News - Local/State

Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007

THE GENESIS OF A MURDERER

Before he was a killer, Larry Gene Bell tried to kidnap Rock Hill woman

It was a Friday, the morning of Feb. 21, 1975. A 19-year-old blonde woman named Dale Sauls Howell needed laundry detergent. She walked from her apartment behind a shopping center on Cherry Road to what was then the Super Duper grocery store. That walk would change her life, hurt her and hurts her still, because in the parking lot of that store a man sat in a green Volkswagen.

That man tried to abduct her. That man lived in Rock Hill in those days, on Saluda Street. He was arrested. About three months later, that man pleaded guilty and got probation.

That man's name was Larry Gene Bell.

The same Larry Gene Bell who 10 years later would kidnap and kill two blonde girls near Columbia. But before he was caught, after those girls were missing for almost a month, people around the state were afraid to let kids play outside.

The name is never Bell or Larry. It is always all three, Larry Gene Bell. The name for 22 years has been synonymous in South Carolina with evil. Bell died in the electric chair in 1996.

A retired State Law Enforcement Division forensic photographer named Rita Shuler wrote a recently published book about his crimes, and in researching the book found this lady from Rock Hill who was Bell's first confirmed victim.

In 1975, Dale Sauls Howell was married with a young son. After her husband died many years later, she changed her name back to Sauls.

"I noticed the guy sitting in the green Volkswagen," Sauls said of that February 1975 morning. "I walked across the parking lot, and he got out. He said, 'Let's go to Charlotte and party.' I said no, and he grabbed me and spun me around. He stuck a knife at my stomach. I started screaming."

People inside the store heard the screams and called the police. Bell took off in the Volkswagen, south on Cherry Road. He was caught near the intersection of Charlotte Avenue, police reports show. Sauls went to the Rock Hill Police Department and identified Bell.

"I saw him there, sitting in a chair, and started screaming," she remembered.

Larry Gene Bell, who worked at Eastern Airlines in Charlotte, was charged that same day with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. The police report shows an open knife was found in the car.

Bell "did press a knife against her abdomen in a threatening manner in an attempt to abduct her," the arrest warrant stated.

The same day, court records show, a woman from Columbia put up a $5,000 bond for Bell, and he was free.

"I couldn't sleep worrying about it," Sauls said of Bell's release.

Sauls said she kept a baseball bat in the bed with her. She hated to be by herself at night.

Court records show that in York on May 26, 1975, Bell pleaded guilty. He received a five-year sentence that was suspended to five years probation. He was supposed to seek mental health counseling for attacking women, documents show.

"I was never told about the hearing," Sauls said. "I didn't find out until that night. I didn't get a chance to go to court."

Ricky Sauls, her brother, said the family knew about Bell's release on bond but were told nothing else afterward until finding out that Bell had already pleaded guilty.

"We never got a chance to go to court," Ricky Sauls said.

The police and court officials involved in the case are long gone from those offices. But it was not the law in 1975 -- as it is now required, and has been for a few years -- that victims had to be told of court appearances and be given the opportunity to address the court during sentencing, Lt. Jerry Waldrop of the Rock Hill Police Department said.

York County probation officials said when Bell was sentenced in May 1975, he had a Columbia address and his probation location was shifted there. Records there also show he had no prior criminal record before the Rock Hill arrest and conviction, officials said.

In June 1976, Bell's probation was revoked after he was convicted and sentenced to five years for attacking a University of South Carolina female student in October 1975 in Columbia, court records show.