The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case

by David James Smith

  In the first week of January there were a series of minor disturbances at Ian’s care home. Two of the young female residents stayed out overnight on the Sunday, and in the early hours of the Tuesday morning, the police were called to help the staff impose some order. There was a row between a few of the residents and the police, and the officers went back to the station, followed a short time later by Ian and three other teenagers shouting abuse. After Ian spat at one of the policemen they were all arrested for disorderly conduct, though later discharged. In the early hours of the Wednesday morning, two of the women were found by police under the Breeze Hill flyover. They dropped an eight-inch knife when the police appeared. They said they wanted to stab the police. Later that day another girl took an overdose of Paracetamol, and had to go to hospital.

  An officer who knew Ian went round to the home to try and calm things down. It seemed that one of the first policemen who had gone to the home had asked Ian his name and, on hearing it, had said, oh, right, you’re one of those Thompsons. Ian had kicked off at this insult, and now, explaining it to the officer who knew him, Ian seemed upset and a bit weird. The officer asked Ian if he was all right. Yeah, said Ian. No, he’s not all right, said one of the other residents, he’s taken 20 Paracetamol. Ian was taken to hospital. He survived.

  Philip got picked up by the police two or three times after Christmas on suspicion of various offences he hadn’t committed. He and David were held for the burglary of a flat which was rented by a friend of David’s. The friend had gone away, and given David the keys to look after it. David had been in hospital with pneumonia over Christmas and was still recovering.

  Then Ian and Philip were stopped and held. Philip had a bottle of 25 paracetamol in his pocket, and when he was released he took the lot. He went into hospital and came out and took another overdose. Ian took another overdose. Ann had both of them in hospital in the same week. A neighbour came round and said Philip had nicked his tracksuit off the washing line. Unlikely, said Ann, he’s in hospital with an overdose.

  Ann had never again thought of taking too many pills. Not even after big Bobby went. Especially after big Bobby went. She wouldn’t kill herself over him.

  ■

  For Bobby and Jon, 1993 did not begin auspiciously at Walton St Mary’s. They ran out of school at lunchtime on their first day back. Jon was returned later in the day by his parents, who had found him nearby.

  The containment policy was maintained, but one afternoon towards the end of the month the school received a phone call from the Strand Shopping Centre. Ryan was in the managers office there, alone and in tears. His class teacher, Jacqueline Helm, went down to collect him, and Ryan explained that he had been bullied into sagging with Bobby and Gummy Gee. Bobby had told Gummy to hit Ryan if he refused to go with them. They had gone down by the canal, and Bobby and Gummy had run away and left Ryan on his own.

  The last video rented from Videoscene on Neil’s membership before the killing of James Bulger was Childs Play 3, which was taken out on 18 January 1993.

  Childs Play 3 tells the story of a Good Guy doll, Chucky, which comes to life possessed by the soul of a psychopath, the Lakeside Strangler, and embarks on a series of murders: ‘Don’t fuck with the Chuck’. There are seven killings, played out in vivid detail, including a long close-up of a man’s face as he is being strangled, a barber whose throat is cut by his own razor, and a youngster whose body explodes when he jumps on a live grenade.

  The film climaxes at a fun fair, inside the ghost train. The rail tracks are wreathed in dry ice, and surrounded by various objects of gothic horror. Chucky’s face is stained with blue paint from an earlier war game battle with paint guns, and as he pursues his intended victims across the tracks — ‘This is it kid. End of the line’ — half of his face is chopped away by the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Chucky loses various limbs, before being shredded in a wind machine.

  On 26 January, Bobby and Jon were thought to be sagging with another boy. Someone from the Education Welfare Office went round to the home of Susan Venables the following day. There was no answer at the door and the EWO representative left a letter, which never received a reply.

  At around this time — he would later be unable to remember the exact day, only that it was the end of January — a man was shopping in the Strand during the lunch break from his work at the Girobank, and saw two boys standing outside TJ Hughes, looking excited and lively as one of them tapped on the glass front of the store. The man thought they were up to mischief and he stopped to watch them. The boy tapping on the glass was evidently trying to attract the attention of a small child, a toddler, and was beckoning him towards the door of the shop. The child walked forward a few paces, and then went back to his mother. The two lads made off.

  Several weeks later, at an identification parade, the man picked out Jon as one of the two boys he had seen.

  On 4 February, Ann went to the school for a network meeting with the staff, a social worker and an Education Welfare Officer. The School’s usual EWO had been off sick since May, but there was emergency cover provided by another EWO, Julia Roberts, who had been involved with Bobby's family in the past. At the meeting Ann agreed that the only sure way to get Bobby into school was to take him herself. She’d already padlocked the back door and screwed the windows down to stop him running off.

  In spite of the problems, Bobby was due to begin secondary school next September.

  Bobby and Jon’s supervision and separation at school continued. They were even watched when they went to the toilet. Jon was often in the classroom next to Jacqueline Helm’s, when he was kept in, and she always made a point of talking to him, touched by his sweet air.

  On Thursday, 11 February, Jon was with Jacqueline Helm, helping her lay out paints in class. She told him he was such a good and helpful boy and asked him why he couldn’t behave like this all the time. Jon agreed with her that it was wrong to sag. She asked him why he did it, then. 1 don’t know, said Jon.

  24

  Over the weekend after they had been charged, the identities of Bobby and Jon became an open secret in Walton. One man, the father of a boy who usually sat next to Bobby in class, heard the names while he was out in the village and went home to tell his son. The boy said that Bobby and Jon used to ask him to sag off. They used to say, do you want to be in our gang, we’re going to kill someone. The boy went quiet for a while and then said, I’m not sitting next to him on Monday.

  On Monday, and throughout that week, the school was besieged by the press and unsettled by its new notoriety. Another classmate sat in Bobby’s chair and bounced up and down, singing, I’m in the murderer’s seat, I’m in the murderer’s seat. Reporters stood at the school gates hoping to interview the children, and barraged the head teacher with phone calls. Some pretended to be parents who had lost a copy of their child’s school photograph and wanted to acquire a replacement.

  The photograph which included Bobby and Jon was hanging from a wall in one of the school corridors. The mother of a pupil took the tabloid shilling to try and steal it. When she discovered that the picture was fixed to the wall, the newspaper supplied her with a small camera, and the mother practised with it, timing herself to remove the camera from the pocket of her anorak, hold it to her eye, snap the picture and return the camera to her pocket. When she had got the timing down to about 12 seconds, the mother went round to the school to meet her boy, and he led her to the corridor where the school photograph was hanging. She had her hand in her pocket, poised, but the school was one step ahead. The photograph had already been removed.

  Bobby and Jon remained in custody at their respective police stations until Monday morning, when they were driven to Bootle, to appear at South Sefton Magistrates Court. The two boys fidgeted their way through the remand hearing, which lasted for two minutes, and then left the court and Liverpool. They would be taken to separate secure units, where they would spend the next year of childhood.

  The route from the court was lined by a t
hicket of television crews and a small crowd of local people, some of whom ran forward offering physical and verbal abuse. There were six arrests in the mel<£e, but the tightly framed images of hatred on the television news seemed to exaggerate the scale of the incident.

  The boys’ parents, Ann Thompson and Neil and Susan Venables, never returned to their homes. Removal teams went in to take their possessions into storage, and the families were rehoused by social services. There was much secrecy and paranoia: fear of being found by the media, the greater fear of some faceless mob, or a vengeful maniac with a petrol bomb.

  Ann spent several weeks with Ryan and Ben in a flat attached to a residential home for the elderly, before being moved into a small house on a large estate, not far from Bobby’s secure unit. She kept Ryan with her at home, unwilling to let him go to school because he might accidentally disclose their secret.

  Neil and Susan Venables were reunited in their efforts to deal with what had happened, and moved together to a house in a quiet street near Jon’s secure unit. Susan sent a thank-you note to the police at Lower Lane, a Hallmark card with a front picture of flowers and the printed words,

  A message can’t really convey

  The gratitude that’s sent your way…

  But may these words somehow express

  Warm thanks for all your thoughtfulness.

  Alongside the message, Susan wrote, We would like to thank all the staff at Lower Lane Station for the kind thoughts and respect we received from you. Without your help I know we would not have coped, we will never forget you. God bless you all. Thanks so very much once again, Sue Neil Jon.’

  On the first Saturday in March the boys were collected from their units by police officers from Merseyside and taken to an identification suite at Longsight Police Station in Manchester, to stand on identification parades. Bobby went first, in a line with eight other boys, and was pointed out by two women who had seen him in the Strand, an assistant from Animate, the pet shop on County Road, and the two boys who had been playing with handcuffs on Church Road West.

  Jon waited in the detention room with his father and a couple of police officers. He asked his dad if Pauline was going to be there. ‘Pauline saw us, I think.’ His dad didn’t know. ‘Pauline, a friend of my mum’s,’ Jon explained to the officers. He asked one of them if they had seen Crimewatch. They asked what about. ‘The James Bulger thing.’ Yes. “What did it say?’ Then Jon wanted to know if the woman with the black dog was there for the parade.

  When he was taken out to begin the parade, Jon began crying and became very distressed. He was taken back to the detention room, but could not stop crying. He wanted the door opened, to let in some fresh air. Why do I have to do it, he said to his dad, Ive told them it was me. His parade was abandoned.

  On the way back to his unit, travelling in an unmarked car, Jon asked why they couldn’t have a police car. I know, he said, ’cos people might look and say there’s that murder boy. Then he said, ‘Me and Robert might get set free ’cos only two identified Robert and that was out of 20.’

  They tried again the following Saturday, and again Jon became upset and worried, waiting at Longsight for the parade to begin. An officer walked him round the station, trying to calm him down, but it was no good. Jon could not go through with the parade. The police decided instead to conduct the identification parade by video. They would film Jon, and eight other boys, and show the sequence to witnesses. Jon was told he would have to be recorded, walking up and down the corridor. ‘Is that because they saw me walking in The Strand?’

  The video recordings were made that day, and shown to witnesses a week later. Jon did not have to attend this time, but his solicitor was there to monitor fair play. Jon was picked out by one of the two women who had also recognised Bobby at The Strand, by the owner of the DIY shop on County Road, and by the man who had seen two boys tapping on the window of TJ Hughes in late January, apparently trying to attract the attention of a child.

  Towards the end of March case conferences were convened at the Merseyside offices of the NSPCC — the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Bobby was discussed at nine thirty in the morning and Jon at eleven o’clock. No members of the boys’ families were present, but the head teacher of the school was there, along with numerous social services’ representatives, an education welfare officer, and a detective from the Merseyside Police child protection unit.

  The conferences were intended to examine the boys’ backgrounds and look for any possible connection between abuse they might have suffered and the offences with which they had been charged. Bobby’s conference was told of the violence and neglect in his mother’s childhood, and his father’s strict upbringing in a fatherless household. All the known indications of physical abuse in Bobby’s family were considered. The police questioning of Philip over the allegation of inciting a gross indecency was mentioned.

  There was no direct evidence that Bobby had been abused by his mother or his elder brothers, and he had seemed happy enough three months ago when seen at a local social services’ Christmas party. A social worker said that the recent period, before the killing of James Bulger, had been more stabilising for Ann and her family. She had been gaining insight into the needs of herself and her children, acknowledging difficulties and showing the motivation to address them; and she had begun to involve herself in areas such as schooling, in which, previously she had felt uncomfortable and intimidated. Despite the absence of social work involvement in the months preceding the autumn of 1992, because of staff sickness, Ann had since been receiving support in coming to terms with her own childhood, her husband’s departure, parenting skills, budgeting, together with the day-to-day dysfunctional aspects of a family.

  The conference concluded that, despite features of neglect and emotional abuse, the physical abuse of Bobby could not be substantiated and no link could be established between his background and the alleged offences. He would not be placed on the Child Protection Register.

  Jon’s conference heard that both his parents had been involved in raising the children, despite their divorce, and was told of the feeling that Jon’s behaviour was affected by his jealousy of the attention given to his elder brother, Mark. There had been no child protection concerns involving either Jon or his siblings, and there was no indication that Jon had been abused. There was one reference, in Mark’s medical history, to his being violent towards Jon, and there was the suspicion that physical chastisement was used on Jon as a form of punishment for his misbehaviour, though there was no evidence that this went beyond what could be called reasonable.

  If there was any vulnerability to physical abuse, this could have been in the evenings, when Susan Venables had difficulty settling the children down, and stress might have led to abuse, though, again, there was no evidence of this. It was felt that Jon’s parents had struggled to maintain a consistent method of parental control, trying different means in response to his difficult behaviour, and sometimes allowing him to get away with things that would otherwise have been punished, while the attention was focused on Mark.

  There was concern that Neil Venables had allowed Susan to take the major role in disciplining and caring for the children. Jon had lived with his father, but Neil had found it hard to cope and sent Jon back to his mother. The head teacher was asked if Jon had ever behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner in school, but said there was no suggestion of this, or any indication of physical abuse.

  Despite the concerns, and in the absence of any firm evidence, the conference decided it would not place Jon on the Child Protection Register.

  Though it was not articulated at the case conferences, there was some worry over the conflict of interest between the judicial process in which the boys were now involved, and their needs as disturbed or damaged children. Any programme of psychotherapy or counselling could not begin in advance of the trial, because it might produce information which could prejudice or influence the case. The delay would only make
the task of helping the boys that much harder. Like many defendants, young or old, in cases of serious crime, they would suppress and deny what had actually happened. The longer this went on, the deeper the truth would be buried, and the more difficult it would be to make progress with rehabilitation, which would involve acknowledging what had really taken place, and coming to an understanding of why it had happened.

  Bobby had sat through seven hours and six minutes of taped police interviews without making any admission of his participation in the abduction and killing of James Bulger. He had said nothing since to suggest otherwise, and, irrespective of the truth, his lawyers had no option but to act on their client’s instructions. He was saying he was not guilty, and this position could not be tested, by anyone around him, until the evidence was put before a jury at the trial. Bobby would not be unique if, despite his guilt, he convinced himself of his own innocence.

  While Jon had made admissions to the police, and had said, ‘I did kill him,’ he was now blaming Bobby for the offences, as were his parents, who would say that Jon had been led on by Bobby. Jon could not bring himself to talk about events on the railway line. It was an understandable way of trying to manage the unmanageable, but it was also a form of denial.

  When he had arrived at his secure unit, Jon had been given a cover story, ostensibly to protect his interests with the other residents. He was told to say he was twelve, not ten, and that he had been caught ‘twoccing’, which was car-stealing: taking without the owner’s consent. It was a further encouragement to deny, and a reminder, as if any was needed, that the actual offences with which he was charged were too awful to be confronted.