by Ralph Bulger
‘We don’t know yet, we don’t know,’ was the gentle response.
At Lower Lane Police Station, Jon Venables tucked into his special fried rice with enthusiasm before his third and final interview for the night.
Eventually Jon admitted to being at the Strand but he denied taking any children. He also admitted to petty stealing and general mischief. The interview ended just after 10 p.m. and Jon was bedded down for the night in the unlocked juvenile detention room. Susan stayed with him on a specially arranged mattress in the room.
At Walton Lane, Robert Thompson also went through one last interview. Robert admitted that they all left the Strand together but insisted it was Jon who had actually taken James. ‘You’ll get his face up on the video,’ he added.
Earlier, Robert had denied it was him and Jon who were seen by a witness on the enclosed reservoir site at Breeze Hill, but by the time this interview had finished he admitted that it was them. He said they had taken James to Breeze Hill and left him there on top of the hill after playing with him. Robert was then settled down for the night.
On the Friday morning, detectives began their questioning of the two boys again. Jon talked about going to various shops with Robert, including Tandy, from where police knew the batteries found at the murder scene had been stolen.
Phil Roberts and Bob Jacobs began their fourth interview with Robert at 11.35 that morning. Phil had the feeling that Robert was ready to tell him more. He steered the questioning in the direction of the paint that was found on James. Robert admitted for the first time being in possession of a small tin of enamel paint. He said it was Jon who had taken James, and that they had taken him up on the railway. He was asked about blood on his clothing and said it was his own blood where Jons mother had hit him. After killing James, the boys were found later that evening hanging out at a video shop, by Susan Venables. Robert claimed she hit him, which she denies. Robert claimed that Jon threw the paint in James’s face and also threw the hood of his anorak on the line.
‘He threw it in his eye,’ said Robert.
‘Why was that?’
‘I don’t know and I ran away from him then, from Jon.’ ‘What did baby James do?’
‘He sat on the floor.’
‘Was he crying?’
‘Yeah, I was crying myself.’
‘Why?’
“Cos he threw it in his face. He could have blinded him.’ He said that after the paint was thrown in James’s face, they ran off, but Jon might have hit him slyly. Crying again, Robert insisted, ‘We never killed him.’ He said James had been crying because he wanted his mum.
Meanwhile, Jon Venables was still denying almost everything. When he was told that Robert had said Jon had taken James by the hand, he threw a tantrum, looking really upset and insisting that Robert was lying.
‘I never killed him. We took him and left him by the canal, that’s all,’ he said, sobbing.
Detectives got the distinct impression that Jon wanted to talk and had some horrific things to tell that were causing him a lot of concern. As Jon was having his lunch in the detention room, Susan shouted to Detective Constable Dave Tanner and asked if he could come in to the room. Jon was sitting on the bench when both his parents and the detective walked in.
Susan held her son in a tight embrace and said, 1 love you, Jon. I want you to tell the truth, whatever it might be.’ Jon Venables started to cry, and just blurted out, ‘I did kill him.’
The boy looked across the room at the detective and said, ‘What about his mum? Will you tell her I’m sorry.’
Robert Thompson still continued to deny murdering James until he volunteered, ‘Jon threw a brick in his face.’ He then said that Jon threw another brick at him, which hit him in the stomach, and hit him with a fishplate, a metal bar with holes used to join tracks together on the railway. This blow, claimed Robert, knocked James out. Robert said he put his ear to James’s stomach and he was not breathing as he lay on the railway track. They had left the scene and not discussed it together since, he said.
Jon continued to blame everything on Robert, but confirmed on the police tape, ‘I killed James’.
He went on to speak of their attempt to abduct another child from the Strand before they found James, the two- year-old toddler son of a local woman called Diane Power. He said it was Robert Thompson’s idea and the plan was that the toddler would go into the road and get knocked over, making his death look like an accident. He said they found James outside the butcher’s shop. He said it was his own idea to take him but it was Robert’s idea to kill him. They took him to the canal, where Robert planned to throw him in. James would not kneel down to look at his reflection in the water as they wanted, so Robert picked him up and threw him on the ground. This was how James had first injured his head. He said that James kept crying, ‘I want my mummy.’
Jon admitted going up to the reservoir and to the railway.
‘I can’t tell you anything else.’ When pressed why, he replied, ‘’Cos that’s the worst bit.’
Under gentle coaxing, he continued: ‘We took him on the railway track and started throwing bricks at him.’
He claimed Robert threw bricks at James and hit him with an iron bar. Jon said he had thrown small stones, but that Robert had thrown house bricks.
When asked what he thought about what they had done to James, he cried and said, ‘It was terrible. I was thinking about it all the time.’
The next day, Robert still maintained his stance that he had nothing to do with the attack on James. He denied taking any of James’s clothes. He said Jon had thrown paint in the child’s face ‘because he felt like it’. He said Jon had thrown bricks in his face and stomach and hit him with a metal bar and claimed that Jon had a smirk on his face afterwards.
Jon, meanwhile, went on to deliver the most graphic and terrible account of the attack they carried out. He described James screaming and falling down under ruthless assault but getting back up again. He claimed Robert told the helpless child, ‘Stay down, you stupid diwie.’
Mark asked Jon why Robert had said this. ‘He wanted him dead, probably,’ he responded.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to, really. Robert was probably doing it for fun because he was laughing his head off.’
‘That was as hill an admission as we were ever going to get of what happened on that railway line,’ George recalled. ‘It was utterly horrific to think that this child of ten could carry out the acts that he did to another human being.’
Robert Thompson was interviewed again and he was formally arrested for the attempted abduction of Diane Power’s son. Phil pressed on, but Robert was still not about to admit to any involvement in the attack on James.
‘He never actually told me the truth in the end — far from it,’ said Phil. ‘He lied from the minute we started to interview him.’
In Jon Venables’ final interview he said that he knelt down by James, who grabbed his coat and said, ‘Don’t hurt me.’
He said it had been Robert’s idea to put bricks over James so nobody would see him. Robert had kicked him, Jon stamped on him. Robert had kicked him in the face lots of times.
After going for a ride in a police car to retrace James’s last journey, Jon returned to the police station and started drawing some pictures. George said to him that he thought Diane Power’s son was the luckiest boy alive the day James was killed.
Jon looked up at George and said, ‘Yes’. There was a big, beaming smile on his face. It was a moment that will haunt the police team for ever.
At 6.15 p.m. Jon Venables was formally charged with the abduction and murder of James Bulger. He began to weep. Then at 6.40 p.m., detectives at Walton Lane Police Station put the same charges to Robert Thompson. He seemed completely unconcerned when the charges were read out to him. He replied simply, ‘It was Jon that done that.’
Phil recalled, ‘When he was charged he had no problem at all with it. I suppose he knew that if he was fo
und guilty he would have a better life than he would outside. I thought to myself, “This boy has caused so much misery and evil.” I didn’t look for the three sixes on the back of his head, but at that moment I thought he was the Devil.’
6
Prisoners of Our Grief
It was an agonizing wait as the detectives continued questioning the two boys. It was completely mind-blowing that ten-year-olds could be responsible for the abduction, torture and murder of my son.
‘This cant be right,’ I kept muttering. ‘There has to be some mistake.’
It felt like we were in limbo, waiting for news, waiting for something, but in the end, none of it really made any difference because James was never coming back to us.
Denise and I remained prisoners of our grief, so immersed in our sorrow that the days rolled into one another. I just ran out of things to say because the pain was so intense. One minute I found myself sobbing, the next I was struck numb, before that terrible anger and hatred began to rise up in me again.
The one thing I can clearly remember is Albert Kirby coming to see Denise and me on Saturday afternoon, little more than a week after our beautiful boy was taken. Jim Green was also with him. The two men came into our home and sat down opposite us.
‘I just wanted to come in person to see you both to let you know that we have charged Robert Thompson and Jon Venables with the abduction and murder of James’ Albert Kirby said. ‘It’s hard to believe because they are both ten years old, but we are not in any doubt that they are responsible. I wanted to tell you before it is made public knowledge to the media, and if you have any questions about anything, then you get in contact with us any time.’
‘Thanks for letting us know,’ I replied.
I didn’t say any more than that. I just stared ahead of me and Denise sat with her head bowed down. What was there to say?
His face was pained and he looked exhausted. I knew the police had done a good job. I also knew that they cared a great deal. I appreciated the fact that Albert Kirby had come to see us himself and I was relieved that James’s killers had been caught, but we were left with the new horror that my son had been tortured and killed by a pair of children. And for what?
After the police left, I went out and just started walking. I felt as if I could hardly breathe and I needed to get some air. I was caught in a waking nightmare and no matter where I went it always came with me.
For nearly twenty years, experts and ordinary people have analysed and probed this case to find out how two children could have acted in such a way, and much was made of their upbringings. But I have never been persuaded that their difficult childhoods had any bearing on what they did to my son. I grew up in a tough community and knew many children who had awful lives through no fault of their own. But they did not go out and murder an innocent child.
I didn’t know much about this pair of kids when they were first charged, but a lot came out in the media after the trial. In the early days, it was always thought that Robert Thompson was the more aggressive of the two boys, harder, tougher and the natural ring leader, but history has shown that Jon Venables was just as nasty and devious as his partner in crime. Some experts have concluded that Venables was possibly even more inclined to violence and cruelty than Robert, a view shared by some of the detectives involved in the case.
Robert certainly had the more brutal upbringing, and from a young age had developed a thick skin to deal with the troubles he faced at home. According to NSPCC Case notes, which the author Blake Morrison obtained and wrote about in his book As If, Robert was used to seeing his father beat his wife, and it seemed the beatings were not just reserved for his mother. Robert’s eldest brother had been put on the child protection register when he was four after he was spotted with a black eye, bruises and a cigarette burn to the face.
When Robert was about six, his father left the family for good to take up with another woman. Robert was the fifth of six brothers and life got a lot worse when their father left. His mother, Ann, admitted she turned to the bottle when her husband left. She became well known in the area for her drinking and neighbours talked to the press about how she would get into fights with other women or even, on occasions, men. It was normal for her children to see her ‘rotten drunk’ according to one local. However, in the last few years she had stopped drinking, after getting pregnant again by another man and giving birth to a seventh son, and was trying to cope.
The Thompson household was in freefall, with each of the brothers beating their younger siblings as if in a domino effect. The eldest boy picked on a younger brother, that brother battered the next in line, right down to the youngest child. Instead of protecting each other without their parents to look after them, the siblings needed protection from one another. Robert was very small for his age and was frightened of his older brothers. But it didn’t stop him from beating those younger than him.
Robert was often seen wandering the streets past midnight and on one occasion terrified his younger brother Ryan by taking him to a local canal and abandoning him there alone. It was the same place to which he would later take James on his final journey. Another brother, Philip, even volunteered to be taken into care to get away from the family home, and on the rare occasions his mother tried to punish him, Robert would taunt her and say she couldn’t touch him or else he would go to the police. He was reported as being a very bright youngster, but life at home meant that he took to regular truanting and rarely spent much time on his education. Robert was moody and quiet at school but well skilled in the art of manipulation. He had few friends to speak of, but the limited number he did have included Jon Venables.
One expert put forward the theory that Robert was replicating on James the violence that he had suffered from his older brothers, but even if that was the case, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Thompson was capable of dealing out extreme violence and cruelty, without showing any remorse. I believe Thompson and Venables are wired wrong and were from the start. And that makes them dangerous.
Jon Venables was also a troubled child but had a different background to his friend. His mum and dad, Neil and Susan Venables, had three children. Jon was the middle child.
His parents divorced when he was just three and life was unsettled for the children. Susan, like Ann, was also reported to be a regular visitor to the local pubs. On one occasion, police were called to their house in the Norris Green area of Liverpool after the three siblings, aged seven, five and three at the time, had been left unsupervised for more than three hours.
His brother and sister were known to have learning problems, but Jon was said to be bright and educationally normal. However, he was hyperactive, prone to wild outbursts and tantrums, and was constantly seeking attention. He was just as aggressive as Thompson and his school teachers recalled how he would fling himself at the walls, knocking off posters, pictures and artwork done by other children. He would curl up under desks and stick paper all over his face, cut himself with scissors and tear his clothes apart. He would stand on his desk and throw things at other pupils and his teachers were exasperated with his behaviour, describing it as unlike anything they had ever seen before. His antics grew more and more violent as he sought ever more attention.
He spent time with his mum and dad, but both of them found his outbursts and tantrum fits hard to deal with and eventually he was referred to his school’s psychologist. He became marginalized, for not only was he aggressive and antisocial to other kids, but he was also bullied for his strange behaviour. His teachers believed that he knew his behaviour was wrong but carried on because it brought him lots of attention. One day he tried to choke another boy at school. He stood behind the pupil and tightened a 12-inch ruler across his neck to stop him breathing. After this, he was suspended and his mother made arrangements for him to start afresh at Walton St Marys Church of England Primary School.
Jon started his new school eighteen months before James was killed and it was there that he met Robert Thompson. N
either of them had many friends, and as a result of their poor school records, they were both put into a class a year below their age. In September 1991 they struck up a friendship, and as two loners they seemed naturally to be drawn to each other.
It was then that Jon started to play truant from school with Robert, something he had never done before. When he was in school, he was the more disruptive of the two in the classroom, Robert remaining quiet and moody. Both would get into trouble in the playground, scrapping with other younger children, and when Jon was made to stand against the wall as a punishment, he would bash his head against the brickwork continually, trying to get the attention of his teachers and dinner ladies. He only stopped when he failed to get the attention he was seeking.
Jons home life was nowhere near as chaotic as Robert’s and so his behaviour is harder to explain. It may not have been a perfect environment, but he didn’t suffer violence from his family, and despite the fact that his parents split up, they both carried on looking after him. Regardless, his aggressive, disruptive and spiteful manner was obvious to those around him
Teachers later recalled how Jon and Robert seemed to bring out the worst in each other, often egging one another on, as each felt bolder and more aggressive in the other’s company. In the classroom, they were always kept apart, but there was little anyone could do outside of school, and the pair began to bunk off more and more regularly. Together they bullied weaker, younger and more vulnerable kids, picking on them in the playground and starting fights they were confident they would win. Jon and Robert’s behaviour began to spiral out of control as they grew more daring. They would often go to the Strand shopping centre and make mischief, steal sweets and toys, and roam the streets until late at night. It seemed that Jon was the one who led the way when it came to luring James away, as well as in their plans to snatch the other little boy earlier in the day.
Robert was always seen by teachers as sly, devious and quiet, and was an accomplished liar. Jon, on the other hand, was more volatile and prone to violent outbursts. Jon’s father, Neil, tried to warn his son to stay away from Robert, insisting he was bad news. But the young Robert Thompson may not have been the only bad influence on Jon.