by Ralph Bulger
‘Hello, my beautiful boy, your daddy’s here beside you,’ I would tell him. ‘I miss you so much, James, with all my heart.
I hope you are OK in heaven and that you have made lots of new friends. I hope you have got your own special chair too. I know everyone who meets you will love you, just as we did. We still love you so much and we wish you were back here with us. I’m gonna stay a while with you now. I don’t want to leave you ever again.’
My drunken ramblings continued into the night and I would sob my heart out in such distress. Often I would pass out from drinking beside James’s grave. When I didn’t come home, Denise would call Jimmy and he’d come out to find me. She probably thought Jimmy would be better at dealing with me and calming me down, as she was still going through her own traumas. Jimmy would drive to a number of different haunts of mine, but he always checked the grave because I went there so often.
‘Come on, Ralph, kid. Let’s get you home,’ Jimmy would say as he shook me awake. I’d be drowsy and weak and he would have to use all his strength to get me standing before taking me home to sleep it off.
I’m not sure what drew me to James’s grave. I just felt it was a way of getting closer to him, to be with him once again. I also wanted to protect him. I know that sounds ridiculous as he was already dead, but I almost felt I was standing guard over him at night when I was at the graveside. There was another very strong reason that I went there of a night. I have already described how I had developed a hatred for going out and facing people, and I didn’t want to go and visit James in the daytime because there would be too many people around. On top of that, members of the public might have recognized me if they realized which grave I was at, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to talk to people.
I realize that this must have been a terrible time for Denise too. She was trying to cope with losing our son and she also had a husband who kept going missing and was bent on self-destruction with the drink. The truth is, I couldn’t cope, and my life would remain this way for a very long time.
I don’t know if anyone could properly deal with something as terrible as this, but I didn’t come from the kind of background where you went to the doctor to ask for counselling or antidepressants. As far as I was concerned, the booze was my medication, even though I was most certainly chronically depressed and grief-stricken. Everyone knew I was drinking way too much but, to an extent, I think people almost expected me to. That was the way it was for a lot of men in Kirkby. I don’t even think it’s a macho thing. I was of the generation who were just supposed to get on with it, and my way of doing that was to get blotto all the time. I don’t remember anyone challenging me about my drinking, but I did get a lot of support from the people of Kirkby, in particular some of the lads in the town. Some of the toughest men I knew did all they could to get me through this period. They knew I was on the ale heavily and that nothing was going to stop me, and so they would often pick me up in a car, drive me out of town to a pub and buy me a meal and a few pints. It was their way of keeping an eye on me, and making sure that I didn’t do anything daft or cause myself any harm — deliberately or by accident.
I realize now that the drinking was only making everything a hundred times worse by heaping on more depression and fuelling my fears and anxieties. There is no question that I considered killing myself. The only thing that stopped me from doing it was the thought that I would be letting James down once again. I couldn’t let that happen. As with everything else, I kept those feelings to myself, but I suspect close family members knew because they were constantly keeping a watch over me. I’m not the brains of Britain but I am a very emotional person. The fact that I struggle to show those feelings makes it all the harder because there is nowhere for me to put them. The drink was my only salvation because it meant I didn’t have to put up with such unbearable emotions twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t even have the energy to try and put on a brave face. I just fell headlong into the daily oblivion of drink. I didn’t know what else to do.
The heavy drinking pattern continued for a long time and I sank to a very dark place. To escape from my feelings I would get in my car and start driving. I never knew where I was going; I just thought that if I drove away from Kirkby I would be leaving my pain and suffering behind. But wherever I went the misery came with me. I would end up in Wales or the Lake District, hours from home. When I arrived, I would get out and buy my bottle of whisky and just go walking through the night until I returned to my car and fell asleep. I would sometimes stay away from home for two or three days. Denise was always worried about me and she would go round to see Karen and Jimmy to ask for their help, but she also had her own intense grief to contend with, and I suppose in a way she just got used to my erratic behaviour. It wasn’t good for either of us, but I felt like I was stuck in Groundhog Day. I would drink to ease the pain, wake up feeling terrible and so take more drink just to make it all go away again for a while.
At one point the pressure became so great that I just went off and locked myself away in the bedroom at home for almost two weeks, refusing to go out or eat properly. I couldn’t get on with my life. I would lie there and think about James constantly. I would grab some of his clothes or his bed linen and hold them to my face so I could still smell him, and I would sob like a baby for hours on end. I couldn’t wash or even look after myself properly. I was really falling apart. Relatives did call round to see me and try to get me to go out, but they knew it was useless until I was ready to do it for myself. No one suggested professional help because that’s not the way things were done in our family. As far as we were concerned, you don’t take tablets for grief. You just have to find a way to get over it.
We were delivered a tiny sliver of hope in April when we learned that Denise was pregnant again. I was stunned at the news. Of course, I was thrilled but I was also terrified at the prospect. We had already lost two babies and I don’t think I would have coped if we had lost any more children. For Denise, it was a godsend. Having that baby was the reason she was able to carry on with life. Without it, she believes she would have gone under.
I knew I had to pull myself together for Denise and the baby, but I still felt so wretched inside. I knew the drink was killing me and so I tried to cope without it, but my attempts didn’t always last very long. Instead of giving up completely, I began to reduce how much I was drinking in a bid to sort my head out. Rather than sinking two bottles of Scotch a day, as I had been in the early days after James’s death, I made a huge effort to cut back to drinking in the evenings and start looking after myself better, but there was no miracle cure. A pattern of binge drinking emerged. I would go through spells of being dry, and then if something happened that brought back the overwhelming emotions I felt over James’s murder, I would pick up the drink to help me deal with things. This is how my life remained for almost ten years after James died. There were good periods and bad periods. All I know is that if I had carried on drinking at such a heavy rate, I wouldn’t be alive today.
I didn’t find life easy without the drink because it had become my mask, but things hadn’t been much easier with it. With ale on board, my mind automatically drifted to thoughts of James and I would become morose and tearful. The body can only take so much punishment and my heavy drinking at times made me feel dreadful, but it was my crutch. Afterwards I had to rebuild my strength again and try to get on with my life.
On the good days, I would take myself off running as I was trying to get myself back into shape to offset the damage done by my drinking. I began going to the gym to do weight training as it was a proper alternative to drinking and it did help to clear my mind. When I ran, I felt a sense of freedom. I thought about James all the time, but my thoughts about him during my private hours of running were far more positive than in the weepy hours I spent drinking. I kept happy images of him in my head as I pounded the roads and attempted to release some of my feelings.
Denise and I tried to pull together when we found out about th
e pregnancy, but the cracks were already there. It was hardly surprising considering that we had been through so much, and I had been a mess for months. Our relationship wasn’t helped by the fact that in the early days, I blamed Denise for what had happened to James, and I was wrong. Very, very wrong. It was just part of my raging grief, frustration and anger. I wanted to scream, ‘Why did you let go of his hand? Why did you let him out of your sight? He would still be here if it wasn’t for you.’
If we bickered together, I would end up blurting out that she was the last person to be with James and that she should never have let go of his hand. I am deeply ashamed of blaming Denise because nothing could be further from the truth, but once I had said it aloud, I could never take it back. I suppose it is inevitable for couples to blame one another. Denise could equally blame me for not taking James with me that day when I went to fix the wardrobes. I know I blame myself and I wish I could turn the clock back, but I can’t. And the truth is that Denise was and still is an outstanding mother, and I would never have anyone say anything otherwise. She loved James with all her heart and soul, and what happened that day was not her fault. She was attentive and protective of Janies and he was a little live wire. No one could possibly have known that such evil was lurking just yards away — it really could have been any parents child that day. I saw how James’s murder devastated Denise and I regret feeling that blame. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Denise any more. I just wasn’t capable of loving anyone or feeling anything other than my emotions around James’s murder.
The only ones I blame are Thompson and Venables, and myself.
If only I had done as Denise asked that day and taken James with me. If only I had been with him at the time to prevent those murderous boys from carrying out their vicious perversions. If only I had been able to save my son in some way. I didn’t, and I will always feel that I failed our child as a father. It was my job to love, protect and nurture that precious baby at all times, and I let him down. That is one of the hardest things I have to deal with.
In the months leading up to Thompson and Venables’ trial, Denise and I tried to get on with our lives as best as possible, but we just couldn’t get out from under the news spotlight. It was an added pressure on top of our mourning. We had become used to seeing cars parked up in our road with journalists and photographers inside them, and it seemed that our everyday lives were under scrutiny. Even though we tried to keep out of the media spotlight, the requests for interviews never ceased and the presence of the press in the town seemed to be permanent. Newspaper, television and radio journalists knocked on our door all the time asking if we would consider talking to them, but we were not fit to take on such demands.
The most intrusive part of the press interest came just after James’s murder and then again when the trial started up in the November of that year. And they weren’t just asking Denise and me for interviews. All our family members were approached, but they closed ranks. When the reporters didn’t get very far with us, they turned their attention to neighbours and people in the town of Kirkby, and we know that many persistent journalists were sent on wild goose chases by people who knew us and tried to protect us. One example of this was when reporters went into one of our local pubs, The Golden Eagle, to ask questions about our family and James. The canny staff in there told them they would find me and Jimmy at a pub on the other side of town, knowing full well that we would not be there. Although the attention was fierce, we did appreciate that the press crews were only doing their jobs, and in many ways they were always on our side. It was just that we couldn’t deal with them as well as our own suffering.
My emotions became even more fragile after one particular visit from the police. Detectives were frantically preparing their case for the pending trial of Thompson and Venables. Albert Kirby came to see me one day just a few weeks before the trial was due to start in November and said he wanted to talk to me about what I might hear during the court case. I still hadn’t learned the full extent of James’s injuries, and Albert explained, as gently as possible, that I should be warned of what would be put before the jurors. It was then that I learned exactly what these creatures had done to my little boy and I would never be able to get those images out of my head ever again.
Albert broke it to me for the very first time just how badly James had been tortured. I didn’t want to know these details, but I had to sit and listen to the terrible truth of how my son was killed. It was devastating. Even in my darkest moments I had never imagined his ordeal could have been this bad. I was totally dumbstruck by what I was hearing and it cut straight to my heart. It was hard to take in because I kept going back to the reality that these injuries had been inflicted by two ten-year-old boys. There was no easy way for Albert to tell me these details that day, and it must have been an awful job for him, but he couldn’t have allowed me to go to court unprepared for what I would hear in evidence against his killers. I couldn’t speak to anyone about what Albert had told me and I think it threw me into even deeper shock. Denise was shielded from those awful details because we all knew she would be unable to cope with them. As far as I can gather, she still doesn’t know the full extent of James’s torture all these years down the line. There was no way she was going to be able to sit through court day after day and hear this gruesome list of injuries to her son.
Thompson and Venables slowly ripped my son apart like two wild and savage dogs, then went home for their tea as his little body lay flung across a railway line.
Their torture began when they made him walk several miles from the shopping centre to the place at the side of the railway line where they would eventually kill him. They dropped him on his head, they pelted him with sticks and stones and laughed at him as he cried for his mummy and daddy. They threw blue paint in his face, in his eyes, and forced him to drink the remainder while he was still conscious. I can still hear him crying out and begging them to stop, their eyes filled with hatred as they jeered him. That would have been one of the last images my son saw before he died.
I felt like I was going to explode as the details kept coming at me. My whole body was shaking. I listened in disbelief as I learned how they used iron bars and bricks to smash him apart. They stamped on his face with their boots and when his bloodied skull was smashed apart they exposed parts of his brain. They smashed him with planks of wood with metal bolts screwed through them, found at the side of the railway. As a final degrading act, they removed his lower clothes, ripped his genitals and inserted batteries inside his rectum. With their torture complete, they took his limp body and lay it across the railway track for a train to come and cut him in two. James was thought to have still been alive but unconscious and unresponsive when he was laid on the track, but he died before his body was cut in two, according to the pathologist who examined him.
That is what I face every day from the moment I open my eyes. Tell me what man, what father, can deal with knowing such evil? James was so young and innocent. He couldn’t fight back and they knew that. That’s why they murdered him — because they could.
The full details of James’s torture almost destroyed me. I began to have horrific nightmares about Thompson and Venables standing at James’s blood-soaked grave, laughing about what they’d done. I had built up a picture of the boys in my imagination and in my mind their faces were blank, almost like a mask, but their eyes blazed and squinted with hatred and their mouths snarled like wild animals. I would wake up sweating, and picture my sons headstone dripping with blood. The pain was like a raw and gaping wound that refused to heal. I could never shut off the soundtrack of James’s dying screams.
9
The Trial
By the end of October, Denise was in the final stages of her pregnancy as the trial of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables was about to start. We hadn’t really moved on with our grief, but we had been forced to adapt to living with our loss. Denise remained really strong as her pregnancy progressed, but we were both dreading the trial. I was determine
d to go along for the sake of James. As Denise was due to give birth the following month, we decided it was best for her to stay home, to save her any distress.
The two boys were now eleven years old and were to appear before a judge and jury at Preston Crown Court on 1 November. The trial had been deliberately taken away from Merseyside because feelings were still running high in Liverpool and the police wanted to avoid any repeat of the ugly scenes witnessed at their initial court appearance before the magistrates.
On the morning of the first day of the trial, I got up with that familiar knot in my stomach. I felt quite ill knowing I’d be facing James’s killers in court for the first time. I had thought of nothing else for the last few weeks as the date edged closer and closer. How would I react when they stood before me? I couldn’t eat a thing as I started to get ready, and then I sat down on the bed and said a silent prayer.
‘Dear God, you’ve taken James from us, but please give me the strength to get through this day. I can’t do this on my own.’
The police had organized to take me, Jimmy and Denise’s brother Ray up to the court at Preston, but we were not alone. There were other members of the family and plenty of friends who were going along too, to give us moral support. I know I was angry. I was always angry. But I think I was scared witless as well because I didn’t want to lose control when confronted by Thompson and Venables, especially as I now knew just what they had done to James. I kissed Denise goodbye and told her I would be back later. On the way to the court, I stayed silent. That’s often the way with me. I may not have said a lot but there was plenty going on in my head.
The police told us that legal arguments would take place in the morning and the trial would open in the afternoon. When we arrived in court, it was extremely daunting. There were so many people packed into the courtroom it was unbelievable. There was press everywhere outside and inside Court Number One where the trial was taking place. It was an old and grand courthouse, which made the surroundings seem even sterner. This was to be a historic criminal trial, but that really meant nothing to me. I just wanted to see the boys who had killed my James punished. Unlike at the Magistrates’ Court some months earlier, the crowds did not turn out in force to protest, most likely because the trial was taking place some 40 miles away from Liverpool. It didn’t mean that the public didn’t attend, but this time they were people who wanted to sit in the court and watch the trial unfold, unlike the angry crowds of before. Our family couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go to watch and hear such a hideous event. I understood that it was a unique trial, and I also got that it was of huge interest for the media to report, but I just couldn’t get my head around ordinary people wanting to be there. It seemed morbid that people should take such an interest in something so awful.
