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On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Mary Bell strangled four-year-old Martin Brown in a derelict house. She was believed to have committed this crime alone. Between that time and a second killing, she and a friend, Norma Joyce Bell (no relation), aged 13, broke into and vandalised a nursery in Scotswood, leaving notes that claimed responsibility for the killing. The police dismissed this incident as a prank.

On 31 July 1968, the pair took part in the death, again by strangling, of three-year-old Brian Howe, on wasteland in the same Scotswood area.Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had later returned to his body to carve an "N" into his stomach with a razor; this was then changed using the same razor but with a different hand to an "M". Mary Bell also used a pair of scissors to cut off some of Howe's hair, scratch his legs, and mutilate his penis. As the girls were so young and their testimonies contradicted each other, the precise details of what happened have never been entirely clear.

An open verdict had originally been recorded for Brown's death as there was no evidence of foul play although Bell had strangled him, her grip was not hard enough to leave any marks.Eventually, his death was linked with Howe's killing and in August 1968 the two girls were charged with two counts of manslaughter.

On 17 December 1968, at Newcastle Assizes, Norma Bell was acquitted but Mary Bell was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, the jury taking their lead from her diagnosis by court-appointed psychiatrists who described her as displaying "classic symptoms of psychopathy". The judge, Mr. Justice Cusack, described her as dangerous and said she posed a "very grave risk to other children". She was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment. She was initially sent to Red Bank secure unit in St. Helens, Lancashire.

After her conviction, Bell was the focus of a great deal of attention from the British press and also from the German Stern magazine. Her mother repeatedly sold stories about her to the press and often gave reporters writings she claimed to be Mary's. Bell herself made headlines when, in September 1977, she briefly absconded from Moore Court open prison, where she had been held since her transfer from a young offenders institution to an adult prison a year earlier. Her penalty for this was a loss of prison privileges for 28 days.

For a time, Bell also lived in a girls' remand home at Cumberlow Lodge in South Norwood (in a house built by Victorian inventor William Stanley)

In 1980, Bell, aged 23, was released from Askham Grange open prison, having served 12 years. She was granted anonymity (including a new name) to start a new life with her daughter, who was born on 25 May 1984. Bell's daughter did not know of her mother's past until Bell's location was discovered by reporters and she and her mother had to leave their house with bed sheets over their heads.

Bell's daughter's anonymity was originally protected only until she reached the age of 18. However, on 21 May 2003, Bell won a High Court battle to have her own anonymity and that of her daughter extended for life. Any court order permanently protecting the identity of a convict is consequently sometimes known as a "Mary Bell order".

In 2009, it was reported that Bell had become a grandmother.

You can read her story in more detail here.

Brenda Ann Spencer is a convicted American spree killer who committed multiple murders from her home in San Diego, California on January 29, 1979. During the shooting spree, she killed two people and injured nine others at Cleveland Elementary School, which was located across the street from her home. Spencer showed no remorse for her crime, and her explanation for her actions was I dont like Mondays; this livens up the day, inspiring the song I Dont Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats. Click here to listen to I Dont Like Mondays.

Born in San Diego, Spencer purportedly took an early liking to guns. For Christmas in 1978, her father Wallace gave her a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle.Before parole board 1999, she said: I asked for a radio and he brought me a gun. I felt like he wanted me to kill myself. On January 29, 1979, Brenda sat by a window and began shooting at Grover Cleveland Elementary School. She opened fire as children were waiting outside for principal Burton Wragg to open the gate.The shooting claimed the lives of Wragg and Mike Suchar, and injured eight students and a police officer. Spencer barricaded herself inside her home, warning police that she was going to come out shooting. Ultimately, she surrendered to police.
When asked why she committed the gun attack Spencer replied, I just did it for the fun of it. I dont like Mondays. This livens up the day. I have to go now. I shot a pig [policeman] I think and I want to shoot more. Im having too much fun [to surrender]. She also said, I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun, It was just like shooting ducks in a pond, and, [The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings. At the time of the shootings, Spencer was 16 years old. She was tried as an adult. She implied the attacks months before: One of these mornings, youre gonna look for me, no one understands me you dont have to wait very long to see what is going on with me. She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. She was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life. She is at the California Institution for Women. After becoming eligible for parole in 1993, Spencer was denied four times, the last on August 13, 2009 and will not be eligible again until 2019.

The youngest person ever charged with multiple counts of murder in Canada, then 12 year old Jasmine Richardson, and her then 23 year old boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke murdered not only her parents, Marc and Debra, but also her 8 year old brother Jacob in cold blood.

On April 23rd, 2006, the bodies of Marc and Debra Richardson, and their 8 year old son Jacob, were discovered in their home, by a 6 year old boy who saw their bodies lying on the floor through a window. Marc and Debra's lifeless bodies were discovered lying on the ground on the first floor, while little Jacob was found upstairs, lying on a bed. The police discovered that the couple's 12 year old daughter, Jasmine Richardson, was missing from the home, and they feared that she had possibly been abducted. However, evidence started piling up quickly that ruled kidnapping out, and pointed to her involvement in the murders.

The next day on April 24th, 2006, Jasmine and her boyfriend Jeremy were located 100 miles away, and both were arrested and charged with 3 counts of first degree murder.

23 year old murderous boyfriend of Jasmine Richardson & self proclaimed 300 year werewolf.
What Happened & Why? "I loved him so much, I thought it would bring us closer together".
23 year old Jeremy Steinke, who was part of the goth crowd, and also proclaimed he was a 300 year old werewolf, purportedly met 12 year old Jasmine Richardson at a punk rock concert in 2006. Jasmine immediately became enamored with him, and with the goth lifestyle. They were in love; behind bars awaiting trial, Jeremy even proposed to Jasmine through jailhouse letters they exchanged. She accepted.

When Jasmine's family found out about her 23 year old werewolf boyfriend, they became furious, grounding her, and forbidding her from seeing him. For Jasmine, and Jeremy, this was reason enough for them to die.

Though Jasmine had discussed with her friends, on more than one occasion, that she was planning on killing her parents, none of them ever took her seriously. During the trial, she would claim that she never meant it; it was just "stupid talk". Unfortunately for her parents, and her younger brother, it became a reality.

While searching for evidence, and looking for a motive for the gruesome murders, the police came across multiple online accounts that belonged to both Jasmine and Jeremy. It would be easy to assume that Jeremy, being the older one in the relationship, was the one who came up with the plan, but their online accounts told a different tale. Amongst the most telling were two messages; the first message, sent from Jasmine to Jeremy read "I have this plan. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you." The other message was posted on a Windows Live Spaces account belonging to Jeremy, where he had written;

"Payment! My Lover's rents are totally unfair; they say that they really care; they don't know what is going on the just assume. As their greed continues to consume, she is slowly going insane. She continues to thank that I came, into her life to help her out, and to stop what they keep trying to shout. It's all total bullshit. Their throats I want to slit. They will regret the shit they have done. Especially when I see to it that they are gone. They shall pay for their insulince. Finally there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment!"

Less than a month later, Jasmine's parents paid with their blood, just as Jeremy had written. On that fateful night, Steinke first attacked Jasmine's mother & father downstairs, stabbing them both to death. He then went upstairs, where Jasmine proceeded to stab her 8 year old brother Jacob in the chest, while he pled for his life. Jeremy then finished him off by slitting his throat. Jasmine testified in court that he was gurgling. She stated that the reason for their decision to kill her brother was that she thought it was cruel to leave him to live without his parents. Two hours after the death of her parents and brother, Jasmine and Jeremy were laughing and kissing at a nearby restaurant.

At trial, when she was asked why they murdered her parents and little brother, Jasmine said "I loved him so much. I thought it would bring us closer together".

Jasmine Richardson went on trial in June of 2007. She was 14 years old at the time. She pled not guilty to 3 counts of first degree murder. The trial lasted approximately a month, and in July of 2007, after 3 hours of deliberation, the jury brought back the verdict: Guilty on all 3 counts.

In November of 2007, Jasmine was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, which is the maximum sentenced allowed by the Youth Criminal Justice act. The act states that any convicts who were under the age of 14 at the time they committed the act cannot be charged as adults, and can be given a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Jasmine's sentence included credit for 18 months for time served, with 4 years to be spent in a psychiatric facility, followed by 4 and 1/2 years where she will be under conditional supervision in the community. As of the writing of this article in November, 2010, Jasmine has one year left to complete of the 4 years required by her sentence in a psychiatric facility, and will then be serving her time under conditional supervision in the community. In 2015, she will have completed her sentence, and be released at the age of 23.

In December of 2008, Jasmine Richardson's boyfriend and accomplice in the murder of her parents and her brother, Jeremy Steinke, was found guilty of 3 counts of first degree murder, and sentenced to 3 concurrent life sentences in prison. He will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years.

Jasmine Richardson, as per the guidelines of her sentencing, has now been released and is serving time under conditional supervision in the community. Canada's youngest convicted multiple-murderer has, as of September 2011, became a freshman at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. Now 18 years old, it has been 6 years since Jasmine and her boyfriend murdered her parents and her little brother.

At the age of 12, he had tied up and tortured several young boys in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He mercilessly beat his victims, and permanently maimed them by slashing with a knife or by knocking out teeth.
After moving to South Boston in 1872, he continued to capture and torture more boys, all between the ages of seven and eleven. According to the April 24, 1874 New York Times, Pomeroy had "stripped, gagged, tied to a telegraph pole, whipped and cut with a knife in the head" one of his young victims. Pomeroy's father worked in a market in downtown, and his mother became a respectable dress maker in South Boston.

The July 6, 1875, Baltimore Sun describes how Pomeroy deceived and tortured one of his victims: "He met one little boy, when there was snow on the ground and the thermometer near zero, standing looking into a window; he told him a story as to how a man wanted a bundle carried a short distance, and as he had a sled with him he would give the boy a quarter if he would assist him. Consent being given he led this boy away some two miles to a shed, entered and made the boy strip to the skin, tied him up, took out his knife, stuck it into each cheek, drawing it away looking at the point to see the blood, then caused the little fellow to don his clothing, placed him on the sled, and drew him to the boy's own door and left him."
Eventually the police arrested Jesse, and he was convicted and sentenced to six years at the Boys Reform School at Westborough, Massachusetts. Pomeroy was very intelligent, and because of good behavior, was released after serving only one year and five months.
At age 14, on April 23, 1874, Jesse Pomeroy tortured and brutally murdered a four-year old boy in a marsh in Dorchester Bay. The boy was stabbed several times and his body mutilated. During the immediate police investigation, the murder scene footprints indicated: "The tracks showed plainly that Pomeroy jumped off the wharf into the soft clay, and then took his little victim down, lending assistance by a swing of the arms. The boots of the murdered boy exactly fitted the smaller prints and corresponded precisely with the plaster casts taken from the prints." Mud in Pomeroy's boot soles also matched the curious color of the mud at the crime scene. Later that day, Pomeroy was taken to the coroner's office to view the body. He then confessed to the murder and said he wiped blood from his knife by dipping it in the mud.
In July 1874, Jesse Pomeroy also confessed to the slaying of a 10-year old girl who had been missing since March. He had coaxed her into the basement of his mother's dress shop, cut her throat, and then buried her under an ash heap.
When asked why he committed the murders he simply stated "I couldn't help it."
A sensational trial took place and Jesse Pomeroy was found guilty in December 1874. He was sentenced to death, but Governor William Gaston would not sign his death warrant due to his age of only 14. The frustrated Governor's Council, which could legally commute Pomeroy's sentence to life in prison, voted twice to affirm Pomeroy's death sentence. A third anonymous vote in 1876 by the council did commute his sentence, and Jesse spent the next 56 years in prison for the brutal murders.

The grim details of the crime, the age of the perpetrators and their two-year-old victim ensured the case provoked universal grief and anger. The CCTV image of Bulger being led away by the hand became etched in the public consciousness as media coverage of the crime and subsequent trial reached fever pitch. Newspapers sought to reflect the mood of the nation by labelling the killers variously as "evil", "beasts" and "bastards".

The trial and the unbearable suffering it detailed after being kicked, beaten and stoned, James's body was left on a railway track for his body to be cut in two were covered in forensic detail. Given the public mood it was no surprise when Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, their identities only revealed after sentencing, were ordered to be detained without limit. Mr Justice Moreland said the boys, both 10 at the time of the murder, were guilty of an act of "unparalleled evil and barbarity". Recommending they serve a minimum of eight years, he suggested "violent video films" might be at least partly to blame.

The Guardian leader comment the next day said the chilling murder "unlocked all kinds of primitive fears about the aggressive urges in young children" but warned against James's death being "an excuse for reversing 10 years of criminal justice policy. A system designed to deal with five million crimes must not be steered by one." It also cited the case of Mary Bell, aged 11 when convicted of manslaughter in 1968, as proof that rehabilitation could work.

Lord Taylor of Gosforth, who was lord chief justice, increased the minimum tariff in the Bulger case to 10 years. But that was not enough to dampen the clamour for a tougher sentence. Almost 280,000 people signed a petition demanding that the boys be locked up for good and 20,000 Sun readers completed coupons saying "life should mean life".

In that febrile atmosphere, Michael Howard, who was home secretary, raised it again to 15 years in July 1994 but that was quashed by the House of Lords after judicial review proceedings in 1997. Two years later the European court of human rights (ECHR) ruled that Venables and Thompson did not receive a fair trial and that Howard had breached human rights by intervening to raise the sentences of the killers. Jack Straw, the home secretary at the time of the ECHR ruling, had been preparing to set a new minimum tariff but he handed over responsibility to the lord chief justice in the wake of the judgment. Lord Woolf paved the way for their early release when he ruled in October 2000 that their minimum term had expired, describing the facts of their crime as "exceptionally horrific" but referring to the boys' age at the time as "the one overriding mitigating factor".

After a threat by James's father, Ralph, to hunt down his son's killers, Venables and Thompson won a high court order in January 2001 protecting their anonymity for life once they were freed with new identities. The judge, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, said she was "convinced that their lives are genuinely at risk as well as their physical safety if their new identities and whereabouts became public knowledge".

In its leader the next day Guardian set out its reasons for declining to join the four newspapers that asked the high court to lift the injunction protecting the anonymity of the killers. The paper noted: "Free speech is important but so is the protection of life Rehabilitating the two remains the best public protection."

On 23 June 2001 Ralph and Denise Bulger were told of the parole board's decision to release Thompson and Venables, by then both aged 18. The conditions of their licence included a ban on them contacting the Bulger family or each other, or visiting Merseyside without the written consent of their probation officers.
The Guardian leader dubbed it "a humane release". "The Bulger family was understandably unhappy with the decision," it said. "Their lawyers have not helped with their thirst for retribution. They should take note of medical studies, which show some form of forgiveness is needed for scars to heal."

Alex and Derek King case is another distortion of the ugly face of our society. Alex and Derek King (12 and 13 at that time) beat their father Terry King to death with an aluminum baseball bat. Brothers Alex and Derek King, pleaded guilty to 3rd degree murder in the death of their dad.

According to Alex and Derek king wikipedia report the boys then set fire to the familys home, in Cantonment, Florida (near Pensacola) in hopes of concealing their crime. Ricky Chavis, a family friend, was convicted of being an accessory to the murder after he hid the boys in his trailer home after the murder and washed the blood from their clothes. Chavis was also accused of molesting Alex King, but later acquitted.

Alex king and Derek king claimed that they committed the murder to end mental abuse including being stared down and spanked. Both brothers pleaded guilty to third degree murder. Alex King was released on April 9, 2008 after serving six years for his part in his fathers death. Derek King was released in March, 2009 after serving seven years for his part in his fathers death.

On Monday, December 1, 1997 fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on a group of praying students, killing three and injuring five more at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky. Michael wrapped a shotgun and a rifle in a blanket and took them to school. When he arrived he fired eight rounds at a youth prayer group: three girls died and five others were wounded. After dropping the gun on the ground, Michael said: Kill me, please. I cant believe I did that. Among the deceased were 14-year-old Nicole Hadley, 17-year-old Jessica James and 15-year-old Kayce Steger. Michael was bullied by other students, diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized several times due to psychosis. Watch murderabilia serial killers ink on news

Weeks before the incident, Michael stole a .38 handgun from his parents room and tried to sell it at school. Michael told students that something big is going to happen on Monday but no one took him seriously. In October 1998, Judge Jeff Hines accepted a plea of guilty from Michael. Under a plea arrangement, Michael received a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 25 years (2023). Michael was transported to the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange. In 2007, Michael filed an appeal claiming that he was too mentally ill to plead guilty to the shooting at Heath High School and asked the Kentucky Supreme Court for a re-trial; his request was rejected. Michael had in his locker at the time a copy of Stephen Kings novel Rage and after the shooting King requested his publisher to allow it to go out of print.

Jeremy T. Ellis, a 10th grader: He was this goofy kid that did silly stuff. He thought it would be cool to walk down the halls shooting people. He told me he would get keys to peoples houses, unlock the door, and steal medication and money. You look back and you see all these things that were warning signs but you didnt realize them at the time.

Matthew T. Barnett, a 10th grader: Michael said we should go to the office and shoot them. I said Yeah, yeah, but didnt think anything about it. Its just idle conversation. I mean, Im sure people say random things like that, not meaning anytthing. And people dont take them seriously.

In 1998, 14-year-old Joshua Phillips bludgeoned his 8-year-old neighbor, and then hid her body beneath his waterbed. Seven days later his mother noticed something leaking from beneath the bed.Joshua claimed that's he'd accidentally hit Maddie in the eye with a baseball. She screamed and he panicked.He then dragged her to his home where he hit her with a bat and then stabbed her eleven times.His story failed to convince a Florida jury, who convicted him of first-degree murder.