The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 2

This episode includes discussion of violence, murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault of a minor.

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On August 24th, 1978, Edward Harold Bell drove to Pasadena, Texas, a suburb nestled between Houston and Galveston.

He parked his truck on a street where a group of children were playing, walked up to them, and exposed himself.

One of the kids' fathers watched it happen, Larry Dickens, a 26-year-old Marine veteran.

Larry ran over to confront Belle.

He leaned into Belle's truck and grabbed his keys, attempting to detain the predatory stranger while his mother, Dorothy, called the police.

She reported everything to the dispatcher as it all unfolded.

She watched Belle pull a handgun from his truck and fire.

He shot at my son, she said, begging officers to hurry.

Belle shot Larry multiple times, but he was still alive and able to crawl into his mother's open garage.

As he did, Belle walked back to his pickup.

He sat the handgun inside and pulled out a rifle.

He stalked back up the Dickens driveway and into the garage, where Dorothy was holding her wounded son.

Then Dorothy watched Belle put the rifle up to Larry's head and fatally shoot her son before driving away.

With the murder happening publicly in broad daylight, police had everything they needed to find Bell.

They made an arrest before he could leave Pasadena.

Now, you might think Bell wouldn't live another day as a free man after that.

But that's not what happened.

No, he posted bail and fled to Costa Rica, then Panama.

and he spent 14 years in hiding before being caught by officials, thrown in prison, and sending those letters to journalist Lisa Olson,

the ones confessing to 11 murders.

Welcome to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast.

I'm Janice Morgan.

You might recognize me as the voice behind the investigative docuseries Broken and the true crime podcast, Fear Thy Neighbor.

I'll be your host for the next few weeks, and I'm thrilled to be here.

We'd love to hear from you.

Follow us on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast and share your thoughts on this week's episode.

Or if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and leave a comment.

Today, we'll dig into Ed Bell's claims and unpack the most shocking evidence Lisa Olson and Fred Page on earth as we try to find out what's true and what's not true.

We're so grateful to have Lisa joining us again today.

Stay with us.

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By the time Lisa Olson and Fred Page are being filmed for the 2017 docuseries The Eleven, their investigation into Ed Bell is in full force.

They think they've identified the 11 alleged victims Bell alluded to in his letter, so now the task becomes trying to corroborate as much as they can.

Bell made a lot of claims over the years, and some of them contradict one another, so let's recap.

In 1998, Bell wrote to two Houston-area DAs and claimed he'd killed seven girls in their jurisdictions.

He named two of them, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, best friends who disappeared together from Galveston in 1971 and were murdered.

In 2011, after Lisa interviewed Bell in prison, he also sent her two letters.

That's when he took credit for killing the girls he called the 11 who went to heaven.

Bell also claimed that he was part of something called the program.

Here's Lisa to explain.

In the interview I did with him and also in the letters to me, he talked about a program in which he claimed he had been brainwashed and specifically abused by his father into becoming a rapist and a murderer.

That was his story,

and

that was his reason for why he said he was a violent.

person.

Bell believes he was first exposed to the program in the early 40s.

He told Lisa that when he was three years old, his mother caught him disrobing another girl his age.

As punishment, both of his parents beat him.

Years later, he theorized that the physical abuse released hormones into his bloodstream, and that's what eventually turned him into a sex offender.

Because, he claimed, that was the whole point of the program.

to see if a regular kid could be made into a killer.

According to Bell, physical abuse was only one aspect of the program.

He believes it was a vast government-sanctioned conspiracy that was kept under wraps.

Various people from all stages of his life had been in on it.

This included ex-wives, his grandfather, and his own dad, along with other shadowy players working behind the scenes.

He said these people used different methods of controlling him, including brainwashing.

Most of them didn't work at first, he told Lisa, and because of that, his dad supposedly tried to have him assassinated at the age of 15.

It wasn't until 1966, when he was in his mid-20s, that he was first caught exposing himself to a group of girls.

After another incident in April 1969, Bell was sent to Galveston to receive psychiatric treatment and avoid prison time.

Doctors diagnosed Bell with depression and a personality disorder.

By 1978, Bell had been arrested seven times, mostly for exposing himself to minors, and reports indicate it likely happened many more times than that.

In fact, from prison, Bell told Lisa that the number could have been in the thousands.

But Bell didn't seem to feel responsible for any of his crimes.

He placed the blame on the program, which he said manipulated him to do it.

At one point, he went even further and told Lisa he'd never actually killed anybody, period.

It's hard to hear given the brutal nature of Larry Dickens' murder in Pasadena.

He shot Larry in broad daylight right in front of his mother and other witnesses.

The times that Bell has admitted to murder, he still blames the program.

He even told Catherine Casey, author of Deliver Us, that he didn't plan to expose himself that day or even be in Pasadena.

He was driving down a highway when he ran into gridlock traffic and suddenly felt compelled to take a detour, like he couldn't control his actions.

He told her he was basically like Frankenstein's monster.

Bell also credits the program with what happened after he killed Larry.

Ed Bell's murder of Larry Dickens had been an infamous murder at the time.

He had run all the way to Panama to get away.

Just 24 hours after he was booked for Larry's murder, Bell posted Bond and walked out of jail.

Then he fled the country and remained a wanted fugitive for over 14 years.

In Panama, Bell thought that the agents of the program were tailing him, studying his movements.

He got the impression that they had wanted him to run all along.

In December 1992, the TV show Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on him.

They recreated the murder of Larry Dickens, with Matthew McConaughey playing Larry in his first on-screen credited role.

Less than three months later, Bell was found in Panama, living aboard a small boat with his teenage girlfriend.

Authorities extradited him to the U.S., and this time, he stayed in prison for good.

According to Fred Page, once Bell left the U.S., the string of similar murders targeting teenage girls around Galveston stopped, which could mean he really was responsible for some or all of the murders he claimed.

On the other hand, the whole idea of the program feels so outlandish that it casts a cloud of doubt over everything.

But throughout their investigation, Lisa and Fred don't jump to conclusions.

Lisa investigates each and every claim to see what, if anything, can be verified.

Ultimately, she and Fred zero in on three cases with the strongest connections to Belle.

Six victims, three double homicides, each involving a pair of best friends.

Only they run into a slight hiccup.

One of the murders on that list had already been solved.

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Last time we talked about how Sharon Shaw and Renee Johnson disappeared from Galveston on August 4th, 1971.

They were hitchhiking back to their hometown of Webster, about 30 miles away.

That's why, throughout their investigation, Lisa Olson and Fred Page think that Bell was referring to them when he wrote, Two Webster, 1971, July.

One blonde, one brunette.

They just think he was off by one month.

But there's a bigger hurdle to proving Belle could have killed Sharon and Renee.

Sharon Shaw's murder was already solved, and by extension, Renee Johnson's case was also considered closed.

A man named Michael Lloyd Self was convicted in 1973.

But as Lisa learns, the investigation into Sharon's murder wasn't without controversy.

and it took a turn that nobody could have predicted.

By the time Renee's remains were located in January 1972, panic was setting in.

Investigators and the public saw a pattern evolving as young girls went missing in or near Galveston.

Pressure to solve the cases mounted.

The public wanted peace of mind.

The girls' families wanted justice.

And Renee's family had influence in the area.

Her grandfather would one day become mayor of Webster, a girl's hometown.

But at the time, he was a councilman, a role that helped appoint police chiefs.

The Webster PD focused their resources on finding the girls, but no solid clues turned up, and the lead investigator had never handled a homicide before.

As a result, in May 1972, the city council, led by Renee's grandfather, replaced the police chief.

A new guy was called in named Don Morris, and he brought with him his assistant chief, Tommy Deal.

Just nine days later, Deal already had a suspect.

Michael Lloyd Self was a gas station attendant and volunteer firefighter.

He was described as shy at the time and may have had a learning disability stemming from an early brain injury.

Self had been arrested twice for peeping in windows, and like Bell, he was ordered into psychiatric treatment.

Right after Don Morris was hired, Self got on his radar for another crime, allegedly stealing gas from the fire chief's car.

Not the most criminal of acts, but that's probably how Chief Morris learned Self liked to talk about police cases, like the murder of Renee and Sharon.

Assistant Chief Tommy Deal brought Self in for questioning.

Right away, Self confessed to killing the two girls.

Here's the story he told in his confession.

On the night of August 4th, 1971, the date of the girls' disappearance, Self happened to drive past Renee near Webster.

He picked her up, and later on, Sharon joined them.

Then, the three of them drove around drinking beer.

Later, the girls became loud and unruly.

Twice, he tried to get intimate with Renee, but she wasn't interested.

The second time, she fought back.

Eventually, it all made him so angry that he grabbed an empty soda bottle from his car and bludgeoned the girls.

His confession went on to say that he took off some of their clothes and kept them in his car.

Then he left the girls in the water and hid their bodies under a pile of branches.

As he drove away, he threw their clothing along the side of the road.

The confession was detailed, providing street names and other specific locations, and it was signed Michael Lloyd Self.

Case closed, right?

But when Self met with his attorney, he immediately recanted.

He claimed he gave a false confession after Chief Morris beat him and forced him to play Russian roulette.

In response, Sheriff's deputies visited him in jail to set things straight, and the result was pretty strange.

Self agreed to take the deputies on a tour of all the places he said he brought the girls that night, including the exact spot where he confessed to leaving them.

There are even photographs of the tour, which you can check out in the 11.

It's hard to know for sure, but some say the location of the girl's remains was public knowledge at this point.

Small town, news traveled fast.

But he topped off the tour with a second confession, just three days after his first.

So he stayed behind bars, charged with murdering Sharon Shaw.

Prosecutors didn't charge him with Renee Johnson's murder in case he was acquitted at trial.

They wanted an opportunity to go after him again if they needed to.

They didn't.

In 1973, Self was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

But that's not the end of this story.

As years passed, more and more people started to doubt whether Self really killed Sharon or Renee.

For one thing, there was never any physical evidence to link him to the crime or support his confession.

In fact, the opposite is true.

Self said he flung their clothes out his car window as he drove away from the crime scene, but that's not where the clothing was found.

It was discovered close to the bodies.

There were also discrepancies between Self's two separate confessions.

In one, he said that he and Renee met Sharon at one place.

In another, he said they met her somewhere else entirely.

Timing was also a problem in his second confession.

He said he picked Sharon up at her house at a time when she was already missing.

Then there's Chief Morris and his right-hand man, Tommy Deal.

They'd had several run-ins with Self leading up to his arrest, including a charge for cannabis possession.

So there's a theory that the officers just wanted the case closed.

They didn't like Self and believed he'd be easy to intimidate.

Other witnesses have come forward claiming they saw Morris resort to threats and violence at work over the years.

And Fred Page learns that one former investigator saw Morris threaten another man with a game of Russian roulette, which is what self-said happened to him.

But nobody really doubted Morris and Deal's intentions at the time.

They were new and they were hot shots.

For the most part, everybody stood behind their work and their character.

That is, until 1975, when they were both arrested for robbery and kidnapping.

That September, up in Caddo Mills, northeast of Dallas, Tommy Deal walked into the State National Bank.

He brought along an accomplice named George Marshall.

One customer exiting the building at the same time noticed something weird.

Both men were wearing surgical gloves.

It didn't look right to him, so he went straight to the mayor, who happened to be across the street from the bank, and told him about the two suspicious men.

Inside the bank, Deal and his partner brandished guns and demanded cash.

They made off with over over $15,000.

Only their cover had already been blown and they knew it right away.

So Deal and his cohort took a hostage, the bank president's 19-year-old daughter.

As Deal and Marshall drove off with her, the mayor himself ran after their car and shot out one of their tires.

Meanwhile, a posse of armed citizens gathered and chased Deal down.

When his car broke down, they cornered him.

Luckily, the young woman was unharmed.

Under arrest, Deal and Marshall gave up their third accomplice, who'd been posted in town wearing a police uniform, Don Morris.

Needless to say, everyone was shocked that two of the bank robbers turned out to be Webster's ex-police chief and his right-hand man.

And that wasn't all.

They had already robbed four other banks.

including one near Webster twice.

Morris and Deal went to prison.

After Deal got out, he went on to commit six more armed bank robberies in the Houston area.

The second time he was caught, he received a life sentence.

Now, none of this necessarily means Michael Lloyd's self was innocent.

But years later, Fred Page conducts a prison interview with Tommy Deal.

He brings up the theory that he and Morris framed self for the murders of Sharon Shaw and Renee Johnson.

In response, Deal simply says, yeah.

It's not necessarily a full confession, but he doesn't deny the accusation.

Self tried to appeal his conviction for years, but he stayed in prison until his death in 2000.

To this day, many believe the investigators back in the 70s got the wrong guy, whether they knew it or not.

Which leaves open the possibility that Bell might have been telling the truth about murdering Sharon and Renee.

And if that's true, what else could be?

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Of all of Edward Bell's murder claims, Lisa Olson found the most evidence to tie Bell to three double homicides.

These six victims shared a lot in common.

They were around the same age, they hitchhiked, and most of them liked water sports, especially surfing near the seawall and water skiing at Wick's ski school in Galveston.

The crimes also seem similar.

In each case, two best friends disappeared together, were murdered, and were found in or near remote bayous and other bodies of water.

And they all seem to match what Bell wrote to Lisa in his letters from prison.

First, there's 2 Webster 1971 July, one blonde, one brunette.

That could refer to Renee Johnson and Sharon Shaw, although they disappeared in August, not July.

Then there's Two Fall 1971 next to the word Galveston.

Not only does that match the timing of Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson's murder, he had already confessed to killing Debbie and Maria by name in an earlier letter to officials.

And lastly, two Dickinson, 1975, one blonde, one brunette.

Although Brooks Bracewell and Georgia Gere actually disappeared in 1974, the rest of the details match.

Here's Lisa.

What struck me from the beginning was the idea that he had killed girls in pairs.

He claimed to have killed girls in pairs.

That is not all that common among serial killers.

You know, he looked for two girls together.

That was something he liked.

He liked having someone watching.

That was something really creepy about Ed.

I mean, that was in his criminal history.

He liked people to watch when he did sexual things or when he did violent things.

By now, Lisa and Fred realized that some of the most compelling circumstantial evidence comes from geographical links.

Places where they know Ed Bell frequented, intersecting with locations where the girls had been.

So, when we were looking at these other cases, we started looking at Ed Bell's known trail of crimes, his own trail of addresses, and whether the remote areas where all of these girls' bodies were dumped were anywhere near where he lived.

Once Lisa and Fred track down Belle's old acquaintances, the answers quickly start to fall into place.

Why?

Because at the time, Belle owned this trailer that was unforgettable.

It was made to look like a red train caboose.

So people would remember it years later because it was kind of a custom trailer.

And that's the trailer he parked on the land that was near where those two girls' bodies were found.

Lisa's able to confirm all the information from these interviews with public records and pinpoint the tract of land Bell owned.

And she realizes If you map out the three double homicides, if you pinpoint where all the girls' remains were found and you draw lines to connect them, creating a triangle, Bell's old plot of land falls right inside that triangle.

In fact, his trailer sat just a couple of miles from where Maria and Debbie were recovered in 1971.

The thing about that specific site was it was down a private road that only local landowners had a key to a gate to get into.

He was a local landowner.

He would have known other locals who had the key if he didn't.

So it looked like this killer, if that claim was true, and that was the case we had the most evidence to time to, it appeared that he liked to dump bodies somewhere near where he lived, where he could maybe go back.

That plot of land is also a short drive to where Brooks and Georgia were last seen.

Fred estimates the caboose was about three miles from the El Rancho Motel.

As Lisa points out in the 11, the girls disappeared in the middle of the day.

She theorizes that whoever abducted the girls had a private spot he could take them to, probably somewhere close and remote.

And when I'm saying these names of towns, I'm not talking about big places.

I'm not talking about places where a lot of people live when I'm talking about Santa Fe or Dickinson, especially in 1971.

Today, yes, maybe there are more, but not then.

There are other places that link Bell to these cases too.

In 1971, Belle also had an apartment in Galveston, right on Offet's Bayou.

It was conveniently close to Doug's surf shop, where Belle sometimes worked and potentially saw some of these girls.

It was also right across the water from Wick's ski school, where Debbie and Maria stopped the day before their disappearance, and where Renee and Sharon stopped the morning they went missing.

Then there are Belle's vehicles.

That trailer, he had bought and had serviced at a RV place that was within two or three blocks from where these two girls from Dickinson were abducted.

And in 1972, Bell was arrested for exposing himself to a minor.

The arrest record shows that he was driving a white van.

From what we know, it matched the description of the van Debbie and Maria got into.

Bell had the van repainted.

It later caught fire.

With so many dots begging to be connected, Lisa goes back to interview Belle in prison for a second time.

He admitted that the two girls from Galveston, the first two crimes I investigated, Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, got into his van.

He even names the ice cream shop where he picked them up, but he doesn't tell Lisa he killed them.

He says he just dropped them off and went to work.

Then he tells Lisa he made up most of his claims to her.

He calls the 11 who went to heaven a quote BS poem.

When I later went back to interview him, he had backed away from saying he was a serial killer.

He had realized by then he was a smart guy, that he was an old man, and that if he tried to lower his profile a little bit, maybe he would get out.

But one thing I have to say is that the prison officials that I talked to

off-camera

said

they had no doubt that Ed Bell was a serial killer.

It wasn't, they didn't think he was a bullshit artist.

They believed that this was the truth.

You know, who specifically he killed, I am not certain of.

That he killed more people than Larry Dickens.

I feel almost absolutely certain that that's the case.

Bell never does get paroled.

He dies in prison in 2019.

The thing is, there's not a lot of forensic evidence left from these cases.

One item, saved from Brenda Jones' case, was tested for DNA, but there wasn't a large enough sample to create a DNA profile.

Like I said, it's a really troubling story.

Ed Bell unfortunately died before really coming clean.

I always hoped that he would really, because, like I said, in some ways he was proud.

of what he had done.

And he also felt that showing what he had done would prove the existence of the program he talked about.

With compelling ties to six victims, what does that mean for the rest of Bell's claims?

The other five victims, the program?

We asked Lisa for her thoughts, and we weren't expecting her answer.

I have to tell you that a lot of things Ed Bell said, I did corroborate.

And I can't tell you that I...

I don't know for sure whether he was experimented on.

There were experiments, as have been subsequently documented, where hospital patients, people from prisons, and people at military bases were given drugs.

The CIA has even admitted to backing some of these experiments under Project Artichoke, which gave way to MKUltra.

They've since stated their intent was to study things like, quote, mind control and, quote, behavioral modification.

What Lisa is saying here is, the program might not be exactly how Bell described it,

on some level, it could have been real.

After years spent investigating this case, Lisa can't simply rule it out.

Lisa also learns that Bell's father, who Bell claimed was in on the program, was with him in Panama while Bell was on the lamb throughout the 80s.

He died there during the Manuel Noriega years when the Panamanian dictator was still working in tandem with the United States CIA.

As for Bell's father,

it doesn't prove that he was in the CIA.

He did some sort of government work.

We don't know exactly what.

No one confirms anything like that.

Like I said, I don't think we can say Ed was completely making that up.

But how many people he killed, unknown.

The fact he was a killer, the fact that he was a serial sex offender, absolutely confirmed.

Whether he killed 11, whether he killed more, you decide.

Thanks for tuning in to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast.

We'd like to thank Lisa Olson for her time and expertise.

If you haven't already, check out the docuseries The Eleven and look for her book, The Scientist and the Serial Killer, coming out in April 2025.

Along with The Eleven, we also found Catherine Casey's book, Deliver Us, Three Decades of Murder and Redemption in the Infamous I-45 Texas Killing Fields, extremely helpful to our research.

Stay safe out there.

This episode was written and produced by Mickey Taylor, edited by Connor Sampson and TTU, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Spencer Howard.

I'm your host, Janice Morgan.