by Gitta Sereny
“This gives you some indication of the sort of girl she is,” Mr. Lyons said, and that concluded the first day of the trial.
Femwood Reception Centre, where Mary spent the nine days and two weekends of her trial (while Norma remained at the Mental Hospital throughout), is a large well-equipped Victorian house set in a lovely big garden in Jesmond, a residential district of Newcastle. Under the authority of Newcastle’s excellent Children’s Department, Fernwood is used for children of school age who come there primarily because of sudden family emergencies and does not need or have “special provisions for high degree security.”
Mary was sent there in spite of this drawback because it was within a few minutes drive from the Court, which might make it less tiring for her; because being in Newcastle and in its own grounds it would be easier to patrol; and above all because, on the top floor, separated from the rest of the house by a lockable door, was a small flat—with bedroom, sitting room, and bath—where she could be kept in isolation from other children for the period of the trial.
The carpeted and cheery bedroom, the window looking out onto the drive and neighboring houses, like the rest of the house light and comfortable, had been equipped for her benefit with television. In the sitting room next door, used mainly on weekends, the window looked down over gardens to a cemetery beyond.
Fourteen policewomen guarded Mary in eight-hour shifts during the days and nights of the trial, when for very good reasons she was never to be left alone for a moment, was not allowed to communicate with any other child or outsider, and was only allowed brief meetings with her family, under guard, in a waiting room off the Court. Policewomen are carefully trained to deal with women and children in times of stress. This may well be why many of the things Mary said to some of them are more revealing than anything she is known to have said at that time to anyone else. It is also a fact that many of Newcastle’s policewomen happen to be exceptionally good-looking and that Mary usually responds very positively to good looks in men or women. Of course, almost everything she said—or did—during this period had significance. And, had more been known about her to begin with, her conversations, behavior, and acts during the hours she spent with these observant young women might have been accorded the importance they deserved and—if taken into account—might have helped the people who later had to decide her fate.
Policewoman Mary S. guarded her twice at weekends, from eight A.M. to four P.M. “We had been advised not to talk to Mary about the trial but I thought it couldn’t possibly hurt her to talk,” she said. “It would probably hurt her more not to talk. We talked about a great many things. One could hardly believe that this was a child of eleven—she talked more like someone of sixteen.”
They were supposed to stay next to her even when she went to the lavatory. “Some of the policewomen were frightened of Mary, I never was,” Mary S. said. “I trusted her and I told her so. She was very intelligent, you know. That first Saturday morning, she was watching the ‘Learn French’ course on television and she picked up French words, you know, and spoke them perfectly, and understood them too. The only thing, she had a funny way of staring at me, through me; that was strange. And then, she was always wanting to have baths. Both times I was with her from eight to four, she suddenly said she wanted a bath in the middle of the day. I thought that was interesting, you know. But I said no, she couldn’t.”
All the policewomen wrote formal reports. “But nobody ever asked us questions about her, nothing about what she said or what we thought or noticed.”
“Just as if nobody wanted to know,” said one perceptive girl. These formal reports wouldn’t have included Mary’s constant talk about her family, her little brother, her aunts Cath and Audrey, and, above all, her “gran,” to all of whom she seemed exceptionally attached. She told many of the policewomen, “When it is all over I’ll go and stay with my gran in Scotland.” The reports would not have spoken of her fondness for animals or her love for her big dog. Some of the policewomen did write down that she hardly slept, but there was no place to mention her terrible restlessness in the night; her sitting “bolt upright” at the slightest sound when she finally did drop off; her mumblings in her sleep; her obviously growing anxiety as the days wore on; and finally her terror, ill-masked by the continuing cheekiness she displayed with everybody except a few of the policewomen, who, warm, pretty, and secure in themselves, offered her something she badly needed and to whom, in return, she seemed to offer a kind of affection. She tried to find points of contact with all of them, almost as if she had a compulsion to leave her “mark,” even with those she did not like. Of the girls who spent time with her, there was not a single one who did not remember something special about her, positive or negative.
“She had no feelings for people,” said Policewoman Hazel R. Hazel, as many others were to feel, could hardly bear to look at Mary, let alone touch her, and felt ashamed of this revulsion from a child. “She was a little horror, wasn’t she?” she said defensively.
Policewoman Jean Q. was a former staff nurse in a mental hospital. She guarded Mary, either from four P.M. to midnight or midnight until eight A.M. for eight days. Mary told another policewoman she didn’t like Jean Q.: “She is too bossy,” she said. But Jean did not return her dislike. Having dealt widely with disturbed children, she was particularly interested in Mary and had no doubt whatever that she belonged in hospital. “If I was still at Northgate,” she said, “I would have no hesitation whatever to take her on. And I think I could have helped her. . . .”
Policewoman Mary S. spoke of the only incident that made everyone briefly sit up and take notice. “It happened that first weekend. She was bored. She was standing at the window watching a cat make her way up the drainpipe and she asked could she bring the cat in. I thought why not, poor kid. So I said all right. We opened the window and she lifted the cat in and started to play with it on the floor, with a bit of wool. I was looking at a magazine or something and then I looked up and I saw first that she was holding the cat by the skin at the back of the neck. I thought, ‘Well, that’s how people pick up cats.’ But then I realized she was holding the cat so tight it could not breathe and its tongue was lolling. I jumped to it and tore her hands away. I said, ‘You mustn’t do that; you’ll hurt her.’ She answered, ‘Oh, she doesn’t feel that, and, anyway, I like hurting little things that can’t fight back.’”
It made one wonder again, not so much why she did such a thing even while under guard, for this may well be a compulsion, but why should a girl described as “very intelligent” and “cunning” make such a remark, which she must have known would be reported? She said something similar to another policewoman she liked, Valerie P. “She told me she’d like to be a policewoman,” Valerie said, “and I answered, ‘Well, you’ve had that.’ So she said, ‘Then I’d like to be a nurse.’ I asked her why. ‘Because then I can stick needles into people. I like hurting people.’”
At the start of the proceedings on the second day of the trial, Mr. Justice Cusack said that he understood that some of the five women jurors had not felt very well on the opening day. (Their discomfort—it had been generally noticed—had arisen when they were handed the photographs of the dead little boys.)
“I have every sympathy with you. This is not an agreeable case for anybody,” he said. “But I want to say to you, and I hope you will sympathize with me, that this is a case in which the assistance of women jurors is of very great importance. Of course women nowadays take the place of men and have the same duties to perform as citizens. If there is any lady on the Jury who really feels so ill as to be unable to discharge her duty and follow the evidence, I will reconsider the position. But I very much hope the ladies will feel they are doing a public duty in this case and will do their best to discharge it. I gather from your silence,” he said a moment later, “that you are all ready and willing to serve, and I thank you.”
Mr. Lyons’ mention of the incident at the sandpit, which occurred two weeks before t
he first murder and during which the throats of three little girls were squeezed by one of the accused girls, caused the first interruption of the trial by Mary’s mother, who broke down and began to sob. Norma turned around at once to watch her: Mary sat, if possible, even stiller than before and did not turn around even when a policewoman escorted her mother from the room.
Continuing after Betty Bell had left, Mr. Lyons said that the sandpit incident would be proved in the course of evidence by the prosecution but was not the subject of another charge. He said the prosecution would introduce it because it might show on the part of one of the girls an abnormal propensity to squeeze the throats of young children. A propensity of this kind, he said, could be valuable as a means of identification when there was no motive besides pleasure and excitement, or possibly the feeling of superiority and a child showing herself cleverer than the police.
From the point of view of propensity, the “sandpit incident,” as it became known—and the allegation of Norma’s eleven-year-old sister Susan that she too had been attacked by Mary Bell in this particular manner—were of considerable significance.
It was when children were on the witness stand—particularly of course the two accused—that one became increasingly uneasy about the incongruity of a trial where a jury was required to evaluate the words and thought processes of children in adult terms. For realizing that, on the basis of legal procedure as it exists in Britain, facts alone establish guilt or innocence, one began to question the validity of such a system with regard to children accused of capital (or any other) crime. While it was certainly possible to establish certain facts—that is: two little boys had been killed; several little girls had been attacked; a series of bizarre notes had been written, etc.—it did not follow from there that adults untrained in the ways and problems of disturbed children could possibly gauge degrees of guilt, or understand motives, and it began to seem indefensible to accuse or convict a child on the same terms as an adult, without understanding all the background of her life, her way of thinking, and the pressures that might have led to her crime.
It is important to remember that for young children it is not the formality of taking the oath that decides whether or not they are going to tell the truth. Their truthfulness is determined—indeed is predetermined—quite simply by whether or not they are truthful children; that is, children who are growing up in an environment where being truthful is a matter of course. To a great many children lies are not at all “lies” in the adult moral sense, but merely fantasy. This does not mean that all children—from whatever environment—do not tell lies at times. But it does mean at least that, for a child who comes from a “truth-oriented” environment, telling a lie under these particular conditions and in answer to a direct question, would be a conscious act—and not easy—while children whose immediate environment is not “truth-oriented” would not necessarily be particularly troubled by such a lie but would consider it a normal, not to say automatic, way of “getting the better” of authority, or of dramatizing themselves in a situation where their own role would otherwise seem negligible. Basically Norma Bell comes from a truth-oriented environment.
It was 2:22 P.M. on Wednesday, 11 December, the fourth day of the trial, when she was called for her examination-in-chief by her counsel. She wore a red dress and yellow cardigan and as always looked beseechingly left and right as her police escort walked her to the witness stand. The room grew silent. Her parents quietly left the Court (they were to sit silently in the snack bar while Norma gave her evidence). Her grandmother stayed.
As Norma, her policewoman escort next to her, stood (very pale and already crying) just a few feet away from the Judge in the witness box, Mr. Justice Cusack leaned forward and spoke to her quietly and gently.
“Norma, I want to say something to you before you start telling us what you have to say. When you went to school, were you taught about God?”
“School and Church,” she whispered.
“You were taught about God. Do you know what the Bible is?”
“Yes.”
“And if you take the Bible and say that you will promise before God to tell the truth, what does that mean?”
“I must tell the truth.”
“Yes, you must tell the truth. She may be sworn. . . . Norma, you can sit down,” he said, after the oath had been administered, and waited until she had been seated on the chair which had a large cushion on it so as to bring the children well up into view.
“You are going to be asked some questions,” he then continued, gently. “If you feel tired and feel that you do not want to go on, or feel that you want to go outside for a few minutes, will you tell the lady who is sitting beside you? Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Norma, your full name is Norma Joyce Bell, is it not?” said R. P. Smith, her counsel.
“Yes.” Her voice could hardly be heard.
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you live at 68 Whitehouse Road, Newcastle?”
“Yes.”
“Have you lived there for about two years?”
“Yes.”
“And you live with your mother and father?”
“Yes.”
“And five brothers, have you?”
“Yes.”
“And five sisters?”
“Yes.”
“All the time you lived there, has a girl called May or Mary Bell lived next door?”
“Yes.”
“Number seventy?”
“Yes.”
“Do you call her Mary or do you call her May?”
“Both.”
“Have you played together?”
“Yes.”
“And you are thirteen, Norma?”
“Yes.”
“When is your birthday?”
“March thirty-first.”
“You will be fourteen next March, will you?”
“Yes.”
“You go to school but not the same school as May?”
“I have just left the school; I have just left Mary’s.”
R. P. Smith questioned her in detail about the sandpit incident, and she said that she had never touched any of the three little girls but that she had seen Mary squeeze their necks. Much later she was again questioned about the sandpit incident, this time by Mr. Lyons. He was always direct, logical, detached, and quick in his examination. Mary—one felt—at times almost enjoyed sparring with him, but Norma was terrified.
“Norma, I want to ask you about the time Mary squeezed Pauline’s throat,” he said. “Did she put both hands around the girl’s throat?”
“Changed them, changing from one hand to two.”
“Changed hands, did she?” asked Mr. Justice Cusack (to emphasize her reply for the Jury), and Mr. Lyons too repeated, “Changed from one hand to two.”
“Did she ever have both hands on at the same time with Pauline?” the Judge asked again.
(These questions were put because medical evidence on Brian Howe had shown that his death was brought about by simultaneous pressure on the neck and on his nose. They were intended to establish whether there was any precedent of Mary’s exerting this pressure with one hand, leaving one hand free to hold the child’s nose.)
“She still used two hands, one each time,” Norma answered Mr. Justice Cusack’s question.
“. . . Is this right,” said Mr. Lyons again, “did you say Mary put both hands round the girl’s throat and squeezed?”
“Changed her hands,” Norma repeated, her voice a mixture of stubbornness and fatigue.
“This is in the sandpit,” Mr. Justice Cusack asked again, obviously concerned lest she mixed up the different incidents which were being referred to.
“One each time,” she answered again.
“It is Cindy I am thinking of now, not Pauline,” said Mr. Lyons. “Do you remember when she squeezed Cindy’s throat?”
“I don’t know Cindy.”
“What?”
“I don’t know Cindy, but still a girl there.” (She meant there was a girl there, but she didn’t know her name.)
“A girl there. How many girls did Mary do that to in succession? Was it three different girls?”
“Two at first.”
“Two at first. Then one afternoon—let’s take the first one: that was Pauline, was it?”
“No, the first one was Cindy.”
“Was Cindy, yes. When Mary squeezed Cindy’s throat, did Mary put both hands round her throat?”
“I forget.”
“. . . Then, when Mary went to Pauline, did she put both hands round Pauline’s throat?”
“Changes.”
“Was there a time when she had both hands and was squeezing Pauline with both hands?”
Norma nodded and Mr. Justice Cusack said, “She nods.”
“You nod, yes?” asked Mr. Lyons.
“Yes.”
“And did Mary do the same to Susan?”
“Yes, but I was not there all the time. I was behind the shed.”
“Did you know that was a wrong thing for Mary to do?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think Mary was a very wicked girl for doing that? Did you?”
Mr. Justice Cusack intervened (as he did on many occasions when he felt that counsels’ language was too ornate for a child’s understanding or their manner too pressing). “Did you think she was very naughty to do it?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Norma replied.
“Did Mary ever talk about killing little boys or girls?”
“She shakes her head, no,” said Judge Cusack.
“No,” repeated Mr. Lyons. “Did she ever show you how little boys or girls could be killed? Did she ever show you that?”
Norma didn’t answer. “Did she, Norma?” asked the Judge.
“Yes,” Norma murmured.
“She is murmuring yes,” said the Judge.
“Well,” said Mr. Lyons, “that was a very naughty thing to do, wasn’t it, to think of killing little boys and girls and talk about it?”
