His name was Edward Harold Bell and he was known as an American sex offender and murderer.
He was born May 26, 1939, in a town in Texas. Bell was a Boy Scout and allegedly he had experienced some kind of physical abuse from them as well as from his father. As a young boy, he moved around a lot with his father, who worked as an oil field worker, and he also graduated from Columbus High School. He had earned a degree from Texas A&M University in College Station.
The bodies of Colette Wilson, Brenda Jones, Rhonda Renee Jackson, Sharon Shaw, Deb Ackerman, Maria Johnson, Gloria Gonzalez, Kim Pitchford, Georgia Geer, Brooks Bracewell, Jane Doe, and Susie Bowers were found near marshes, swamps, or some kind of water vessel.
Details from the discovery of these young girls were dark. Debbie and Maria's hands were tied and they had been stripped of almost all their clothing. They had been thrown into the water allegedly. Once they were in the water, the perpetrator shot them at close range.
Bell had claimed during some of his investigations that his father had encouraged him to commit heinous crimes such as the raping and murdering of women, and robbing banks.
The main investigator responsible was Fred Paige, and he was working with an investigative reporter from the Houston Chronicle by the name of Lisa Olsen. They both believe that there was only one man responsible for all these murders. They both felt that they knew who did it.
There are other things that we need to know about Edward Bell. He had a history of exposing himself to little girls. Due to these exposures, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital, and after some time there he continued to romance underage girls. Once released from the psychiatric hospital, he continued to flash and masturbate in front of girls in the towns of Lubbock, Pasadena, Plainville, and a few other little towns of Texas and Louisiana.
During one of his exposures, Bell had been driving his GMC truck around Pasadena, Texas. During this, a young man by the name of Larry Dean Dickens saw what was happening. He tried to get Bell's keys in an attempt to keep him from leaving the scene. During this time, Bell pulled out his pistol and shot Dickens. Dickens had ended up walking slowly to his mother's house and collapsing in her garage. His mother was trying to calm him down and while she was doing this, Bell went and grabbed his rifle and shot him in his forehead before leaving the scene. Shortly later, Bell was pulled over by police and was interned on a bail bond. He was supposed to show up for a trial date, but he did not come. Therefore, he was wanted by the local police.
Bell ended up being a fugitive for the next 14 years while traveling between Mexico and Central America. During these yours, he was living paycheck to paycheck by giving dive trips to American tourists.
Bell had family settled down in the country of Panama where he married for the third time a young girl.
A young businessman had been doing business in Panama City and happened to see the episode of Unsolved Mysteries on the murder of Larry Dean Dickens. He turned his information into Unsolved Mysteries. Thankfully, with the help of the FBI and the Panamanian National Police, the arrest of Edward Bell happened.
There was a June trial on the murder of Larry Dean Dickens, and Bell was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison for the murder of Dickens.
While spending time in prison, Bell had written a slew of confession letters to the prosecutors who worked in the counties of Galveston and Harris. He had claimed that he killed seven girls between the years of 1971 and 1977. He had details of their hair color and some of their names.
Unfortunately, these letters were kept secret until 2011. Thankfully, Fred Paige finally revealed to the public these letters in hopes that they would be a potential lead to the discovery of who the killer was of these ungodly murders.
During that same year of 1998 when those confession letters were written, Bell met with the Houston Chronicle reporter. He said that he had committed the 11 murders of those young girls and potentially a 12th victim as well. Detectives wanted him to be charged as a Serial Killer, and prosecutors in Galveston declined to show a jury his written confessions. They thought that these confessions were not enough to convict him.
The Harris County prosecutors never have looked into these confessions and eventually, they were misplaced from him. Lastly, Bell refused to cooperate with the authorities.
Witnesses were interviewed about the murders and they were wondering if Bell was telling the truth.
Oddly, these confession letters were never shown to the parents of any of the victims.
Why?
Unfortunately, Bell died at the age of 79 while collapsing at the Wallace Park unit. There was no foul play or any weapons found near the scene of his death.
The murder cases of Deb Ackerman and Maria Jackson were reopened.
While the investigators were working tirelessly, they were trying to solve these murders. It's hard to solve this amount of cases when there is poor communication, a lack of information sharing between the agencies, and the involvement of politics. In addition, information about the case was lost with no databases, and not enough remains to do immediate identification. They went out every night to work on these murder cases. They will not back down from the truth on who killed these young girls. They will keep moving forward and trying to connect the dots until these murders are solved.
If you have any information about these cases you can contact the investigators at theeleventipline@gmail.com or call 832-387-5382.
Written By: Heidi
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