An interesting observation draws parallel to the Mary Bell case (11yo female serial killer in the UK) and Nannie Doss ( American serial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people between 1927 and 1954).
Despite the obvious evidence of abuse suffered during the offenders’ childhood, a less talked about viewpoint is that they both suffered head injury.
Mary Bell
Mary Bell was dropped from 1st floor window by her mother at the age of around three (1960).
Here is my reply to a reddit discussion regarding this matter:
I immediately thought of this when I read about her early life but it's so rarely talked about - head trauma causing personality change: anxiety, anger, irritability, impulsive and risky behaviour - due to damages to the frontal lobe that controls morality and reasoning.
Personality change in post Traumatic Brain Injury occurs in 59.1% of patients
(reference needs to be checked)
A recent example I've heard of is Nannie Dose case where she was involved in a car accident in her childhood where she hit her head on a metal bar resulting many years of headaches, blackouts, depression (reference to be checked)
Nancy “Nannie Doss” Hazle
In addition to the physical injury that may have caused a “change” in personality or characteristics, it’s not to be missed that both offenders have excelling people skills. Mary Bell was described as an “intellegent, mannipulative” psychopathic child by psychiatrist Dr. Orton; whereas Nannie Doss masked her dark side behind a warm smile and friendly personality as she silently kill everyone around her (including her own blood).
Mary Bell was released at the age of 23 on account of good behaviour serving her life sentence in an institution, had a daughter and later granddaughter living under alias and jurisditory protection. If she was truely a mannipulative child psychopath, could she have really been “re-educated” back to a normal life? Was there ever suspicions of coersion where she could have mannipulated her parol staff? What are the measures in place to keep track of her on-going good conduct for the rest of her life?
Mary Bell at the age of 16
Mary Bell (circa 1980)
23/06/2026 21h00
To answer my own question regarding Mary Bell’s psychopathy and reinsertion into society, I am including the following response I have given in the student forum for my course content.
Hi @___
I second @___'s discussion around Mary Bell's psychopathy leaning towards Secondary.
In my notes, I highlighted her impulsive misconducts ('testing out' strangling after verbal threat), emotional outbursts (anger mode towards her classmate), as well as recklessness about keeping quiet of her crimes (bragged about her being a murderer, vandalising school with writings which may give away her identity).
Another detail which was rather perplexing to me is the fact that, she was released at the age of 23 and seem to have lead on a rather normal life. She is now a mother and grandmother, and have not commited further crimes. At first, I couldn't understand the jurisdictory decision of freeing her and allowing her to live under alias with protection for the rest of her life. I even suspected that she may have used mannipulative tactics to convince the authority. However, if her case was evaluated as a Secondary Psychopathy, it would make sense that a re-education programme in prison may have been sucessful.