she said. Among the list were several horror films, including one video in which the police took special interest: Child's Play 3, a film which carries the line 'Children are consumer trainees'. Occasionally, when the children would be left sitting on the red wall outside the house too long, one of the neighbours would call the police to go and get her out of the Top House. 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Im bringing them up on my own, but if I went round and screwed every warehouse, my kids would have everything, too. Even so, while Roberts community was rough, his home life was perhaps worse, and could hardly be considered a refuge for the boy. Financially, the couple appeared to be functioning, but meanwhile, Susan was at the end of her rope with her eldest son, who, having become increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate, had grown terribly unhappy and was having temper tantrums regularly. That's the thing that upsets me because obviously, where I was standing poor little James must have been not far . 'When you have got people in the area threatening to blow your kneecaps off every moment of the day - that's just the way they are. How can people defend their actions .#TheBulgerKillers.". By chance, the rest of Jon's family was driving past and spotted them. Are they mad? Our feelings haven't changed towards him. Since his 14-year-old brother, Phillip , had already tried to stab him, the social services agreed. The bird was taken to the vets where they are nursing it back to health. Thousands of members of Unison, Unite and the GMB unions are set to walk out across England and Wales on Monday as part of continued industrial action in the health service, Performers taking part in a parade involving costumes, lion dances and floats, during Chinese New Year celebrations in London, Everton fans hold up banners protesting against the board of directors during their Premier League match against West Ham at the London Stadium, A pair of swans fly over a frozen pond in Bushy Park in London, People take part in a demonstration in support of trans rights outside the UK Government Office in Edinburgh, A member of the Royal College of Nursing holds their dog whilst on the picket line outside Kings College Hospital in London, as nurses take industrial action over pay, The scene on the A39 Quantock Road in Bridgwater after a double-decker bus overturned in a crash involving a motorcycle, A man walks dogs in snowy conditions in a park in Hexham. fun to be with". 'His mum was more strict. Neil had been laid off in the months prior, so the couple sold their home, and Neil moved back in with his father, before finally relocating to an apartment in Kirkdale. Toddler James Bulger disappeared on February 12 1993. MOST of the boys were bright. He also liked to scare old ladies by jumping out in front of their noses. The taunts upset Jons already volatile temper, and he began coming home in increasingly low spirits and crying. He took a jar of paracetamol. I would say he was provoked. They were sent home to their mother at one point, but after attempting suicide with overdoses, were placed back into care. Another added: "An awful mistake??!! Although not officially entered into a witness protection programme they were given help by the authorities in finding new homes and taking on new identities. She initially enrolled the two younger children in Broad Square Elementary, but it soon became clear that her daughter was struggling to keep up with the schools curriculum. Kids fantasise about such things. Thompson & Venebales. More press conferences, terrible details beginning to emerge about the state James was found in, and the chilling prospect, soon confirmed, that indeed it was children who had done this. They sat just feet from me, perched on the edge of their wooden seat, smartly dressed and hunched in shame just below their son, Jon. his killers were just 10 years old and attention focused on their upbringing and dysfunctional home life. The government will be required to respond within 14 days if as the petition achieves more than 100,000 signatures. gk. She claimed, however, that she was completely unaware of Jons erratic behaviors at school, had never seen any evidence to support them (such as cuts on his arms or holes in his socks), and dismissed the possibility that many of the occurrences cited by the teacher had ever taken place. They rejected suggestions that he could have watched Child's Play Three, a film that his father had rented three weeks before James's death, which, it has been claimed, included scenes similar to those of the attack on the two-year-old. Mr Venables said it had never crossed their minds that the video pictures from the security cameras in the shopping centre from which James went missing showed their own son. They had to report him missing at the security office before he was found, and Jon's mother was very angry. yet, as Venables is back behind bars. The parents of James Bulgers killers have also come to learn that the consequences of that terrible day will stay with them for ever too. DAVID James Smith, who visited Mrs Thompson at one of her secret homes, reveals that it was a sad existence. Robert is not believed to have reoffended - Venables has been convicted twice since being set free. In all, they played truant four times. Both parents hope was that he would make something of his life and eventually find some peace. It is claimed that taxpayers could have to fork out another 250,000 to provide a new life when he is eventually released. Susan Venables has blamed "weakness" for her son's role in the killing of James Bulger, claiming that he "got involved with the wrong person". A day later she would face much worse. The beginnings of the friendship were inauspicious enough. - a grey heron in Asawn, Southern Egypt. He has had security with loving parents and a loving brother and sister.". Little Bobby went to visit his brothers every so often, eager to show them the latest playthings he had robbed from the assorted shops nearby. He is broken- hearted over it. In 1999, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the pair did not receive a fair trial and awarded costs and expenses of 29,000 to Jon Venables and 15,000 to Robert Thompson. They have never come out of hiding. everyone blamed Thompson and. qu fy. "Just TV programmes and little things remind me of the good times we had together . 2023 BBC. "I don't think we went wrong as parents at all. Susan seemed happy with the arrangement, although, for the children, this type of relationship would have been just one more confusing anomaly to cope with in the wake of an already confusing time in their young lives. They looked, moved, fidgeted, scratched, cried - even sucked their thumbs - just like any 11-year-olds. Robert had eaten too many and felt sick. He would often have to stay in class at break times to catch up. They probably weren't out to kill someone, but they were probably out to ruin someone else's happiness. Egypt. The distress of one woman who had come agonisingly close to taking James by the hand herself to a police station, only to be hoodwinked by Thompson and Venables that they were doing just that. His mother cared about him. The best photos of birds and other wildlife from around the world. Then they would hide their school satchels under a subway and set off on their adventure. The guilty verdicts came quickly - within five hours. His father, Neil, an unemployed panel-beater, was separated from his mother but they lived only a mile apart, saw each other every other day, and took equal care of the children. They passed 36 people, with one recalling how they urged the boys to take their 'little brother' home because he was 'crying for his mummy'. But his outbursts of anger grew worse and he was suspended for trying to throttle a boy with a ruler. At Radio City in Liverpool the calls were coming through from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The details of Jamess death were sickening. She acknowledged her son had committed a terrible crime but claimed that her innocent younger children were being denied a proper education because of having to abandon their homes to escape attacks. The other boy, Robert Thompson, we are told is now abiding by the conditions of his life license since he was released 17 years ago, and is doing well. In the autumn term of 1992, Robert played truant for 49 half days and Jon for 40. So, when he first began his association with classmate Jon Venables, in September 1992, Robert was happy to have finally befriended a boy like Jon, who could almost always be persuaded to follow in his lead. The Crown Prosecution Service released a statement in January confirming Venables had been charged. Behind them eyes bore into them - from everyone on all sides, journalists, their parents, members of the public, and of course, theBulgerfamily. Ms Truss has written a 4,000-word essay in todays Sunday Telegraph in which she stood by her plans to boost economic growth during her short tenure in No 10, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker fails to stop team-mate Joel Matip (not pictured) from scoring an own goal during the Premier League match at Molineux Stadium, Wolverhampton, A member of the public lines the road into St Michaels on Wyre, Lancashire, with missing posters of Nicola Bulley, 45, as police continue their search for the missing woman who was last seen on the morning of Friday January 27, when she was spotted walking her dog on a footpath by the nearby River Wyre, Not your usual prisoner! Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Walton Village Financial Services would lend you pounds 300 for Christmas and demand a total of pounds 460 in repayment. This story has no borders,' NBC correspondent Denis Murphy said. . So he came home. The hardliners in the police have a simpler explanation. Counsel for the prosecution, Richard Henriques QC, made it clear all three elements needed to be proved for a murder conviction. He is one of those children that if you told him to put his hand in the fire, he would. Many of us had dined together most nights throughout the trial, mulling it all over but distracting ourselves, too. There is hatred and envy directed at the baby - a wish to see it suffer in the way they have suffered. She said that Jon was always "loving, caring, thoughtful and considerate . Birds. Meanwhile Robert Thompson always regarded as the ringleader and the most likely of the murderous duo to fall by the wayside is said to be doing well. Its beyond me," one viewer tweeted. They would sneak out during the morning break, hiding behind a wall before the coast was clear. Extraordinarily, she even shouted up to the railway tracks at Walton where she knew Robert had a den. Sorry, we are unable to accept comments about this article at the moment. According to a legal source we spoke to this week, Jon Venables parents have sought to be a support for their son, despite the enormity of his crime. and things like that is that he was frightened. She would arrive at the secure unit with food parcels and is said to be proud of his achievements since the crime. Jon Venables is demonstrably no such thing. The days James was abducted, February 12 1993, I was a young reporter in my home city of Liverpool. At his first primary school the headmistress referred him to a psychologist, noting how he used to bang his head against the classroom wall to gain attention. I just think of James and his Dad and about all that fun with his little boy, like I had with Jon.". Will you tell his Mum Im sorry?. 'We have never really been apart,' Mrs Venables said. Susan Venabless bent body shrank deeper into itself. Since the murder Robert has been in a state of post-traumatic shock, hounded by nightmares and flashbacks from the railway tracks. What a horror it all was. Neither gave evidence to the court, but were found guilty after an officer told how Venables admitted the murder, saying, "We did it. Mrs Thompson worked as an office cleaner until two years ago, when she got pregnant again by another man, who also left her. He had been quiet that weekend, they said, but they had thought that was because his mother had taken him to the police station on the Friday evening for playing truant. He would steal objects that he neither needed nor wanted, then chuck them away in the street. The family was already exhaustingly overextended, and Robert, being the fifth edition, was quick to pick up on the coping mechanisms needed to survive in a life of unremitting chaos and enmity. football, snooker, things like that. however, as the incident in the playground shows, the ever-present threat of discovery cast a constant shadow over anyone related to the two murderers. "It is hard to take in really. "Throughout the conduct of the case there have been a number of issues that have been swept under the carpet. Jon spent Sunday to Thursday with his mum and the rest of every week with his dad. On November 24, 1993, the two boys, by then aged 11, became the youngest defendants to be sentenced for murder in a British court. In any case, the couple drifted together, and in 1983, just fifteen months succeeding Jons birth, Susan gave birth to their third child, a daughter. Jon's parents, who sat in court for most of the trial, said they grieved for the Bulgers. Susan Venables is on Facebook. On the days he was at school he had a knack for stirring things up. Susan Venables agreed but on condition that she saw her son first. Both were banned from ever returning to Liverpool and given new identities at a reported cost of 1.5million. The James Bulger murder View gallery Venables was born on August 12, 1982. Given the Venables family history, it was later suggested that Jon could arguably have been affected by an undiagnosed disorder at the time, and was clearly emotionally underdeveloped. He had that odd combination of obsession with and disdain for possessions that is characteristic of children who have never enjoyed any of their own. "We are committed to driving sustainability in the leather industry, through the commitment of. But they shouldn't have been tried in an adult court because they were still children. She was prone to hysteria and hailed from a 'strict and disciplined' background. He appears to be a normal human, but inside the soft flesh there is indestructable metal. ", Children accused of a crime are usually granted anonymity, but at the end of the trial the judge allowed both to be named, "because the public interest overrode the interest of the defendants.". The case is doomed to be picked over by every faction within the caring professionals and politics. Some neighbours claim they saw the boy snaring birds into traps in the back yard of his home, while one local youth claimed he saw the boy pull the heads off live baby pigeons. When you have got people in the area threatening to blow your kneecaps off every moment of the daythats just the way they are. sp. 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Or they would mess around in shops, playing on computer games if Robert had his way, sliding on the polished floors if Jon had his. He said he was frightened of Robert's older brother. Grainy CCTV footage shows them walking James away from the Strand . On Sundays he used to watch Thunderbirds. One woman asked how James had injured his forehead. See that cell. Venables, who was said to have been subjected to regular beatings by his mother Susan, titled the drawing 'My Dads house'. While, on the face of it, there doesnt appear to be as much external devastation present in Jons family history as in Roberts, his outlandish behavior suggested that internally, Jon was in a state of extreme emotional upset. I suspect she still feels that., In 2001 there was a renewed uproar over the case when it emerged that the killers were to be freed, despite a. recommendation by the trial judge that they should remain behind bars for a very long time. He was also given 'respite care' - six weekly weekend breaks to relieve the family of the burden of looking after him. It was to be an adult trial, both boys appearing every day in the full gaze of whoever was in that room, but neither giving evidence directly to the court. He is an old-fashioned crime and punishment man. After a while the boys became used to it. If I wanted to kill a baby, Id kill Id kill me own, wouldnt I?. While both boys may have felt helpless and inferior in their own settings, together they were fearless, a portrait of machismo, each playing on the others strong points. eb. They were drawn to one another quickly. TWO BOYS. In the last few years she stopped drinking in the Top House and tried to keep things together. The week after he walked out the family's home burned down in an accidental fire. I just burst into tears because you just knew what that meanther heart was broken. King Charles III shakes hands with Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky as he welcomes at Buckingham Palace, in London, ahead of an audience during his first visit to the UK since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When they finally came to a disused railway track near the police station, the murderous duo tortured James, throwing stones and bricks at the baby, and kicking and stamping on him before finally dropping a heavy iron bar on to the defenceless tot. The petition, that now has 14,682 signatures, reads: "We want a Public Inquiry into the James Bulger murder case. When he played truant he was scared she would come and find him. They said their son met Robert Thompson in September 1991, when Jon was transferred from another school. Such pleasantries were not for Robbie. Then they had carried, dragged and kicked him along a two and a half mile journey, at times swinging him violently in the air or dropping him against the road, until they reached the railway where they stoned him with bricks, bashed his head with a 22lb iron bar, and left him dead across the tracks to be cut in half by a passing goods train. "All he said when we've said 'Why didn't you run away?' We feel so sorry for him because he must be going through so much torment. I cant believe people find excuses for these murderers. That seems the very least they could face for what they did. The fathers of both Robert and Jon were without work. . You know, we just try and help him as best we can to try to come to terms with things. On November 24, 1993, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables became the youngest persons to be convicted of murder in Britain in almost 250 years, when the pair, both eleven, was found guilty of the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Patrick Bulger. Ian was clever enough to know that to survive he had to get out. Jobs were few and far between. Born 10 days apart in August 1982 in Liverpool. 'It was good. The judge, in sentencing the boys yesterday, voiced his strong suspicion that exposure to violent videos had played a strong part in corrupting them. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter', Why half of India's urban women stay at home. 'If, in their own lives, they have had it extremely tough and been bullied and neglected and abused then they end up rapidly having to prove themselves to be extremely tough and invulnerable - a bit like Arnold Shwarzenegger in The Terminator. "He tends to be a bit hyperactive so his concentration did go a bit, but apart from that he is quite bright, no worries.". My young body must have been tense with the deep anxiety that permeated every inch of that courtroom. Neil Venables, 40, said he felt "just devastated, thinking of that little boy'. Fiction Writing. ql zo. Constantly restless, his workbooks were empty, and he would often be denied recess because he was so far behind. The teacher had a different perspective, saying that Susan was in fact aware of the issue, and had expressed deep concern. Get out and get into Dyson Hall children's centre, the only residential care school in the country just outside Liverpool. CCTV images revealed how James had been lured away by Thompson and Venables, who was also aged 10. 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Hes your son., Unhappily, it was during this critical time that Ann became pregnant with her seventh child, the product of another failed relationship. 'I even went up to the railway line because I knew the other boy had a den up there and was on the railway nearly all the time.'. I got on with my job, but months later the impact of that trial had sunk in and a difficult, tearful, confusing year followed for me. But apart from his brother, Robert struggled to build friendships. The Swedes, French, Germans, Canadian and Americans had all come to gaze at Liverpool's child killers. Recently, I dug out my old notebooks of the trial and my handwriting during the verdicts says it all. Our feelings haven't changed towards him. The shock in the city was plain to see, but it wasn't just in Liverpool that people stared at the CCTV pictures of the boy holding James' hand, while another led the way to the exit of the shopping centre where a frantic Denise Bulger would have been desperately looking for her child. Superintendent Kirby is a religious man. 'You'd better tell the truth. Last week the author Angela Phillips spoke of how the gentle son of the female friend of hers turned into a fascist skinhead: 'The boy his mother wanted him to become was not man enough for the world he was forced to inhabit. sons, were settled in council houses within easy reach of the institutions where their sons were being held. He gets upset. Most of the fun revolved around shoplifting - sweets, trolls, pepperami, tins of modelling paint, drinks, candles; anything, really. This means that we may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. Just as Venables's confession convicted him, a shoe print belonging to Robert Thompson, found on James cheekbone, confirmed his guilt, too. Lady Penelope was his favourite character because she was rich, followed by Brains with the glasses. The first time he asked Jon to play truant with him was last September, only weeks after they had become friends. Resentful of her husbands lack of involvement with the children, Susan conceded that the couple fought constantly, especially throughout 1983, but maintained that Neil had never been aggressive towards her, nor had she hit him. A torrent of questions erupted from the moment the grim news came out that James Bulger's body had been found on a railway line in Liverpool and the last people seen with him were two ten-year-olds, captured on grainy CCTV footage.