True Crime Collection

James Bulger

*****WARNING!! This case involves the torture and murder of 2 year old boy. Some readers may find this case very distressing. Please read with caution!!*****

James Patrick Bulger was born 16th March 1990. He was born in Kirkby, Merseyside, England.

CCTV evidence from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on 12th February, 1993, showed Robert Thompson, 10, and Jon Venables, 10, casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Robert and John 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. One of the boys later revealed that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the shopping centre, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.

That same afternoon, James, went with his mother, Denise to the New Strand Shopping Centre. Whilst inside the A.R. Tym's butcher's shop on the lower floor of the centre at around 15:40, Denise, who had been temporarily distracted, realised that her son had disappeared. Robert and John approached James, took him by the hand and led him out of the shopping centre. The moment was caught on CCTV at 15:42. James was taken to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, around a quarter of a mile from the New Strand Shopping Centre, where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing James into the canal. An eyewitness during the trial said that when he saw James at the canal, he was "crying his eyes out". During a 2.5 mile walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene. 2 people challenged Robert and John, but they claimed James was their younger brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to the local police station. At one point, the boys took James 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 James up a steep bank to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Anfield Cemetery, where they began torturing him.

One of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Jame's left eye. They kicked him, stamped on him and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Jame's mouth and, according to police, some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, the boys dropped a 10 kilogram (22lb) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, on James. He sustained 10 skull fractures as a result of the bar striking his head. Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, stated that James suffered so many injuries - 42 in total - that none could be isolated as the fatal blow. Robert and John laid James across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the home that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After they left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Jame's severed body was discovered 2 days later on 14th February. A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since James's shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. When Robert and John were questioned about this aspect of the attack by detectives and a child psychiatrist, Eileen Vizard, the pair were reluctant to give details and also denied inserting some of the batteries into James's anus. At his eventual parole, John's psychiatrist, Susan Bailey, reported that "visiting and revisiting the issue with John as a child, and now as an adolescent, he gives no account of any sexual element to the offence."

The police quickly found low resolution video images of James's abduction from the New Strand Shopping Centre by 2 unidentified boys. The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was adorned with hundreds of bunches of flowers. The family of one boy, who was detained for questioning but subsequently released, had to flee the city due to threats by vigilantes. The breakthrough came when  a woman, on seeing slightly enhanced images of the 2 boys on national television, recognised John, whom she knew had played truant with Robert that day. She contacted police and the boys were arrested.