![]() ![]() Gitta attributed her fascination with evil to her own experiences of Nazism as a child of central Europe in the early 20th century. She passed away in England aged 91, following a long illness. Gitta Sereny was an Austrian born journalist, biographer and historian. What emerges from this extraordinary case is the inability of society to anticipate such events and to take adequate steps once disaster has struck. Step by step, Gitta Sereny pieces together a gripping and rare study of a horrifying crime the murders, the events surrounding them, the alternately bizzare and nonchalant behaviour of the two girls, their brazen offers to help the distraught families of the dead boys, the police work that led to their apprehension, and finally the trial itself. She evaded being branded as a murderer due to what the court ruled as 'diminished responsibility', but she was sentenced to 'detention' for life. Mary Bell, the younger but infinitely more sophisticated and cooler of the two, was found guilty of manslaughter. In December 1968 two girls who lived next door to each other - Mary, aged eleven, and Norma, thirteen - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling two little boys Martin Brown, four-years-old, and Brian Howe, three. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |