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

by Ralph Bulger

  The house was packed that day as the funeral cars began to arrive. In total, there were fourteen matching limousines for close family as well as a small bus for those who couldn’t fit into the vehicles. Additional cars had been laid on by several more funeral directors around the area, to cope with the number of people attending. Again, they were provided free of charge. Three of the hearses that led the procession were brimming with flowers that had been sent from around the world. Behind them was the hearse carrying James to the church; inside was a clean, white oak coffin with gold handles and a gold cross. His gold name plate was on the top along with a tiny bunch of flowers. It was simple but beautiful. Alongside James’s coffin were a large floral wreath spelling out his name and a teddy bear made from carnations.

  Denise and I were in the car behind James’s casket and it was only a few short minutes from Eileen’s house to the church, but even so, the drive felt like it was taking an eternity. Many of the neighbours along the route had closed their curtains as a mark of respect while literally thousands of people came out onto the pavements to line the route. Nearly all had their heads bowed down in grief.

  When we arrived at the church gates, I took a deep breath as I climbed from the car, knowing I was about to carry my son on his final journey to heaven. I went to the front of the casket with Ray while Philip and Gary took the back of the coffin. I remember thinking how light this little white box felt on my shoulders; it was the pain and heartbreak that weighed so heavily on all of us who shared that burden that day. My biggest fear was that I would collapse under the huge weight of the grief that was engulfing me. I just thought of my beautiful son as I kept my head bowed and began the slow and agonizing walk into the church.

  The sight that met me was quite overwhelming and a wave of emotions rushed over me. The church was packed and there were flowers everywhere, many of which had been left at makeshift shrines to James both at the Strand and at the railway line where he was murdered. I could feel my bottom lip trembling and it took all my strength not to cry in front of everyone. I had to stay dignified for James and it was the thought of my little boy that got me through that moment. The congregation was silent at first and then they began singing the traditional hymn ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ with all their might, and you could almost touch the emotion in the church it was so strong. When we arrived at the front of the altar with James, we gently and carefully placed him down. Denise had followed the coffin from behind and together we took our place in the front row of the church.

  The first thing I saw as I looked up from my seat was the little red chair I had so lovingly made for my wonderful son. All I could picture was the chair in our flat, with James bouncing all over it and giggling away to his hearts content. Now, instead, two of his teddies sat on the seat on the altar of a church at his funeral. How could this be happening? I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks. Denise was distraught. I put my arm around her but she was inconsolable. I could hear Father Michael talking but I couldn’t concentrate on the words.

  Albert Kirby was among those we had asked to make a Bible reading and he did so with huge dignity and care. And then Father Michael spoke publicly to Denise and me about James.

  ‘Everyone’s heart absolutely goes out to you,’ he said. ‘We wish we could turn the clock back two and a half weeks. We wish we could make things better. We wish so much we could bring James back to you both and to all of us, but we can’t. All we can do is offer you our support, share with you our faith, acknowledge with you the loss you are feeling and the gift God gave us in James Patrick.

  ‘Almost three years ago James was born. In those three years James shared so much with us.

  ‘Even though we can’t touch him, he is still influencing us, having a power over us. His death is not in vain. Something in James Patrick has touched the whole world and maybe they will respond. It has brought something out of us deep down. The death of an innocent little child is causing us to do something about it and make life better.

  ‘For three years we had James and in those three years from what I can gather he certainly developed a personality of his own, fond of his dancing, putting on his Michael Jackson music, someone who liked to make people laugh, someone who was always in good form, someone who liked his own chair, someone we are going to miss very much.

  ‘James Patrick didn’t waste life. He lived those three years to the full and put all his energies into it, staying up at night right until the last minute. Jesus Christ didn’t turn the children away from him. James Patrick has his very own little chair up in heaven now. Maybe He has James Patrick on his knee. We are going to miss him every day for the rest of our lives because we will never forget and won’t ever get over him. Time does not heal. Time just helps us cope a little bit better. Let all he stood for, his innocence, love of life and music, his good humour and fun, his spontaneity, let all that continue to come to us now. Let us spread it out throughout the rest of Northwood, Kirkby and Merseyside. Life has changed. It hasn’t ended. Let that change be as best we can make it, supporting one another in our tears and giving one another help and encouragement. Let us put our faith and trust in God and one another. Let this be a beginning.’

  Father Michael’s words were very beautiful and captured the essence of James perfectly. But life had ended for James and it was to prove to be the beginning of an unrelenting, painful journey for those of us left behind. I knew James would have his own chair in heaven and that he would make all those around him laugh and be happy. I just wished with all my heart he was still here with us to make us smile once again. Denise and I just held each other in silence as we tried to draw comfort from the words being offered to us. But the sadness was overpowering.

  We had chosen Michael Jackson’s song ‘Heal the World’ to be played amidst the more traditional hymns, and as the recording began to play, so many people broke down and cried. Denise was sobbing and all I could do was hold her. We were both distraught and we knew our hearts had been broken that day. Some days later, Michael Jackson heard about the funeral and delivered a bouquet of flowers and a message of condolence to us. It was an extraordinary gesture and I know James would have loved that.

  After the Requiem Mass finished, it was time for me to carry my son for one last time. As I bore his casket on my shoulder, a recording of Eric Clapton’s heartbreaking song ‘Tears in Heaven played throughout the church. With every step I was edging closer to the moment I had to let my son go. I wanted to sob there and then but I refused to break down before my job was done. The agony of bearing your child in a coffin is almost beyond words. And I kept thinking about how he had been deliberately mutilated and murdered. If anything, it was my hatred for his killers that got me through that day. Had I allowed my pain and sorrow to flood out, I would have broken down, but I had to be strong one final time for Denise and for my son.

  From the church, we began the long and harrowing journey in the cars to the cemetery where James was to be buried. There were thousands of people lining the streets along the route. The people of Kirkby were sharing our grief and pain, just as I knew they would. Everywhere people were stopping their business to bow their heads and pay their respects to the sorry procession of funeral cars that slowly made its way to its final destination. It was an outstanding tribute to James and to the people of my town, who had so little themselves but freely gave their love and compassion, and I will never forget the way they rallied to our support.

  It wasn’t a huge gathering at the graveside. It was just close family and friends and a handful of the police officers who had been intimately involved with the case. They had all been so deeply affected by what they had seen, especially those who were present when James’s body was found, that it seemed to bring them some comfort and closure to what had undoubtedly been the worst case they had ever had to deal with. It was a peaceful time and a stark contrast to the violence and pain that James endured while he was still alive. The police showed us that they cared deeply for our son and about wh
at had happened to him, and they were very welcome at his graveside.

  As I stood looking into the ground that was to be my son’s final resting place, I felt nothing but profound sorrow. Denise and I placed single stems of red roses on James’s coffin and, as I bent down to my knees, I just wanted to climb down into the grave and lie still with my son. I wanted the world to go away and let me be with James one more time.

  The funeral home had organized for the other relatives to be given bags of rose petals to scatter on the coffin instead of the traditional earth. It was a thoughtful and loving touch for which we were very grateful, allowing James go to rest in a bed of beautiful roses.

  Our final goodbye to our son was contained in a poem that Denise and I had chosen for James. A local man named Archie, who drank in the Roughwood pub, had written the poem as a tribute to James and it touched us so much we asked him if we could use it as our final goodbye to our son. We laid it alongside a floral wreath at his graveside in the form of the gates of Heaven, to which we had no doubt that our son had now gone. Our final message to James read: ‘James, our beautiful baby son. We didn’t get to say goodbye and that really makes us cry. You brought so much love in our lives, that love for you will never die. The only thing that we can do, is sit and pray for you. In our hearts you will still be there, locked inside our loving care. God, look after him as we would do, for we are sure that he is with you. Goodnight and God bless, James Patrick. All our love, hugs and kisses, Mum and Dad. xxxx’

  From the graveside we all left to attend a wake at the Sacred Heart Club in Kirkby. It was very much a family affair and not just confined to the adults. Several generations of relatives, including all the children, gathered together to share their loss and bring comfort where they could. For me, it was a chance to shed some of the emotions that had built up during the day. It was a pretty full-on do, and as drink began to flow, so too did the tears from almost everyone who was there that evening. That night I got drunk, very drunk, until the moment I was able to pass out under the heavy anaesthetic of the alcohol. I didn’t want to feel anything any more. Not the anger or the hatred. Not the pain or torture in my soul. Every waking hour felt like my heart had been ripped apart, my soul wrenched from my body, and the alcohol brought the smallest refuge from the agony I was feeling.

  A few days after James was buried, I returned to his grave with my brother Jimmy. We saw a young couple standing at his plot. Beside them were their own two young children. They were crying and very distressed and I wondered if they too had suffered the kind of loss that we were going through. They recognized me when they saw me.

  ‘Hello, are you Ralph?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘I’m so sorry if you think we are intruding but we felt we had to come here to pay our respects to your son. I hope you don’t mind us being here, but as parents ourselves, we felt we couldn’t do nothing.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I appreciate the fact that you care so much. You are welcome here.’

  It turned out that this anonymous young couple, who never knew James or his family, had travelled nearly 150 miles with their own children from Sunderland to bring flowers to my son’s grave. It wasn’t the only time they would visit his final resting place. For the next couple of years, they regularly continued to visit James once a month to lay fresh flowers on his grave. They showed genuine compassion for us and for what had happened to James, and they were not the only ones. So many people responded with such overwhelming love and kindness, as well as shock and outrage, that it taught me there are more good people in the world than bad.

  8

  The Aftermath

  Gradually, after the funeral, Denise and I started to recognize the impact James’s murder had had on others. You would expect an outpouring of grief and anger in Liverpool — this is a community that fiercely protects its own, and to discover that two local boys were responsible for the heinous crime only added to the intensity of feelings. But James’s murder shook the world. Parents everywhere were terrified for the safety of their children, realizing that their precious offspring may no longer even be safe with other children. In the weeks after James was killed, mothers and fathers held their children’s hands tighter in public, and there was a sharp increase in the sale of baby reins, so that youngsters could not wander off into potential danger.

  Denise and I began to receive thousands of messages of support from the four corners of the globe. Letters and cards of sympathy arrived in sack loads on a daily basis. Like the couple at the graveside, everyone felt they had to do something to show their solidarity and outrage at the dreadful course of events. Some of the letters were simply addressed to the parents of James Bulger, Liverpool, but they all arrived through our letterbox.

  One handwritten letter had added poignancy and really showed just how this crime had touched people from all walks of life. It read:

  Dear Ralph and Denise,

  I know you are inundated with messages and flowers, but I could not let James’s journey to a better place go by without expressing my deepest, deepest sympathy. I am so shocked and upset that this could have happened, and cannot in any way comprehend the total suffering you must be going through.

  Last night I went to see my little babies in their beds. I thought of James and the pain I would feel if I walked back into these bedrooms and could not see my girls in their beds — and feeling the suffering of knowing they would never come back It made me cry and they were there. It was a small feeling of the agonies in your heart. You must be going over and over in your mind what happened and if only. . .

  But James is in a better place. This world we live in was not for James and he was such a special person that God needed his soul. I know nothing can ever ease your suffering, you both have been through so much. If there is anything I can do at all to help you, please let me know. I give you all my support and strength, for what it is worth.

  With love, Sarah.

  The note had arrived from Buckingham Palace and was from the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. It touched us both very deeply and mirrored the kind of sentiments that so many people were sending to us in the wake of losing James. We really did appreciate the messages of support from everyone, but I don’t think they sunk in until a lot later on when I was able to go back over them, and that’s when they helped me to grasp how much people had cared about James. In the early days, I was just too wrapped up in my own pain to look outside of myself.

  After James’s funeral, my life began to unravel in spectacular fashion. Now I no longer had the planning and the day itself to give me a reason to keep going, I felt this terrible, dark void, as if life just wasn’t worth living any more. That feeling intensified on 16 March, the date that should have been James’s third birthday. It was just over a month since James had been murdered. As we had done in the previous two years, we would have had a party for him with all his cousins and friends. There would have been jelly sweets and ice cream, chocolate cake and party games. Instead, I sat alone in our bedroom where James used to sleep alongside us. I didn’t know what to do with myself and found myself staring at the walls, or pacing up and down, all the time wishing more than anything that James was back with me once again. I could hear the echoes of him laughing. ‘Look at me, Ralph, look at me.’ I remembered his voice so vividly. In my imagination, I could see him trying to shove as much cake as possible into his mouth at once, making everyone around him laugh. And I could see him happily blowing out the candles on his birthday cake: three little candles he never got to see. I missed James more than ever that day and couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone. The only person I spoke to was in my head.

  ‘Happy birthday, son,’ I whispered. ‘I hope you are having a great day in heaven and that you have chocolate birthday cake with all your friends. I miss you so much, James, and I love you more than you can ever know’

  Denise was also suffering from enormous grief and we tried so hard to comfort each other, but it was impossible
. We were both so angry it wasn’t true. I think I found it hard to speak to Denise about it because I was not the type of person who was used to opening up about my feelings, and this was so huge, it felt as if it might finish me off if I confronted how I felt. For that reason, it almost felt easier, possibly even safer, to say nothing in the hope that it would go away. It never would, of course, but I didn’t know that then.

  I’m not even sure how to describe some of my feelings properly. All I knew was that I felt so badly broken that I didn’t believe anything could ever put me back together again. The result was that a lot of emotions continued to fester inside of me, which was unhealthy, but I didn’t know any other way. There is no handbook to tell you how to deal with the awful murder of your own son by two young boys.

  I had a recurring sense that I just wanted to run away, to get away from what I was feeling, and inevitably that led to me starting to drink heavily. I would drink anything I could lay my hands on cheaply, and often that would be pints of lager washed down with large whisky chasers. I would drink in the pub or I would drink at home, I really didn’t care. In so many ways I had given up on life. I would lie in bed during the day, hungover, ill and in a world of physical and mental pain.

  In the beginning, I was drinking a bottle of cheap whisky a day, but that quickly doubled to two. I would buy the drink and then take myself off in private somewhere. The truth is, I do not remember half the places I went to. My head was in a permanent fog. I know that I often used to walk through the night drinking until I arrived at James’s grave, where I would sit for hours and hours just talking to him aloud. It was crazy, stupid stuff, but it was like my grief was a kind of insanity.