Jon Venables and Robert Thompson,both 10, came to the shopping center to steal. It didn’t seem to matter what. They lurked around the counters, pocketing whatever was in reach when the salesperson was busy. They stole batteries, enamel paint, pens and pencils, a troll doll (Robert collected trolls), some fruit and candy, makeup, and other trinkets. They swiped a wind-up toy soldier, played with it on the escalator, and tossed it down the moving steps. They discarded much of what they took. Stealing was the fun part.
“Let’s get a kid”
Whose idea was it to lure a child? In custody, Robert claimed Jon said, “Let’s get a kid, I haven’t hit one for ages.” But Jon blamed Robert. “Let’s get this kid lost,” he quoted Robert as saying, “let’s get him lost outside so when he goes into the road he’ll get knocked over.” Perhaps both are telling the truth, perhaps they became giddy as they talked about taking a child. Was the idea first brought up as a joke, a dare? Boys talk tough, exaggerating their feats, goading one another to bigger challenges. Was Jon desperate to impress his tough friend? Was Robert trying to maintain his hooligan act? Neither would chicken out or back down once the challenge “let’s get a kid” was made. By stealing a baby, it seems, they were proving to each other that they were not babies themselves.
Jon spotted a little boy in a blue anorak by the butcher’s door. He was eating Smarties.
“Come on, baby,” said Jon. James followed and Jon took him by the hand.
As they walked through the Strand, a few women noticed the threesome. Sometimes James ran ahead. The older boys were calling to him: “Come on, baby.” Together, they left the shopping center. The video camera captured them as they left at 3:42 p.m.
Jon and Robert left the Bootle Strand and walked up Stanley Road. They carried the toddler, who cried and fussed. They set him down near the post office and said loudly, “Are you all right? You were told not to run.” James cried for his mother, but the boys continued on, ignoring his pleas. Jon held the boy’s hand as they walked. Sometimes he ran ahead, other times he fell behind. They walked down to the canal and under a bridge to an isolated area. Jon and Robert joked about pushing James into the water.
It was at the canal that they first hurt James. One of them (each blamed the other) picked James up and dropped him on his head. If they were earnest about wanting to murder a baby, why not here and now? They had their opportunity and had made their first assault on the toddler. Yet Jon and Robert ran away, afraid. They weren’t prepared to kill, so they left James alone by the canal wailing.
The journey had been long, over two and a half miles. They had spent hours together.
38 people recalled having seen them along the way.
The attack and murder of James Bulger occurred between 5:45 and 6:30 p.m. It began with one of the boys flinging paint on James’s face into his left eye. He screamed. As Blake Morrison points out in his book As If, Jon and Robert probably used the paint to “dehumanize James, to wipe him of his normal features. Splashed in sky color, he looked like something else -- a troll doll or alien -- and was less conscience-troubling to kill.” The boys threw stones at James, kicked him, and beat him with bricks. They pulled off his shoes and pants, perhaps sexually assaulting him. They hit him with an iron bar. When they thought James was dead, they laid his body on the railroad track, covering his bleeding head with bricks. They left before the train came.
Four boys found James’s body on the tracks on Sunday afternoon, when they went up to the railroad to look for footballs. At first they thought he was cat, then a doll, torn into two. Jon and Robert had laid out James directly on the track, aware that a train would come by soon.
His upper body was hidden within the coat. His lower body was further down the tracks, completely undressed. He had suffered 42 injuries, most to his face and head and had not died during the attack, but some time before the train hit him. Jon and Robert had left him while he was still alive.
James’s body had been severed with some distance in between. It was as if there were two crime scenes, two bodies to examine. The upper part of his body, at first, appeared to be nothing more than a bundle of clothing. His lower half, however, was starkly naked. Police determined that James had been laid by the waist onto the rail, with his upper body on the inside of the tracks. It looked as if his head had been covered with bricks, but the force of the train disturbed the arrangement. The lower half of his body had been carried further down the track.
James had been severely beaten around the head and neck. There had been fractures, cuts, bruises caused by blows from heavy blunt objects and there had been severe bleeding. On one cheek, a patterned bruise appeared, which indicated the imprint from a shoe. Although there was no conclusive evidence indicating a sexual assault, forensic specialists believed that some of the injuries below the waist were suspicious and sexual in nature.
Detective- Superintendent Albert Kirby ,now retired,said he would never forget the butchery inflicted on Jamie Bulger's tiny body, or the horror in the eyes of Jamie's mother.
Mr Kirby vividly recalled finding Jamie's body dumped on a railway track, sliced in two by a passing train after being dumped there by the two young killers. Jamie's face had been smashed with bricks and bludgeoned with an iron bar. "His head was like pulp," Mr Kirby said.
His face also was splattered with paint thrown at him and he was naked from the waist down. It was also suspected he was sexually molested In a way that would have caused "excruciating pain".
In Aug. 2001,both were freed . They were given new identities and moved to secret residence locations under a "witness protection"-style action. They will live out their lives on a 'life licence', which allows for their immediate re-incarceration (for an unlimited period of time) if they break the terms of their release: that is, if they are seen to be a danger to the public.