The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case

by David James Smith

  Bobby had earlier kicked off his shoes and removed his sweater. Now he fidgeted and sighed heavily. Jon had not previously been able to confront what had happened. Now it was coming and he had no choice. He moved his hands restlessly and looked desperate.

  By the time Henriques’s narrative had taken the boys out of the Strand with James and onto Stanley Road, Jon was crying openly, burying his face in the adjacent shoulder of his case worker.

  Henriques told the jury he was going through the evidence in detail because it would show that both boys had been involved, that it was a joint enterprise. He said 12 February had been an ordinary school day on Merseyside when all ten-year-olds, including the two defendants, should have been in school. Then he began the description of the boys’ day, through the accounts of the various witnesses who had seen or encountered them. He spoke of Toymaster and the tins of paint, and the paint that was later found on their clothing and on James Bulger. It would, he said, form an important part of the prosecution case.

  He described the early attempt at abduction and the abduction of James: ‘Denise believed that James was by her side — but she looked down and he was gone.’ He referred to the sightings and timings on the Strand’s security video.

  Out on to Stanley Road, and into the journey. At the reservoir, Henriques mentioned an incline. Bobby leant over and whispered to his case worker, who held up his hand at an angle. That’s what an incline is.

  Away from the reservoir, along to County Road, and through to the entry alongside the railway line. Down to the end of the entry by Walton Lane. A witness who had seen a youth carrying a child who was laughing. That, said Henriques, may well be the last time that anyone, other than the defendants, saw James Bulger alive.

  It was between 5–30 and 6.45 that James Bulger was stoned and beaten to death before being placed across a railway line. Henriques described how the body was found by four boys, and described the scene that greeted the police on the railway line. He mentioned the patterned bruise on James’s cheek, the result of a severe blow. He told the jury they would hear more of that severe blow.

  There was the blood on the boys’ shoes and the forensic tests that showed it was James’s blood. There was the head hair on the lace of Bobby’s right shoe, and the forensic test that showed it was James’s hair. There were the stains of blue paint, including the mark on the sleeve of Jon’s jacket, and the forensic tests that showed it could well be the mark of a small hand stained with paint.

  The boys were arrested six days later and they were both interviewed. The jury would hear the interviews.

  Henriques stopped then, and it was the end of the first day of the trial. The court would only sit from 10.30 to 3.30 each day, with breaks in midmorning and mid-afternoon, and an hour for lunch. This was in deference to the attention span of two eleven-year-old boys. It was an approximation of their school day.

  That night, Jon was in distress at his unit, shouting at his dad. The following morning he was hysterical, before coming up into the dock. His face was flushed and puffy, his eyes red and tired.

  Henriques was still on his opening, going through the content of each of the interviews for the jury. He said they demonstrated the boys’ fluent capacity to tell lies. Each defendant changed ground to meet the circumstances. As the police disclosed the evidence, so each made further admissions. They demonstrated a progression from total ignorance of events, to partial knowledge, through to placing as much of the blame as possible on their co-accused.

  Bobby was quoted. I wouldn’t hit the baby, I wouldn’t touch him. Henriques told the jury that, when considering whether or not he knew this was seriously wrong, they would bear in mind those words.

  Jon was quoted. I said it’s a very bad thing to do, isn’t it. Henriques told the jury to bear this in mind when deciding whether Jon knew what he was doing was seriously wrong.

  In order to prove murder against either of these defendants, Henriques said, the prosecution must make sure that the defendant in question played a part in causing the death of James Bulger. Participation might vary from actually delivering the fatal blow, or some of the blows, to a much lesser role of intentionally giving encouragement to the other by his mere presence. In the present case, he submitted, both defendants played a part in causing James Bulger’s death.

  It must also be proved that the defendants knew that death or serious injury would be inflicted on James. Because they were under 14, the jury had to be sure that they knew what they were doing was seriously wrong, rather than naughty or mischievous.

  ‘Some criminal acts are more obviously wrong than others. These crimes are most seriously obviously wrong, not merely to a ten-year-old but to a child of perhaps half that age or even less.’

  In due course the prosecution would point to the gross nature of the acts, to the defendants’ conduct and demeanour after the events and their manner and demeanour during the interviews. The jury would hear from people who taught the boys at school, including a teacher who taught religious education and had sixteen years’ experience of teaching maladjusted pupils. He taught them right from wrong.

  The closing words of the opening speech were: ‘You can properly be satisfied that each of them knew it was seriously wrong to take a young child from his mother, to try to do so, and to use such extreme violence on a child of such tender years.’

  The jury were given files of folded plans and maps depicting the Strand and the route. Then they were given the ring-pull folders containing copies of the 54 photographs. Henriques led them through the photographs. Again, they were taken on the journey.

  Photograph 1 showed the escalators at the Strand and by photograph 24 they were looking at the reservoir steps. Photograph 25 also showed the reservoir steps. 38 was the hood of James’s anorak, in the tree where Jon had thrown it.

  Henriques paused after 43. The remaining photographs are unpleasant to look at and I advise you to steel yourselves. Here were the scene of crime pictures, showing the two halves of the body, and the close-ups of the face and head. A woman juror began crying. Susan Venables began crying. Jon leant over, looking anxiously at his mother, asking if she was all right.

  The first witness was called, one of the assistants from Clinton Cards. She was asked to describe trolls, for the benefit of those who were unfamiliar with them. She said they were miniature dolls with ugly faces and straggly hair. She was a chirpy woman, seemingly undaunted by her appearance in court. When she had given her evidence in chief she was offered to Turner and Walsh for cross-examination. Brian Walsh asked her to agree that it was the smaller boy — Bobby — who had been doing all the talking during her conversation with the boys. She was happy to agree to this.

  It took five more days and 42 more witnesses to take the Crown’s case from Clinton Cards in the Strand to the entry opposite Walton Lane Police Station. Every known moment of the day, and the journey, was recalled and pored over in the finest and sometimes most painful detail. The witnesses were young, middle-aged and elderly, all of them ordinary people from Bootle, Walton and elsewhere on Merseyside. Some had apparently dressed for court, others came in their regular clothes. Some spoke clearly and confidendy. Some were so terrified that their bodies shook and their mouths went dry. The judge was always solicitous. Would you like a glass of water? Do you think you might be more comfortable if you gave your evidence sitting down? He gathered up his gown and swept over to the witness box, offering assistance with the search for locations on maps and plans when witnesses became confused.

  Many were clearly very emotional. James Bulger had passed them by. If only… if only … Sometimes it seemed that they had made these if onlys real in their own minds. Their evidence would veer wildly from the statements they had given to the police, eight months before. David Turner and Brian Walsh would do their best to steer the witnesses back to their original recollections. Or at least try to imply to the jury that all was not quite as accurate as it should be. Walsh, in particular, would often sound patronising
, as he tried, helpfully, to suggest that the passage of time could play tricks with the memory.

  I’m not going senile at 51 years of age, someone retorted angrily. It was a red-headed woman in a big black and white checked jacket. She was very nervous, but she was not about to let some smart-arse barrister put one over on her. There was not always the reverence for their authority which Turner and Walsh might more readily have expected, and even exploited, from witnesses not born and raised in Liverpool. The rounded, educated, voices of counsel rubbed uneasily against the colloquial patter of the witnesses. There was the unmistakable conflict of class.

  The mother of the child that Bobby and Jon were accused of attempting to abduct said in court that it looked as if Jon had been enticing her son to follow him. This was not something she had originally said in her police statement. In cross-examination, Brian Walsh asked her to look at her original statement. When it was handed to her, the mother said, stroppily, well, do you want me to read it? Walsh pointed out that she had not contacted the police until four days after the incident. He suggested that if she had not heard the news of James Bulgers killing she would not have contacted the police. She said she didn’t think that anyone of that age could kill anyone. Then she began crying.

  Another mother giving evidence said that one of the boys had spoken to her son, when he approached the boys while they were playing with a fire hydrant door at the Strand. This was much more damaging to the defence than her original statement, in which she said her son had gone up and spoken to the boys. She said the boys had stared at her, and had been mumbling to each other. She hadn’t mentioned those incidents either, in her statement.

  David Turner, cross-examining, asked if she was sure the boy had been talking to her son. Well, his mouth was moving up and down, she said. Clearly, the mother was getting upset. There were more questions and, when the woman carried on speaking, Turner tried to talk over her, to restrict her answers. Henriques stood up and pointed this out. The judge said, I’m sure, Mr Turner, you will be careful not to interrupt the witnesses. Turner said he wasn’t aware he had, but he apologised, and was more careful with witnesses after that.

  It was the cabbie who had been waiting outside the Strand who provided the first evidence of any violence towards James, with his description of a boy in a mustard jacket — Jon — who had jerked James up to carry him. Brian Walsh cross-examined the cabbie and asked him to confirm that the boy in the mustard jacket did not seem to be someone experienced in lifting a small child. The cabbie was happy to agree this, but it was difficult to see how it advanced Jon’s defence.

  Brian Walsh cross-examined several witnesses on geographical points, apparently trying to establish where they had been when they saw or spoke to the boys. These too, were puzzling interventions.

  The full impact of the case — and the publicity that had surrounded it — on some of the witnesses was expressed in the evidence of the woman who had been travelling along Breeze Hill on the 67 bus when she had seen the boys swinging James between them. She had told the police in her statement, ten days after the killing, that she had commented on the boys’ actions to her daughter, sitting beside her on the bus. She thought the passenger sitting behind them might have overheard her remarks.

  In court she gave evidence that she had shouted, what the friggin hell they doin’ to that poor kid, and the whole of the bus had turned to look. David Turner pointed out that this was not in her statement. She said the police didn’t put it in. She had shouted. She would never forget the incident. But it didn’t find its way into your statement, said Turner. The woman said she didn’t know why not. ‘I came here to give evidence and I’ve come to tell the truth and that’s what I’m doing.’ Do you feel emotional? Turner asked. ‘I’m emotional because of what happened to that little boy.’

  ‘Maudlin Liverpool shite,’ muttered someone, a Liverpudlian, in the court.

  Turner spent considerable time cross-examining the witness who had seen a boy — Bobby — giving James a persuasive kick, while he was driving past in his van, looking in his mirror. His evidence did not vary significantly from his earlier statement, and he would not be persuaded that he might not have seen what he said he had seen. Turner tried everything. The heavy traffic, the whereabouts of the boys in relation to the van, was it a quick glimpse in the mirror? It was more of a stare. Which mirror? The interior mirror. I suggest to you there was no kick. There was.

  More than any other witness, the elderly woman who had been walking her dog on the reservoir, and spoken to the boys, seemed burdened by guilt and if only. She had been subjected to considerable local publicity at the time of the killing, when it was thought she might have been the last person to see James alive. She wasn’t, but she was plainly troubled by the memory and looked very unhappy, giving evidence.

  She had told the police at the time that she had asked the boys if they knew the child. They had said they didn’t and she had told them he should have some attention for the visible bumps on his head. The boys had said they would take him to the police station, and they had walked away. In court, giving evidence, the two bumps had become ‘this huge big lump … this terrible lump’. She said she thought all three children were brothers. They had told her they were going home, and she had told them to hurry up, and show their mum the lump.

  When Turner stood he immediately told the woman, please understand that in cross-examination, he was not suggesting she was anything other than truthful, but… She denied telling the police she had asked the boys if they knew the child. She denied saying they had told her, no. She was sure one of them had said they were going home, and that she had told them to hurry up. Turner said her statement showed completely different words. That wasn’t what she had said, she said. But it was in the statement, and wasn’t the statement more likely to be correct? How do you mean? Wasn’t it more likely to be right because it was taken nearer the time? No, said the woman. The judge asked why not. ‘Because I didn’t say that to them.’ It was made clear that she had signed the statement as a true and accurate record of what she had said. She had even signed one or two small alterations. Still, standing there in the witness box, she would not concede the original description of her encounter.

  Brian Walsh followed David Turner and fared no better. He even offered the woman a way out: perhaps she had confused her own statement with that of her friend, who had also been a witness. Was that an explanation? ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  All the Crown QC, Henriques, had to do was guide the witnesses through their evidence-in-chief. It was the defence who had the problem. They were doing well if they could hold the witnesses to their original police statements. The problem, it gradually became apparent, was that there was no defence to speak of. Walsh and Turner could emphasise the minor role of their own defendant in these various encounters, and emphasise the major role of the other defendant. They had little else to work with.

  After only a handful of positive identifications among the many witnesses, Bobby and Jon were rarely referred to by name in the court. Bobby was the short one, the chubby one, the round-faced one, the one in the black anorak, the one with the skinhead haircut, the one with the skinhead haircut that was beginning to grow out, as several witnesses described it, showing careful attention to hair style. Jon was the taller one, the one with the longer hair, the one wearing the beige or mustard-coloured anorak. Sometimes the descriptions became muddled. It didn’t seem to matter very much.

  No one spoke to the boys. Apart from brief, whispered exchanges with their case workers or their lawyers — ‘How many more witnesses are there, Mr Walsh?’ Jon could be heard to ask — they seemed to be taking no part in the proceedings. Between the first and last days of the trial, not a single word uttered in court was addressed to them. It was difficult to believe that they could concentrate on, or understand, more than a tiny proportion of what was going on around them. Their understanding did not seem to be a priority of the court. The abstract descriptions of the bo
ys by the witnesses only reinforced the idea that they weren’t actually there, or need not, or should not, have been there, as child participants in an adult ritual.

  Don’t be surprised to see men with red noses juggling balls in the court, someone said. It was not just the presence of the media that created a circuslike atmosphere. It was the men — they were all men — in wigs and gowns, the formality and theatricality of the language and the procedure.

  The family of James Bulger had a right to expect, and to see justice. Retribution for the killing was an important component of the ritual, but it was not the only, nor even the major consideration. It was hard to square the desire for due process, the playing out of the full majesty of the law, with the ages of the two boys in the dock.

  The trial was likened to the mediaeval case of a pig — 1386, Normandy — which was tried and hanged for infanticide. It had torn the head and arms of a child, and the child had died. The pig faced a tribunal and was sentenced to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, before being executed. It was dressed in male clothing for the public hanging in the town square.

  Sometimes Bobby and Jon would seem to be engaged by the procession of characters through the witness box, if only by displays of emotion, tension or distress. Occasionally, if Bobby was being mentioned, Jon would look cautiously in Bobby’s direction, and snap his head back if Bobby turned to meet his glance. When Jon was mentioned, Bobby might do the same.

  They never held each other’s eyes and nothing was shared between them, though there was one moment, after they had been toying with paper tissues, when both boys simultaneously produced identical tissue-creations, like knotted hankies, which they together smoothed out across their knees. Like all their behaviour in court, this was capable of being interpreted in some way or other. Perhaps the boys were only there for the benefit of the media, who scrutinised, analysed, enlarged and invented their activities.