I want to face my brother Rikki’s killer
Sis: I haven’t got closure
RIKKI Neave’s sister wants to face the six-year-old’s killer and ask him: “Why did you do it?”
Sexual fantasist James Watson was 13 when he lured “cheeky, loving” Rikki to woods in Peterborough, Cambs, in 1994 – strangling him with his own anorak and then posing his naked body in a star shape.
The tragic lad’s sister,
Rochelle, is relieved that
Watson was finally brought to justice last week but wants to know what drove him to commit the sickening crime.
Rochelle, 30, said: “I haven’t got closure. What was he thinking at 13 to murder my brother? I want to speak to him myself and ask him to give me these answers. But I don’t think I’m ever going to get them.” Watson had already served 18 months for indecently assaulting a sleeping young man when he was finally arrested in April 2016, after police found his DNA on samples taken from Rikki’s clothing.
But in 2018 prosecutors dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence. Rochelle successfully challenged the decision and Watson was charged in 2020. She attended most of the killer’s 11-week case at the Old Bailey and was enraged by his callous behaviour in the dock.
She said: “I cried quite a few times and it made me angry as well. He was smug. He was cocky. It was just like The James Watson Show. I found it insulting to my family. He rolled his eyes at us and he was laughing at us through the dock window. He tried to cry in the box when he was giving his testimony. It was the most pathetic attempt I’ve ever seen.”
Watson, now 41, was convicted by a 10-2 jury majority and will be sentenced on May 9. Judge Mrs Justice Mcgowan warned that his tariff “will be determined largely by the age he was at the time of the offence”.
His ex-girlfriend told the jury he strangled her during sex and used a stocking as a ligature in an attack on a member of staff at a children’s home in the 90s.
Police initially decided Rikki and Rochelle’s mum, Ruth, killed him and dumped his body using a buggy. She was cleared of murder in 1996 but got seven years after admitting child cruelty.
Rochelle, adopted by a family in Leicester, grew up being told her mother had killed her brother – but as she had been acquitted nothing could be done.
She said: “I’d think, ‘That’s my brother, why aren’t you doing anything about it?’ I grew up as a very angry child. I just wanted justice for my brother.”