I Let Him Go: The heartbreaking book from the mother of James Bulger

by Fergus, Denise

  I felt I was constantly firefighting, and I look back now and realise I had no time to grieve. I couldn’t keep my head above water and so it was decided that I should leave the area for a while. The police and my family thought this might help calm down the press intrusion and encourage them to move on from my mum’s doorstep. They were also very worried about my health and the well-being of the baby too – the strain was immense and it wasn’t doing either of us any good. I felt terrible for the rest of the family – they were being doorstepped at work and my sisters were harassed as they took their kids to school – it was endless. I hoped that if I wasn’t around they would lose interest, so I went off to stay with some friends in the south of England. It didn’t really help the situation with Ralph, as he didn’t come with me. And it didn’t stop the press – the interest just seemed to get worse.

  ***

  As the months passed, I grew bigger and the pregnancy progressed well. But the elephant in the room was the imminent trial. I look back now and I find it extraordinary that the entire time it took me to grow my baby, the police were pouring over every small detail of our son’s death preparing their case against Thompson and Venables – talk about a parallel universe. As with my pregnancy with James, this third one was an angst-ridden time as I spent nine months convinced I didn’t deserve a new baby. The stress was immense and my emotional state was worrying – the grief was so deep I didn’t ever think the wounds could heal and I was guilt-ridden because I was looking to the future. If I felt the baby kick and got excited or laughed and smiled, I immediately felt disloyal to James because for a split second I was focused on the new baby and not him. I practically lived at the hospital and probably had a scan almost every week. I was so paranoid that something would happen to the baby, that somehow the misery I felt would seep into my unborn child.

  Ralph and I tried our best to carry on as normally as possible as the trial date approached but, if I am brutally honest, it was clear that there wasn’t much in the way of a marriage to salvage. Everything died with James that cold February day, including the closeness Ralph and I had shared. The initial distance that set in with Ralph’s drinking would have required some serious effort to undo and we just didn’t have anything to give. The problem was that all our energy was taken up surviving a day at a time and preparing to see our boy’s killers get what they deserved – there wasn’t an ounce of anything else left over. We were both so focused on getting justice and making sure those two boys were punished for what that had done to our family, we ignored each other.

  We still didn’t have a home, as I couldn’t go back to where James had lived, so we were pretty much living separately – me at my sister’s and Ralph at his mum’s – and the months rolled by. I found the arrival of summer really hard. It sounds silly, but as long as the weather stayed cold and wet it was the same as when James had been here, so he was close to me. Watching the leaves and flowers coming out and the days getting longer meant time was marching relentlessly on and my baby wasn’t here. I found one of the scariest things about those early months was the worry that James was getting further away from me and that there would come a point where he had been dead longer than he’d been with me.

  The police were still being fantastic – Albert, Mandy and the whole liaison team kept in close touch and that contact increased as the trial grew closer. As with James’ abduction and murder, the details given to me were sketchy – it was very much a need-to-know basis. That suited me fine, although as the trial date drew closer I suppose my interest intensified – I was absolutely terrified that Thompson and Venables would get off because they were so young. The thing about me is that I can’t help asking questions and I am quite good at reading people, so there were a few awkward moments where I asked for an answer that was clearly hard for the police team to give without adding detail they knew would deeply upset me. It was a delicate balancing of what would come out in court (and therefore be all over the papers) and their wish to protect me.

  By the time the court date arrived, I would be eight months pregnant, and there was great worry that the stress of the trial would bring on early labour. The pregnancy had been relatively straightforward, which felt like a miracle, all things considered. It had been such an emotionally complicated experience – grieving for one baby while knowing another one was coming along. With the trial a couple of weeks away I was deeply sad. I tried to be hopeful and look to the future so the baby being born would feel joyous – yet there wasn’t a shred of happiness in me. I couldn’t get Kirsty’s stillbirth out of my head. That had happened when we were carefree and happy, so goodness knows what might happen as my son’s murderers went on trial.

  It was decided early on between the police, my family and my doctors that it would be best for me to stay away from the trial. I didn’t put up much of a fight – I had no idea what to expect but, whatever it was, deep down I knew I couldn’t face it. I especially didn’t want to be under public scrutiny, hearing terrible details about my son’s death for the first time in front of the boys who killed him. I most definitely would not do anything to put my baby’s health in danger.

  That said, I was determined that James would be properly represented, so in the end we decided that Ralph, Ray, Phil (Ralph’s brother) and Dennis (my brother-in-law) would go and they would report back at the end of each day. A week or so before the trial started, we had a long visit from Albert Kirby and Mandy Waller to talk us through what we could expect. I had lived the past eight months in a bubble – my family had swung into action any time I walked into the room and the TV was on with people talking about James. The radio stayed switched off in the kitchen now, just in case, and everyone stopped having newspapers delivered. Friends knew not to bring up anything they might have read and they also closed ranks on the press who tried endlessly to get stories from them by feeding them bits of information about Thompson and Venables, hoping they would get angry and speak out. I was so well isolated and cared for, but now, not even my nearest and dearest could protect me from the circus that would surround us for the next few weeks.

  On the one hand I felt relief that the date was finally here, the eight-month wait for James to have his day in court had been torture, but now it was here all I felt was dread and fear all over again. When Albert and Mandy came round they sat Ralph and I down and gently talked through the process. I remember clearly watching their mouths move and thinking, I shouldn’t be sitting here talking about James like this; I should be talking to him.

  Sean was there too, on hand to try and explain anything we didn’t understand. It was explained to us that, because both boys were ten years old, the law presumed they were incapable of committing an offence like James’ murder, so it was the job of the prosecution to not only prove that they knowingly killed James, but also that they knew it was wrong. The law was changed in that regard in 1998 by the new Labour government, I believe as a direct result of James’ murder.

  It seemed that anyone charged with murder, particularly when that person is ten years old, rarely puts up their hand to say, ‘Yes, I am guilty.’ Obviously two such young children would have been advised to plead not guilty, so in reality there was always going to be a trial. Some people assumed it would be a formality and that a guilty verdict was a given, but that was never the case.

  As the date drew nearer it was decided to move the trial out of Liverpool to Preston, mainly because of heightened feelings, but also because the defence for Thompson and Venables argued they wouldn’t get a fair trial with so much anger swirling around.

  It was obvious that detail would start to emerge of James’ last hours and the police wanted to make sure we were prepared for that. It had been Ralph’s intention to go every day and look his son’s killers in the eye, so the police wanted to make sure there were no surprises in court. As I decided not to go and didn’t want to know the detail at that time, Albert Kirby took Ralph aside and explained what they would be putting forward as evidence. Albert Kirby and the t
eam had led a very thorough investigation and he was also sensitive to what Ralph and I did and didn’t need to know. I only found out afterwards that the decision was taken, in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service, not to use all the evidence they had for the trial because they thought it would be unnecessarily upsetting for us. They selected the evidence they needed to secure a conviction but didn’t put everything in the public domain.

  Sean was also heavily involved during this time and knew far more than me. He comments, ‘It was a police decision to keep back the detail from you and that became doubly important once you discovered you were pregnant with Michael. Did Ralph know everything? I don’t know and to be honest I am not sure I know everything. Albert Kirby was very concerned with the welfare of the two of you; he is a Christian man and he felt strongly that he didn’t want to cause the family unnecessary distress by making public information that pointed to a possible sexual motivation, especially if it wasn’t necessary to secure a conviction. There are some things that I genuinely don’t know if you know, because we haven’t ever talked about it.

  ‘The prosecution was represented by the very senior and experienced Richard Henriques QC. Everyone went through the evidence with a fine-tooth comb and said, “This is relevant, we are going to use this. This isn’t, so we won’t use that.” Albert was always keen not to upset you unnecessarily, so if the jury didn’t need to know something he made sure they didn’t and he didn’t volunteer anything extra.

  ‘Perhaps, as things subsequently turned out, there is an argument that, had everything Venables and Thompson did to James been put in the public domain, then they would have been given longer sentences and James might have had the justice he deserved. At the very least they would have seen the inside of an actual prison.’

  Either way, everyone did what they felt was right at the time, and Ralph and I were as prepared as was possible given the circumstances. As 1st November arrived, the reality of it all suddenly hit me: we were about to hear the terrible truth of how our son had died at the hands of two ten-year-old children and we also had to share that with the waiting world.

  Chapter 13

  The Trial

  Just before it started, the police took the time to explain again the realities of the trial. You’d have to be on another planet to even question if those two were guilty of the crime, but that wasn’t the issue or what needed proving. Getting a guilty verdict rested on whether it could be proven that Thompson and Venables understood that abducting and killing James was wrong. So the job of the prosecution wasn’t to prove the crime – that was obvious from the fact that the only time I could spend with my son was in a cemetery – but it was to establish that Thompson and Venables knew right from wrong, good from bad, truth from lies. If that could be proven beyond doubt, then it followed that they knew full well what they were doing and understood that their actions would hurt and kill James. The irony was not lost on me that in the end, it all came down to whether or not the two boys who murdered my son had any understanding of morality.

  At that time, English law demanded of its juvenile killers an ethical awareness that adult murderers are not required to possess. The trial became a slightly odd forum for discovering the intensity of Thompson and Venables’ malice. Some argued that being children actually played against them – the jury was able to hear details of their characters and behaviour patterns in a way that wouldn’t have been allowed in an adult trial – so the court was told about their shoplifting and truancy and their torture of animals.

  I can’t really remember the exact detail of the first morning of the trial, although I do recall everyone being worried about setting off in good time, as it was 40 miles away. I think I went to my mum’s to spend the day there with her and my sisters as Ralph, Ray, Phil and Dennis set off with the police and a group of family and friends. Everyone was very quiet and dressed in smart suits. Other than that, nothing really stands out. I have since found out bits and pieces about that day – the press were swarming everywhere and, most bizarrely, there was a queue of normal people wanting a seat in the courtroom to hear the grisly details of what had happened to my son. To this day I still don’t understand why anyone would queue from 7am to be given one of the 48 seats available in the public gallery. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone would willingly subject themselves to hearing awful information about unspeakable things being done to a baby they had never met. In a way it made me all the more certain I had made the right decision to stay away. Ralph, Phil, Dennis and Ray had reserved seats in Court One, which also meant an uninterrupted view of Thompson and Venables as they walked up the 23 steps to take their seats in the dock.

  Ray said that first day passed in a bit of a blur. The morning was taken up with legal arguments and the actual trial didn’t begin until after lunch. One of those legal arguments was from David Turner QC who tried to argue that the judge should grant a ‘stay’ due to ‘abuse of process’. Basically he was arguing that because of excessive and biased reporting by the media, the boys would not receive a fair trial – that would have stopped the case there and then and meant all charges were dropped. Thankfully that was overruled and things carried on as planned. For our family, and Albert Kirby and his team, that would have been our very worst nightmare.

  It was a huge relief to my family to know that things would be proceeding, but any sense of calm was soon put to an end once Thompson and Venables entered the courtroom. Ray often describes his sense of shock at seeing them for the first time and it was something I shared when I faced them both on the final day of the trial. It is almost impossible to explain how small they looked in such a grown-up and severe environment, like little toys on a grown-up canvas. They were just two short kids dressed in their school uniforms. That initial sighting was so extraordinary it was like being punched in the chest.

  As Ray has told me, ‘I went into that courtroom every day, representing our baby James, taking the burden as much as I could from you and Ralph. Ralph went on the first day but couldn’t go back in after that until the final day, when he came with you for the verdict. Every single day was a living hell, finding out certain terrible things right there in public and having to sit on your hands, it was the hardest thing ever. All I kept thinking was, “How could anyone do to a child what those two children did to my nephew?”’

  I don’t know how anyone associated with James could have spent days on end just yards from the boys who ended his life. It was so brave of my family to do that for us and I will always be grateful to them for going through it.

  On the surface at least, the court proceedings appeared to be civil and polite. This was in direct contrast to the animal-like awfulness of what those two boys had done to my son, and that became obvious as the trial got going. David Harrison, who covered the trial for the Guardian, said the ‘descriptions of what happened to James Bulger whisked us off to a darker world. And the emotions of the case exploded into the courtroom. Witness after witness broke down, sat down, drank water, struggled to regain their composure. At times it felt like the whole court was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’ One witness, when asked why he didn’t intervene as he saw Venables and Thompson dragging James along the road, said, ‘It’s usually grown-up fellas who do that sort of thing, what kid kidnaps a toddler to do him harm? What normal person would even think that’s what was happening if they saw it?’

  David Harrison’s article continued, ‘The Bulger family are wise to stay away. There is no catharsis to be had at Preston Crown Court. Only incomprehension. And misery.’

  As I didn’t attend the trial my grasp of the ins and outs isn’t as detailed as some other accounts, but I was told how the proceedings worked. The jurors were sworn in and the charges were read out. There were three charges in total and Ray says Thompson and Venables didn’t even flinch as those crimes were recounted to the court: the attempted abduction of a child belonging to Mrs Diane Power; the abduction of my James; and the murder of James. Venables and Thompson h
ad already entered a not guilty plea at an earlier hearing, so there was no need for them to speak. Apparently, as the charges were read out they carried on fidgeting and generally mucking around, the severity of the words having absolutely no impact whatsoever.

  Richard Henriques QC did not mess about as he opened the trial – he went straight in with the cold, hard facts of what happened to my boy on that bleak February day and he spared no detail. I don’t know all that he said, as some of his opening argument contained information about what they did to James that I choose not to know, but the message was stark and unavoidable:

  James Bulger was two years and eleven months old when he died. He was the only child of Ralph and Denise Bulger and they live in Kirkby. They always called him James and we will refer to him as James throughout this trial. He died on Friday, 12th February this year.

  In short, these two defendants abducted James from his mother in a shopping precinct in Bootle. They walked him some two and a half miles across Liverpool to Walton, a very long and distressing walk for a two-year-old toddler. James was then taken up to a railway line and subjected to a prolonged and violent attack . . . Both the defendants are now eleven years of age. On Friday, 12th February, they were both ten years and six months old, both born in August 1982. Notwithstanding their ages, it is alleged that they both intended to either kill James or at least to cause him really serious injury and they both knew that their behaviour was really seriously wrong.

  Not only is it alleged that they both abducted and murdered James, but that they attempted, prior to abducting James, to abduct another two-year-old boy. He was in the same shopping precinct three hours earlier.

  Ray says that you could have heard a pin drop as all this was read out, the crowd already transfixed by the grim details and the sheer calculated evil of which these two primary school children stood accused. The forensic evidence was then outlined, including bloodstains on shoes belonging to Venables that matched a DNA sample taken from James. There was also other forensic evidence that tied in directly to the objects they used to kill James. That first day was a barrage of information – none of it welcome or easy to process – all of it only underlining the fact that everyone in that courtroom was in the presence of pure evil.