He posted bail several weeks later and in order to avoid conviction and further incarceration, he fled Texas and escaped from the United States, evading police for more than two decades. In 1993, he was arrested in Panama and extradited back to the United States, where he was subsequently convicted of Dickens' murder and received a 70-year sentence. In 1998, Bell wrote several letters to the Harris County Attorney, confessing to the murders of five girls in 1971 and six more between 1974 and 1977.