The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case

by David James Smith

  Turner asks, why go on the railway? Bobby is crying again. I don’t know. I didn’t think Jon was going to hurt James.

  Why not?

  I’m not a mind reader.

  But you’re not daft either?

  No. I didn’t speak to Jon. You’re not listening to me. On the canal I said, what did you do that for? He just said, I didn’t. I just didn’t ask again.

  Why not?

  I don’t know.

  Bobby is shouting, angry, interrupting as Turner tries to speak.

  I don’t know. 1 don’t know. I don’t know.

  Turner asks about the paint. Bobby sighs heavily. He agrees it was a horrible thing to do. Turner asks how James’s clothes came off. Read the statement, says Bobby, sighing. He says, Jon took them off. He sighs some more. He says, I don’t want to talk about it. It’ll make me mum upset. Turner says perhaps it’ll make you upset. Bobby shouts, if it makes me upset it doesn’t bloody matter. Turner asks again about the clothes. Bobby shouts, I said, Jon took them off. It doesn’t sound like you’re listening to me. He did it? Yes. Don’t ask me what for. Bobby sighs. I saw it.

  On the railway, says Bobby, James had already been hit by bricks and the iron bar. There was loads of red stuff. He was out unconscious, not talking, on his back. Bobby doesn’t know why he stayed and watched Jon do it. He never asked Jon why.

  Turner asks if James’s body was on the line to make it look like an accident. Bobby says how does he know. He doesn’t read Jon’s mind. Jon never said anything about it. Bobby says he put bricks on James’s head. He says it was to stop the blood coming out. Turner asks how that would stop the blood coming out. Bobby says he never said it was a plaster. Turner asks if Bobby couldn’t have helped James. Bobby says, no, you ask some silly questions don’t you.

  The dry run finishes with Bobby emerging from behind his tissues, cockily asserting that the shoes they showed in court weren’t his. The only shoes he’s got with D rings are Doc Martens.

  Bobby would not be giving evidence.

  ■

  It took another four days to complete the playing of the interviews to the court. First Bobby’s, then Jon’s. There was no point in playing Bobby’s last three tapes, because they had added nothing to his version of events. A precis of them was read out in court.

  Jon’s interviews were also edited, but his hysterical crying was still very much in evidence, and was noticeably affecting to many people in court.

  Bobby seemed affected by Jon’s statement, in his first interview, that Bobby was like a girl because he played with dolls. Bobby gave Jon a long hard look. Later in Jon’s interviews he described how Bobby had said that they should get a kid lost so he’d go in the road and get knocked over. Jon said he had told Bobby that was a very bad thing to do. He said Bobby had replied, no it isn’t. When the tape played Bobby’s alleged words — no it isn’t — Jon looked guiltily in Bobby’s direction. It was probably just one more lie, among so many, from both boys.

  The Crown seemed anxious to disprove Bobby’s claim that he and Jon had taken James onto the railway line at City Broo and not, as Jon had claimed, at the end of the entry, opposite the police station on Walton Lane. A police officer was called into the box at the beginning of the third week of the trial. He had been down to City Road bridge at the weekend, and tried to get over the fence onto the railway embankment. He had his picture taken doing it, just so that the court could see how treacherous it was, and how implausible it was that the boys could have got on to the railway at that point.

  It was hard to see why this mattered so much, except to highlight yet another lie from Bobby, or a truth from Jon. Most kids in Walton would have said that City Broo was an easy way onto the line. The bent fencing there was some testimony to its frequent use. David Turner and the police officer became quite fractious with each other, as Turner tried, with no great success, to undermine the officer’s evidence.

  The route the boys had taken to the railway line could be added to the long list of mysteries surrounding the case, which the trial could not hope to resolve while the boys kept the answers to themselves.

  At the end of the prosecution case, David Turner and Brian Walsh offered no evidence. There was no defence, and all that now remained were the closing speeches.

  Henriques was on his feet for just under an hour, making his final address to the jury. ‘Together they took James away from his mother and from the Strand. One holding his hand, the other leading the way.

  ‘Together they took him to the canal bank where he sustained injury, and together they took him away from the Strand where they knew his mother must be.

  ‘Together they led him or pulled him, carried him or dragged him, injured, past and away from adult after adult, away from help and assistance which was almost continuously at hand.

  ‘They preferred, you may think, to avoid detection, which was clearly a greater priority than James’s well-being. Together they abused James. Robert Thompson delivered a persuasive kick, while Jon Venables chose to shake James. Venables led him from the Strand, with Thompson leading the way.

  ‘Their roles reversed. Thompson carried him up on the railway embankment, with Venables leading the way. They each heard each other lie to adults.

  ‘If ever a crime was committed jointly and together, then this was that crime. They were clearly both together as James sustained his terrible injuries.’

  Did one defendant deliver at least 30 blows to James, with no criminal participation from the other and no active encouragement? Did one defendant build a platform of bricks to assist James’s destruction by a passing train with no assistance from the other? Could one defendant have removed James’s lower clothing? Would the non-partner in crime behave so coolly after the event and maintain such a lying stance, protecting the killer in interview after interview with the police? ‘We submit, most certainly not.’

  Both defendants had told lies in their interviews, but Robert Thompson had told the greater number. He had told lies from beginning to end in his interviews, and quite sophisticated lies at that. They had both consistently lied because they feared the truth. Those lies were themselves evidence of guilt. A verdict that either boy was guilty of manslaughter rather than murder would underestimate by some distance the gravity of this crime. This was in law a murderous attack on a small child.

  Henriques referred to the doli issue. How could this grave conduct, he said, be described as naughty or mischeivous? He cited Jon’s words. 1 said it was a very bad thing to do. Members of the jury, said Henriques, this was a very bad thing to do.

  It was Friday of the third week, Day 14 of the trial. The judge told the jury to go home and try to relax over the weekend. To try and put the case to the back of their mind. On Monday they would hear the defence speeches, on Tuesday the judge would be making his summary, and on Wednesday the jury would begin considering its verdict.

  Bobby had been telling his mother that sometimes he felt like crying in the court. He wouldn’t let himself cry because people would think he was a baby. Ann told him if he wanted to cry he should.

  David Turner was not much more than a minute or two into his speech on the Monday morning, when Bobby was holding a tissue to his face, evidently in tears. Turner had swapped seats with Brian Walsh so that he could be closer to the jury during his address. He had notes in a ring-pull folder, which was perched on an upturned cardboard filing box in front of him. After a break in the middle of his eighty-minute speech, Bobby came back up and took Jon’s seat, behind Turner, for the only time during the trial.

  The grief of Denise Bulger and her husband had dominated this trial, Turner had told the jury. Those members of the jury with children must have found the depth of their grief unimaginable. As he addressed them he could only hope to reflect the dignity that had been shown by the Bulger family in this harrowing trial.

  ‘This case is not the tragedy of one family but three families. A tragedy for the Bulger family, yes, but also a tragedy for the fam
ilies of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.

  ‘No-one who has been involved in the trial will ever be the same again.’ Many tears had been shed, but those who had been dry-eyed might also be feeling pain and misery.

  Turner said the Crown’s case was that a small child was deliberately abducted and that the intention from the outset was to cause at least really serious harm to James.

  ‘If that be right then this is a most disturbing case — that children whose previous misdemeanours were mainly shoplifting and truancy should conceive and execute such a thoroughly diabolical plan is beyond belief.’

  He asked if it was a mischievous prank which, in no time at all, had got out of control. ‘If the plan was to cause a child to get hurt in the traffic, that never happened. If the plan was to throw a child into the canal, that never happened.’

  If the plan had been to take James to a lonely stretch of railway track and to murder him, they had taken a two and a half mile route along the busiest streets in Liverpool. They had spoken to at least two witnesses, telling them they had found James and were taking him to Walton Lane Police Station. Was not the purpose of it to invite a grown-up to intervene? If there was a diabolical, wicked plot to abduct a child and to kill him, the boys would not have spoken the truth to passers-by.

  ‘We suggest an alternative intention. These boys were saddled by their own mischief with a little toddler who must have been tired out, as they were themselves. They had been hanging round the shops of the Strand since school time in the morning, walking with a toddler all that way, not knowing what to do with him, unable to abandon him or foist him off on a grown-up, and not having the courage to take him into a police station where they had taken him because they might have been afraid they would be in trouble. This is a far more likely scenario than the planned evil put forward by the Crown.’

  Turner referred to the evidence of witnesses where Jon had taken a leading role. He asked if there could be any doubt about who was in control. ‘It is our sad duty to say that the evidence points clearly to Jon Venables. You know that Robert Thompson’s case is and always has been that the attack on little James was initiated and carried out by Jon Venables. It is no pleasant task for us to make that accusation against another, now 11–year-old, boy. But we say that for whatever reason, a reason that one can never know — petulance, tiredness, a sudden swing of mood of the sort that became evident in the interviews — Jon Venables unhappily and tragically carried out a sudden but sustained attack on little James.’

  Turner dealt at length with the damning evidence against Jon. He pointed out that Jon had said, I did kill him, not, we did, or, Robert did. He spoke of the limited accounts from witnesses of Bobby's active involvement. He said the evidence of the van driver’s persuasive kick should be treated with caution. He spoke of the alleged kick by Bobby, and the evidence that a light impact could be more likely to result in a clear mark.

  A psychiatrist had said that, on the balance of probabilities, Bobby had known what he was doing was wrong. The jury would look for proof, in this case as in all cases, not on the balance of probabilities, not whether it was more likely than not, but beyond reasonable doubt.

  It would have to be proved that each boy had played a part in the death of James Bulger. It meant taking a physical part in the attack. The Crown could not say, because it was not true, that Bobby had ever said that he had taken part in the attack. He always denied it. He always said, I did nothing. ‘Was there active participation? What happened on the railway line? Can you say who did what? It must be proved in respect of each that there was an intent to cause death or really serious bodily harm. That there was a murderous intent.

  ‘In this case you are asked to assess what was in the mind of a child of ten. That you may find one of the most difficult issues in this trial.’

  Finally, it was appalling that a dear child, loved by all around him should die as James did. But Robert Thompson did not cause the death of James Bulger.

  Turner sat down, and the rest of the day belonged to Brian Walsh, who reclaimed his seat, placed his own notes on the upturned box, and spoke for over two hours on Jon’s behalf. His speech was substantially devoted to Bobby.

  Where Turner had been circumspect in his use of the cut-throat defence — straight for the jugular: it wasn’t me, it was him — Walsh showed no such inhibition. He said the case had inspired widespread revulsion. It would be easy for the jury to say, let’s have them both and good riddance to the pair of them. The Crown’s case had given mystical significance to the word ‘together’. But it was a broad-brush approach, which failed to make distinctions between the defendants.

  ‘You are dealing with two different minds… two different thoughts and thought processes, and in this case dealing with a charge of murder. The Crown must prove that these two different minds had but a single thought and a single intention, namely killing or causing really serious harm to James Bulger.

  ‘The two defendants are in fact very different boys. They have different vocabularies and different personalities. Nothing could have come over more clearly than that when you began to listen to those tapes and heard those two voices and the way they dealt with questions.’

  In his interviews Robert Thompson had sounded assertive, challenging and argumentative. He had used the imagination and guile at which he was adept in a persistent campaign of lies. He was a cool, calm, collected and brazen little rogue. ‘If he cried, if there were any tears, who were those tears for? They were for him.’ He had treated the interviews as a debating pointscoring match, challenging police to prove it, and admitting something only if he was caught in the act or filmed doing it.

  Robert Thompson was an arguing, cocky little liar, wriggling, devious and determined to say anything but the real truth: that there was blood on him because he had kicked James, beaten him and battered him.

  Jon Venables, by contrast appeared as a sad, somewhat diffident boy. ‘I make no bones about it’, said Walsh, ‘I am addressing you on behalf of the boy who told the truth, who had wanted for a long time to tell the truth, but who for the reason of the distress of his mother could not do so. He is the one boy who has shown, not just remorse, but genuine remorse.

  ‘I am not speaking on behalf of someone who has been lying from beginning to end, through and through.’

  Once the protective influence, the inhibiting influence of his mother had gone, Jon had been able to tell the police what they sensed he had wanted to tell for a long time. He had told them he had killed James, but the Crown did not suggest that this meant he killed him and no one else had anything to do with it.

  ‘He does not pretend to be lily-white or totally blameless. He says he did intend to cause some harm to James, some little harm. He did not want him to be killed.

  ‘If that contention is right, if it may be right, he cannot be guilty of the crime of murder, although he could be guilty of the serious offence of manslaughter.’

  Jon had good reason to lie initially, since he was trying to protect the person who meant the most to him. ‘He wanted to tell the truth about his limited but shameful part in it, but he could not bring himself to speak of it in the presence of his mother.’

  The judge’s summary started on Tuesday, and finished on Wednesday. He told the jury they should reach their verdicts on the evidence alone, and in no circumstances could they take into account what they had seen or heard or read outside the courtroom.

  He said the case had aroused unprecedented media attention which had been worldwide. For the people of Bootle and Walton it had been heartrending. ‘Many of the witnesses were doing the humdrum things of everyday life on that Friday afternoon when, wholly unawares, they were caught up in the last few tragic hours of James Bulger’s tragic life.’

  It could have been somebody taking a dog for a walk, or going to the library. It was only later, when news broke, that they realised, or thought they had seen James Bulger with two older boys.

  They had been subjected to excep
tional strain, arriving in court in a blaze of publicity. Many had faced a bevy of photographers, and they had come into this large courtroom, which had been packed, to give evidence. Not surprisingly, some witnesses had been overcome with emotion, and had difficulty speaking audibly. The jury would have to decide if they were accurate.

  ‘All of those involved in this case will have been emotionally affected by the circumstances of James Bulger’s death, but I am sure each of you will assess the evidence and reach your conclusions dispassionately and objectively and will not allow your emotions to warp your judgement.

  Many witnesses must have thought, if only. ‘If only they had realised that it was not a case of three brothers out together, or two boys taking a little boy to the police station, but was a case of a little boy taken from his mother. They must be saying, ‘if I had gone to the police, James Bulgers life may have been saved’. Those feelings are inevitable.

  ‘You will probably come to the conclusion that the witnesses have given their evidence honestly, doing their best to tell the truth. But you have got to ask yourself, ‘are they accurate?’ He said that inconsistencies between the witnesses’ police statements and their evidence in court might well indicate that their evidence was unreliable.

  Turning to the charges, and the two boys, the judge explained the law, and outlined the issues the jury would have to consider. They would have to weigh the evidence against each defendant separately, and what one had said in interview about the other was not evidence.

  It was the prosecution case that the boys had jointly committed the offences. ‘Where an offence is committed jointly by two people, each of them may play a different part but each can be guilty of the same offence. To put it simply, are you sure they were in it together?’

  The jury might think that the evidence was overwhelming that James Bulger was unlawfully killed, and whichever of the defendants it was who inflicted those injuries intended either to kill James Bulger or to do him really serious injury. ‘The crucial question is not what was their intention when James Bulger was taken from the Strand or during the long walk of over two miles to the railway line, but what was the intention of each defendant on the railway line, when the fatal injuries were inflicted.’