The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Accused met Rikki but denies murder
The son of a former police officer has admitted a string of crimes from the age of 13, but insisted he did not murder sixyear-old Rikki Neave.
James Watson, 40, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of strangling Rikki (pictured below, in 1994 and leaving his naked body posed in woodland in Peterborough.
The defendant, who was 13 at the time, was charged with the schoolboy’s murder after his DNA was found on discarded clothes more than 20 years later. Watson has claimed he picked up Rikki during a brief encounter in the street with the little boy on the day of his disappearance.
On Tuesday, his lawyer Jennifer Dempster QC asked him: “Have you ever had sexual interest in children?” Watson said: “No, never.” Ms Dempster went on: “Did you have anything to do with the murder of Rikki Neave?”
Watson told jurors: “I wish I could look every one of you 12 times in the eyes. But no, I did not kill Rikki Neave, I did not have anything to do with his disappearance.”
Watson was living at a children’s home at the time of Rikki’s death and was regarded by social services as a “vulnerable” child.
He could not stay at home after his father, who had previously been a Cambridgeshire Police officer, was arrested and jailed.
While at a children’s home in January 1995, Watson stole track signal detonators that gave off a loud noise, and laid them on a railway line.
Watson said: “It was fun. It reads worse than I remember it.”
In August 2005, Watson stole uniform items, equipment and car keys from a police station and left in an unmarked car.
Asked to explain it, he said that “a lot” of his crimes had been to get arrested when his life was not going well. I went to a police station – that is the only place I have been where
people ask: ‘Are you OK? Are you alright?’”
His “warped view” of police was formed from his experience of his father and being taken into care, jurors heard. In January 2009, Watson broke into a British Transport Police station and stole items including cuffs and batons before setting fire to the property store and making off on a bicycle.
Watson told jurors: “I was very angry at the police, the police station bore the brunt of that.” The defendant was asked about a 2018 conviction for sexual assault on a man who had stayed over.
He said: “He was effectively sleeping beside me. During the night I reached out my hand, it landed on his stomach and briefly – incredibly briefly – my hand touched his penis. I withdrew it straightaway. “The next morning I was disgusted with myself.” Watson’s record also included a number of thefts and
burglaries. He said: “There was a lot of breaking into sheds. There was an amount of burglaries, a lot of cars.
“When I was in the children’s home I would go out with other children and steal a car and set fire to it. It was fun at the time.”
With one exception, he had always previously admitted the offences.
He said: “I wanted them to know it was me. Some of the crime I have done was to get in trouble. I have never lied to the police.”
Jurors have heard Watson was on police bail over Rikki’s murder in 2016 and living in a hostel as he awaited a charge decision.
In June 2016, he travelled by ferry from Dover to the continent, ending up in Portugal in August of that year before returning to the UK.
Watson said: “I left the country because of the stress I was under... My intention was always to come back and answer to my police bail.”
Earlier, in an opening address, Ms Dempster told jurors there are three issues in the defence case. Firstly, she highlighted the difficulty in
pinpointing the time of Rikki’s death.
The second issue is whether the jury can be sure that Watson killed Rikki “given the state of the evidence”.
Ms Dempster said it is “incontrovertibly” proven that Watson had met Rikki and there were a “few minutes” of interaction.
But there is “simply no evidence” that he was in the woods for some two hours, during which time it is alleged he killed, stripped and posed Rikki.
Thirdly, Rikki’s body was found by a police officer the next day, shortly after noon.
Yet, Ms Dempster said, another officer had searched the path where he was found just after 7.30pm the night before and Rikki was not there.
The defence lawyer suggested that if that was right, Rikki or his body was moved there under cover of darkness.
The “major consequence” of that would be to rule out Watson, as he would already have got his taxi back to the children’s home, she asserted.
Watson, of no fixed address, denies murder and the trial continues.