Crimes That Shocked The World - The Most Chilling True-Life Stories From the Last 40 Years. Danny Collins
England, 12 February 1993
‘C’mon baby, we’re going to have some fun’
– John Venables to James Bulger.
There is, in every man and woman on this planet, the capacity for violence – hot and unforgiving when our security or that of our loved ones is breached. But what possesses the cold-blooded killer, he or she who can be moved to commit murder without apparent motive other than an assumed blood lust? What can have moved two ten-year-old boys, no more than children themselves, to lure a younger child from its mother’s side and take it to a secluded spot, there to wreak the most horrible violence upon the young body until life was extinguished and then to leave the abused and battered corpse across railway lines in the hope that a passing train would further destroy the body and free the killers of suspicion?
Whereas no one could reasonably deny that Charles Darwin had something when he sat among giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands and developed his theory of the survival of the fittest, just what being the fittest to survive indicates in this cruel world leaves us much to think about. The obvious, one assumes, is physical strength matched with intelligence in all its varying degrees, but one cannot deny that showing a hint of usefulness or attractiveness to the would-be aggressor must have saved a potential victim on countless occasions.
New-born and very young creatures are certainly not strong enough to fight off an aggressor, therefore they must rely on cuteness and charm to save the day. Puppies are endearing, kittens are cuddly, and children are loveable. All bring out a sense of protectiveness in those around them. Very few men or women would wilfully harm an animal or child without deep moral self recrimination. And yet it happens. Mothers stand by while their drunken boyfriend assaults their child, often with fatal results. Children tie tin cans to a cat’s tail and enjoy the animal’s frantic efforts to free itself. There is in man a deep, sadistic streak.
Yet sadism in itself has a purpose. It is about domination, self-gratification, and a desire to humiliate. Such motives were evident in the murder of three-year-old James Bulger in a Liverpool suburb in 1993, and the same motives reverberate through every other horrific crime of torture and murder reported in this book. Yet the case of James Bulger reflects a deeper horror in that it was committed by two ten-year-old boys. Animals (if animals will forgive us the description)? Unhinged individuals beyond the salvation offered by Britain’s overly moral judicial system? The reader must judge.
The discovery of two-year-old James Patrick Bulger’s tiny bisected, bloodied, and paint-spattered body by a group of bored teenagers wandering beside a seldom-used railway track at Walton, Liverpool, on 14 February 1993, struck horror into the hearts of parents everywhere. Even though he was only a month off his third birthday, so small was James’s body that the teenagers first thought that someone had abandoned a doll. The full horror of their discovery on the track alongside the Walton section of the freight line from Edge Hill to Bootle became clear only as they stepped forward for a closer look.
James Bulger had disappeared while shopping with his mother in a shopping centre in Bootle two days earlier. Children often become bored with shopping and wander off to become lost and bewildered among the milling crowd of shoppers, all intent on their own lists of errands. But after two hours of frantic searching by James’s parents (Denise and Ralph Bulger), security staff and police, worries of abduction, never far from the minds of all concerned parents, began to surface.
When his mutilated body was examined by investigators, it became obvious that the toddler hadn’t wandered onto the track in Walton – two miles from the shopping centre – of his own accord, and the police immediately became aware that they were dealing with a case of violent homicide.
It was clear that James Bulger had been beaten severely, and pathologists would find 38 fractures on his tiny skull, so many that the bone structure had collapsed. The blood-spattered weapons were lying close by in plain view – house bricks and a metre-long iron sleeper tie weighing 10 kg. The child’s track bottoms and underclothes had been removed, hinting at a possible dark motive for his abduction and murder. His face, which bore the imprint of a shoe, was stained with blue enamel paint of the type used by model makers, residues of which were also found on his anorak from which the hood had been torn. The hood would later be found high in the branches of a tree along the route from the Strand Shopping Centre to the site where the body was found.
Pathologists concluded that soon after death – caused by any one of the 38 skull fractures – James’s body was laid across the railway track in such a position that it would be hit by a passing train. The head and upper body were covered with bricks and rubble to disguise the pathetic form. The motive was clear to investigators – the killer or killers had attempted to make the death of James Bulger appear as a tragic accident.
The horror felt by police investigators and forensic officers was apparent. Who would inflict such injuries on a two-year-old child, beating the victim to death by a deserted railway track? And what could be deduced from the removal of the child’s lower clothing? An obvious first assumption would be that they were dealing with a child sex murder. However, that motive would be disproved with the arrest of the killers some weeks later. Ten-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables revealed they had killed for sadistic pleasure, rather like tying a burning rag to a puppy’s tail. They had abducted James Bulger from his mother’s side on a whim and, having eventually grown tired of their victim, they had killed him. Then, believing they had artfully covered up the crime, they had gone home for their tea.
On the morning of 12 February 1993, Denise Bulger had taken her son – often called ‘Jamie’ in the press reports of the murder but never so by his parents and immediate family – to visit his grandmother, Eileen Matthews, in Oak Towers, Kirkby. In fact Eileen had left earlier on a shopping trip to Birkenhead but Denise made the most of their visit by chatting to her sister, Sheila, while James played with his young cousin, Antonia. Later they would be joined by Nicola Bailey, the girlfriend of Denise’s brother Paul, who was looking after another Matthews child – a three-year-old cousin of James. Nicola suggested that Denise and James join her and her charge on a shopping expedition to the Strand Shopping Centre in Stanley Road, Bootle town centre.
The ensuing ride in Nicola’s Ford Orion delighted James for, like most toddlers, the lively two-year-old loved a car ride and thought it a great adventure. Sadly, the adventure that day was to end in his death.
Meanwhile, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables had left their respective homes in the Liverpool suburbs of Walton and Norris Green that morning with the intention of dodging school for the day, a common enough occurrence among local schoolchildren, referred to generally as ‘sagging’. The boys met up and Venables dumped his school bag in an accustomed hiding place where it would stay until he recovered it later. Forgotten in the bag was a note from his mother giving Jon permission to bring home the school gerbils that he was be in charge of for the weekend.
The boys headed for the Bootle Strand Shopping Centre, their usual truancy haunt, where they intended to go on a shoplifting spree for anything that took their fancy. Just how or when the idea of kidnapping a child came to them was never revealed in questioning, although, typically, the boys blamed each other. Whoever came up with the notion, its purpose was odious: to lure a child into the heavy traffic that roared past the shopping centre to create a potentially fatal accident. But once a victim was in their hands, however, their purpose became even more bloodcurdling.
The pair spent the morning in the shopping centre, generally making a nuisance of themselves by harassing elderly shoppers and stealing from shop displays. Their haul for the morning included sweets, make-up, fruit, Duracell batteries and a small tin of blue enamel paint, similar to the type used in craft modelling. The latter two items were to figure in the crime and the blue enamel paint would prove their downfall.
Throughout the morning, the disruptive presence of Venables and Thompson was noted and later recalled by shop staff and customers. An elderly woman reported being poked and prodded by the boys, who ran off laughing when she remonstrated with them. The staff at McDonald’s recalled chasing the boys out of the area where they had been leaping over chairs and throwing leftovers from un-cleared tables.