Edward Howard Bell
9 min read
If you are a true crime fan, you have probably heard of the Texas Killing Fields. The Killing Fields is a 25-acre patch of land a mile from Interstate Highway 45 in League City. Since the early 1970s, 30 bodies have been uncovered within the area. The murders are believed to be the work of multiple serial killers using the location as their dumping ground. All eleven potential victims linked to Edward Bell were found at the Killing Fields. Tips that finally led to his arrest poured in after Bell became the subject of a 1992 "Unsolved Mysteries" episode. The show featured fellow Texan Matthew McConaughey as Larry Dickens in his first acting role.
Matthew McConaughey
Credit: Unsolved Mysteries
Murder of Larry Dickens
On August 24, 1978, Dorothy Lang looked out her kitchen window while washing dishes and saw a man park his red and white GMC truck across from her house. Lang saw that he was naked from the waist down as he stepped out masturbating and approached a group of children playing in the street. Larry Dickens, Lang's twenty-six-year-old son, ran over to the man's truck and took the keys from the ignition while his mother called the police. The man grabbed his jeans from the truck, put them on, and then reached back into the vehicle to produce a gun. He then shot the gun in the air and told Larry that he would kill him if he did not return his keys. Larry replied that the man would not kill anyone and took a few steps toward him.
Larry Dickens
Credit: Unsolved Mysteries
Lang was still watching from the window and witnessed the man shoot her son five times; Larry staggered back towards the garage. Lang threw the phone down and ran towards the garage to let Larry inside. He was leaning on the washer, and the man was standing next to him with the gun pointed to Larry's head. Lang told the man that he better leave because the police were on their way. He said he couldn't go anywhere because Larry had his keys. Lang told her son to give the man back his keys. Larry gave him the keys, and then he fired the final shot at him. The man retreated to his truck, and Lang grabbed her son from behind and helped him lie down, then she ran inside to call an ambulance.
Meanwhile, Dawna Dickens, Larry's sister, was returning home from cheer practice and saw the man walk from her garage to his truck, get a rifle, and walk back up her driveway. As Dawna crossed the street, she saw the man lean over and shoot the gun at something on the ground. As she got closer, she saw that Larry was lying in the driveway. The man ran back to his truck and left.
Officer Curtis Adams was responding to the scene when he saw a suspect in a red truck matching the description he was given over his radio. He turned around and began to pursue the vehicle. The suspect accelerated and turned into a cul-de-sac, where he crossed the yard and stopped the truck at a fence. He then began to flee on foot. Adams ordered him to stop, and he did. The man's name was Edward Bell. An inventory of his truck produced a loaded rifle and a .22 automatic pistol. Adams testified that Bell was very calm and had no marks on his face. Adams took Bell back to the scene where Dawna and Dorothy identified him.
The autopsy of Larry Dickens showed that he had been shot twice in the head, in both elbows, in the right thigh, and the back. The two head wounds and the back wound were all fatal. A large-caliber lead bullet was recovered from the scalp, and four .22 caliber bullets were recovered. The injury to the left cheek was from close range, nine to twelve inches away. Despite the violent nature of the crime against Dickens, Bell's bond was set at $125,000. He quietly liquidated his assets and posted bail in less than two months. When the trial date came about, Bell did not appear. Instead, for the next 14 years, Bell roamed coastal towns in Mexico and Central America, guiding dive trips and living aboard a sailboat. He assumed the identity of a dead cousin named Cecil Boyd and told people to call him "Wally."
Edward Howard Bell
Credit: Houston Chronicle
Early Life
There are conflicting reports on Edward Bell's birth date; from what I've been able to gather, I presume the year he was born to be 1937. His father was an oil field worker who frequently moved his family to various towns surrounding the Houston area. Edward allegedly endured physical abuse from his father, scout leaders at the Boy Scouts, and one of his cousins. Despite his rough upbringing, he graduated from Columbus High School and went on to earn a P.E. degree at Texas A&M University, where he played in the Aggie Band. After graduation, he worked as a traveling pharmaceutical salesman and married his first wife in San Marcos. They moved to West Texas and had three children.
For the next twelve years or more before he was arrested for the murder of Larry Dickens, Bell trolled for girls and exposed himself across Texas and Louisiana in vehicles he often altered and swapped. According to records and Bell's own admissions, he was stopped by police at least a dozen times for masturbating and flashing girls between 1966 and 1978.
Crimes
Bell's first documented arrest occurred in 1966. He was stopped for exposing himself to a pair of young girls in Sudan; as a result, he was admitted to Big Spring State Psychiatric Hospital. Three years later, Bell, still married to his first wife and working as a traveling salesman, got arrested twice for exposing himself to girls in two different West Texas towns. One girl was the thirteen-year-old daughter of a Lubbock police officer. He agreed to report to another in-patient treatment program at the University of Texas Medical Branch to avoid prosecution. His marriage finally ended, as did contact with his children.
Bell spent his time in the mental ward baiting underage patients. First, he "dated" a sixteen-year-old but says he didn't "make love" to her because "I was already in enough trouble with the law... I didn't want statutory rape on top of the flasher charge." Next, according to Bell, he seduced a seventeen-year-old patient in Room 417. Then, a few months after his release, he married her, Bell was thirty-one. In 1970, he and his new wife moved into an apartment in Galveston.
It was there that Bell met Doug Pruns through a mutual friend. Pruns was a surfer who made custom boards out of his shop in the area. Bell became a silent partner at Doug's Dive and Surf Shop. In an interview, Pruns said he once visited a property where Bell kept horses, raccoons, various critters, and a travel trailer painted to look like a red caboose. Pruns considered Bell a creepy weirdo but knew little of his life.
Pasture owned by Bell in the mid-1970s
Credit: Houston Chronicle
In April 1974, Bell exposed himself to two girls on the road near Bacliff and pursued them in a Volkswagen rental as they ran. He was arrested again in the rape of a Jennie Sealy mental patient he met outside the hospital. Both cases were dropped. On June 26, 1978, he exposed himself to two girls riding bikes, aged 11 and 12. Five weeks later, he shot Larry Dickens while masturbating in front of five Pasadena girls.
Capture
Named Texas' most wanted fugitive in the 1980s, Bell was featured on the T.V. series “Unsolved Mysteries.” Two viewers recognized Edward Bell and called in with tips when this story aired. One said he had recently met Bell during a business trip to Panama City, Panama. Another viewer claimed that Bell had lived in Panama for several years. According to Special Agent Rolando Moss of the Houston FBI, Bell was prospecting for gold on land he owned near Panama City. The Panama police located Bell in 1992 at a yacht club. They placed him under arrest, and the FBI, along with the Panama City Police Department, brought Bell back to the United States. Edward Harold Bell was convicted of murder and sentenced to 70 years in prison for the death of Larry Dickens.
Letters
In 1998, Bell wrote several letters to prosecutors in Galveston and Harris county, claiming that he had killed eleven teenage girls between 1971 and 1977. Referring to them as the "eleven who went to heaven." Bell provided the names of four of those girls; Colette Wilson, Debbie Ackerman, Maria Johnson, and Kimberly Pitchford. He gave the remaining victims their initials, hair color, and the year they were murdered.
He said he was "brainwashed" into killing Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson in the letters. He described how he murdered them and the deserted bridge where the bodies were recovered. Despite these claims, Bell was not investigated until 2011. The investigators finally decided to release the letters to the public in an attempt to uncover any leads that could verify his accounts.
Letters detailing killings
Credit: Kathryn Casey
Ex-homicide detective Fred Paige and Lise Olsen, an investigative journalist for the Houston Chronicle, teamed up to reopen the case of the "eleven who went to heaven." Paige interviewed two witnesses who saw Ackerman and Johnson accepting a ride near a Baskin-Robbins from a man driving a white van. Police reports showed that in February of 1972, Bell was arrested after flashing a fifteen-year-old and he was driving a 1971 white Ford van. Bell worked at Doug's Dive and Surf Shop and lived in an apartment along Offatts Bayou when the girls disappeared.
Both girls were known to frequent the surf shop and likely would have recognized Bell if he pulled up alongside them and casually offered the pair a ride home. Reports revealed that Ackerman and Johnson's abductor tied them up, stripped them from the waist down, and left their bodies in the bayou exactly as Bell had claimed.
He identified another of his victims as a reddish-blonde girl named "Pitchford," kidnapped near Glufgate Mall in Houston. Harris County medical examiner's records reveal Kimberly Pitchford, a sixteen-year-old, didn't return home after a driver's ed course. Her body was found in a thicket in January 1973.
Just three months after Ackerman and Johnson disappeared from Galveston, so did two fourteen-year-old Webster girls named Sharon Shaw and Rhonda Johnson. All four girls were known to hang out at a water ski school near Bell's apartment in Offatts Bayou.
In 1972, two middle school students, Georgia Greer and Brooks Bracewell were last seen at the Dickinson store. Deed records showed that Bell owned a pasture just a few minutes drive from the store. Their bones were recovered in a bayou in 1976 and weren't identified until 1981.
Bell’s potential victims\
Credit: A&E “The Eleven”
During interviews, Bell blamed his heinous actions on a systematic program of abuse, lies, and brainwashing begun by his father. "My father thought if he beat you real bad, it would send chemicals into your bloodstream," Bell said. He also listed former scoutmasters, a cousin, and three of his ex-wives as part of "the program." "One thing they wanted me to do for sure was rape a girl," Bell said to the Houston Chronicle. "They wanted me to rape girls and rob banks and rob people. My father tried to brainwash me into killing myself."
"Eleven who went to Heaven"
In 2017, A&E produced a docuseries called "The Eleven." The show reopened the case to the public and closely followed Paige and Olsen's investigation. Through their diligent efforts, they came up with the following list of potential victims:
Collette Wilson went missing from Alvin, Texas, in June of 1971.
Brenda Jones went missing from Galveston in 1971.
Rhonda "Renee" Johnson and Sharon Shaw disappeared from Galveston on August 4, 1971.
Gloria Gonzales went missing in October of 1971 (her body was found near Wilson's)
Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson disappeared from Galveston on November 15, 1971.
Kim Pitchford went missing in January of 1973.
Georgia Geer and Brooks Bracewell, aka "the Dickenson girls," both vanished in September of 1974
Suzie Bowers went missing from Galveston in 1977.
Credit: Texas Monthly “The Eleven: On the trail of a serial killer”
In interviews with Lise Olsen, Edward Bell denies killing anyone, even Larry Dickens. He declared the murder was pinned on him, and the police were responsible for shooting Dickens. When asked about the letters he wrote in 1998, Bell said he was suicidal and wanted the state to execute him; he supposedly made it all up.
At this time, Bell was eighty-years-old, frail, and pasty. Bell admitted that Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson got into his van outside the Baskin-Robbins the day they went missing, but said he didn’t kill them. In the interview he stated the girls wanted him to have sex with them because they were tired of the younger boys. Detective Fred Paige and Lise Olsen's excellent investigation work uncovered a generous amount of circumstantial evidence linking Bell to the crimes but found no definitive proof. Unfortunately, prosecutors could not develop DNA samples or evidence to corroborate his claims in the letters and he was never charged with any of the murders.
Where is he now?
Edward Howard Bell collapsed at the Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota on April 20, 2019. He was eighty-two years old at the time of his death. Texas is fortunate that Larry Dickens stepped in that afternoon and stopped Edward Bell. He could have gone on to kill many more young women and continued to flash his junk at innocent children. The cases of all eleven girls remain open and unsolved. Bell remains the lead suspect at this time and it is very hard for me to believe he is innocent. If you have any information, please get in touch with the tip line of the Galveston County District Attorney's Office at 1(800) 566-2209.
Edward Howard Bell
Credit: Kathryn Casey
Sources
https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/tenth-court-of-appeals/1994/1036.html
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Confessions-of-a-cold-blooded-killer-2187501.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Harold_Bell
https://unsolved.com/gallery/edward-harold-bell/
https://archive.ph/AvlnC
https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/convicted-killer-edward-bell-dies-in-navasota-prison/285-a63d52bf-60a7-4b5d-a5b2-cb15f4ab7132
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-eleven-on-the-trail-of-a-serial-killer/
https://www.kathryncasey.com/bio.htm
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/houston-matters/2019/04/22/330217/possible-serial-killer-dies-in-texas-prison/