I was in my own bubble and had no concept of the brutal realities others were dealing with – I didn’t know what had happened to James’ killers and I wasn’t involved in the logistical side of things like identifying my baby’s body. That devastating task fell to Ralph’s brother Jimmy. I later found out that Ralph had asked to do the identification but had been prevented by the police as they decided it would be too much for any parent to stand. I know my brother Ray had also considered doing it but he was in pieces.
I talked to Ray a lot for this book – especially about those days, where I was in no position to take anything in. We had never really talked to each other properly about it all before. He remembers so much more about those awful days than me. Of the identification process, Ray says, ‘When Jimmy stepped in and offered I was so grateful, I will always be grateful that he spared me from a sight I know would have haunted me forever. Now I can remember baby James on that final morning, standing on my dad’s armchair and waving at the birds out of the window. Happy, smiling and loved.’
I think Jimmy went to see James’ body a day or two after he had been found, but it’s all a bit hazy as no one really discussed it with me. I do remember distinctly feeling utterly distraught at the thought of him lying there in a mortuary all on his own, no one to hold him or stroke his forehead. But inconsolable is the only word to describe me when it became clear that they had to do an autopsy on my boy. The thought of that sent me into a dark spiral – even now I have to shut it out of my thoughts if my mind goes there. It was something I’d been able to avoid with Kirsty, but, after all he had been through, I couldn’t even protect my James from that. It felt like a final act of brutality.
I know it wasn’t easy for anyone involved. The pathologist, Dr Alan Williams, has said, ‘Doing post-mortems on young children can be so upsetting, especially if you have kids yourself. At that time I had a child only slightly older than James. Like all parents, you look at your own child asleep safely in bed and you pray it will never happen to your children. James had a large number of injuries and bruising and it was all very difficult.’
A lot of decisions were being made over endless cups of tea in the kitchen and I preferred to lock myself away in my sister’s bedroom. Lying curled up on the bed and being still was all I could handle, but in the immediate aftermath of James being found and identified there were things I had to know and deal with whether I liked it or not. That started with a visit from DS Jim Green, the man who had taken my initial statement at the police station on the Friday evening after James had gone missing. He had been formally appointed as our family liaison officer, along with Mandy, and he had the job of coming to my mum’s house to tell us that James’ body had been severed by a train. Various sections of the media knew this fact and he wanted to tell us before we read it in the papers, not least as some of the media had been down to the railway track trying to get photographs of James’ body being removed by the forensic team.
I heard the bell ring and, as usual, just turned over in bed and ignored it. Eventually there was a soft knock on the bedroom door and my sister told me that the police were here and I needed to come down. I walked into the kitchen to a collection of faces – some I knew, some I didn’t – and Ralph. We stood there as they told us what had happened to James’ body and I could feel Ralph tensing up. He was holding my hand and the grip got tighter as he struggled to keep himself in check. I kept my head down, staring at the tiles on my mum’s kitchen floor, thinking how muddy they would get as people weren’t taking their shoes off when they came in. I didn’t look up once and can’t remember what was said, I just wanted to be back upstairs wrapped in my duvet in the quiet. We spoke briefly about how to handle the press attention and they asked if I had any questions. I remember thinking, Where on earth do I start?
Chapter 9
The Arrests
We were advised to stay away from all forms of media in those early days, which suited me fine, although realistically that was impossible as my baby’s sweet face was splashed across every newspaper and magazine up and down the country. The police were doing their best to keep us up to date on how the investigation was progressing and they moved quickly and efficiently during those first few days after James was found. I know that obviously the priority in those initial hours was tracking down the two lads seen in the CCTV images. Now that James’ body had been discovered it was becoming even clearer that the security footage represented something very much out of the ordinary, but at this point I still don’t think the police had any idea of the significance those images would take on as the events unfolded. I remember Albert Kirby saying that officers thought they were looking for boys of around 13 years old, but that it was very difficult to judge their height against anything in the precinct due to the grainy quality of the security stills.
Those first few days felt like purgatory: the police were still appealing for the boys to come forward and I was still locked away from the world at my mum’s. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping and my brain was burning with images of my baby needing me, calling for me, putting his arms out for me – I truly felt like I was going mad. I was wasting away physically and mentally. The doctor brought round dozens of Complan shakes and persuaded me to drink those as the weight was dropping off me. I couldn’t even entertain the idea of food, the very thought of chewing defeated and exhausted me. It’s funny what you can get used to and I soon forgot how to exist in any part of the house apart from my bedroom so, on the rare occasion I did come out, any room I walked into felt too big. I’d look around and be filled with panic that there was too much noise and too many people, I couldn’t cope and so I would go back to my room and calm down – it became my safe haven.
Although I wasn’t necessarily aware of it at the time, the commitment to finding those responsible for James’ murder was overwhelming. Obviously I knew that Albert and his team were working night and day to find out what had happened to our boy, but the finer details were kept away from me. Ralph knew more than I did, along with my brother Ray, and everyone’s focus was on making sure that I didn’t have to deal with anything that might tip me over the edge. Ray says now, ‘Although you said from the start that you wanted to know everything that was going on, it was such a fine line between keeping you informed and thinking about every word before you said it – the smallest detail could have been too much, never mind the bigger and more distressing stuff. The pressure was really on and that only got worse once the trial started. I was there as eyes and ears for you and Ralph, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you most of what was said.’
On the one hand I know I was very lucky to have a family so concerned with my well-being, on the other it meant that, once I was ready to hear more detail about what had happened, it was too late and would have caused more harm than good. It also meant that, though Ralph and I were united in our grief, a distance opened up in those early days that we couldn’t close. As time went on it became harder to come together in our pain and we both sought separate ways of dealing with the overwhelming sorrow that almost drowned us.
***
In the days after James’ murder, more than 50 young boys aged between 10 and 18 were called in, arrested and questioned immediately – some after being identified by witnesses, some who were picked up by police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That in itself was a roller coaster for us all. Ray said, ‘When you hear the word “arrested” you immediately imagine they have the potential culprits, but it actually just meant they were questioning anyone and everyone.’
Albert Kirby’s statement at the press conference after the murder had struck a chord: ‘There must, somewhere, be somebody who knows the identity of the boys seen with James.’ The amount of information that came in was extraordinary. One police officer said, ‘In any other murder case you would put an officer aside to answer the phones and deal with the incoming information, but the phones were ringing off the hook and in the end we needed to set six or seven officers asid
e simply to deal with the queries and the amount of information flooding in.’
At that moment there weren’t any concrete theories the police could share with us. I know that before they arrested and interviewed Thompson and Venables, they toyed with the idea of James’ murder being a prank that had gone wrong. I suspect this was as much to do with the fact that no mind, not even a police one, could wrap itself around the idea that any young child could have deliberately lured James away and done what they did.
I became aware of a potential breakthrough on the Tuesday after James was found, raising my hopes that the monsters who had taken my baby had been caught. I was told that a boy of 12 had been arrested in Kirkdale. Lots of neighbours had seen the police activity at his house and immediately concluded that this must be James’ killer. That meant that the press were tipped off and things descended quickly into a near riot.
It showed the level of emotion swirling around and the amount of people who wanted justice for James. But I must say that I have never wanted violence in James’ name – not least as he didn’t have a bad bone in his body. That has never changed, not even once Venables and Thompson were convicted – and very much contrary to reports that I organised vigilante groups to find them once they were released. All I have ever wanted for my boy is justice and so, even though my spirits were raised at the thought of an arrest, I didn’t get my hopes up. We were getting all kinds of phone calls from friends and family keeping us informed of what was being reported in the press, so my brother Ray called DCI Geoff MacDonald to try and separate the facts from the emotional second guessing.
Geoff told Ray that the lad had only ever been a ‘possible’ suspect in the hunt and that he was one of many arrests – it just so happened that the journalists had found out about this one rather than any of the others. It was then that he told us, ‘We are arresting anyone who fits the description if they don’t come willingly to help us.’
It came to light that the boy in question, Jonathan Green, had aroused the suspicion of his father, who had called police to share his worries. Parents were so appalled by what had happened that they were questioning their own children. It soon became clear that Jonathan had nothing to do with James’ murder but that didn’t stop the harassment and, even though the boy was totally innocent, he and his family had to leave their house and the area.
The request for information continued and on the Thursday evening Crimewatch was aired: it was the first time the programme had featured a crime the same week it had been committed.
The programme showed new images of the boys enhanced using techniques favoured by the Ministry of Defence – they were still fuzzy but a huge improvement on the originals. What we didn’t know was that, just before the show aired, two more boys were in custody being questioned. A woman, who had been away on holiday for over a week, walked into Marsh Lane Police Station late Wednesday evening saying she had information about the youngsters captured on CCTV. She told the police that she was a friend of the family of a boy called Jon Venables and that he was often in trouble for skipping school and causing general mischief. She could recognise him from the images that she had seen on the news and she was certain it was him. She was also able to give the name of a boy he often hung around with: Robert Thompson.
Armed with that information two teams went to arrest them in plain clothes and unmarked cars, marking the start of a new horror story for my family. Thompson lived in Walton, not far from the murder scene, with his mum and two younger brothers. The arresting officer recalls knocking on the door and it being opened by his mother. The officer explained who he was and why he was there and ended up speaking to Thompson’s seven-year-old brother. The officer said at the time, ‘He knew about the murder, so much so that he and Thompson had been down to put flowers on the tracks – I remember hearing that and wondering if we were making a terrible mistake. I mean, what adult could be that conniving if they had murdered someone, let alone a child behaving so cynically?’
Venables was arrested at the same time. His parents had divorced when he was three years old and they shared custody of Jon and his siblings. Teachers described him as an attention seeker – seemingly the very least of his issues once everything else came to light. When he was called to the landing by his mother the arresting officer recalled, ‘I was so shocked to see his age and his size, I just couldn’t get my head around the possibility that this tiny kid had committed such an evil act.’
They were taken to separate police stations and Albert Kirby travelled to London for Crimewatch, I am sure still believing that the two boys they had in custody were far too young to be responsible. I remember it being one of the hardest things to get my head around – they were just seven years older than my James, the baby they were supposed to have murdered. I have since learned that the arresting officers began their questioning on the Thursday afternoon and it was the first time any of them had interviewed murder suspects so young. There was no precedent for what was taking place, and so that had to be set at the same time as following protocol. One officer later said, ‘We were aware that it would be going to the Crown Court whatever happened, so any mistakes could rob that poor James of justice. In that situation you have to shut off your own feelings and do your best to be impartial.’
The interviews were recorded but a court injunction now bans them from being broadcast to protect the identities of Venables and Thompson – a familiar pattern of protection for my son’s killers that was established early on. Because of their young age, the first and most important thing to establish was if they understood right from wrong and the difference between a lie and the truth. I know very little about the ins and outs of the questioning – it’s been the only way to survive really and protect what was left of my sanity. I know there are full transcripts that have been printed, but I try not to waste my emotional energy on the two boys who stole my world. There has been enough written about them and I would rather spend my time remembering James as he was, not for how he died. I do know that interviewing these two boys affected some of the officers deeply – that really came home to me years later when I met one of them at a police party. I could clearly see in his eyes that he was still hurting, that he was trying to tell me something but didn’t quite know how to do it. Because he’d had a bit to drink he couldn’t get the words out and was also terrified of upsetting me. He looked haunted and, frankly, destroyed – he later said of the interviews, ‘The level of manipulation, detail and evil for such a young person to be involved in will stick in my mind forever.’
***
We had ongoing support from Mandy, Albert and the team and it was actually their suggestion that Ralph and I should get a solicitor on board to help us manage all the press, the paperwork and the general admin that I just couldn’t engage with. I could barely dress myself and sit upright, never mind deal with any kind of process – all I wanted to know was if they were going to charge the two boys they suspected had murdered my son. I don’t remember a thing about that first meeting with Sean Sexton, the recommended solicitor, who was known to the family (mainly by my brother Ray).
I spoke to Sean while writing this book, and he says of how he first got involved, ‘I got a phone call almost one week after James’ body had been found, it was Saturday, 20th February. I was 34 and had set up on my own four years beforehand. Until that point I’d done a whole range of what a high street solicitor would do – personal injury work, criminal work, dealt with family issues, but nothing that prepared me for this case. I got a call asking me to go to Kirkby in relation to the James Bulger case. Originally I thought it was to do with one of the kids who had been arrested, as that was all over the media at the time and I thought maybe one of them wanted representation from a solicitor.’
It turns out the response to James’ murder was threatening to swamp Marsh Lane Police Station and the team knew that I wasn’t dealing with anything at all. Ralph was also in bits and had started drinking to ease the pain, so they decided to enlist some
help on our behalf. During the week between James’ disappearance and the discovery of his body, there had been letters flooding in – some simply addressed ‘James’ Mummy, Liverpool’ – so the police were having to vet them all to check there wasn’t anything inappropriate inside. They were nearly always cards of condolence and most had cash inside, telling us to buy a teddy bear for James or buy some flowers for me. The generosity was overwhelming and reminded me how many good people there were in the world despite the horror we had encountered. The station had never seen anything like it and tried to put a team in place around us, and so the police arranged for Sean to come and see us on the Saturday morning. I was persuaded to come downstairs and meet him.
Sean remembers, ‘I got there at midday and went to your mother’s house, Ray lived in the same road just a bit further on. I walked into that house and the misery hit me, as soon as I crossed the threshold. I was introduced to you and Ralph, and you just looked through me. You didn’t seem to be connecting to anything that was happening. You didn’t hear anything that anyone was saying – you weren’t really functioning at all. I remember that Ray offered me a cigarette. I had given up smoking that New Year’s Eve – I was so proud of myself and had done so well, not a single puff since – but the atmosphere was so intense that I smoked two cigarettes in the first half an hour before I remembered that I had given up the fags. I couldn’t see exactly what my role would be at that point but one of the police liaison officers suggested that I go down to Marsh Lane Police Station and see what they were dealing with. So off I went and, when I got there, I was led into this small room with four or five police officers sitting there opening mountains of envelopes full of donations and letters. It was almost overwhelming.’
I Let Him Go: The heartbreaking book from the mother of James Bulger Page 8
