{"id":5548,"date":"2017-02-02T10:26:19","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=5548"},"modified":"2017-02-02T10:26:19","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:26:19","slug":"norma-bell-murder-gareth-dack-sentenced-33-years-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/02\/02\/norma-bell-murder-gareth-dack-sentenced-33-years-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Norma Bell murder: Gareth Dack sentenced to 33 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A drug dealer who killed a foster mother and torched her home to destroy the evidence has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 33 years.<\/p>\n

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Gareth Dack strangled Norma Bell at her Hartlepool home in April last year – a month short of her 80th birthday – and then attempted to blow it up.<\/p>\n

The penniless father-of-four used a telephone cable to kill the 79-year-old – whom he had known since childhood – and then rang sex chat lines after she lay dead or dying.<\/p>\n

He then stole \u00a3700 and a boxed 49-inch TV, which he sold to a friend for \u00a360. He had borrowed \u00a310 from his victim the week before.<\/p>\n

He left the premises the next day after starting two fires and leaving the gas on in the kitchen of the home Mrs Bell had lived in for 27 years.<\/p>\n

But his attempt to blow up the house failed and his DNA was found on a used match in the kitchen, inside Mrs Bell’s handbag and on the cable around her neck.<\/p>\n

Her mobile phone was found in the garage of Dack’s parents’ home further down Westbourne Road.<\/p>\n

The victim, described as a woman who had a “heart as big as a lion”, had fostered more than 50 children.<\/p>\n

Dack was convicted of her murder and arson at Teesside Crown Court on Wednesday following a three-week trial.<\/p>\n

The jury heard Dack considered the widow, who lost her husband in 2010, to be a “soft touch”.<\/p>\n

Trial judge Mrs Justice Whipple told him: “You killed Norma Bell in cold blood in her own home when she was defenceless.<\/p>\n

“She had done nothing to deserve your violence, then you set fire to her home in a failed attempt to cover your tracks.”<\/p>\n

The Bells had three sons and were parents to six long-term foster children.<\/p>\n

The court heard statements from some of the children the couple had fostered.<\/p>\n

One child described them as “amazing parents”, while another said she had been bullied for being fostered, but “mam told me to be proud of who I was and said I was a chosen child, and I should be proud of that and not ashamed”.<\/p>\n

Her family said in a statement: “Her murder has left an enormous gap in our lives and forgiveness will never be given.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source\u00a0 news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A drug dealer who killed a foster mother and torched her home to destroy the evidence has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 33 years. Gareth Dack strangled Norma Bell at her […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[2764,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-5548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-foster-mother","10":"tag-murder","11":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5550,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548\/revisions\/5550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}