James Bulger - The Murder

The Murder

CCTV evidence from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on 12 February 1993 showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint, some of which were later found at the murder scene. It was later revealed by one of the boys that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the mall, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.

That same afternoon, James Bulger (often called "Jamie" by the press, although never by his family), from nearby Kirkby, went with his mother Denise to the New Strand Shopping Centre. While inside the A.R. Tym's butcher's shop on the lower floor of the centre at around 3:40 pm, Denise, who had been momentarily distracted, realised that her son had disappeared. He had been wandering by the open door of the shop while she placed an order for lamb chops, and was spotted by Thompson and Venables. They approached him and spoke to him, before taking him by the hand and leading him out of the precinct. This moment was captured on a CCTV camera recording timestamped at 15:42.

The boys took Bulger on a meandering 2.5-mile (4.0 km) walk across Liverpool to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal. During the walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people. Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene, assuming that he was a younger brother. Two people challenged the older boys, but they claimed that Bulger was a younger brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to the local police station. At one point, the boys took Bulger into a pet shop, from which they were ejected. Eventually the boys arrived in the village of Walton, and with Walton Lane police station across the road facing them, they hesitated and led Bulger up a steep bank to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Anfield Cemetery, where they began torturing him.

At the trial it was established that at this location, one of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger's left eye. They kicked and stomped on him, and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger's mouth. Police believed some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, was dropped on him. Bulger suffered ten skull fractures as a result of the iron bar striking his head. Dr. Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries—42 in total—that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger's shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist's report read out in court stated that Bulger's foreskin had been forcibly retracted. When questioned about this aspect of the attack by detectives and the child psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Vizard, Thompson and Venables were reluctant to give details; they also vehemently denied inserting some of the batteries into Bulger's anus. At his eventual parole, Venables's psychiatrist until he was aged 21, Dr. Susan Bailey, reported that "visiting and revisiting the issue with Jon as a child, and now as an adolescent, he gives no account of any sexual element to the offence."

Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After Bulger's killers left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger's severed body was discovered two days later, on 14 February. A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.

The police quickly found low-resolution video images of Bulger's abduction from the New Strand Shopping Centre by two unidentified boys. As the circumstances surrounding the death became clear, tabloid newspapers denounced the people who had seen Bulger but had not intervened to aid Bulger as he was being taken through the city, as the "Liverpool 38". The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was flooded with hundreds of bunches of flowers.

The crime created great anger in Liverpool and throughout the country. The family of one boy who was detained for questioning, but subsequently released, had to flee the city. The breakthrough came when a woman, on seeing slightly enhanced images of the two boys on national television, recognised Venables, who, she knew, had played truant with Thompson that day. She contacted police and the boys were arrested.