-Caveat Lector-
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Robert Thompson and Jon
Venables: Great Britain's Infamous Ten-Year-Old Kidnappers
by Sky Ryan
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"Come on, baby," Jon Venables urged pulling toddler James
Bulger by the hand. Jon’s best chum, Robert Thompson, walked a few feet in
front of them leading the way out the front glass doors of the Bootle
Strand Shopping Center just outside Liverpool, England.
Venables
and Thompson had been "sagging" (British for playing hooky) that chilly
afternoon in February of 1993. The two schoolboys were close friends as
well as disreputable rabble-rousers from broken homes.
Jon and
Robert spent that morning and early part of the afternoon goofing around
the Bootle Strand on a shoplifting high. The wily imps managed to smuggle
all kinds of crap out of several businesses without getting caught. Among
the items they ripped off were batteries, candy, toy soldiers, magic
markers, blue paint, and a troll doll for Robert’s collection. Several
hours into pocketing small stuff, Jon and Robert grew bored of their
spree. They agreed to move onto stealing something far more valuable than
merchandise in a store, something sure to give them a bigger rush: a real,
live baby.
A little after three o’clock when they should have been
getting out of school, Venables and Thompson strolled nonchalantly through
the mall in search of a smaller unsupervised kid. It didn’t take long for
Satan to lead them to James Bulger -- a preschooler playing alone with
cigarette butts in an ashtray outside the mall’s butcher shop. Baby James
had wandered away from his young mum just a minute before Jon and Robert
approached him. As the naughty truants hastily lured Bulger out of the
galleria, his mother Denise chit-chatted away in the long, crowded line of
the butcher’s, unaware her son had vanished. Not until she finished making
her purchase did Mrs. Bulger notice her only child was gone from her side.
She called out for him in the shop and asked strangers all around if they
had seen a two-year-old with blond hair wearing a blue anorak. Nobody she
approached had. She then tracked down security guards, who announced
James’s disappearance over the speakers.
Denise and the guards
searched for Jamie throughout the plaza for a full half hour. At 4:15
p.m., they called police to report him missing. By the time authorities
got to the mall to interview James’s mum, he’d been led nearly a mile away
by his abductors. Bulger became fussy within the first few minutes he was
dragged between Robert and Jon. As soon as he would whine for his mummy
and try to stop walking, the older lads would force him to go on,
punching, kicking, and shaking him ‘til he’d cooperate. Venables and
Thompson wandered around town for about ninety minutes with Jamie,
covering a two mile radius. During those ninety minutes, they took Bulger
into a couple of stores, including a pet shop and bakery. They also yanked
him down a grassy slope to a canal under a bridge where they got a kick
out of dangling him upside down and dropping him on his head.
A
few minutes into that particular torture game, Jon and Robert stopped
themselves from having too much fun. It wasn’t quite dark yet and they
knew someone could easily peer down the hill and discover them hurting a
baby. So Jon carried the bruised and whimpering James in his arms,
following his leader up the bank. When they reached the hilltop, they
adjusted Jamie’s coat and scarf to cover as much of his swollen face as
possible, then roamed about town for a bit longer until nightfall.
At 5:30, when they felt it was finally dark enough, Venables and
Thompson took Bulger to one of their favorite play spots -- some railroad
tracks -- where they knocked Baby to the ground and stomped on his tummy
and chest. Jon opened the jar of bright blue paint he’d pocketed earlier
and splashed it across the tyke’s face. Robert removed Bulger’s shoes and
pants, then inserted the stolen AAA batteries into his rectum. One of them
spotted a two-foot long heavy iron pipe nearby, which they used to bash
their toy tot’s brains in. They also found bricks to hurl at him.
When Bulger’s body went stiff, Jon took him by the legs while
Robert got hold of the torso. They carried James directly over the
railroad tracks and laid him down so that his upper half was off the
tracks, while his naked legs were on them.
They left before the
train came.
******************************************************************
Later that night, while Jon and Robert were safe inside their
humble homes, detectives were studying security camera footage of Jamie
Bulger’s kidnapping. Expecting the baby snatcher to be an adult – perhaps
a greasy middle-aged pedophile or maybe even a barren crazy lady – they
were stunned when the tape showed two little lads, not much bigger than
Bulger himself, abducting the child.
The video, which was taken
from a camera just above the mall’s main exit, was copied and handed over
to local news stations for broadcast the next day. The fuzzy footage
showed the backs of the three boys leaving, but not their faces. All one
could gather about the kidnappers’ appearances was that the boy holding
the missing baby’s hand had a mustard-colored coat and the one walking in
front of them was pudgy with a shaved head.
Although Friday
February 12th, 1993 was an unimaginably hellish day for Denise Bulger,
Saturday was worse.
Less than 24 hours after Denise misplaced her
son, his body was discovered by four teenage boys messing around the crime
scene. At first glance they mistook Bulger for a doll. A closer look
uncovered the shape in question wasn’t a doll at all, but half of a
mutilated toddler. The foursome stumbled upon James’s upper body first,
clothed in the blue anorak and white scarf. A train had been by that
morning and severed the baby at the waist, just as his killers had
intended. When the train struck, Bulger’s torso went flying off the
tracks, while his naked lower limbs remained. The teens located his bottom
half, too.
A makeshift memorial was created by the Liverpool
community when word got out that Bulger’s body had been found. People
brought balloons, flowers, and teddy bears to place near the tracks in
prayerful remembrance. Robert Thompson was one of hundreds to visit the
site that weekend, contributing a single long-stem rose.
Since the
abduction video only showed backsides, police had no solid leads for
almost a full week after the murder. That all changed early on February
18th when an anonymous caller reported she had a friend whose son, she
knew for a fact, skipped school the day of the kidnapping. Additionally,
the witness stated she’d seen the kid wearing a mustard-colored coat with
blue paint on it.
Thursday morning the Merseyside County
constabulary showed up at each boy’s residence. Instead of going to
school, Robert and Jon were brought to the station with their parents for
separate interviews. They both crumbled and cried on the spot and blamed
each other for the all the bad stuff they’d done to their victim.
While J. and R. awaited trial, they were placed in special private
quarters, isolated from all other juvenile offenders including one
another. Psychiatrists examined the boys and determined they were mentally
fit to stand trial, which began November 1st, 1993. Presiding Judge Sir
Michael Morland ruled that Thompson and Venables be referred to as "Child
A" (Robert) and "Child B" (Jon) during the proceedings.
Defense
attorneys David Turner and Brian Walsh attempted to gain sympathy by
giving the jury histories of A and B’s dysfunctional backgrounds. It was
made known that "Child A" (Thompson) was raised by a single alcoholic
mother and was the fifth of six boys. Child A’s older siblings were fond
of locking him and the youngest brother (who happened to be the same age
as James Bulger) in their backyard pigeon shed.
Child B was born
August 13th 1982 and was the middle of three rug rats, sandwiched between
an older brother with a cleft lip and a younger "special needs" sister.
B’s pop Neil was an out-of-work forklift driver who was pretty lenient
when it came to parenting his kids. Just a few weeks prior to the murder,
Neil rented "Child’s Play 3" for his brood, a violent rated R movie which
ends with the "Chucky" character having blue paint splattered on his face
while being viciously killed on a railroad.
The defense’s unhappy
childhood vindication flopped. Jon and Robert were found guilty, given 15
years a piece, and had their real names exposed in the media.
In
October of 2000, newly-appointed Lord Chief Justice Woolf, with the
support of the liberal European Court of Human Rights, overturned Robert
and Jon’s original sentences and released them in June of 2001 after
they’d both turned 18.
Rob and Jon served their relatively short
eight-year terms in secure units similar to the ones they were housed in
before trial. Their posh "cells" were equipped with televisions,
Nintendos, and CD players. Between ‘93 and 2001, they got to continue
school and graduate. Moreover, they were bestowed passes to the beach, the
movies, and professional sporting events (to get them "readjusted to the
community").
Upon being freed, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson
were placed in government protection programs and granted new identities
for their safety. They were given fake birth certificates, passports, and
national insurance numbers. As the mother of the slain put it, "The
murderers have walked away to a life of luxury–bought homes, bank
accounts, and 24 hour protection."
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