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

by Ralph Bulger

  I think my son would have grown into a tall, strong and handsome young man with a winning smile, sparkling eyes and a kind heart. As each year passed, I imagined James that little bit taller and wiser, just getting on with his life. I would love to have heard his voice as he grew from a boy into a man. But all I am left with is the sound of him as a baby. I still carry his picture in my wallet and talk to him all the time. That will never change, but I wish with all my might that I could once again just be that ordinary man with my extraordinary son by my side.

  Even after the boys were released the newspapers continued to report on Thompson and Venables and their new lives, and each time they did, it reignited public fury. At the time of Jamess tenth anniversary, it was reported that the two young men were to be spared reminders of their crime by being whisked away to adventure holiday parks at the taxpayers’ expense. They were said to have been taken to separate outdoor pursuit centres for a ten-day break with twenty-four-hour protection to guard against the threats from gangsters who had placed a £100,000 bounty on their heads. These were the types of stories that repeatedly surfaced over the years and did nothing to appease public fury. As I’ve said, I have no idea which of the stories were true, but they kept coming thick and fast. Some of them sound highly unlikely, but to some extent that almost made me believe they must be true.

  The Internet also played a very dangerous role in the reporting about the killers. On several occasions innocent young men were accused of being Thompson or Venables and had to go into hiding as a result. Up-to-date photographs said to be of the pair were also posted online and often they would be emailed to Jimmy. We both saw them, but so often there was no proof that they really were images of Thompson or Venables. While the authorities acted swiftly to shut the sites down when they appeared, it wasn’t before thousands of people had had the chance to view them or copy them. It made a mockery of the injunction in place, because from the day they were released, it was always going to prove an uphill task to keep their identities secret in an age in which technology can spread information so quickly.

  The public was furious to read reports that both killers independently went on unsupervised foreign holidays in Europe, even though both were meant to be strictly monitored under the terms of their parole. Venables, it was reported, was given permission to go clubbing in Norway. One of the most shocking allegations was that Venables had also had sex with a female guard at the secure unit where he was held while still a teenager. That just about summed up our system to me. Not only did it appear that those boys had enjoyed every privilege they could have wanted — clothes, computer games and a sterling education — but now it was claimed one of them had had sex with a grown woman who was supposed to be guarding him.

  The newspapers widely reported that in 2000 Venables had sex with the woman shortly before he was granted parole and while he was still in detention at Red Bank secure unit in Merseyside. He was seventeen at the time.

  According to the reports, instead of punishing the guard, it was alleged that Red Bank hushed it up, although she was later suspended and never returned to work after staff at the unit filed reports on the incident. The local council that runs Red Bank denied any cover up and said the matter had been properly investigated. It was never confirmed whether Venables had or hadn’t been involved. But if he had then I can’t help thinking this woman must have been as twisted as Venables to want to have sex with him in the first place, and it would have been a grave breach of trust by someone who was supposed to part of a so-called rehabilitation process. It would also have begged the question of whether the Parole Board knew about the incident when they made their decision to free him.

  17

  Life Goes On

  James’s tenth anniversary was definitely a major turning point in my life. Perhaps it helped that our legal battle seemed to be over — there was no more we could achieve. Thompson and Venables had been freed. I knew the very best thing I could do was look after my family, so I finally stopped the binge drinking and, when I wasn’t looking after the kids, I would go training for hours on end or take myself off for a spot of fishing. I didn’t go on some mad teetotal campaign, but my attitude had changed and I became healthier and more positive, and occasionally I would enjoy a social drink without going over the top. I was trying to focus on the future of my children.

  The girls were growing up fast and they kept me busy. I loved every minute of it. One of their favourite games was when I would deliberately scare them with a pair of coyote slippers that I would wear. When you pressed the ears the slippers began howling and the kids would squeal in mock terror and run off to hide behind the sofa. I would deliberately chase them and they loved it. These were the silly, simple games with the children that kept me grounded and sane.

  I took my daughters shopping one day and stupidly said they could have money each to buy whatever clothes they wanted. I had no idea the sort of mayhem that could break out in a shop from making that kind of offer to fashion- mad young girls. In seconds there were clothes everywhere and their arms were filled with items they liked, until I got so embarrassed I dragged them all out of the store insisting their mum could bring them back another day! I took them all to a cafe for egg and chips afterwards and we laughed our heads off. The girls said the look of horror on my face was hilarious. They were cheeky and funny, happy young girls, just the way they should be, and I couldn’t have asked any more of them.

  It was in the same year as James’s tenth anniversary that Ree turned eight, and she dropped a bombshell on me that I hadn’t been expecting. She came home from school one day and began to ask me about her brother James. All the other kids at school had been talking about him and she wanted to know what had happened to him. Ree was far too young for me to fill her head with horrible things. I told her that James was her lovely older brother and that when she was a bit older I would tell her more about him. A couple of years later the issue came up again, only this time she really began to dig deeper.

  ‘How did James die?’ she asked out of the blue one day.

  ‘I’ll tell you one day, but not right now.’

  ‘Kids at school say he was killed.’

  ‘Bad things did happen to James, but he’s in heaven now. He was a lot like Bobbi. Noisy and lively,’ I joked, desperate to lighten the moment.

  Jimmy and Karen had faced similar issues with their girls. By this stage, two of them had looked up a lot of the details on the Internet at school and knew far more than their parents were aware. Their eldest daughter became extremely protective of her mum and dad, and if any of her siblings attempted to ask them about James, she would give them a tug.

  ‘Don’t you be asking Mum and Dad about that stuff. If you wanna know anything about James, you come and ask me,’ she demanded. It was as if the girls had created their own little secret service to protect their parents and it was very touching.

  And so it went on. We had the ordinary days without drama and then there was a burst of activity, which was nearly always prompted by something in the papers about Thompson or Venables. One particular story really shocked us. In 2006, the Sunday Mirror reported that Robert Thompson had become a dad himself. By now he had turned twenty-three and the report said that the mother of his baby had no idea of his criminal past.

  We didn’t respond to a lot of press reports, but if this was true it was terrifying. Jimmy and I decided to ask Robin if he could find out for us but we were always met with a wall of silence. It was a story that was repeated many times over the years and never denied by the authorities. The follow-up to this was another report that Robert Thompson had left the mother of his child and was now gay and living with his male lover, who knew all about his conviction for murdering James. Again, we had no way of proving whether this was true or false, and we learned not to get too wound up by every single story that came out. It’s fair to say that my emotions always went up and down, but I knew I couldn’t let the press stories get to me, or my health would begin to su
ffer and my head would get filled up with anger again.

  Unfortunately, while my life did improve during this period, the same couldn’t be said for Jimmy, who seemed to be stuck in the same rut of self-destruction. As Jimmy himself says:

  Without question, I was never the same man again after seeing James’s body in the mortuary. It has been years of mental torture. I can only begin to guess what it must have been like for Ralph and Denise to lose their child in such a brutal and savage way.

  Just like Ralph, I began to be consumed with anger. It was impossible not to, after seeing the sheer brutalization of little James’s body. It was utterly beyond comprehension how a human being could inflict such suffering onto a tiny young boy. From that day to this, life has been a struggle for everyone. Of course, it affected Ralph and Denise the most, but my family life would never be the same again. I was furious all the time and that spilled over into my own behaviour at home. I didn’t know how to deal with what I had seen and all my feelings remained locked up inside, as they still do now. My health has suffered greatly over the years as I struggled to look after myself. I drank too much and smoked too much as I tried to block out the raw and horrific images I had seen, and this caused massive health problems. In some strange way, it was almost as if I felt I didn’t deserve to be well. I felt that my own life and wellbeing just didn’t matter any more, because nothing could ever compare to the pain that little boy went through. When something like this happens, there is a part of your soul that dies too. Your faith in human nature is destroyed when you have seen humanity at its worst. Along this journey, there have been plenty of people who have helped to restore that belief in goodness — the kind of people who have unselfishly tried to help Ralph and Denise and our entire family. But it can never erase the awful truth that there is so much evil in the world too. James was the one who suffered the most, but his parents and loved ones were left with a lifetime of misery too. The flashbacks I have experienced for many years now will never go away and I can still imagine James’s pleading voice as he was being tortured. I wake up covered in sweat and I can hear James crying in the dark.

  Where once I was an outgoing, happy man, today I am a very different character. Over the years I have become a loner, with horrendous thoughts locked in my head. I have never been able to talk to anyone about it and that, in turn, has affected my own family, including my children, some of whom were not even born when James was murdered. I could never have got through these years without my devoted wife. She has been therefor me solidly even though she, too, has been to hell and back trying to keep everything together and bring up our children. Ultimately, feeling terrible becomes the ‘norm’, but on that awful day in 1993, I vowed I would do everything in my power to help Ralph seek justice for his son. At times, it became like an obsession and completely took over our lives. But we all knew we could never give up fighting for baby James.

  Karen has had to watch me fall apart over the years and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was there that night with me when I identified James and says she will never forget seeing how ashen and stunned I was when I came out of that room. She said that I looked like a ghost, a living spectre who had just glanced into Hell. She was right. The terrible image of James’s body stays with me all the time, but I have never learned how to talk about it properly. It has always felt easier to cover it up and deal with it alone. And for my wife, that almost felt like losing her husband. The feelings remained trapped in my body and I had nowhere to put them. When my anger boiled over, I would erupt with fury and frustration and this affected our family life. My outbursts at home were both terrifying and tragic. The kids didn’t know why their daddy was so angry all the time or why their mummy was crying or upset. My girls bore the damage of losing their cousin too. I often felt so sorry for them because our paranoid fear for their safety meant their lives were so different to the way they should have been. We almost tried to keep them under lock and key, which meant they never got to enjoy normal things like going to youth clubs or having sleep- overs at their mates’.

  The enormity of the case really hit home for me when my daughters began studying for their exams. Two of my girls studied psychology at school and part of their curriculum was to learn about the murder of James Bulger. I remember clearly the day one of the girls got back from class with homework about her own murdered cousin. It was quite flabbergasting and it upset the girls greatly. There was very little that a textbook or coursework could tell them about the grisly death of young James.

  I have never been able to share my feelings with Karen. I don’t know if that is because I tried to protect her or whether I just wasn’t capable of getting them out. Ralph was better at expressing himself than me, and he was able to cry, which was very healthy and part of a healing process. I think it has been a lonely journey for all of us in our own ways, but when things got tough we just dug our heels in and waited for the storm to pass.

  I did settle down over the years but sleep never came easy to me. I would sit up most nights researching the case on the Internet until the early hours of the morning. My disillusionment with the legal and political system turned to loathing as they shafted us time after time.

  Karen and I both saw at close quarters what this all did to Ralph. When his marriage broke down, he came to live with me and Karen for three months. If you look at photographs of Ralph in the newspapers, he always looks so hostile. He scowb and tenses his whole face, but that is very much part of his protective armour. When he is not in the spotlight, he looks less harsh and at ease. He has always been a thoughtful and kind man and he is gentle, a trait which his son James inherited from him. But Thompson and Venables instilled anger in him, too.

  Peace is a luxury that has been stripped from our family because of two evil young boys who killed for kicks and ripped so many hearts wide open, but we will never give up the fight for James.

  18

  Recalled to Prison

  It was late afternoon on 2 March 2010, around 4 p.m., when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting any visitors and so when I opened the door to see two official-looking callers, a man and a woman, I knew it had to be something serious. They introduced themselves to me and said they were from Merseyside CID and the Ministry of Justice. My heart quickened as I knew it could only be related to one thing.

  ‘Mr Bulger, we have some news for you. Do you mind if we come in for a while?’ the middle-aged man, a plainclothes detective, asked. I opened the door to him and the woman from the ministry. I showed them into the living room and invited them to sit down.

  ‘I am afraid we have to tell you that one of your son’s killers, Jon Venables, has been recalled to prison for breaking the terms of his release and we wanted to inform you before the news became public.

  ‘Unfortunately, we can’t tell you the extent of what he has done, only to say it is an extremely serious matter that is being treated with the gravest of concern.’

  The man in the suit continued talking but his voice seemed to get fainter as my mind began to work overtime.

  ‘Please, God, don’t let him have harmed another baby,’ I prayed in silence.

  I realized that he was still talking to me as I tried to gather my thoughts.

  ‘Ralph, can I ask you how you feel about him going back to prison?’ he urged.

  I shrugged my shoulders and told him, ‘To be perfectly blunt, I am not surprised at all, and as much as I appreciate you coming here, your visit is a bit of a waste of time because I said a long time ago that I knew this was going to happen.

  ‘No one listened to me then and I doubt they will listen to me now.

  ‘Has he killed another baby? Has he done it again? No one else should have to go through what James suffered.’

  The man looked at me apologetically but, as expected, his reply told me nothing.

  ‘As I said, I’m afraid I don’t have any details at the moment, but I am sure more will become clear.’

  That was the extent of my
‘briefing’, and in less than ten minutes they were gone. As a parting shot, the woman who had stayed quiet until now added, ‘Oh, you might see news of this on the television and in the media. Just to let you know.’

  There was the punchline. The recall of Jon Venables to prison was about to become headline news and I strongly suspected that this was the only reason I was getting a personal visit. If their hand had not been forced by the media getting wind of events, I believe I probably would never have learned that Venables had reoffended and been taken back to jail.

  I had a million and one questions that the ministry was unable to answer and, once again, I was in the dark about the real truth of what had happened.

  I got on the phone to Jimmy immediately. ‘Venables is back in prison, Jim.’

  ‘What?’ he stuttered.

  ‘Yeah, he’s back in jail for breaching his licence but they won’t tell me what he has done. I hope he hasn’t hurt another baby, Jim.’

  ‘Jesus, Ralph, are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. One down and one to go, eh?’

  ‘Yep. It was only a matter of time and we both knew that. Let’s try and find out what he has done.’

  ‘It will be all over the news later. The media have already got hold of it.’

  ‘OK, well, maybe they will shed some light on it for us.’

  By 6 p.m. that evening, just two hours after my visit, the national news had broken the story and the media went crazy. It was the lead story and headline news around the world.