The child killers who broke Britain’s heart
Three-year-old James Bulger vanished 25 years ago from a Merseyside butcher shop as he waited with his mother.
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WHEN Ann Thompson insisted her son Bobby “did not kill that baby”, millions of spectators engrossed by the horror unfolding in a Lancashire courtroom probably wanted to believe her.
The details of little Jamie Bulger’s torture and death on railway tracks near Liverpool were appalling.
Accepting that he died at the hands of two 10-year-olds was diabolic.
Jamie disappeared as his mother Denise took money from her purse at a butcher shop in New Strand Shopping Centre at dockside Bootle, Merseyside, 25 years ago. It was 3.40pm on Friday, February 12, 1993, a month before his third birthday.
“James had been at my side while I was being served,” Denise said on television that night. “When I looked down he had gone. I panicked and ran to the security office.”
Jamie’s father Ralph joined search parties before the boy’s battered body was found two days later on railway tracks 4km away at Walton, where he had died of multiple injuries. Merseyside Police Serious Crime Squad chief inspector Geoff MacDonald released a security video from the shopping centre that showed Jamie leaving with two youths. A woman recognised Jon Venables, which led police to Robert Thompson, classmates who had wagged school.
At first believed to be older, when arrested on February 18, both boys were 10. The next day Venables, born on August 13, 1982, and Thompson, born August 23, 1982, first appeared at South Sefton Magistrates Court.
Charged on February 20 with Jamie’s murder, forensic tests later confirmed both boys had the same blue paint on their clothing as found on Jamie’s body. Both had blood on their shoes, and DNA tests matched blood on Thompson’s shoe to Jamie’s. After appearing at South Sefton Youth Court on February 22, 1993, as “A” (Thompson) and “B” (Venables), they were remanded in custody. Both denied abducting and murdering Jamie, and attempting to abduct another two-year-old on the same afternoon.
As the youngest accused murderers in Britain in the 20th century, a key question at their trial in November 1993 was if they should be tried as children or adults.
Psychiatrists Eileen Vizard and Susan Bailey were to answer yes or no as whether Boy A and Boy B knew the difference between right and wrong, if they knew it was wrong to take a young child away from its mother, and if it was wrong to cause injury to a child. When they answered yes to all three questions, both boys were tried as adults at Preston Crown Court, a decision later criticised as unfair by the European Court of Human Rights. In the courtroom, the floor was raised 50cm so the boys could see over the dock, and evidence about their home environments was deemed inadmissable. Venables’ parents Neil and Susan regularly attended court; Ann Thompson appeared occasionally, and his father Robert not at all.
Thompson was the fifth of Ann and Robert’s six sons, then aged eight to 20. Each from violent and alcoholic homes, at 18 the couple signed up to their own violent, alcoholic marriage. Robert left Ann with the boys in 1988, and a week later their home burned down in an accidental fire. Ann was then often found in the bar in Higson’s Top House where she sometimes had physical fights, and in 1991 had another son, Ned. Thompson’s welfare workers listed “a series of violent incidents, none enough to justify the kids being taken into care but the sum of them appalling. The boys grew up “afraid of each other”. They bit, hammered, battered, tortured each other”.
Ann accepted “Bobby” was “a thief, a liar, is devious and plays truant”. But she insisted he was not a murderer. “Yes, he did tell some lies, but he also told the truth about one thing from beginning to end — he did not kill that baby. I honestly do believe him.”
Thompson was considered the leader in Jamie’s murder, but Venables had earlier attempted to choke a boy at their school. The second of three children, his parents had separated and reconciled several times as both battled depression. After divorcing in 1986, Susan began drinking heavily. Jon struggled with hyperactivity and the other children had serious learning difficulties. After changing schools in 1991, Jon threw tantrums and was increasingly disturbed in class. First depicted as devoted parents, it later emerged Venables may have seen horror movies among the 400 videos rented by Neil in the few years before Jamie’s murder, while Susan reportedly used harsh physical discipline.
Both boys were found guilty on November 24, 1993 and sentenced to custody until age 18, then released under new identities on a lifelong licence in June 2001. Venables has returned to prison twice, jailed again last week for possessing child abuse images for the second time.
Originally published as The child killers who broke Britain’s heart
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