Norma Bell: Killed By A Neighbour She'd Known Since Childhood | Ep 7 | What The Killer Did Next

She'd fostered more than 50 children. She was a month from her 80th birthday. Her killer lived three doors away. Norma Bell was a widow, a mother of nine, and one of the most beloved figures on Westbourne Road in Hartlepool. She had lived in the same home for 27 years. Over her lifetime she had taken more than 50 foster children into her care. Her family later described her as "a loving and caring woman, full of life" with "a heart as big as a lion." In May 2016, she would have turned 80. She never reached her birthday. On 3 April 2016, a fire was reported at Norma's home. When emergency services arrived, they found her body inside. A post-mortem revealed she had been strangled — first by hand, then with a mobile phone cable. The fire had been set deliberately. The killer was Gareth Dack, a 33-year-old father of four who lived just down the street with his parents. He had known Norma since childhood. Only the week before her death, he had borrowed £10 from her — one of countless small acts of kindness she had extended to people in her community over decades. What he did next is one of the most disturbing chapters in the series. After killing her, Dack sat in Norma's home and made calls from her landline to adult chat lines. He ransacked her belongings, stole £700 in cash and a 49-inch boxed television (which he later sold to a friend for £60), then set two fires and left the gas on in the kitchen — a deliberate attempt to destroy the evidence by blowing up the house she had lived in for 27 years. The gas explosion never came. Cleveland Police pieced together the case carefully. Dack's DNA was found on a used match in the kitchen, inside Norma's handbag, and on the cable around her neck. Her mobile phone was recovered from the garage of his parents' home — on the same street where she had been killed. Convicted at Teesside Crown Court in February 2017, Dack was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 33 years. Mrs Justice Whipple branded him "perverted and disgusting" and described the attack as "savage" and a "truly terrifying ordeal" for an elderly woman alone in her own home. Dack refused throughout the trial and afterwards to explain or take responsibility for what he had done. Gareth Dack died in HMP Frankland in April 2025. Hosted by Philip Glenister, What The Killer Did Next rewinds from the moment of arrest to show exactly how the killer behaved AFTER the murder — the brazenness, the theft, the failed cover-up, and the painstaking detective work that delivered justice for one of Hartlepool's most extraordinary women. This is Episode 7 of 8. The series finale lands next Monday at 2pm. 🔔 Subscribe to The Real Files for true crime, real-life investigations and the British stories you won't be able to look away from. #NormaBell #WhatTheKillerDidNext #TrueCrime #PhilipGlenister #GarethDack #BritishTrueCrime #TheRealFiles #HartlepoolMurder #CrimeDocumentary #UKTrueCrime