Teenager ‘had child murder fantasy days before killing Rikki’
A BOY of 13 accused of killing sixyear-old Rikki Neave fantasised about the murder of a toddler, a court heard yesterday.
James Watson allegedly pretended to his mother that he had heard a radio report about a two-year-old who was abducted, strangled and left in a dyke.
But he had invented the story as a chilling ‘prediction’ and killed Rikki just days later, jurors were told. Rikki was strangled with his own jacket and stripped naked after being lured to a woodland in Peterborough on November 28, 1994.
Three days earlier, Watson was said to have told his mother of ‘a two-year-old boy [who] had been abducted from the Paston area of Peterborough and... had been strangled and left naked off the Paston Parkway’.
Prosecutor John Price QC said the story Watson ‘made up’ showed his ‘grotesque interest in the subject of child murder’. He told the Old Bailey: ‘A local child did go missing. He wasn’t aged two, he was six. But this child really was murdered. This child was strangled.
‘And this real child had been with the inventor of this bogus radio report.’
Watson, now 40, is alleged to have remained with his victim’s body for an hour and made no attempt to conceal it, deliberately arranging the corpse in a ‘star shape’.
In the days after the murder, his teachers noted ‘disturbing aspects of his behaviour’ and ‘conspicuous interest’ in the case, Mr Price said. While at school, the teenager reportedly made numerous photocopies of the front page of a local paper featuring the murder and photograph of the victim.
David Benjamin, head of house at Walton School, was so alarmed he phoned police.
He said: ‘[Watson] informed me that he knew the dead boy. He informed me that the six photocopies were for display at the children’s home [where Watson lived].
‘Subsequently Watson had a further 25 copies made of the poster of Rikki.’
Another teacher recalled him leaving school to buy the newspaper, which he carried around with him falsely claim
‘Grotesque interest’
ing that the victim was his friend’s brother, it was said.
Despite this, police continued to pursue the victim’s drug-addict mother Ruth Neave as the prime suspect, mistakenly thinking she had killed her son at home and then hidden him in the woodland.
Miss Neave was acquitted of murder in 1996. Watson wasn’t identified as a suspect until a cold case review in 2015 led to a DNA breakthrough. Samples taken from Rikki’s clothing matched the profile of Watson, the court heard.
Mr Price told jurors there was no evidence the killing was sexual in nature, adding: ‘Rikki Neave knew his killer. He felt safe and at his ease with him.’
Watson denies murder. The trial continues.