Authors: Paul Britton
‘They meant to kill him?’ asked Kirby, ruefully.
‘What happened to Jamie wasn’t a happenstance. Even though the final mechanics and the implements used in his death may not have been planned or chosen at the outset there was an intention to take a child and to ultimately kill him. We know that because Jamie wasn’t the first child that they tried to acquire that day. We also know they took him by a long and convoluted route to the place where they finally killed him. During that journey, they overcame quite carefully, deliberately and systematically a number of hurdles along the way. They had numerous opportunities to walk away and give the child up at no risk to themselves but they were determined to hang on to him even if it meant lying. From start to finish there is a purposefulness to their journey.’
Kirby jotted notes into his operational record book. ‘What can you tell us about them?’
‘One or both of the boys will live very close to the scene of the murder, perhaps within line of sight, but certainly walking distance. People do things according to a mental mapping system built up by their knowledge of local surroundings. These boys knew where they were going. They knew the streets, footpaths and shortcuts - it was their own turf.
‘You are also likely to find some domestic difficulty in their backgrounds, not necessarily broken families but the sort of disturbance that is associated with an unstable upbringing. This is a classic characteristic of children who exhibit antisocial and violent tendencies.’
Kirby asked, ‘Will they have any previous form?’
‘Not necessarily,’ I warned. ‘There’s no reason to expect convictions or court appearances. They may have a history of untoward behaviour but it might not have brought them police attention.
‘The same goes for any obvious sign of mental illness or other psychological pathology. It’s easy to assume that these boys are grossly abnormal or mentally ill and would be known to the Mental Health Services or, at least, within the local community. But just think of how easily they dealt with each adult they met; they had the confidence and reasoning to dismiss their concerns easily and come up with plausible stories.
‘This also indicates that they will be of at least normal intelligence and will be accomplished deceivers.
‘Obviously neither of these boys was at school on Friday, which doesn’t necessarily mean they will have a long history of truanting but I wouldn’t be surprised, particularly if there’s disruption in their home lives. Truancy is very common in these situations because the kids can’t cope with the routine and the authority of the classroom.
‘Both boys are likely to be isolated from their parents and to have embraced another, different set of values. There is a powerful delinquent street culture that attracts some children and these youngsters develop a system of relying on each other and sharing and enacting fantasies. The values they share with their peers are far more potent in regulating their lives than the values of their families.’
‘Like a gang mentality,’ suggested one of the officers.
‘You could say that, although there doesn’t need to be a gang, it’s much more diffuse than that. There will be lots of young groups in the area which sometimes work together and sometimes compete. They may have different styles and rules, but there will be an overriding set of values that they all share which exclude, or even reject, the “straight” world of their families.’
‘Will they tell anyone about the killing?’ asked Kirby, hopefully.
‘Certainly not their families. Their parents won’t believe that their sons could have been involved in such a crime. Initially, the boys will take a keen interest in local publicity and attitudes. They will want to know what people think and whether it is being viewed as some heroic achievement or with horror.
‘It will show on them. There’ll be apprehension and evidence of excitement and anxiety, possibly of sleep disturbance. The sense of control and adrenalin rush that led to the killing of Jamie will disappear quickly. And when that adrenalin flushes away, they will begin to ask, “What on earth have I done?” Jamie didn’t die silently, nor did he die cleanly. These boys will have vivid images of what actually happened and it won’t be like the television - blood leaves marks; a child’s screams cannot be turned down like a volume control.
‘Equally, when they went their separate ways, they no longer had each other to fall back on. Now they will find that they can’t quite shut it out and will suffer a trauma themselves. They will become frightened and worry about being found out. They will wonder if their partner will tell. Although they are a pair, they have now been catapulted into a league that they never contemplated and can’t quite rely on each other.’
Kirby asked, ‘I assume one of them will be the ringleader?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but that’s not significant in the killing. Throughout the day there were numerous opportunities for either child to have left the other and gone home. None of these were taken.’
‘And they definitely knew it was wrong?’
‘Yes. They lied and deceived to protect themselves; they lay Jamie across the tracks to make it look as though a train had killed him. They knew exactly what they were doing.’
Outside, the ranks of journalists had thinned. Groups huddled in cars escaping the cold and occasionally wiping the fogged windows to keep the station entrance in view. I slipped outside, avoided eye contact and was relieved to see the car in one piece.
The journey home seemed to take a very long time. Although the heater was on I was cold. The sense of emptiness which I knew would come had arrived. It always does after I steep myself in reconstructing the terror of a victim and the exhilaration of an exploiter as they are joined in murder.
I stopped at a service station on the M6, just outside Stoke-on-Trent, and bought a coffee. The handful of others who had broken their journeys looked secure and relaxed as they quietly went about their lives. I envied them. My thoughts were with Denise Bulger and the horror that had entered her life when Jamie had slipped from her side and which now would never truly leave her.
It was very late and the village streets were deserted when I pulled into the driveway. A light was on downstairs, Marilyn had waited up for me. She had fallen asleep in a chair worrying about ice on the roads. I didn’t mention many of the details of my day and she was kind enough not to ask. She, more so than I, had followed the daily reports on ‘Baby James’ as the papers referred to him. Like any mother she was shaken by the ease with which it had happened. She could remember times when our own two children were youngsters when, glancing away for just a second, she would turn back and not see them. For that brief moment, all mothers experience a sense of anxiety and fear which sends their pulses racing.
‘Anything the matter?’ she asked sleepily.
‘Not a thing.’
‘It was on the news again tonight. That poor mother… imagine how she must feel.’
I had leaned back into an easy chair.
‘Are you coming to bed?’ she asked.
‘In a little while. I can still hear the road.’
I was still asleep when two teams of detectives assembled shortly after dawn at Marsh Lane Police Station and were briefed by Kirby. They had the names and addresses of two boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged ten and a half. Thompson lived less than 200 yards from the Cherry Lane railway embankment.
Following my advice, the police had refocused their inquiries closer to the scene, and had come across a woman who thought she recognized Thompson from one of the video images. After discreet inquiries at the boys’ school, it was discovered that neither had attended classes on the previous Friday.
After the furore created by the arrest of the twelve-year-old in Kirkdale, this latest operation was to be top secret and low-profile. Apart from avoiding mob violence, Kirby wanted to ensure that the calls from the public kept coming. Often when a suspect has been picked up, potential witnesses assume that their information is not necessary or important and vital clues can be lost.
He was also aware that Crimewatch UK was due to screen a reconstruction of James Bulger’s last movements at 9 p.m. that night on BBC1. Video images from the security cameras at the shopping centre had been enhanced by Defence Ministry experts and were to be broadcast afresh to an audience that ran into millions.
At 7.30 a.m. detectives knocked on the doors of a house in Walton, and another in Norris Green. Detective Constable David Tanner, one of the arresting officers, said afterwards, ‘When he [Jon Venables] came down those stairs in his pyjamas, I thought it had to be a mistake. He was just so small.’
The boys were taken to separate police stations while their homes were searched and clothing taken for forensic analysis.
Like millions of others, I watched Crimewatch UK that night, unaware that anyone had been arrested. A two-year-old boy who looked remarkably like Jamie posed as part of the murder hunt outside the butcher’s shop in The Strand. His clothes were identical. Kirby, who had flown to London for the programme, made several references to the psychological profile.
Meanwhile, twenty-five special lines had been installed at Marsh Lane to answer calls from viewers. The deluge that followed produced about forty-three names and an important new witness.
It was not until early the following day that I learned of the arrests. I was at Warwickshire police headquarters, a rather grand-looking country house on the outskirts of the village of Leek Wootton, launching a long-term research project to identify and isolate the characteristics which make some police officers more successful interviewers than others. It was hoped that these interviewing skills could eventually be taught.
In a sense I was back where I started because thirty years earlier part of my police cadet training had been here and I remembered the cross-country races over open fields that had since made way for a golf course. Albert Kirby sounded more relaxed when he called. ‘We have two boys in custody. Some of their clothing is stained with blue paint and possibly blood but it’s all circumstantial at the moment.’
‘Have they admitted anything?’ I asked.
‘No. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. They’re only ten years old. They’re so small it’s hard to believe it could be them. You know the situation, we have to make sure that they know and fully understand what they are saying and, most importantly, if they were responsible for killing Jamie, whether they knew what they were doing. None of my officers have ever had to interview children this young. It’s a whole new ball game and we can’t afford to get it wrong.’
‘You expected this,’ I said and Kirby agreed. He wanted advice on what they could expect.
‘OK, but I need every possible detail about their backgrounds and circumstances…’
Kirby said, ‘Most of it’s in your profile. They’re both the same age, born twelve days apart in 1982. Robert Thompson lives two hundred yards from the murder scene and is one of seven kids in a single parent family. The father moved out several years ago and Robert apparently roams the streets with little or no parental control. Local intelligence records produced nothing on him, but he has an elder brother with some minor offences.
‘Jon Venables has also had family problems and been monitored by social workers for the past three years. His parents are separated and there have been problems at school where he’s complained of being bullied.
‘The boys are friends and live close to each other. Both were missing from school last Friday and are regular truants. They’ve been held back a year because of slow progress.’
‘Has anyone talked to them?’
‘Only casual conversations, trying to build up a rapport.’
‘How do they seem?’
‘Frightened.’
‘All right. I’ll call you back.’
The clock was running. Thompson and Venables could only be held for a maximum of thirty-six hours from the time of their arrest. Meanwhile, their families had been moved to safe houses.
When I was a young lad growing up in Leamington Spa, we lived near a disused clay quarry which had all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore. Sometimes I’d play there after school or at weekends and one day I came across what appeared to be the skeletons of frogs. Moving closer, I saw that they were pinned to the ground by wooden skewers.
I didn’t understand at first but later I watched as older boys, between nine and thirteen, actually caught the frogs, skewered them and watched them die. Or sometimes they would cripple a frog so it couldn’t jump quickly and then take turns in throwing a pen knife at it. They seemed to get enormous enjoyment out of this, as if wielding such power and control gave them a thrill that they couldn’t legitimately get by hurting someone else.
They knew it was wrong, just as it was wrong to shoplift, but in just the same way the sense of exhilaration kicked in and they carried on regardless. These same children would then go home and have their tea and be tucked into bed, perhaps not little angels but basically unexceptional. Catching and killing frogs was just something they did when they came together.
What happened to Jamie Bulger is just this, writ very large. Such a mundane, banal explanation shocks people because it means that his two killers are not so different from us. There is a pathway by which most of us could have ended up there.
This doesn’t mean, however, that they were helpless in the face of some irresistible force. They chose to do what they did.
Sitting in an upstairs office at Warwickshire police headquarters, I began to plot an interview strategy for the young boys. But if the interrogators were going to discover what happened to Jamie, they first had to understand why it happened. What was it in two boys’ lives that gave them the need to abduct an unknown baby, let alone kill one?
Many people have trouble accepting that a child is capable of serious crime and, as a result, want to believe that Jamie’s death was somehow accidental or unintentional because the alternative is too dreadful to contemplate. We attribute to childhood a certain sort of innocence and purity of heart and we need to protect this image.