"On the other hand, you are looking at him and you are saying 'Well, I know why - because he is so weak'. He wanted a Rovers strip for his birthday present. Unemployment levels were more than twice the national average in Walton. Ann, desperate to escape the physical and emotional torment of living with her drunken father, was married to Robert, Sr. in December 1971, on the day of her eighteenth birthday. Both of them struggled at school and had been lumped into the year below their age. If I wanted to kill a baby, Id kill Id kill me own, wouldnt I?. David Sharrock, Maggie O'Kane, and Edward Pilkington look at the lives of the rebels who turned to killing, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Their faces affected me deeply. Put bluntly, Jon Venables still gets a kick out of seeing small children suffer. In March 2010, Venables was recalled to prison for downloading and distributing more than 100 images of child abuse. Ann was a heavy drinker, separated from her husband, also called Robert, who had deserted the family several years earlier and did not attend court. and things like that is that he was frightened. Neighbors later reported that it wasnt uncommon for Robert to be seen wandering the streets of Walton after midnight, since he was always running off at night. On Monday night's documentary, Robert Thompson's solicitor Dominic Lloyd said: "Many years after the trial a juror said 'we found them guilty of murder but we didn't have the option to find them guilty of being two very bewildered and frightened little boys who made an awful mistake and need a lot of help'.". He wore his dark hair short, almost a crew cut, which accentuated his ample forehead and blunt nose. Tweet. He started with Liverpool, but by the time of the murder he had switched to Blackburn Rovers. Hes your son., Unhappily, it was during this critical time that Ann became pregnant with her seventh child, the product of another failed relationship. Read about our approach to external linking. I know how I feel as a mother. 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. Without anyone in the family to turn to for support, he had to look outside for people whose swaggering aggression he could emulate. 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. The shocking murder that shook the nation, Both Venables and Robert Thompson were 10 years-old when they tortured and killed 2 year-old James Bulger, Thompson and Venables were tried as adults, James Bulger, aged 2 years old, being led away in a shopping centre in Liverpool, Denise Fergus denied having anything to do with the Channel 4 documentary about her son, James Bulger's murder case could now be investigated, The petition is on nearly 15,000 signatures, James Bulger was just two when he was brutally murdered, He had been out shopping with his mum Denise, James was made to walk two miles before being left for dead on a disused rail line, Denise tirelessly campaigned to have their sentence increased, Denise once admitted she's lived 'in fear' since the trial. On many occasions, Susan was observed physically and verbally assaulting Jon. Susan Venable - we found 141 people search records: 55 CVs and social profiles with photos, 50 addresses & phone numbers, 1 real estate objects, 6 Susan Venable's cars, 2 companies. "'It wasnt fair to interview him. Half way through the 1992-1993 school year, Robert had already racked up nearly 50 unauthorized absences, and was falling significantly behind in his schoolwork. Other parents came in to complain about attention seeking. They played truant, they pinched sweets, they terrorised old ladies. In March 2010, Venables was recalled to prison for downloading and distributing more than 100 images of child abuse. Ultimately, wanting to escape the havoc, most of the boys opted to leave home, and some were placed into voluntary care at Dysons Hall, a childrens home just outside of Liverpool. Their kids have got everything, she added, bitterly. 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. In Jon's case, 'hyperactivity' went beyond mere fidgeting into outbursts of sudden anger and violence. She said an educational psychologist had diagnosed hyperactivity in her son, who was bullied at his previous school. Sitting in the new class was a chubby boy with a cherub's face - Robert Thompson. Robert Thompson was born to Robert Sr. and Ann Thompson on the 23rd day of August 1982, in Liverpool, England. ", Her husband, Neil, said: "If you had a league table of children, you would put him at the bottom of the list for anything like this.". Good people asked the boys if they were lost or urged them to take "their baby brother" home as he cried for his mummy. Directly in front of the bench was the raised dock in which Thompson, Venables, and two social workers would sit for the next four weeks. In the years between Venabless first return to prison and this latest conviction he was deemed to be living successfully in the community, when in fact he was working out ways to dodge his internet ban and hiding a computer in his headboard in order to download abusive images of children, including what the judge described this week as serious crimes inflicted on male toddlers. The left will make play of social deprivation, unemployment, bad housing and general inner-city rot. 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. Three days later his body was found, and three days after that a tip-off came from a shopkeeper who had seen two boys playing truant on the day James went missing and gave police two names - Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. The two bumped into each other - literally - in the school playground in the middle of a fight. View the profiles of people named Susan Venables. We still dont know why. Ironically, Jon was the child who caused his parents least anxiety. They deal with drugs, they deal with everything. IN their interviews with the two boys, psychiatrists could find no clues to why the boys acted so violently. Southern. Wiping away tears, he went on: 'I feel for that family. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? 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. That's the thing that upsets me because obviously where I was standing poor little James must have been not. He had an elder brother, aged 13, and a nine-year-old sister. WALTON, where they both lived, is, in the jargon of planning, an inner-city urban priority area; neither the best nor the worst the city has to offer. "Just TV programmes and little things remind me of the good times we had together . He had been stripped from the waist down,. In Crosbies corner shop Ian, the next oldest to Robert, was able to tot up the shopping in his mind before the cash register rang up the total. It seems likely that he was bullied. It is not known whether the boy watched any of his father's adult movies. "He tends to be a bit hyperactive so his concentration did go a bit, but apart from that he is quite bright, no worries.". This story has no borders,' NBC correspondent Denis Murphy said. Her family were dignified throughout, but on that day one of theBulgerfamily supporters allowed themselvesa loud 'YES' as the verdicts came in. Mrs Venables said: "He mentions James, not all the time. Reporters from around the world ended up in the drab streets of Walton, cadging interviews off any 10-year-old boys hanging around in the streets. It was a sign of such restlessness that he was unable to hang on to a football team for long - he kept shifting his allegiance like a floating voter. I wonder how many parents looked at their sons of a similar age that week, sure in the knowledge their own children could never be so wicked, but asked themselves anyway "what would I do if?". The Swedes, French, Germans, Canadian and Americans had all come to gaze at Liverpool's child killers. 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. Grey seal pups on the beach at Horsey in Norfolk, as the pupping season draws to a close at one the UK's most important sites for the mammals. ROBERT had a reputation in the neighbourhood for being a troublemaker. Apart from Jon's incident with the ruler, there had been no record of previous violence. Few will ever forget the chilling footage of two 10-year-old boys holding a toddler's hand as they led him to his death. It would be a week before we heard their voices, in hours of taped police interviews, They stopped us all in our tracks. Robert was number five of seven. Their seats were just below the raised dock where their sons would sit for the next three weeks, listening to a prosecution which aimed to prove not only that they killed James Bulger, but that they planned to, and that when they did they knew it to be wrong. Please review our, You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. You know, we just try and help him as best we can to try to come to terms with things. 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. 'They would say 'take your son home'. It was when Jon turned seven that Susan and the children had relocated to Norris Green, one of Liverpools larger, more reputable areas. Weeping, she said: 'I wasn't actually on the railway track because there is a fence, but I went up the side. "The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 that's too low. Robert's feelings towards his half-brother also appear to have been ambivalent - he told police he would not have murdered James Bulger because 'if I wanted to kill a baby, I'd kill my own, wouldn't I?'. At Preston Crown Court a few months later, I was one of a handful of journalists given full access to the small courtroom for the trial of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both now 11-years-old. Jon Venables said the class teacher tried to entice Robert by offering him a prize for a week's continual attendance - he did, but the prize never came. Haunting CCTV footage shows the pair leading the tiny, trusting boy . Real bottom of the gut stuff, like an animal. Something went wrong, please try again later. Then, one Friday in February, they discovered a new rule to break: they murdered a two-year-old. In contrast he has had no contact with his father despite an approach soon after sentencing. He would steal objects that he neither needed nor wanted, then chuck them away in the street. Mrs Venables has also said that she felt heartbreak for James and his parents and shame for her son. It was during this time that Susan, having suffered from clinical depression for many years, had experienced what were later described as two traumatic incidences, both of which Jon would have witnessed. In the business world, too many people think it's all about being hard, tough, ambitious, or having grit. I remember watching her then on TV, her sobbing plea for information and thinking how much guts it must have taken to get up that day and face a roomful of journalists and photographers. Seeing at first hand the pain of a family who have lost a toddler to an act of brutal violence is almost unbearably moving. Born on August 13th, 1982, Jon was the middle child of Neil and Susan Venables. His grip was so strong that it took two people to pry Jon off of the boy. Spidery and messy. Although Susan couldnt recall any dramatic change in Jons behavior, his teachers there expressed some concern that Jon had become upset and difficult following the separation. However, given that the tension in the household was persistent throughout the most crucial of Jons formative years, the belief that he had moved through the ordeal entirely unaffected is questionable. Constantly restless, his workbooks were empty, and he would often be denied recess because he was so far behind. His former wife would send their boys up the street to give their father the fingers through the bay windows of his mother's house. Born on August 13th, 1982, Jon was the middle child of Neil and Susan Venables. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The reaction prompted James' mum Denise Fergus to let supporters know she had nothing to do with the programme. We will never be able to do the fun things any more . I cant believe people find excuses for these murderers. But they shouldn't have been tried in an adult court because they were still children. At the trialnine months laterI would learn that Robert Thompson had been among those people. The Liverpool Echo boasted that their man had one of 'just 34 seats' allocated to the international press. "I think my son's concentration wasn't the way it should have been, but he wasn't slow. This would have put Jon in a particularly arduous position, as the couples only excelling child, and as author Gitta Sereny observed from her time spent with the Venables in 1994, forcing this middle child, Jon, for a long time, perhaps unconsciously, to compensate his mother for her two problem children, put an enormous weight of responsibility on this child virtually from the time he was born., As Susan struggled to manage her two disadvantaged children day to day, Neil was the familys breadwinner, working as a forklift driver. The case of James, a two-year-old who was snatched from a shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool, in 1993, before being tortured and left to die, shocked the nation. sons, were settled in council houses within easy reach of the institutions where their sons were being held. As always you can unsubscribe at any time. A day later she would face much worse. One of the new works by Banksy, appears to show a 1950s housewife, wearing a classic blue pinny and yellow washing up gloves, with a swollen eye and a missing tooth seemingly shoving her male partner into a chest freezer, the piece is set on a white wall backdrop in Kent. I made notes of the pathologists evidence. They were drawn to one another quickly. More often, he would pinch them from local shops. I didnt connect the dots until much later on. He has had security with loving parents and a loving brother and sister.". gl. I dont think she saw a very happy future., The author says there was no contact with the Venables family after the trial as Mrs Thompson focused, her energy on supporting her son, refusing to accept he was a monster. It should certainly be moved up to 12; in some European countries it is 14," she said. The couple, who are living together again after a partial separation, said their feelings towards Jon had not changed despite the terrible crime. Both boys had been held back a year, and they were put in the same class. They had to report him missing at the security office before he was found, and Jon's mother was very angry. what is the bite force of a baboon. The abduction and brutal murder of this two-year-old by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who were just 10 at the time, prompted a conversation in Britain that we are still having today. Facebook gives people the power. Sometimes Robert would sag off on his own, but it was more fun with a friend. We have found 88 people in the UK with the name Susan Venables. 'I think about little James and what he must have gone through, how they must feel. He has had his holidays like everyone else. He also liked to scare old ladies by jumping out in front of their noses. . At school Jon was considered bright enough, though he had trouble keeping up with lessons. 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. James smith (16 March 1990 [2] - 12 February 1993) was a two-year-old boy from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables (born 13 August 1982), on 12 February 1993. Neil Venables, 40, said he felt "just devastated, thinking of that little boy'. He was fearful of the other boy. Will you tell his Mum Im sorry?. His body was found two days later on a railway line. They fled the city, never to return. We still think the same of him as we always have. 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. 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One woman asked how James had injured his forehead. It was the kind of family neighbours compare themselves against and then feel better. Then they would hide their school satchels under a subway and set off on their adventure. "You look at him and you say to yourself, 'How could you be involved in anything like this?'" He said he was frightened of Robert's older brother. The citys worst instincts produced the wrongful hounding of a family whose sons people decided were responsible. The days James was abducted, February 12 1993, I was a young reporter in my home city of Liverpool. Not surprisingly, Ann had also attempted suicide in the same manner, some months before. Susan Venables has blamed weakness for her sons role in the killing of James Bulger, claiming that he got involved with the wrong person. It was so stressful trying to contain him. Our feelings haven't changed towards him. "We are committed to driving sustainability in the leather industry, through the commitment of. Robert had eaten too many and felt sick. Ann denied the physical abuse, but later admitted to being cruel to the boys at times. We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. 'Provided you have no court orders for debts already,' the man on the phone would add helpfully. By now the two boys from Walton were part of an international freak show. I am not sure if in fact he was seen by the school psychologist, but I did complete a form for him.. Three years ago, after his mother walloped him, he went to social services and asked them to put him in care. David James Smith, who wrote a book about the Bulger case, The Sleep Of Reason, and stayed in touch with Ann Thompson afterwards. For weeks, she stayed in bed, not bothering to tend to the children, and when she finally did reemerge, she readily admitted she drank from morning to night, but had stopped taking the pills. Murder of James Bulger. Look at mine. This happened, more often than not, at night, when they refused to go to bed when told. The details of Jamess death were sickening. She remained very frightened and felt that she and her son were the most hated people in the country. His father, thin and balding, had a much gentler edge. The most agonising thing about the whole case was that so many people had stopped them and questioned them. His parents, Susan and Neil, accompanied him during the interview process. Read about our approach to external linking. Thompson got better opportunities there than if hed been walking the streets in Walton, says the author. She also had to stay strong for the remaining children. Ironically, the relationship between mother and son improved when he, was behind bars. The couples first child, a son, had been born with a cleft pallet, and when Jon was born, much of the Venables focus was on getting their eldest son into speech therapy. Both were banned from ever returning to Liverpool and given new identities at a reported cost of 1.5million. It worked. In some families this was the third generation to be unemployed. this weekend for breaching the terms of his early release, the parents of both the Bulger killers continue to stand by them. Dudson was given a minimum term of 18 years. Superintendent Kirby is a religious man. According to the teacher, Jon would rock back and forth in his desk, making strange noises (this behavior was later speculated to be Jons jealous attempt to emulate his elder brother, in order to receive the same special attention), bang his head on the desk or walls repeatedly, glue bits of paper all over his face, wedge himself in between desks, throw himself on the ground, throw chairs across the corridor, rip projects off the classroom walls, cut holes in his socks, and intentionally cut himself with scissors. When the fisticuffs ended, impressed by each other's performance, they made friends. He was jailed for two years before being granted parole again in July 2013. Child killer Mary Bell and Maxine Carr, the former girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley, are the others. For a start, there were only three children, of whom Jon was the middle. xf fy. so they were put in a lower year. Once the jury retired, so did the journalists - but we didnt go far. His mother cared about him. Ann and Bobby fought regularly in front of the children, with virtually all of the fights leading to physical violence. Guilty of abducting and murdering James PatrickBulger. The couple was financially strained from the start, but Ann did what she could to make it work. Thompson, who gained five GCSEs and A-levels in design and technology, is said to have developed an interest in theatre. "Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, [Thompson and Venables] were tried in an adult court. 'I couldn't be arsed talking about them,' said one. The Rt Reverend Glyn Webster lights a candle in front of the newly restored Lady Chapel East Window at All Saints North Street in York, one of thirteen stained glass windows from the church undergoing conservation work at Barley Studio, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Pat Cullen on the picket line outside Great Ormond Street Hospital in London during a strike by nurses and ambulance staff, Britains former prime minister Liz Truss leaves her home on February 5, 2023 in London, England. 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. He took a jar of paracetamol. Counsel for the prosecution, Richard Henriques QC, made it clear all three elements needed to be proved for a murder conviction. When the court was played Jon's taped descriptions of how they had truanted they simultaneously smiled. He appears to be a normal human, but inside the soft flesh there is indestructable metal. Hope. Their kids have got everything. Less thanfive hours laterthe verdicts were in. Jon spent Sunday to Thursday with his mum and the rest of every week with his dad. 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"I think about little James and what he must have gone through, how they must feel. Maybe it was that incident that put the idea into Jon or Robbie's head to 'get a little boy lost'. For me, though, it is Susan and Neil Venables who stay most in my memory of that day. What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget. He is broken- hearted over it. "It is hard to take in really. However, you will find some great articles which you can comment on right now in our Comment section. Robert's mother agreed with her son's assessment: 'Name one family in the area who would have a good word for us.'. TWO BOYS. I just think of James and his Dad and about all that fun with his little boy, like I had with Jon.". Instead, she was involved in an ITV documentary with Sir Trevor McDonald that will air on Thursday. There was a pattern of bullying, with the older boys picking on their younger brothers down the line. Meanwhile, Thompson has not re-offended since his release, and is believed to be in a long-term relationship with a man who knows who he really is. 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. ", 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.".

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