good that would make people feel like,
43:00well, she wasn't such a bad person.
43:03But I really can't.
43:05I can't think of one person that was in her close sphere
43:09that came away intact after knowing her.
43:12Every person that was close to her has lost something in her wake.
43:20I could not like that.
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