by Gitta Sereny
Mr. Smith, ignoring Mary’s behavior, continued his questions to Dr. Westbury. “She is violent?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“She is very dangerous?”
“Very.”
“Very dangerous?”
“I think so, sir.”
“I have no questions, My Lord,” said Mr. Lyons. There was no reason for him to prolong the agony now. From the point of view of responsibility, guilt, and even degrees of guilt, the evidence of the two doctors had established and—more than was ever taken account of—explained the case.
The night following Norma’s evidence, on Wednesday December 11, Policewoman Pauline Z. guarded Mary. An attractive young woman with a peculiarly Northern pugnacious kind of courage, she had made no secret of her compassion for Mary ever since she had first guarded her the night after her arrest in August. And Mary told everybody that Pauline was her favorite.
“A lot of girls never talked to her, you know,” Pauline said. “They felt very uncomfortable about her. They wrote letters or read, and they talked as little as possible. Some felt in advance that she was a little horror, and they obeyed to the letter the instructions we had about not talking to her about the case and that. Except that some went further and didn’t talk to her at all. Well, I felt as long as we had to spend eight hours together at a time, I might as well make them into as good eight hours for both of us as possible. She wanted to know all about you, you know; your parents, who you lived with, how you lived. If you had photographs her day was complete. I have a little dog and I have a snapshot of him and she just loved that. She loved animals.”
But soon, with the relentless day-by-day accumulation of evidence, Mary was no longer able to continue her usual chatter. Norma’s testimony and the compassionate and protective attitudes which Mary quite correctly sensed toward her among many in the courtroom were doubtlessly the springboard for her mounting terror.
“They won’t be able to do anything to one of us without the other,” she said to Pauline, half statement, half question, on that evening of 11 December. “After all, we were both . . .” She hesitated. “. . . In it. It would be unfair to punish one without the other.” And later on in the sleepless night she said, “They are going to blame it all on me, because they’ll say Norma’s daft. . . .” From the moment Mary had first heard herself being referred to as a psychopath, she had asked everyone of the policewomen, and some of the men, “What’s a psychopath?” None of them told her, because none of them really knew. “Anyway, how can you explain it to a child?” one of them asked.
Policewoman Susan N. guarded her the night of 12 December after her first few hours in the witness stand. “I think it’s all a dream,” Mary said to her, “it’s never happened. Do you think I’ll ever go home again? I wish I was going to sleep in my own bed. Do you think I’ll get thirty years? I think he is a horrible Judge if he gives me thirty years.” (Thirty years were in her mind because of the sentence handed out to the “Train Robbers,” a case that she often referred to.) “If I was a Judge,” she continued, “and I had an eleven-year-old who’d done this, I’d give her eighteen months.” The continuous tension was beginning to take its toll—her guard was down.
“Murder isn’t that bad,” Mary said, “we all die sometime anyway.” “And then,” Policewoman N. said, “she ended that sentence by saying, ‘My mam gives me sweets every day.’” She shook her head. “That was funny, wasn’t it? But I thought she was a canny kid. If you hadn’t known what she’d done, you wouldn’t have thought she could have.”
The next day, Friday, 13 December, the seventh day of the trial, was devoted to the final speeches of the prosecution and defense.
Describing the case as “macabre and grotesque,” Mr. Lyons told the Jury that eleven-year-old Mary had wielded over thirteen-year-old Norma “an evil and compelling influence almost like that of the fictional Svengali.” “It has been a tortuous tunnel, has it not, that has led us through the grimmest and almost unfathomable recesses of juvenile thought, in which we have plumbed unprecedented depths of juvenile wickedness. In Norma you have a simple backward girl of subnormal intelligence. In Mary you have a most abnormal child, aggressive, vicious, cruel, incapable of remorse, a girl moreover possessed of a dominating personality, with a somewhat unusual intelligence and a degree of cunning that is almost terrifying.”
Mr. Lyons repeated again, as he had already said in his opening address to the Jury, “I forecast that you might take the view that the younger girl—although two years and two months younger than the other—was nevertheless the cleverer and more dominating personality. . . .” He recalled that Mary had been described as a manipulator of little children and said that the Jury might think that, but for the fact that she and Norma lived next door to each other, the older girl, Norma, would never have been placed in the terrible position in which she now stood.
Mr. Lyons described again at some length the lies Mary told to the police and to the Court, and the “fiendishly cunning” way in which she tried to adapt her story to the evidence as she heard it presented in Court. He spoke of the statement to the police in which Mary had described how Norma had banged Brian Howe’s head on a piece of wood and knocked him senseless. “She mentioned that in her evidence also,” Mr. Lyons said, “but I am sure you will not have forgotten that she tried to play that down.”
“. . . Did you tell the police,” Mr. Smith had asked Mary the day before, “that Norma had banged Brian’s head on some wood or a corner of wood?”
“I didn’t . . .” she faltered, “er . . . really mean to say ‘bang.’ She wasn’t going like that.”
“Did you say that Brian’s head was banged on some wood?” Mr. Smith insisted.
“I might have done, but I never meant ‘bang’ really. . . .”
“. . . If you had said it ‘banged’ on the wood, that would be a lie, would it?”
“Yes.”
(Mr. Justice Cusack, in his summing up, was also to refer to these lies:
“There is reference in the statement,” he said, “of banging Brian’s head on a piece of wood. The prosecution say,” said the Judge, “that here is another example of this remarkable child adapting her evidence by taking into account what has already been said in this court, and endeavoring to cope with it because the scientific evidence says that there was no blood, no hairs, any sign of anybody’s head being banged forcibly upon that wood, and she had heard that evidence before she gave her own evidence. . . .”
Mr. Lyons then spoke of how Mary had said that it was Norma who had the Gillette blade and cut Brian’s hair and ear.
(“She tried to show me it was sharp,” Mary had said in her statement. “She took the top of her dress where it was raggie and cut it—it made a slit.”)
Mr. Smith had asked her, “Did you tell the police—Mr. Dobson—that same day that Norma had the razor blade?”
“Yes.”
“And tried to cut Brian’s leg and ear with it?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t true, was it?”
“It was.”
“Did you tell the police that, to show you that the razor blade was sharp, Norma took the top of her dress and slit it with the razor?”
“She never slit it.”
“Did you tell the police that she had?”
“I cannot remember, but . . .” She made a gesture with her arm. “. . . She went like that with it, but I . . . I don’t know if it touched it or not.”
“Just listen, Mary,” and Mr. Smith read from her statement. “That is what you said to the police, isn’t it?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You can, Mary, can’t you?”
“No.”
“If that is what you said, is it true, or a lie?”
“Well, she never slit it.”
“So it would be a lie to say that she had, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You have been listening very carefully to the evidence in
this case, haven’t you? Haven’t you?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you understood the importance of the police evidence about Norma’s clothing, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“Beg pardon?” she asked.
“. . . You heard it said, didn’t you, that Norma’s clothing had been examined?”
“Er—yes.”
“You heard it said that none of it was cut?”
“Yes.”
“That is why you are saying now that you didn’t tell the police that it was cut?”
“I never says that.”
In his summing up, the Judge also read the Jury that part of Mary’s statement: “No such slit has been found,” he added, “though as you know all of Norma’s clothing has been examined. And Mary, when asked about that, said she did not remember about the slit. . . .”
The lie Mr. Lyons discussed most fully was Mary’s attempt (as the Judge said later) to cast the blame with regard to Brian Howe upon a totally innocent boy. “You will long remember,” said Mr. Lyons, “the fiendish cunning with which she sought to lay the blame for Brian Howe’s murder on a completely innocent boy of eight by saying she had seen him on the day of Brian’s death and giving the police a most detailed description of the clothes the boy was wearing and by saying, ‘A. was covered with grass and flowers.’ . . . Of all the innocent children in the area, she picked on a little boy who, in fact, had played with Brian Howe. . . .”
Mr. Smith, the day before, had reminded Mary of the day after Brian had been killed—a Thursday.
“You were being asked some questions. Did you say something about a boy called A.? . . . Did you try and blame A. for Brian Howe’s death?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“To get me and Norma out of trouble, sir.”
“But you realized it might get A. into trouble, did you?”
“Not serious trouble.”
“Some trouble. Everything you said about A. was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Not everything.”
“Did you see A. on the Wednesday that Brian was killed?”
“Er—no.”
“No. So when you told the police you did, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but all of it wasn’t a lie.”
“Well, I will go through it. Did you tell the police that A. was standing by himself on the Wednesday in Delaval Road?”
“Not Delaval Road—er—by Stainsbury’s fence.”
(It could not escape the Court’s attention that she remembered sufficiently precisely the details of her own statement made five months previously—a lie though it was—to correct Mr. Smith. Mary could never resist her impulse to show how clever she was, even if it worked against her own advantage.)
“The back lane towards Delaval Road, did you say that?”
“Yes.”
“That was a lie?”
“Yes.”
“Did you say he was covered with grass and little purply flowers?”
“Yes.”
“That was a lie?”
“Yes. . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“But it is true about I saw him try to cut the cat’s whiskers and that.”
“Let me come to that, Mary, in a moment. I will give you every chance. You say you had seen A. playing with Brian Howe a lot?”
“Yes.”
“Was that true?”
“Yes.”
“That was true. Did you say that you had seen A. hit Brian for no reason at all?”
“Yes.”
“Was that true?”
“Yes. . . .”
“. . . Was it true that A. had hit Brian on the face and neck?” he asked again.
“Well, he always used to hit him and . . .”
“On the neck?”
“No, on the face because he always used to . . .” she faltered.
“I’m sorry—he always?”
“He was always pelting stones and that.”
“If you told the police that A. hit Brian on the neck, would that be true or a lie?”
“Well, sometimes he hits him with his hand like that, not actually on the neck [but] when he goes like that to him, his hands hits his neck.”
“Did you say to the police you had seen A. play with a pair of scissors?”
“Yes.”
“Was that true?”
“I have seen him.”
“With a pair of scissors like the ones in this box . . .?”
“. . . I have saw him playing with a pair, but not like that.”
“Did you try to tell the police that you had seen A. playing with a pair of scissors, like silver-colored and something wrong with the scissors, like one leg was either broken or bent?”
“Yes.”
“Were you meaning to describe these scissors?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they are the scissors which Norma had used.”
“Why did you say to the police that A. had been seen playing with those scissors?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“. . . It was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you think it was very naughty indeed to tell that lie?”
“Yes.”
“. . . Did you tell the police that you had seen A. trying to cut a cat’s tail off with those scissors?”
“Not those.”
“Did you say to the police you had seen A. trying to cut a cat’s tail off?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Was that true?”
“Yes.”
“With those scissors?”
“No.”
“She admitted,” said Mr. Lyons in his final speech, “most of the things she said in her statement [about this boy] were lies. But she insisted in her evidence that that little boy had been seen to cut cat’s whiskers and had hurt Brian Howe in the neck. If it is true that he ever hit Brian, doesn’t that make her attempt to incriminate him all the more wicked and horrible? One shudders to think of what might have happened to that eight-year-old boy if he had been in the area that afternoon instead of being, by happy chance, with other people six miles away at Newcastle Airport, where a group of people could say they saw him.”
(A further tragic dimension was added to the events of the trial when, the Sunday following Mr. Lyons’ final speech, and the day before the Judge’s summing up, during which Mr. Justice Cusack—if this was necessary—put the final stamp on clearing that little boy A. totally of any suspicion, this child’s mother died in a street accident.)
Mr. Smith, defending Norma, made an impassioned speech to the Jury, saying that, “To be an innocent bystander when a crime is committed is not to have criminal responsibility.” He said Norma admitted going back to see the body of one of the murdered boys; she said it was naughty to do so, and she knew what a terrible thing had been done at the concrete blocks. But what child, he asked, would not tell a lie to get herself out of that situation? There was a difference between a childish lie and the sort told by the other accused girl who tried to get a little boy into trouble. Mary’s lies were wicked and were told by a little girl, he said, who one was tempted to describe as evil. Norma had gone back to the “Tin Lizzie” because Mary had asked her to. If Mary asked her to do anything, said Mr. Smith, the probability was that she would do it.
“It is not part of my duty,” he said in conclusion, “to blackguard Mary, or blacken her character. Although this is a ghastly case, and although some of the evidence may have made you ill, it is possible to feel sorry for Mary. She had a bad start in life. . . . Her illness—psychopathic personality—is said to be the result of genetic and environmental factors. It’s not her fault she grew up this way; it’s not her fault she was born. . . .”
The last two days of the trial Mary was probably more in need of warmth and compassion than at any other time since her arrest. Pauline Z. and Susan N., two of t
he three policewomen who guarded Mary during the weekend, were particularly sympathetic toward her. The feelings of the third, Policewoman Brenda M., about Mary was more complicated: like many others, she was curious but at the same time repelled by her and disliked herself for having these feelings.
“I didn’t like her,” she said, with pretended off-handedness. “Guarding her was just a job, like any other, except that I didn’t like it.” She came on duty at eight A.M. on Sunday morning. “She was still in bed then,” Brenda said. “Then she got up, had her bath and got dressed. I didn’t want to talk to her. I started to write letters almost as soon as I arrived. It was snowing outside. She asked me to play a game of cards, snap. I played with her,” she shrugged her shoulders. “There wasn’t any harm in it I thought, so I played with her. I hate cards, but it was better than nothing. Then I went back to letter writing and she went and stood at the window and looked out at the snow.”
The quiet of the scene must have accentuated Mary’s isolation and perhaps her fear. “She was talking as she stood there at the window,” said Brenda. “She said how nice it looked and that she wished she could go for a walk in the new snow. ‘Well you can’t,’ I said. ‘I would like to write a letter as well,’ Mary said after a while. ‘Can I have paper and pencil?’”
Brenda gave it to her and she wrote, sitting on her bed and resting the paper on a comic. “She wrote for quite a long time,” Brenda said. “Three single pages on lined paper, in her big handwriting. And then she just sat there, with the letter on her lap. I thought to myself, ‘I wonder who she wrote to, this long letter.’”
“I’ve written a letter as well,” she finally said.
“I know,” Brenda answered. “Who did you write to then?”
“I wrote to God.” There was a sort of pause and then she said, “Would you like to read my letter to God?”
“I said, ‘Yes, I would,’” Brenda said. “I read the letter once and then again,” she recalled, “and then once more. It seemed so funny that she should have written such a letter. It went something like this: