There weren't any 'good old days.' My Grandfather used to talk about the following:
Going to a segregated high school. He remembers 'colored' water fountains, entrances to buildings, and schools.
Men freely beating their wives and bragging about it to their friends, who then gave them slaps on the back for keeping their little women in line.
2 girls from his school dying in back alley abortions, countless others who went to stay with aunts or other relatives and came back having had their babies stolen and placed with 'good 2 parent families'
Several children dying under mysterious circumstances, but no one looked into it, because those things didn't happen in 'nice families' (read white, married couples with the picket fence and the dog)
Girls getting married at 14 or 15 years old, and starting families immediately. No jobs, no college (or even high school), no options.
Institutionalizing babies with birth defects immediately. My grandmother was hospitalized with spinal meningitis as a child. The doctor stood at a four year olds bedside, looked at her mother and flat out told her to go home and forget she had ever birthed this child. He would take care of all the paperwork and have her put in an institution. This was before they had any idea whether or not she would be physically or mentally impaired.
While he claimed to have never known anyone who was gay and never expressed an issue with it, he did very seriously tell me that a gay man in his town should have run, because that man would end up lynched. Flat out. And the men that did the lynching would pat themselves on the back afterwards.
I would say that the good old days weren't that great, unless you happened to be a straight, white, middle or upper class man. Everyone else better bow before them.
People think it's worse, because they can see all these stories on the internet, but these things have always happened. 60 years ago Bella just would have gone unidentified forever. The story might not have even been reported, because it would have been too shocking. What if a woman read the paper and saw it?
Really, the only old case like Bella's that comes to mind is the "Boy in the Box" case, and that was only widely reported because one officer couldn't let it go and worked his entire life to keep it in the public eye. Today, the internet never forgets.