doesn t want to leave the house. she doesn t want to do anything. camille hid her own fear from her children. and you ve got to hold them together so you can t act as scared as you are. the body of yusef bell was found in an abandoned schoolhouse. his body would not turn up for another month. yusef bell had been strangled. all of the what could have been, should have been and probably would have been was taken away, and we ll never know now, because somebody decided that it was all right to just kill a little kid because they wanted to. for a long time, the 3-year-old would look for yusef every time it was a foggy day. and we d go out into the fog and she would go as far as she could into the fog. and i d say, come back here. and she d say, i got to go find
fibers there, depending upon the case. in the spring of 1980, no one wanted to believe a serial killer was loose in the city, even when bob buffington spotted a disturbing pattern. there had been a sharp increase in the number of children under the age of 14 who had been killed. when he told his boss at homicide, the major threatened to transfer him. and i truly think that they were afraid that there would be a panic. it was this mother, after the loss of her 9-year-old son, who finally forced police to listen, but not until almost a year after her boy died. camille bell and her children lived in these project apartments. poor to the eye, but rich in mind and spirit. yusef bell was an honor student in the gifted program at school.
reach when this documentary was first broadcast. but before then, a look at some of the answers from those who lived through the terror 30 years ago. the prosecutor. obviously guilty. the defense attorney. not proven. one way or the other. the fbi agent in charge. guilty of two double homicide. sheila baltazar. he could have killed all of them. the supreme court justice. not proven. the witness. guilty. camille bell. innocent but stupid. that first task force detective. no maybes, ifs. guilty. the right man for those homicides is in jail. the original audience verdict, guilty. 69%.
on a warm october sunday in 1979 he walked away on an errand to buy snuff for an elderly lady downstairs. he went barefooted in a pair of brown shorts. he got to the store. he bought the snuff. he started back home. less than half a block from this store, yusef bell stepped off this curb and vanished. and nobody saw anybody do anything or anything. but they did see him come back across the street. and that s the last that we saw him. camille bell called the police. they came and said they d write a report. that s all. days went by. camille waited with two older children and yusef s 3-year-old sister. and so she is terrified. if he can go to the store and they can steal him, then she
it would be another year before jefferey mathis body was found in the woods, miles from his home. his mother would join camille bell in forming a committee to confront the city s leaders. the reaction of the police was that we were overreacting and that there was no serial killer. even though by now six black children were dead. four others were missing. perhaps we were like distraught parents that really needed everyone s sympathy, but nobody needed to do anything. for years, it has been a dirty little secret among the press and the police. deaths of blacks draw less attention than deaths of whites. nobody cared. so you could have several killings go on and if the people were poor, then no one discovered there was a serial killing. if you were black and poor, then really nobody looked. especially the black and poor and southern. police were slow to recognize these deaths were different. many of the bodies were left in the woods, far from home, unlike most murder victims