This podcast details true crime cases.

It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

This episode contains explicit language.

It is not intended for children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for our continued series, Killer Kids.

This is Chapter 2, Mary Bell. Mary Flora Bell was born

May 26, 1957. She lived in Northeast England in Newcastle-Pondheim. Her neighborhood was called

Scottswood. The area where the Bells lived had not changed a whole lot since the war.

It was quite a blighted area with many abandoned and crumbling buildings. Scotswood's children often played in the rubble unsupervised.

This scenario is reminiscent of the type of environment young Jesse Pomeroy lived in way back in the late 1800s that I outlined in

episode five. There was a high number of petty crimes and public drunkenness attributed to the

local population in Scottswood. Darylicks lived in the abandoned buildings that dotted the neighborhood.

Mary, who was called May by her family, was 11 years old in the summer of 1968.

Mary lived with her mother, Betty, and her stepfather, Billy Bell, who married Betty when Mary was only a baby.

Mary's father was never in her life, and there was even some dispute as to his name, either Jimmy or Johnny.

Betty was only 17 years old when she gave birth to Mary. Take this thing away from me,

Betty was reported as saying, when the newborn was placed into her arms for the first time. Mary's

mother was often gone. She had a history of being flaky and unable to take care of her now, two children.

Mary's brother was born before Mary was two years old. Mary and her brother were

often left with either her stepfather, Billy, or her maternal grandmother, her aunt Kath and

Uncle Jack, her uncle's Issa, Audrey, and Margaret, and her uncle Philip. They all loved Mary and

...