Product Description

In 1968, 11-year-old Mary Bell was found guilty of the manslaughter of two young boys. This study asks why one child would murder another, and provides the background to the Bell case. The author also gives her account of the case of James Bulger, now that the debate has tragically re-opened.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37163 in Books
• Published on: 1995-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
Unlike the Moors murders, the story of Mary Bell, eleven, who in the company of her friend - not sister - Norma Bell, killed two little boys of three and four at an interval of more than two months, was muffled in the press. It was too unthinkable. And actually Miss Sereny who covered the trial and followed it up for three years never raises her voice above a quiet rebuke at the world which neglected this child - her mother, teachers and the society at large where until recently there have not existed the right facilities in which to confine and perhaps rehabilitate her. Mary Bell is a psychopath and her condition has never been properly separated from her crime, reviewed here along with the extensive Assizes trial in Newcastle where both girls blamed each other but only Mary - intelligent, variable ("I couldn't hurt a fly" or "I like hurting people") but above all manipulative - committed the strangulations. And as she most rightly declared, "I've got no feelings." With less wide-ranging social commentary than Pamela Hansford Johnson's On Iniquity (1967) but equal regret, author Sereny discusses the aftermath for each family involved and in particular Mary's own terrible history - a mother as disturbed as the child and the various prefatory "accidents" since Mary's infancy. She has also informed it with caution (we cannot afford sentimentality) as weft as compassion and cool reason. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
In 1968, 11-year-old Mary Bell was found guilty of the manslaughter of two young boys. This study asks why one child would murder another, and provides the background to the Bell case. The author also gives her account of the case of James Bulger, now that the debate has tragically re-opened.