After searching on the Internet for young murderers, this true story of a 10 year old girl who murdered two boys caught my attention. It has really grasped my imagination and I want to use a similar background for the child in my film. The monochrome photograph below of Mary Bell looks really edgy. I will want to take a photo of the actor in the same way - I have in mind a girl called Vanessa. I will want shots of Vanessa's face in the same pose facing the camera in my film to try to really make the viewer feel eerie and unnerved.
Bell's mother Betty was a prostitute who was often absent from the family home. Independent accounts from family members suggest strongly that Betty had attempted to kill Mary and make her death look accidental more than once. Mary herself says her mother forced her to engage in sex acts with men from the age of five.
Mary Bell was convicted of strangling toddler Martin Brown on May 25, 1968, when she was 10 years old.
On July 31, 1968, she took part in the death, again by strangulation, of three-year-old Brian Howe. Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had gone back after killing him to carve an "M" in his stomach with a razor, as well as use scissors to cut off bits of his hair and scrape part of his genitals.
Mary Bell was convicted of manslaughter on December 17th, 1968. She was found guilty not of murder, but of "manslaughter due to diminished responsibility," the jury taking their lead from her diagnosis by court-appointed psychiatrists who described her as displaying "classic symptoms of psychopathology".
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