SUSPECT: Edward Bell and the "Eleven Who Went to Heaven"

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Edward Harold Bell, admitted sex offender, convicted murderer and self-described serial killer, has given multiple chilling confessions from his locked prison cell of abducting and slaying teenage and adolescent girls in the 1970s, describing crimes even now unsolved.

In disturbing letters sent to Harris and Galveston county prosecutors in 1998 - but kept secret for 13 years - Bell claimed to have killed seven girls, including two Galveston 15-year-olds shot as they stood tied up and half naked in the chilly waters of Turner Bayou, according to excerpts and descriptions of Bell's letters obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

In July and September, in exclusive interviews, Bell, now gaunt and pasty-faced at 72, told a Chronicle reporter the tally of lives was not just seven, but 11, the "Eleven that went to Heaven."

Bell claims a brainwashing "program" forced him to "be a flasher," to "rape girls" and ultimately to kill.
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Several senior investigators familiar with Bell's letters of confessions told the Chronicle they have long believed he committed multiple murders and found evidence to corroborate his claims. But probes stalled.
Galveston prosecutors refused to present Bell's written confessions to a grand jury. Harris County prosecutors never investigated the claims and subsequently lost the letters. And Bell refused to cooperate with police. Several investigators said not enough effort was made in 1998 to re-investigate the cases.
One former Galveston DA, Kurt Sistrunk, told the Chronicle, "I didn't believe we had sufficient evidence that we could proceed to grand jury with, and without getting into specifics, that's the decision that had to be made, no matter the temptations to proceed otherwise ... It wasn't for a lack of effort."


Read more: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/n...-as-11-girls-across-2189199.php#ixzz1ZAy5EDXI

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Jenni979 said:

I wonder if he ever ventured back into Texas during those years he was "in hiding"... I also wonder how many other poor girls he killed while he was living out of the country...

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nursebeeme said:

all the bold and red I have problems with..... seems like there was a lot of lack in effort to me....

lost the letter??? <<snort>>

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nursebeeme said:

if he was telling the truth he trolled malls...these three girls were at the mall when they went missing in 1974

http://www.missingtrio.com/TRIO/index.aspx

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A convicted murderer has revealed that he is also the serial killer behind eleven other murders of teenage adolescent girls in the seventies.

Edward Harold Bell, who was on the run for 14 years after the shooting murder of Larry Dickens, calls his victims the 'Eleven that went to Heaven'.

He has given a chilling confession from his prison cell after he was jailed for 70 years for murder after being caught in Panama in 1993.

Bell says he killed 15-year-olds Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson who disappeared after hitch-hiking in Texas, according to the Houston Chronicle.

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TENTH COURT OF APPEALS

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A jury found Edward Harold Bell guilty of murder and assessed punishment at seventy years confinement. Bell contends in three points that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the verdict, that he was denied effective assistance of counsel, and that the court erred by failing to instruct the jury on voluntary conduct. We affirm.

On the afternoon of August 28, 1978, Dorothy Lang was looking out her kitchen window and saw Edward Bell park his truck across the street from her house. When he stepped out of the truck, she saw that he was wearing only a red shirt that came down past his waist but did not cover his genitals. Lang called the police when she saw Bell approach a group of boys while masturbating. Larry Dickens, Lang's twenty-six year old son, overheard Lang's call to the police and ran outside to detain Bell until the police arrived.

Larry ran to the truck and took the keys from the ignition. Bell began demanding that his keys be returned to him.

Lang testified that Bell got his jeans from the truck and put them on. He reached back inside the truck, produced a gun, and told Larry that he was going to kill him if he did not return his keys. Bell then fired the gun into the air and threatened to kill Larry if he didn't return the keys. Larry replied that Bell was not going to kill anyone and started to approach Bell. According to Lang, her son walked two or three steps toward Bell when Bell shot him. After Bell shot Larry five times, Larry staggered to his garage.

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It was also learned by The Police News
during our research, that Ed Bell at one
time, wrote a letter to law enforcement officials
admitting to the murders of Debbie
Ackerman and Maria Johnson and some
others whose names he could not recall.
However, when investigators interviewed
him in his prison cell, he refused talk further
about the letter or the murders. One thing
is certain, the confession in his letter was
not coerced, but apparently there was no
evidence or not enough evidence to support
his claims, because he has never been
charged with any of the murders.
Edward H. Bell remains in a Texas prison
today.

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Police: No corroboration for killing confession

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Paige started working on the Ackerman and Johnson case in 2005 and turned over findings about Bell to the district attorney&#8217;s office.

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The girls, both 15, were found in Turner&#8217;s Bayou in Texas City on Nov. 19, 1971, four days after they were reported missing. The girls were shot and found half nude, according to The Daily News&#8217; archives.

Galveston police built a cold case file on the killings, three binders thick, police Capt. Jeff Heyse said.

&#8216;He Wants Immunity&#8217;

&#8220;He wants immunity before swearing to anything, and if he&#8217;s not going to swear to anything, you&#8217;re not going to get a conviction,&#8221; Heyse said.

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In 1971, Bell approached a surf-shop owner about storing diving equipment. Ackerman and Johnson were among those teens that regularly hung out at the shop. After they vanished, two witnesses told police they saw the girls last in a white van. Bell drove a white van in 1972 when police arrested him for exposing himself to young girls.

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