Authors: Paul Britton
In the station office I spread the photographs, forensic reports, statements and maps across the desk. Ordinarily, I’d have taken them home and spent several nights going over the details, but this time the clock was ticking. The pressure for a result was enormous, there was intense national and international scrutiny of the investigation and growing anger in the community. Despite thousands of phone calls - sometimes 200 an hour - door-to-door inquiries, posters, press conferences and re-runs of video footage on television, the identity of Jamie’s killer or killers remained unknown.
Taking a sip of coffee, I asked myself four questions - what actually happened? How was it done? Who is the victim? And what motivated the killer or killers?
Only when I had these answers could I tackle the most important query - who was responsible?
I leaned back, closed my eyes and pictured The Strand shopping centre on that busy Friday afternoon. There are two boys who should have been at school but are not. They’re not casual acquaintances or youngsters who merely sit and share sandwiches in the playground; there’s a bond between them, a feeling that they can explore things with each other and share secrets. It has qualities of a special friendship where they have expectations of one another and compete to win respect. All of these things can be drawn from the comfort with which they acquired Jamie and took him on his last journey.
At the same time, elsewhere in The Strand, Denise Bulger is going through a basic routine of her life - shopping for her husband Ray and her young son. It’s an ordinary day and Jamie is a typically happy, playful toddler for whom the world is a playground and every new sight, sound and smell continues his process of learning and developing. Like most young children his curiosity and desire for exploration is enormous.
For Jamie the covered shopping centre has many of the characteristics of a large house. It’s cold outside but the mall is more cosy and has been set up to be welcoming and to attract curiosity. The window displays, bright lights and greenery are pleasing to the eye and designed to make people feel comfortable.
Children of Jamie’s age are very careful about straying too far from Mum or Dad unless they feel safe. Even when they extend their range of exploration, taking a few steps further, they look back to make a connection with a parent, usually line of sight. If they come across something which seems threatening, they will scuttle back but if everything seems OK they will go a little further, gaining in confidence.
Something catches Jamie’s eye and he toddles off to have a look. He knows where his Mum is and feels safe. Once outside the shop, he is presented with a kaleidoscope of different sights and sounds, an almost infinite opportunity for imaginative play.
So we have two streams of existence - the two lads, pre-adolescent perhaps, and young Jamie Bulger and his mother. The day had started with them completely independent of each other but now each is moving inextricably to combine and be inseparable for ever.
What do I know of the boys? It’s likely they came together early in the day and spent time speculating about what they were going to do. At some point this hardens into an undertaking, a mission. Although they won’t have an absolutely clear picture of every detail of the plan, they’ll have a general picture.
Perhaps it began with a chance remark such as, ‘Why don’t we take a kid …’
‘What do ya’ mean?’
‘We could get one … take him away.’
‘Yeah.’
Then they bolstered each other up.
‘What if someone says something?’
‘Nah, no-one’s gonna see.’
‘But what if someone does?’
‘They’d just think we was messing about.’
Over a period of time this conversation develops into a clear, shared intention. For two boys to have reached this point, I knew that their backgrounds would be littered with disturbance and disruption, be it broken homes, delinquent siblings, violent or abusive parents, or simply a mother and father who have difficulty in building the emotional space into their lives to concentrate on nurturing. Time and again in clinical consulting rooms these factors emerge in the histories of emotionally disturbed children.
Two damaged boys came together in this case, perhaps because they could relate to each other. I would expect both to have been bullied and to be bullies in a family and a school setting. Equally, truancy is often flagged by problems at home for a child, as well as the inability to keep up with the academic and disciplinary requirements at school.
As they cruised through the shopping centre, the boys made a decision.
‘Let’s do it now.’
‘There’s one.’
‘No, he’s with his mum.’
‘Why don’t we try upstairs?’
‘Yeah.’
They won’t be able to carry out any detailed criminal analysis of the scene but they can sense when it feels wrong and bide their time. Then they see a child.
‘Hello baby, do you want to play? Come and see what we’ve got. Come on.’
The toddler takes a few steps towards them.
Mercifully, at that moment, the mother turns and sees what’s happening. She sees, but doesn’t recognize. If a thirty-year-old man had been enticing her little boy away it would have been a different story, but here are a couple of lads who give her a cheeky smile.
‘Just playing with him,’ they say.
They’ve almost been caught but they don’t panic. Nobody knows or expects they’re planning a murder; they’re just mucking about, that’s all. They look at each other and smile because they know the mother doesn’t have the slightest inkling of their designs.
Fear would have stopped many at this stage, but this is not a casual act for these boys; they have learned to deal with the adult world by challenging it and not accepting its values. Similarly, neither of them wants to let himself down in the eyes of the other.
Outside A.R. Timms butchers they come upon the perfect victim, Jamie Bulger.
He’s alone and at precisely the age which makes him most manageable and controllable as well as being mobile.
If Jamie had been a few years older, the risk to his abductors would have been far greater. But at two and a half he doesn’t have the vocal skills or the social insight to appeal to passers-by for help. Later, when people stopped and asked why he was crying, they talked to the abductors rather than the child; always about him, never directly to him. Similarly, with a more developed personality and vocabulary Jamie could have talked to the boys and they may have found themselves relating to a person rather than someone who was anonymous and impersonal. This could have made it far harder for them to kill him.
These boys regard Jamie as just somebody’s kid but they also know they are breaking one of the most important taboos in our society. They might not be able to articulate it, because of their age, but they know the value that we place on children.
The actual approach is the most difficult moment of all. Their hearts are pumping and adrenalin surging. This they enjoy. It happens very quickly and without violence. Nobody notices because there were two worlds in the mall. In the adult world if a man takes a child or aggressively grabs a woman, people react, however Jamie’s abduction took place in a different world. It didn’t register with dozens of potential witnesses because, of course, boys don’t snatch toddlers away from their mothers.
We don’t know what they say to Jamie, perhaps very little. Maybe they simply hold out a hand and he reaches up and takes it because he’s used to being treated with love and kindness. From that moment on, he’s as good as dead because all that follows indicates that the boys were determined not to let him go.
As they take him through the shopping centre, neither shows any outward signs of anxiety or panic. The surge of excitement at having total control over the toddler and the ability to do whatever they liked to him outweighs any feelings of compassion or knowledge of wrongdoing. Their apprehension simply feeds into the enjoyment and they know, even if caught, they can argue that Jamie had simply followed them.
Outside, they carry the toddler across Stanley Road and down to the canal towpath. They want to take him to a place where they can control him without interference but haven’t got a detailed plan. All the while they’re talking to each other.
At some point, possibly by the canal, Jamie is dropped or beaten and begins to bleed. Suddenly things are not right. The world has always been a ‘caring’ place for him but suddenly it’s changed. These lads turn out to be a threat. Where’s his mum, he can’t find her. He whimpers and cries. Now he’s becoming more difficult to control and the boys will use a combination of reasoning, cajoling and physical threats.
‘Shut up or else!’ says one.
‘Yeah, shut up or else.’
One may push him and then the other will copy the violence.
Even though hurt and frightened, Jamie might still have followed the boys because they were the only people he recognized in the strange surroundings. If they’d hurt him too much or made him too frightened, he might simply have stopped and howled, knowing that it normally brought his mum. Or if the boys had wandered a little from him and a passer-by had moved closer, perhaps the distance might have separated Jamie from them and pushed him into the arms of someone else. But they weren’t about to let that happen. They stayed close because Jamie was their prize and they wouldn’t give him up.
This is one of the problems. Several witnesses saw Jamie tired and crying during the walk, but he seemed to be following the boys and not struggling. What does it tell them? It says that it’s a typical scene - older lads who have been told to look after a young brother but think it’s a drag and would rather be off on their own.
Each time they meet an adult, they easily satisfy their concerns by offering a plausible story such as asking directions to the nearest police station or talking to Jamie as if they knew him well. They’re not in a hurry and seem relaxed, taking advantage of their intimate knowledge of the area. Perhaps they were waiting for darkness to fall or simply searching for the right location. Eventually, they make their way to a place they know well - a railway cutting away from the roads and constraints of the adult world. Jamie is now in their domain.
Once down the embankment, there’s no longer any need to be gentle or cajoling with him. They take off his hood and throw it into the tree. Egging each other on, they begin to do the things they talk about. Rather than having a solitary offender who has some internal fantasy to which he or she responds, the attack on Jamie shows the power of two people combining.
They begin to torment him, taking off various items of clothing and causing pain. As Jamie gets more upset, they laugh and revel in their sense of control. They observe human discomfort and recognize the power they wield - raise a hand and see the child cringe, hit him and see the tears. You can even make the child behave positively towards you because he’s hoping this will stop you doing it again.
Finally they reach a section of the tracks which is almost like a concealed arena - a little amphitheatre surrounded by shrubbery and undergrowth. This is their place and the adrenalin and excitement surge as they begin to systematically beat and injure Jamie. At some point a stone or brick lands. More are thrown and the toddler’s distress increases. He then falls victim to a much more intense attack as the boys use exploratory violence, engaging in direct physical contact. There is no frenzy or loss of control, in fact the evidence shows great deliberation and a sense of exploration. For example, one of the boys holds Jamie’s head while the other pours modelling paint into his eyes.
Finally, Jamie’s agony and torment is over. He didn’t die quickly. For the boys, there is an element of deflation but they feel no panic or remorse. If so, they would have run away. Instead, they carry Jamie’s body and lay it across the railway track before trying to conceal it under bricks and ballast.
At six o’clock I telephoned my wife Marilyn and told her I wouldn’t be home until late.
‘Do you want me to keep your dinner?’ she asked.
‘No. I’ll pick something up.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. Fine. Tired, I guess.’
After thirty years together, she knew me too well. She has watched the small changes in me, some of them temporary, others more enduring and she’d learned to cope with my defensive walls and pensive silences. Despite the horrors that I had to see, she knew that I couldn’t turn my back when people ask for help, perhaps because she possessed an enormous capacity to empathize with people in crisis or distress.
‘When will you be home?’ she asked.
‘When you see me.’
An hour later, I called Kirby and his colleagues back into the office. On a notepad, I had handwritten a fifteen-point psychological profile.
‘It’s a tragic but not a complex murder,’ I said, straightening the page in front of me. ‘To answer your first question, keep looking for the children. There is nothing in the postmortem report that particularly suggests an adult predatory offender. There was no semen present on the body; the anal injury isn’t consistent with penile or digital penetration. The blows to the body weren’t sufficiently crushing to indicate the bricks and metal bar had been wielded by an adult. Equally, there’s no history of predation by adults in or around the site and none of the caution, or the display, that I would expect to see characterizing an adult’s work. The police station was too close.
‘All the injuries are small injuries. The process which took James from the shopping centre to the scene of his death was a succession of small events. The murder scene is known to be a children’s play area and the batteries and pot of Humbrol enamel paint are the tools of a child.
‘Similarly, the attempt to dispose of Jamie by leaving his body on the railway track was a naive attempt at deception. An adult would have realized this and perhaps used other methods to hide the cause of death.’
Kirby sighed and nodded his head.
Moving to my next point, I told them I didn’t believe that Jamie had died in a game that got out of control. Everything suggested calculation and intent.