James Bulger’s family on their terrible loss
THE TODDLER’S KILLING SHOOK THE WORLD. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, HIS BROTHERS TALK ABOUT WHAT THE LOSS MEANT TO THEIR FAMILY
It took just over 90 seconds for two-year-old James Bulger to be lured away from his mother Denise as she paid for pork chops at the butcher. James was murdered on a February afternoon 28 years ago by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The fact they were so young made the brutality of James’ killing all the more shocking.
Now, a new Channel 5 documentary sees James’ family speaking about the desperate search for the toddler, and how his murder impacted their lives. James has three brothers – Michael, now 27, from Denise’s marriage to her ex-husband and James’ father, Ralph; and Thomas, 22, and Leon, 21, from her second marriage to Stuart Fergus. All have grown up knowing about their elder sibling and the circumstances surrounding his death. Michael is now a father himself and, more than ever, can understand his mother’s anguish over the loss of her son.
Michael was born in December 1993, nine months after James’ disappearance from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside. He says the family
all keep James’ memory alive by talking about him. “Being James’ brother is not a weird thing. We have always grown up knowing he was there, what he was like, his character. In the household, we talk about James a lot… my mum will give us little stories and insights about what he was like. He has always been a character we wanted to know more about, wishing he was there, rather than someone who was in the background all the time.” Thomas adds, “It is still weird seeing James on the news to this day, because he should have been here with us. We shouldn’t be looking at him on the news about a kid being murdered, we would rather he had been sat next to us.”
TERRIBLE EVENTS
On that afternoon, James was enticed away from Denise by Venables and Thompson, who were playing truant from school. Within seconds, he was gone. As soon as she realised her son had disappeared, Denise started checking shops and ran to the shopping centre reception, where an announcement was made over the Tannoy. The police were informed and arrived to take details of the missing child and start the search. But although missing children were usually found quickly, James had vanished. The scale of the search grew, as Merseyside CID became involved, and the police helicopter joined the hunt. Investigators poring over CCTV footage from the shopping centre then saw pictures showing James being led away by the two boys. In the docu, Jim Fitzsimmons, then a Detective Inspector at Merseyside Police, says,
‘WE TALK ABOUT JAMES A LOT – LITTLE STORIES AND INSIGHTS’
“You had to look twice because it was surprising, and I remember thinking, ‘What does this mean?’ It was something I didn’t expect to see.”
At first, the fact it was children who had taken James came as a relief to those searching, with even Denise believing they wouldn’t hurt her son. But as the days passed, she began to lose hope. And on Sunday 14 February, police confirmed that James’ body had been found on a Merseyside railway embankment. It was clear from the injuries James had suffered that his death was murder. He had been beaten, kicked, and had paint and bricks thrown at him. James suffered 42 injuries, and the pathologist couldn’t isolate the fatal blow.
Venables was identified by a neighbour who had seen him with paint on his coat on the day of James’ death, and it was soon discovered that Thompson had been truanting with him. Both blamed the other, and during police interview tapes featured in the documentary, Thompson (who had a young sibling at the time) can be heard saying, “Why
‘IT LEFT A SCAR ON THE COUNTRY’S COLLECTIVE MEMORY’
would I wanna kill him when I have got a baby of my own? If I wanted to kill a baby, I would kill my own, wouldn’t I?” He later mimicked the toddler asking for his mother. On the sixth day of the investigation, Venables admitted killing James, saying they had first considered throwing him in the canal beside the shopping centre, before taking him to the railway embankment. Thompson and Venables, who were 11 by the time they faced trial at Preston Crown Court, were the youngest murder defendants in the UK in more than 100 years. After a 17-day trial in November 1993, they were found guilty of James’ abduction and murder. But despite the judge warning they faced imprisonment for “very many years” for the “unparalleled evil and barbarity” of their actions, Denise and her family were distraught when they were sentenced to just eight years.
This was raised to ten years by the Lord Chief Justice, then 15 years by then-home Secretary Michael Howard. But Thompson and Venables appealed, and their sentences were reduced to seven years and eight months, which meant they wouldn’t
serve any time in an adult prison. They were released on licence under new identities in 2001, and although Venables has been recalled to prison numerous times, Thompson has not been heard of since. But their actions that day have left a scar on the country’s collective memory, and on James’ family in particular.
TRAGIC LEGACY
In the documentary, Leon says,
“Still now, I can’t really fathom about exactly what happened, I don’t really want to know all the details about it.” Thomas agrees, describing the abduction and murder as “sickening”. And James’ abduction left his mother terrified history would repeat itself with her other children. Michael says,
“Growing up, after what happened to James, going through school, I wasn’t allowed on school trips or to go to the shops with my mates. The only place I was allowed was either in the front garden or literally outside the gate with my mates, but I would have to be in view of the window, so if I went out of sight, [Mum] would be straight out.”
Denise would, Leon says, always walk behind her children in shops, so she could see where they were at all times, and Thomas recalls his mother texting “every five minutes” when he was with friends. But, he says, “We are a closer family because of what happened. We do spend more
‘WE WANT TO CHERISH THE TIME WE HAVE TOGETHER’
time together than some other families do, just because we want to cherish the time we have together.”
Michael has now become a father himself, after his mother announced she was going to be a grandmother in May last year. His daughter was born in November, with Denise announcing the arrival of her “beautiful granddaughter” via Twitter. He says, “Becoming a dad, seeing it from my mum’s eyes, it’s going to make me more protective and hold the baby closer than I think anyone could.”
Lost Boy: The Killing Of James Bulger is available on My5 now