Larry Gene Bell
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Larry Gene Bell (30 October 1949 - 4 October 1996) was an American murderer and suspected serial killer responsible for the murders of Sharon Faye Smith and Debra May Helmick in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Biography edit
Bell was born in Ralph, Alabama, with four siblings. He joined the United States Marine Corps in 1970 but was discharged the same year after injuring himself. He worked as a prison guard at the Columbia Department of Corrections.
On 31 May 1985 Bell abducted 17-year-old Sharon Faye "Shari" Smith at gunpoint. He forced her to write a Last Will and Testament which he then sent to her family before suffocating her. Over the next few days, he called Smith's family to taunt them and claimed she was still alive before eventually admitting he had killed her and giving them directions to the location of the body in Lexington, South Carolina. Over the next few days he repeatedly called the Smiths to further taunt them, calling her sister Dawn on the day of the funeral to brag about how he repeatedly raped her sister before asphyxiating her with duct tape. In many of these calls he made reference to God wanting him to do it and his soul having become one with Smith's.
On 14 June, Bell abducted 9-year-old Debra Helmick from outside her house and killed her. On 23 June, he called Dawn Smith again, threatened to kill her and gave her directions to where he had dumped Helmick.
On 27 July, Bell was arrested after forensics identified the indentation of an incomplete phone number on Shari Smith's "will" and traced it back to a man named Larry Sheppard, for whom he had been house-sitting at the time of the murders. Sheppard identified Bell's voice from the phone calls. Bell was arrested, and Shari Smith's hair was found in his apartment.
Bell received two separate trials for the murders. At his trials he attempted to feign insanity by testifying on his own behalf and making bizarre comments such as "Mona Lisa is a man and silence is golden, my friend" and "I am Jesus Christ!". However, he was convicted of both murders and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair on 4 October 1996, the last person executed in South Carolina until the execution of James Neil Tucker in 2004.
In addition to the murders of Smith and Helmick, Bell is suspected of murdering Denise Newson Porch and Sandee Elaine, both young women linked to Bell who disappeared in 1975 and 1984 respectively.