My James: The Heartrending Story of James Bulger by His Father

by Ralph Bulger

  Back cover:

  The morning of 12 February 1993 was like any other for Ralph Bulger, as he sat having breakfast with his wife Denise and toddler son James. He was happily married, he loved being a father and was content to live a simple life. All of that w as swept away in a heartbeat when later that day his son was abducted and brutally murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. It was a crime that shocked the world, and horrified the British public.

  In My James, Ralph talks with searing honesty about the murder and the aftermath, from the police investigation and the trial to the nightmares that haunted him and the grief that ripped his marriage apart. He describes his outrage as his son’s killers were given onlv eight years’ detention in a secure unit and how he has found the strength to sustain a twenty-year battle against the legal system in a quest to achieve real justice for his son.

  An incredibly moving and powerful story of loss and survival, My James is also a loving father’s tribute to his son, an adorable young boy whose smile was so bright it brought joy to all who knew him.

  NON-FICTION

  Front cover photograph (c) Getty Images

  ISBN 978-0-283-07183-6

  First published 2013 by Sidgwick & Jackson

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-283-07168-3 HB

  ISBN 978-0-283-07183-6 TPB

  Copyright © Ralph Bulger and Rosie Dunn 2013

  The right of Ralph Bulger and Rosie Dunn to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The picture credits on page 323 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset by Ellipsis Digital Limited, Glasgow Printed and bound by Griffin Press

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  TVM edition 2015

  Dedicated to my beautiful son James

  Contents

  Prologue

  1My Beautiful Baby Boy

  2The Day Everything Changed

  3The Search

  4Who Did This to My Son?

  5The Boys Were Just Ten Years Old

  6Prisoners of Our Grief

  7My Son’s Last Journey

  8The Aftermath

  9The Trial

  10The Verdict

  11The Battles Begin

  12Trying to Have A Family Life

  13The Fight Back

  14Justice for James Denied

  15Killers Free Once Again

  16The Tenth Annivesary

  17Life Goes On

  18Recalled to Prison

  19Parole Denied

  Epilogue

  Appendix: The Story of MAMAA

  Pictures

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  I’ve always loved to watch the damselflies skimming the water, like low-flying helicopters just above the ocean. Today was no exception as I sat on the banks of the river, watching the warm summer sun glint off their sparkling turquoise bodies. There was barely any noise apart from the chirping of the grasshoppers in the reeds and the occasional cyclist who would draw my attention for a few seconds before I returned to watch my fishing rod, waiting for that all-important bite. It couldn’t have been a more peaceful or tranquil setting, but it was a stark contrast to the turbulence in my head.

  I couldn’t help but think how my young son would have loved this day out with his dad, trying to spot the grasshoppers and sharing ham sandwiches and crisps with me. I had always planned to teach James to fish when he was a bit older, to buy him his own little rod and tackle box, but I never got the chance. Now, my fishing trips were the times when I would try to make sense of everything, a small slice of peace in an otherwise messed-up world. As I perched on my camp stool, alone at the side of the river, watching the odd bubble float to the surface from a fish chancing its luck to feed on the flies that danced there, I began one of my many conversations with my dead child.

  ‘My darling James, I hope you are keeping well and that you are safe and warm and happy. I hope you have made lots of new friends and that you are all playing games and having fun. I wish you were with me now, son, by my side so that I could put my arm around you and tell you how deeply sorry I am. Your dad is fishing today and I wish with all my heart I could magic you up beside me. You would love it and I looked forward so much to teaching you how to fish.

  ‘You were such a loving and kind little boy, and I wanted to say thank you for being the most fantastic little lad ever. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the time I shut my eyes at night, you are with me, and I hope you can still feel me with you. I try not to think about all the horrible things that happened to you that day and try to concentrate on your lovely smile and the glorious sound of your laughter. That was the best music I ever heard and I want to be able to hear it for the rest of my life. You were a joy to be with, James, and I miss you every single day. Whatever happens now, I want you to know that I have tried with all my heart to fight for you. I will keep on with the battle just so that you know how much you meant to me.

  ‘Your dad is so sad without you, lad. And that’s because you were so very special to everyone who was lucky enough to meet you. You made me the happiest man alive and the proudest father on earth. I sometimes thought my heart would burst with joy when I watched you play or held your hand as you were sleeping. I hope you knew how much we all loved you and that you were happy for the few short years you spent with us. You will always travel with me in my heart.

  Love, your Ralph.’

  1

  My Beautiful Baby Boy

  From the moment I laid eyes on my son, he stole my heart completely. He was the most lovely baby I had ever seen, and as I held him close for the very first time, moments after he was born, I felt like the luckiest man in the world. This tiny little child in my arms meant everything to me and, as I wrapped myself around him, I couldn’t stop staring at him. His big blue eyes peeped up at me as he wriggled around and tried to adjust to his new world. He began blinking ra
pidly under the bright lights of the hospital delivery room and I held him even tighter to comfort him. I rocked him gently, back and forth, and tried to take in everything about him — his wet blond locks of hair, his wrinkled pink baby skin and his little button nose. He felt so light and delicate, and I knew instinctively that I would always want to cherish and protect him. It was an incredible feeling and words could barely describe the happiness I felt inside. To me he was just perfect.

  ‘Hello, my beautiful baby boy,’ I whispered to James as I kissed him gently on the forehead. ‘I’m your daddy.’

  My wife Denise gave birth to our son James Patrick Bulger on Friday, 16 March 1990, at the maternity unit at Liverpool’s

  Fazakerley Hospital. I was by her side throughout. Despite our obvious joy, the moment was tinged with sadness because we had lost our first baby. In June 1988, Denise gave birth to our daughter Kirsty, but tragically she was stillborn. We had no idea that this was going to happen and so the shock and pain were huge. I was there with Denise when she delivered Kirsty, and we were both distraught at the loss and overwhelmed with grief. Instinctively, I asked Denise to marry me that day, and she accepted. I just wanted to look after her and help her through our shared suffering. I am not a sophisticated or intelligent man, but I loved her, and that was my way of showing how much she meant to me.

  We buried our daughter in a small wooden coffin on a day I will never forget. It was a simple but heartbreaking funeral service that gave us both a chance to say goodbye to the little girl we would never get to know, never see grow up. We didn’t want a big funeral, and so it was just our immediate families who attended the service. It was unbelievably sad. Both Denise and I were in a bad way over the loss of Kirsty. In some respects, I think it hit Denise harder because she had carried our baby for so long inside her. We had no choice other than to get on with life, but the sadness never left us. We talked a lot together about Kirsty and we tried to imagine what sort of daughter she would have grown up to be. It was important to us never to forget her, but we were both determined that we would have another baby. We really wanted a family together even though we knew we would never be able to replace Kirsty. Denise was full of grief, but she was also very strong. Despite the sadness, she showed fantastic courage by refusing to fall apart. We dealt with our loss together and, in some ways, it made us closer as a team.

  Denise and I married at Knowsley Register Office in Prescot on 16 September 1989, the day Denise turned twenty-two. I was twenty-three at the time. It was a quiet, small wedding, just the way we wanted it, and we held a family party at home to celebrate. Denise was by now already pregnant again, with James, and I did my very best to look after and care for her, as we were both terrified of losing another baby and having to go through the same grief again. Thankfully, we were spared another loss at that time, and James was born a healthy and happy baby who cemented our marriage and created our own loving family unit.

  We lived in a small, pokey bedsit in the Southdene area of Kirkby, an industrial town on the outskirts of Liverpool that was an overspill to the main city. Money was tight, but where hard cash was lacking, love most certainly was not. Twenty years earlier, things had been very different because there was more work around, which made people’s lives easier. Kirkby was a historic area of Merseyside that had been developed as a new town in the late 1950s, to house people who were being forced to move out from homes that were falling down and being bulldozed to make way for new developments in the city centre.

  My mum and dad, Helen and James senior, had moved there from the Scotland Road area of Liverpool. ‘Scottie Road’, as it is known, was near to the busy docks and was once home to thousands of people. But the area had been badly damaged by bombs during the Second World War and many of the houses still standing were in poor condition and considered to be slums. At the time, people were delighted to move out of the city. The old houses they lived in were often damp and, in many cases, still had outside loos and small backyards. By contrast, Kirkby was brand new. The houses were purpose built by the council and had neat front and back gardens with all mod cons inside. And the town had local parks and open green spaces where children could play out safely. Mum and Dad saw it as a new start, a great place to bring up a family.

  Opportunities for work were good in Kirkby s heyday, as the town had plenty of factories. At its height in the early 1970s, Kirkby Industrial Estate provided jobs for 26,000 people and was known to be one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. One of the main employers in the town was the giant Birds Eye frozen-food company, which provided thousands of jobs over the years, as well as the Kraft food company and plenty of small car firms. But when the economic recession hit in the early 1980s, a lot of companies shut down or moved out because it was cheaper to manufacture abroad or elsewhere in the UK. This hit Kirkby hard and unemployment began to rise. As in many other urban areas of England, this brought social problems, in particular when heroin became widely available and many saw it as a way of escaping life’s difficulties. That’s not to say that everyone took to drugs and crime — they didn’t. The majority of people were good, hard-working folk who were doing the best they could to get through, but the town was affected by the same inner-city problems that surfaced in a lot of places during the recession. Once it had been a sought-after area; now it had become rougher, and you needed to be pretty tough to survive there. Kirkby attracted a lot of unwanted press attention, even earning itself the dubious nickname ‘Baby Beirut’.

  It remains a tough town today, though there has been some recent regeneration with the building of new sports facilities, and there are major plans to overhaul the town centre. The industrial park still provides some work, even if it doesn’t compare to how Kirkby thrived in its early days. But its harsh history didn’t just bring problems; Kirkby became an area where the sense of community was strong and people were always willing to help each other out where they could. It is still like that today — it is a tight-knit place, and the town always protects its own. Even though life was difficult, most of the families there were good, honest people who did their best in life to survive, and everyone pulled together.

  I have lived in Kirkby all my life and it has always been home to me, despite its reputation and lack of work opportunities. It is in Kirkby that I have a sense of belonging in my own community. It’s not pretty or gentle, but it is very real. It is where I feel most comfortable and I remain proud of the great people of this community. When you really need support, I can’t imagine where you would find a warmer, more generous and loving group.

  I was the baby of our family, born on 24 June 1966, and had three older brothers, Jimmy, Philip and John, and two sisters, Lorraine and Carol. I was pretty spoilt as the youngest child but, even so, life wasn’t always a bowl of cherries. Money was scarce, but at a very early age my parents instilled in me an understanding of right and wrong.

  There were three bedrooms in our house, one for my mum and dad, one for my sisters and one for us lads, and as a kid I shared a double bed with all three of my brothers. It was crowded but it was great fun too. My brothers and I were lively, and even though we were always scrapping, we were also very close. We would hang out together when we were not in school and I was always looked after because I was the youngest. And it was at the heart of this environment that I learned to have a sharp sense of humour. Everyone was in the same boat, and so I didn’t really know any different. People were always telling jokes, often at their own expense — it was a very Scouse way of dealing with the hard things in life.

  I was taught to have a good work ethic by my parents, but the problem was that there was no work to be had. By the time I was a young man in the 1980s, unemployment in Kirkby was terrible. The town had never really recovered after the recession. I didn’t have any qualifications from school, but I could use my hands. I was constantly looking for work, with no luck, and as a result I was sent on countless Government schemes and courses to learn skills. I learned bricklaying, plastering,
reupholstering, truck driving, joinery and how to be an electrician. You name it, where manual labouring skills were concerned, I had a certificate with my name on it. And at the end of it all, as hard as I tried, all I was left with was a bag of tools and no job. It was pretty soul-destroying, but I was certainly not alone. Many men from the area were forced to move away from their homes and families and travel to London or the south of England to get work to provide for their loved ones, because the north-west was on its knees at the time.

  Like the rest of my family, I chose to stay at home and continue the search for work. I didn’t sit around moping about the fact that there were no jobs, I just got on with things. It makes you fairly hardy to the knocks that life throws at you, but I got through it by taking up running and training in the gym.

  It was in 1987 that I met my future wife, Denise. I was on a night out at Kirkby Town Football Club when I spotted this young, pretty girl dancing away and I liked her immediately. Denise was only small but she had a big personality. She laughed a lot and I liked that. She looked carefree and happy, and with the Dutch comage of a few glasses of ale inside me, I went and asked her to dance. I was made up when she said yes. She was even prettier close up, with lovely blue eyes and wavy brown hair to her shoulders, but it was her big smile that I liked the best. I have always been a quiet, shy person and it takes quite a lot for me to open up to people, but I felt very comfortable and relaxed with Denise. In particular, she had a wicked sense of humour and a great laugh. We began going out together and in a way it was very old-fashioned. At first we just enjoyed having a few drinks until we got to know each other better, and then we really clicked and became a permanent item. Like me, Denise also had very strong family ties and we both wanted the same simple things in life.