Drug dealer jailed for murder of foster carer aged 79
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Version 0 of 1. A small-time drug dealer has been jailed for a minimum of 33 years for the “cold-blooded” killing of a 79-year-old widow who fostered more than 50 children. Gareth Dack, 33, was found guilty on Wednesday of strangling Norma Bell to death before setting fire to her house to try to cover his tracks. The unemployed drug user made explicit calls to the adult television channel Babestation while his elderly victim lay dead or dying in her home in Hartlepool on 3 April last year. Jailing him, the trial judge, Mrs Justice Whipple, said: “You killed Norma Bell in cold blood in her own home when she was defenceless. “She had done nothing to deserve your violence. Then you set fire to her home in a failed attempt to cover your tracks.” The trial at Teesside crown court heard that Dack preyed on his elderly victim, who lived alone after the death of her husband, John, in 2010, because he thought she was a “soft touch”. A childhood friend of one of her long-term foster sons, Dack visited Bell a week before the murder when she lent him £10 for petrol. Since 1965, Norma and John Bell had fostered more than 50 babies and toddlers in the small coastal town in north-east England. She was known as the town’s supermum, devoting her life to caring for dozens of children for more than 30 years. Six of the foster children stayed long term, becoming part of the family with the couple’s three own children. In a statement after Dack’s conviction, Bell’s family paid tribute to the woman they described as having “a heart as big as a lion”. “The events of 3 April last year turned our lives upside down and in the following 10 months we have endured pain we did not conceive possible. “Norma Bell was our confidant, our friend, our crutch to lean on, our shoulder to cry on and not least she was our mam. Her murder has left an enormous gap in our lives and forgiveness will never be given.” They said she had helped raise 12 grandchildren since retiring as a foster carer in the 1990s and that she would tease them about who would be first to give her a great-grandchild. “This is something she dearly looked forward to yet this is something she will now never get to see,” the family said. “Gareth Dack brutally murdered our mother in the place she should have been safest and then burned out the family home, destroying everything she had for a few quid to feed his drug habit, and his actions have left us all in pieces.” |