A convicted murderer serving a 70-year prison sentence died leaving unanswered questions about the unsolved killings of 11 missing girls.
Edward Harold Bell, 82, was being investigated over his 'confession' that he was actually a serial killer responsible for their deaths.
In a past letter sent to the Houston Chronicle about the cold cases concerning the victims, who all disappeared from locations around Texas in the 1970s, Bell called them the "Eleven who went to Heaven."
The Texas inmate and sex offender, who claimed to be a serial killer before backtracking on his confessions, died on Saturday.
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He had been serving time for the murder of an ex-Marine and had never been charged over the killings of the 11 girls- although reports claim he was a prime suspect in at least two cases.
In 2011, he reportedly told the Houston Chronicle he was the missing piece in the puzzle of the string of cold cases in a series of letters and jailhouse interviews.
Bell claimed he murdered the girls, some of who were as young as 12 when they disappeared from Galveston, Dickinson, Houston, Clear Lake and Alvin between 1971-77.
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Bell was only ever convicted of the murder he died serving time over.
He shot Larry Dickens dead in 1978 in Pasadena, California, after the ex-Marine confronted him immediately after he exposed himself to a group of neighbourhood girls.
Dickens' mother was reportedly watching from a kitchen window as Bell shot her son with two different guns minutes after the confrontation.
She called 911 and local police found murder weapons and pornography in Bell's pick-up truck when they arrested him.
The Houston Chronicle reports Bell went on the run for 14 years after he made bail.
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The authorities finally caught up with him after he became the subject of an Unsolved Mysteries TV show episode in 1992.
Police found him in 1993 living with a teenage girl at a yacht club in Panama, the Chronicle reports.
After Bell made the 2011 claims he had also killed 11 girls, Chronicle reporter Lise Olsen teamed up with retired homicide detective Fred Paige to investigate whether he really could have been in the right places at the crucial times to have carried out the slayings.
The investigation that resulted featured in a documentary 'The Eleven' and prompted Galveston prosecutors to reopen the Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson murder cases.
The Chronicle reports Bell had described their abduction and deaths, claiming he had picked them up from an ice cream shop, shot and killed them, then dumped their bodies in a remote bayou.
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The body of water where the bodies were found matched Bell's description, and was reportedly near a pasture where he kept a trailer.
Bell was never charged over the two homicides, hopes he would be held to account for the crimes he claimed to have committed ended when the inmate collapsed at his prison unit on Saturday, local time.
However he remained the prime suspect over the girls' killings at the time of his death.
The Chronicle reports he was a suspect in several other unsolved murders where no DNA evidence or weapons had been located by detectives.
Some suggested Bell's death could prompt someone to come forward with new information.
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“People were afraid of him,” investigative journalist Olsen reportedly said. “And there were some people who would never talk to me because they were afraid of him — they were afraid that he might get out.”
Her retired detective co-investigator, Paige, had stumbled across a "confession" letter Bell wrote in the 1990s.
Bell later distanced himself from the claims when he was interviewed again in jail in 2017.
He told a Houston Matters reporter he was suicidal, and had made it all up in hopes of provoking the state of Texas to deal him the death penalty.
Two years later he is dead. But even as he takes his secrets to the grave with him, many of the missing girls' family members are convinced of Bell's involvement in their murders.
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Maria Johnson's sister Rita Brestrup told the Chronicle she was glad Bell “no longer walks this earth and will never be paroled."
“I believe he took a life precious to me and my life has never been the same since.
"Maria’s death impacted my life more than any other single event. Nothing can take her memory away.”
Phyllis Southern reportedly remains Bell murdered her sister Brenda Jones.
The Chronicle wrote that upon hearing of his death, she said: “I had hoped to one day to question him myself, but now God’s judgment is upon him."
