Crimes That Shocked The World - The Most Chilling True-Life Stories From the Last 40 Years. Danny Collins
was possibly made to jam batteries into his anus. He was also spattered with blue enamel paint, a residue of which would be found on Venables’s jacket following his arrest three weeks later.
Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were tried for the abduction and murder of James Patrick Bulger at Preston Crown Court on 1 November, 1993. Both boys had turned 11 by the date of the trial but were still, nonetheless – along with 10-year-old Mary Bell in 1968 – the youngest children to stand trial for murder in Britain in the 20th century.
English law dictates that children between 10 and 14 are exempt from criminal responsibility unless the prosecution can prove that at the time of the offence the child was aware of the gravity of the crime. Thus, the jury was faced with deciding whether Thompson and Venables were equally guilty of the offences with which they were charged.
In the late morning of 24 November, after counsels’ closing speeches, the jury retired to consider its verdict and returned just under six hours later to pronounce both defendants guilty as charged on all counts. On passing his sentence that both should be detained during Her Majesty’s Pleasure, Justice Morland told the young murderers: ‘The killing of James Bulger was an act of unparalleled evil and barbarity. This child of two was taken from his mother on a journey of over two miles, and then on a railway line battered to death without mercy. Then his body was placed across the railway line so that it would be run over by a train, in an attempt to conceal the murder. In my judgement your conduct was both cunning and very wicked.’
AFTERNOTE
Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for a minimum of eight years. In response to public opinion, the incumbent Home Secretary, Michael Howard, attempted to change the minimum time served to 15 years but this was rebutted by the European Court of Appeal. Venables and Thompson were released on a life licence in 2001 and given new identities after serving the eight years minimum tariff set by the trial judge. An injunction made at the time and still in force prevents their new identities or whereabouts being published.
Knoxville, Tennessee, USA 6 January 2007
‘I’ve just got to take out the trash’
– Lemaricus Davidson, after placing his victim’s body in a garbage bin.
Hugh Christopher (Chris) Newsom Jr and Channon Christian were a wholesome couple. He was a 23-year-old former baseball player for the Halls High School Red Devils who had graduated in 2002 and was currently working as a trim carpenter in Knoxville, Tennessee, the town where he had grown up. He met his girlfriend Channon Christian – a graduate of Farragut High School and a senior majoring in sociology at the University of Tennessee – when the Christian family moved to Knoxville from their native Louisiana in 1997.
The couple had met as teenagers on a social evening and Channon had fallen in love with the slender youth, admiring his prowess on the baseball pitch and responding to his ready smile. Her feelings were reciprocated and both sets of parents felt that an engagement might ensue, not too far in the future, perhaps when Channon had completed her sociology degree. There was no doubt that the attractive blue-eyed blonde had captured Chris Newsom’s heart.
On 6 January the couple drove in Channon’s almost new Toyota 4 Runner to watch an outdoor movie at Market Square – a common distraction in Knoxville provided courtesy of the Knox County Library. Afterwards they had dinner in a local restaurant before visiting friends in the town’s Washington Heights Apartments, saying their farewells just after midnight for the drive home. They never arrived.
Despite being the largest city in East Tennessee and ranking third largest in the state, Knoxville’s population is slightly less than 180,000 souls. Outside the city nucleus the area is mostly agricultural. People usually get where they’re going and the incidence of road traffic accidents is minimal.
Chris’s and Channon’s parents – Gary and Deena Christian and Hugh and Mary Newsom – were puzzled to find their respective offsprings’ beds un-slept in the next morning and hurriedly rang each other to confirm whether the couple had slept at each other’s parents’ home. But it was clear that the couple had never returned to either property. Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom had disappeared within minutes of leaving the house of the friends they had visited the previous evening. Their worried parents called the police and immediate checks were carried out at hospitals and with local traffic police. Chief of Police Sterling Owen directed the search for the young couple and speculation was rife about their disappearance. Both Channon and Christopher were known as level-headed individuals with their lives and future clearly mapped out. A runaway elopement was discounted and anxiety grew for their safety.
Later that afternoon, that anxiety became reality when the brutalised and burned body of a young white male was found in East Knoxville near a section of railway tracks between the Cherry Street and Ninth Avenue bridges. It was identified by a police officer who knew the family of Christopher Newsom Jr. ‘I recognised him by his eyes,’ the officer told Chris’s father. The 23-year-old baseball star had been shot in the head, spine, and lower body. His hands were bound behind him. An examination of the bloodied corpse in situ revealed even more horrifying details. Christopher’s penis had been savagely hacked off and his body showed signs of repeated anal rape, later confirmed by autopsy. Whoever had dumped him near the tracks had soaked his body in gasoline and set it on fire before leaving the scene.
The search for Channon grew in intensity. Meanwhile, her parents returned to the police with her cellphone number and a trace run by the service providers led to the discovery of her abandoned vehicle in the rural neighbourhood of Chipman Street the next day. The vehicle was searched and fingerprints sent for comparison to the National Index. When the results arrived a few days later, prints found on an envelope containing Channon’s bank statement found inside the Toyota SUV led police to 2316 Chipman Street, a clapboard single storey home not far from where the vehicle was found. It was the residence of 25-year-old Lemaricus Devall ‘Slim’ Davidson, a local black petty criminal with a long rap sheet of violent robbery and carjacking offences. Davidson was nowhere to be seen and the house appeared to be unoccupied.
A search warrant for the house was executed on the following day and revealed some broken sticks of furniture, a .22 calibre revolver and a .22 rifle. In the kitchen a horrific discovery awaited. Police found Channon Christian’s body crammed inside a large domestic trash can, covered with plastic sheets. An autopsy would reveal that the young student had died of asphyxiation. An all-points, stop-and-detain warrant was issued for Davidson, who eventually surrendered to police. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and his subsequent questioning by investigators led to the arrests of three other black men and one woman: Davidson’s half brother Letalvis ‘Rome’ Cobbins (24), George Geovonni ‘Detroit’ Thomas (27), Eric DeWayne ‘E’ Boyd (34) and 18-year-old Vanessa Coleman who, Davidson told police, had all been visiting him from Kentucky on the day of the carjacking. All were eventually charged with various counts of rape, murder, and hijacking.
Lemaricus Davidson would later claim that his stepbrother, Cobbins, together with Thomas and Boyd had carjacked the couple after he had told Cobbins that he and his friends from Kentucky were freeloading on his hospitality. He claimed never to have seen Newsom and pointed his finger at Cobbins and Thomas for the victims’ rape and murder. He admitted seeing Channon Christian brought into the house and noted that she was wearing a ‘hoodie’ and had not been blindfolded. ‘That meant they’d have to kill her ’cos she’d seen faces,’ he told police and federal investigators. ‘I took the keys of the girl’s car from my brother and drove away. I didn’t want to see what was going to happen.’
He claimed never to have returned to the scene, although his testimony would change dramatically