My James: The Heartrending Story of James Bulger by His Father

by Ralph Bulger

  It was then that I realized I was shaking. I was freezing cold and yet the rage I felt building inside was like a furnace. I had to see Denise, but I was dreading facing her — my lovely wife and the fantastic mother of our amazing son. What on earth could I say? I knew that no words would ever be able to console her. And I somehow had to keep my anger from her. She needed comfort and protection; I just didn’t know if I was capable of giving that to her.

  As I walked into the police TV room where Denise was waiting, I saw she was sitting in a chair, rocking gently and crying. I walked over and just held her with all my might and kissed her on the head. I held her for so long, but no words came out of my mouth. We were both crying together, trapped in a world of pain that no one else could ever understand. She felt so tiny and so vulnerable. I tried to push the anger back, and just held on to her for all I was worth.

  We stayed like that for a long while, our arms around each other, crying. From time to time her sobs became uncontrollable and all I could do was hold on tighter. Eventually we began to talk.

  ‘We will get whoever did this to our son,’ I promised her.

  ‘I just want my baby back, Ralph,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I know, so do I. Let’s try and be brave for our James’

  ‘I want him back, Ralph. I need to have him with me.

  ‘I want him too. I want him too.’

  Denise was inconsolable. To hear your wife crying in such way is unbearable. I knew there was nothing I could do to take her pain away. It was like listening to a wounded animal. The grief was overwhelming; it takes over your body in a way that you would never imagine possible.

  We must have stayed in that room for over an hour, comforting each other and trying to pull ourselves together. We didn’t have the words to express our feelings but we both felt them. Above all else we were confused and we didn’t know what to do. I don’t think there was any obvious reason for us to stay in that room, we just didn’t know where else to go. Eventually we knew we couldn’t hide there any longer; it was time to go home. It was the moment I had dreaded: returning to our little flat where just a few days before we had been a happy family, only this time it was without James and we knew for sure that he was never coming back to us. All our hopes had gone for ever, and all we were left with was an emptiness and feelings that I could never describe to another living soul. I remember seeing Jimmy when I came out of the police room and that’s about all I know. My memory from that moment is hazy. I don’t even remember getting home, but Denise and I went to her mum’s house where she took herself off to the bedroom and locked herself away in silence.

  I sat with the men of the family downstairs and they tried their best to console me, but I can’t say that I remember much of what they said. I was in total despair, sometimes crying, other times in complete silence. The rage would still rise up from time to time, but my body was exhausted and all I really wanted to do was go and see James. To be with him and hold him close to me for the very last time. There was so much I wanted to say to him. A little later the police arrived to say they would need someone to formally identify James’s body.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I volunteered without hesitation.

  He was my son and I wanted to see him. I needed the chance to tell him how sorry I was for failing to save him.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Jimmy said straight away. He recalls:

  We knew that James had been badly injured but didn’t know the full extent of how he had been mutilated. I just knew that I didn’t want that to be Ralph’s last image of his son. Ralph and Denise had looked distraught at the police station when they’d been told the news. It was one of the most terrible things I have ever seen. I have never felt so sad or so angry. I knew there was nothing I could do to make them feel any better, but at the very least I could spare Ralph the gruesome sight of James’s body.

  The police agreed with me and advised Ralph not to see his son because of the extent of the injuries he had suffered. I quietly spoke to the police and said that I would do it as soon as possible because otherwise Ralph would change his mind and insist on seeing James himself. That was the last thing I wanted him to do. As it turned out, the police were also keen for the identification to take place as quickly as possible, even if it was to be a legal formality.

  It wasn’t a job I wanted to do, but I knew I had no choice. I just wanted Ralph to remember his son as he had last seen him — a happy, bubbly, giggling child. I knew that if James was my son I would want my last image of him to be a good one, and not the mashed-up body of a small baby.

  It was agreed that I would do the identification and I went home to my wife Karen, not far away in Kirkby.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Will you be able to cope?’ she asked.

  ‘I have no choice, Karen. I can’t bring back baby James, but I have to do all I can to protect Ralph. He’s my brother and I owe him that much. I wouldn’t want to see my child lying on a mortuary slab’ I replied.

  I asked Karen if she would come with me and she agreed straight away. I was going to need all the support and backup possible after what I was about to do.

  Karen has always been my strength, my backbone, and she is a strong and decent woman. She was totally devastated at the death of James, as we all were, but she was still trying to look after me too.

  At about 9 p.m. that night, a police traffic control car arrived to take us both to the morgue at Broad Green Hospital, about a fifteen-minute drive away. As I sat in the back of the car with Karen, I tried to prepare myself for what I was going to see. I felt strangely detached, as if my body was trying to protect me from the horror I was about to witness.

  Every single minute of that night has stayed with me to this very day. It is like it has been scorched into my memory and it plays in my head over and over again. Nothing I do can ever get rid of the images I saw that evening.

  When we got to the mortuary, Geoff MacDonald and Albert Kirby were both there to meet us. They wanted us to go into a briefing with them and the pathologist before I saw the body. They outlined what I could expect and warned me that James was horrifically injured. They told me that James’s little body had been severed in two by a train where it had been left on a railway track. The two senior detectives kept stressing how important it was that I didn’t touch James’s body because it could interfere with forensic examinations that still needed to be carried out.

  I didn’t ask many questions. I just listened in silence as I felt the palms of my hands start to sweat. Albert spoke to me quietly and gently before he asked, ‘Are you sure you’re capable of doing this, Jimmy?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure, ’ I replied.

  He then said it was important that I take my time to identify the body and not to rush, despite how difficult the job was going to be. No one was in any doubt that this was James, but it was vital that no errors were made and that all procedures were followed correctly. I understood what they were saying.

  ‘Have a good look, Jimmy, and then let us know if this is James. If you are not sure, then just say so, ’ Albert Kirby reiterated.

  As I stood up to get the job done, they both stressed again how crucial it was that I didn’t touch the body. When I entered the room it was cold, clinical and eerie. I could feel my breath shorten as I began to gasp for air.

  The first thing I saw was the adult-size mortuary table. It was about eight feet long and covered in a white sheet. And then it hit me like a car crash — the minuscule outline of a little body under the cover. I will never forget how incredibly tiny the trace of that childish figure looked against the backdrop of that huge table.

  The pathologist gestured to me to go towards the table and nodded at me with raised eyebrows, silently asking if I was still OK to go through with it. I nodded in return and slowly edged towards the body. Geoff MacDonald and Albert Kirby were both in the room with me also.

  ‘Are you happy to go ahead with this, Jimmy?’ Albert asked again.

 
; ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Take your time,’ he repeated.

  With that, the pathologist slowly and deliberately drew back the cover from James to just below his chest. I gasped aloud and drew a long, hard breath as if I was terrified my heart was going to stop beating. I have seen many things in my lifetime -fights, injuries, horrific car crashes on the roads — but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I saw before me.

  There was no mistaking that it was James, despite the obvious and brutal injuries all over his body. Lying before me was the corpse of a precious little boy. Just a few days earlier he had been the light of his parents’ life, giggling and charging around with the innocence of a small child. Now there was nothing there. Nothing but a shell, a mutilated body replacing the vibrant and much-loved child who hadn’t even reached his third birthday.

  Even though the rest of his torso was covered up, I could still tell that his body was in two bits lying on that table. There was a separate mortuary table in the room that was empty, and I assumed that was where the post mortem for one half of his body was carried out while the top half was examined on another. The two had been placed together for the identification.

  His bright blue eyes were still open, just staring outwards, and his little mouth was slightly apart too. His thick, soft, strawberry-blond hair was still splattered red, matted with his own blood. There were hideous marks all over his face and body and the skin on his forehead had been pushed back, exposing his brain.

  I remember feeling sick — not just physically sick, but violently traumatized to think that any living human being could possibly have done this to such a warm and loving boy. I felt a rage well up inside. It was a pure venom and at that moment I just wanted to take revenge on whoever had done such a wicked thing to James. I kept thinking about his parents, Ralph and Denise, and how important it was that they never see what had been done to their baby boy, so they could keep their memories of James intact. It was truly horrific.

  Despite all the reminders, I instinctively reached out to cradle him and to stroke his head to bring him comfort, but Geoff swiftly stepped in to stop me.

  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it,’ I whispered.

  James’s skull was badly mutilated and there were savage marks on his face where he had been kicked and battered and tortured to death. I can remember clearly the blue paint on his face — it looked so odd and out of place.

  I stood staring in disbelief for a long time as tears rolled down my face and splashed onto my hands. I could hear James’s voice crying out for his mummy and daddy. I could hear him begging his attackers to stop, pleading for mercy through the terrible pain he must have suffered. Never could anyone have been confronted with something so unimaginably violent and evil.

  Eventually, Albert Kirby interrupted the silence. ‘Is this baby James, Jimmy?’ he gently prodded.

  ‘Yes, that’s our James,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you certain?’ he coaxed.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. ’

  My head hung low as I stood frozen in grief and anger while the white sheet was pulled back over James’s broken body.

  We all left the room together and I heard Geoff MacDonald ask me, ‘Are you OK, Jimmy?’

  I nodded and asked him, ‘Will they be able to do anything to put his face back together so that Ralph and Denise can see him one last time?’

  ‘It is highly unlikely,’ he said.

  ‘In that case, I don’t think they should ever see James like that. He might be their son, but I would never want them to see him like that. I will never be able to rid my mind of those images now, and I think it will finish them both off to see what has been done to him.’

  Geoff nodded in agreement.

  I went out and sat down beside Karen, who was waiting for me. She held my hand as I sunk into the chair beside her and she asked if I was all right. I just nodded and said it was time to go. The police said they would need me to sign a statement confirming the positive identification I had just made, and I agreed.

  The traffic car drove us home again and both Karen and I stayed silent. It was a chance to gather my thoughts in the quiet as I tried to pull up the emotional drawbridge and lock the experience away. But, as hard as I tried, what I had seen that evening would stay with me for ever. I’ve learned you can’t put your feelings on standby. Certain smells can trigger instant flashbacks to that day, in high-definition technicolour. Certain colours and weird shapes still take me back to the sight of this little boy’s battered brain. But the strangest thing is, you cannot see what it does to you. You don’t witness the change in yourself that your loved ones around you see.

  5

  The Boys Were Just Ten Years Old

  They discovered James’s body on that cold Sunday afternoon on Valentines Day. A group of teenage boys were playing alongside a railway track near their homes in Walton when they spotted what they thought at first was a toy doll or a dead cat on the freight track between Edge Hill and Bootle.

  As they moved closer the full horror struck them. The ‘doll’ on the track was, in fact, my son. James’s lifeless body lay on the railway line in two pieces, severed in half after a train careered over him. The four boys screamed and ran as fast as they could down the railway embankment to Walton Lane Police Station, which was just 100 yards away. They crashed through the doors and blurted out to the desk sergeant what they had seen. Police officers scrambled to the scene. The long search for James was finally over.

  His killers had brutalized him, battered, kicked and tortured him before carrying his blood-soaked body to the railway track and laying him over it. He was still wearing his coat on his upper body, but his lower body, which was further down the tracks, was completely naked. There was blood everywhere at the scene and we later learned that James suffered forty-two injuries, mainly to his head and face as well as his body. He didn’t die during his torture but some time before the train hit him. He was still alive when his attackers left him on the track to die alone.

  Albert Kirby, Geoff MacDonald and Jim Fitzsimmons all went to the crime scene that day and were deeply horrified at what they saw. They said there was no question that James had been deliberately and brutally attacked and murdered. Because James’s body was cut in two and the two halves found some distance apart, the police effectively had to deal with this as two crime scenes, preserving as much evidence as possible. James had been laid on the rail at the waist and his upper body was on the inside of the tracks. It was thought his head may have been weighted down with bricks, and when the train hit him his lower body was carried further down the track.

  The clothes that had been removed from James’s lower body were found close by, his underwear soaked in blood. Detectives also discovered blood-stained bricks, stones and iron bars at the scene, as well as some AA batteries and a tin of blue modelling paint.

  It was very clear to the detectives that James had been savagely beaten around the head and body. He showed multiple cuts and fractures to the head and there had been severe bleeding. On one cheek there was bruising thought to have been caused by the imprint of a shoe. There was some damage to my son’s genitals and his body was spattered with blue paint.

  The police spared us nearly all of the gruesome details about James’s injuries in those initial hours, and a decision was taken by Albert Kirby to withhold much of this information, not just from the press and the public, but from the investigation officers also. The senior officers who had been at the crime scene knew the full extent of what had happened to James because they had seen it for themselves, but many others on the investigation were not told until a long time afterwards. Albert Kirby took the view that it would be unnecessarily distressing for his team, and he was trying to keep them focused on the job ahead of them. It was only over a period of time that the full horror would inevitably unfold.

  I can remember getting a visit from Detective Sergeant Jim Green, a smart and polite young officer in his thirties. He had now been appoint
ed as our family liaison officer along with Mandy Waller. The night after Jimmy had identified James’s body, Jim Green came to see Denise and me at Eileen’s house. It was well known in the media that James’s body had been cut in two by a train, and this information would not stay secret for long. Jim had the awful job of breaking the dreadful news to us so we didn’t find out from the newspapers or television.

  Denise and I sat in the kitchen together as we listened to the officer and neither of us said a word. Denise held her head down and I am not sure she was able to take in anything that was being said. I was just like a block of stone. I listened but I was beyond responding. After he left, Denise went back up to the bedroom and I sat alone, trying to get the images out of my head of James being injured and cut in half by a train. I veered between rage and grief. Sometimes I would sob, other times I wanted to explode with anger.

  There was much going on in Liverpool, but for the first few days Denise and I were unaware of almost everything. We didn’t leave the house and stayed locked in private, silent grief for most of the time. I can remember wandering out of the house on occasion to go and see my mum. She was utterly devastated by James’s murder and, like everyone else, was trying to find ways to cope with it and understand it. As well as dealing with her own grief for her grandson, Mum was trying to protect not just me, but Denise too. Several hours after the news was released that James’s body had been found, it was obviously all over the media. That evening people began ringing in to the Pete Price talk show on the city’s independent Radio City channel. One caller cruelly started blaming Denise for James’s murder, and my mum just snapped and picked up the phone to publicly defend her. She went on air to say that Denise was a great mum who loved her son and that she was not to blame for James’s death. It was quite an extreme thing to do, but that’s how protective Mum was of both of us. She couldn’t sit back and listen to strangers making judgements about her family without coming out and having her say.