The questioning was calm, steady, even playful at the beginning to try to get a sense the two boys really did know the difference between right and wrong. ', The closest either boy came to offering an explanation was when Jon was asked by police why he had taken James's shoe off by the railway tracks. The right will draw attention to the broken homes, the single parents, the persistent truancy. It is here, of course, that Jon met and made friends with fellow eccentric, Robert Thompson. she said. And in Lower Lane police station when he was being questioned about the murder she had to be told that her harsh words were inhibiting him from confessing. Little Bobby went to visit his brothers every so often, eager to show them the latest playthings he had robbed from the assorted shops nearby. 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. Keep them apart or he'll get into trouble, they said. . Mr Venables said: "He wouldn't watch horror. 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. 'I couldn't hear anything,' she said. 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. The final scene takes place among the tracks of a fun-fair ghost train where the doll, which resembles an infant with spiky hair has his face slashed before he is cut to pieces by a ventilator fan. They went on family outings together, slept together, and when Susan did find a place, virtually coexisted between the two homes. Police respond to reporters of a swan being removed from the harbour by a drunk male before it being involved in a collision on Mutley Plain. Thompson and Venables, now both 27 years old, are among only four individuals in the UK whose crimes are so notorious that they have been given lifelong anonymity. 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. . Constantly restless, his workbooks were empty, and he would often be denied recess because he was so far behind. It is just heartbreaking.". Teachers later reported that whereas the boys were manageable when separated, together their behavior worsened dramatically. 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. But that is the common lot of thousands of 10-year-olds who have not turned into murderers. Jon's parents, who sat in court for most of the trial, said they grieved for the Bulgers. Then there were the separated parents, the poverty, the truanting, the videos. He is one of those children that if you told him to put his hand in the fire, he would. He took a jar of paracetamol. 'When the fisticuffs ended, they made friends.' Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. His mind was too restless to take up other hobbies for long. Join Facebook to connect with Susan Venables and others you may know. Venables was a different creature. See that cell. "My heart really goes out to them. They saw it with their eyes. Will you tell his mum I'm sorry?". Venables and Thompson abducted, tortured and killed two-year-old James in Liverpool in 1993 when they were both aged just 10. The living versions on the floor of the court looked equally wrinkled and austere. Mrs Thompson said she was so often called to Walton Lane police station to retrieve her truanting son that they should have given her a job there. The hardliners in the police have a simpler explanation. 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. His mother, Susan, attributed this behavior with peer pressure and hyperactivity, and put him on a special diet, though it did nothing to quell his frequent emotional outbursts. fun to be with". On Sundays he used to watch Thunderbirds. One neighbour said she always let him into her home whenever his mother was out. I feel so sorry for them. We still dont know why. Susan Venables, mother of Jon - referred to throughout the trial as Boy B - blamed her son's 'weakness' for the murder of James Bulger, . I made notes of the pathologists evidence. Last week the author Angela Phillips spoke of how the gentle son of the female friend of hers turned into a fascist skinhead: 'The boy his mother wanted him to become was not man enough for the world he was forced to inhabit. 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. He said that on the day James was killed, when he went to the school in the afternoon to collect Jon he was told his son was missing. Gillespie, McNeilly, and Powell were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years. Any anxiety or animosity he might have felt was manifested largely through his school-aged thumb-sucking, a habit which elicited titters and taunts from the neighborhood children. 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. CCTV images revealed how James had been lured away by Thompson and Venables, who was also aged 10. In March 2010, Venables was recalled to prison for downloading and distributing more than 100 images of child abuse. She claimed, however, that she was completely unaware of Jons erratic behaviors at school, had never seen any evidence to support them (such as cuts on his arms or holes in his socks), and dismissed the possibility that many of the occurrences cited by the teacher had ever taken place. Venables parents were divorced but still lived within a stones throw of one another and were both involved in their sons upbringing. I thought he was all right, Jon said of Robert during his police interviews. 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. Denise Bulger believes her son's murderers - men now - should be in prison for ever. But however hollow a gesture it might have seemed, those who are in touch with the Thompson and Venables families insist that they have sought to make some sort of amends with their sons after the horrific events of 17 years ago that will rightly stay with them for the rest of their lives. He was also given 'respite care' - six weekly weekend breaks to relieve the family of the burden of looking after him. Robert Thompson was born to Robert Sr. and Ann Thompson on the 23rd day of August 1982, in Liverpool, England. Sandra Gotheridge. They looked, moved, fidgeted, scratched, cried - even sucked their thumbs - just like any 11-year-olds. I just heard an almighty screech. sp. In all, they played truant four times. 'You'd better tell the truth. Who were their parents? In 1999, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the pair did not receive a fair trial and awarded costs and expenses of 29,000 to Jon Venables and 15,000 to Robert Thompson. The mayor of Preston accused them of being sick ghouls, but still they came, queuing up for tickets two hours before proceedings began. 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. 'Just mad. . Ms Truss has written a 4,000-word essay in todays Sunday Telegraph in which she stood by her plans to boost economic growth during her short tenure in No 10, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker fails to stop team-mate Joel Matip (not pictured) from scoring an own goal during the Premier League match at Molineux Stadium, Wolverhampton, A member of the public lines the road into St Michaels on Wyre, Lancashire, with missing posters of Nicola Bulley, 45, as police continue their search for the missing woman who was last seen on the morning of Friday January 27, when she was spotted walking her dog on a footpath by the nearby River Wyre, Not your usual prisoner! He had an elder brother, aged 13, and a nine-year-old sister. Apart from Jon's incident with the ruler, there had been no record of previous violence. Neil Venables regarded himself as the Barry Norman of Merseyside - a film buff with a penchant for horror. Depressed, Ann began drinking heavily and was taking narcotics which caused her to hallucinate. The government will be required to respond within 14 days if as the petition achieves more than 100,000 signatures. From their point of view it makes perfect sense. Express. . 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. I said no. Pictures; Inside the Guardian; Guardian Weekly . One of Anns sons claimed that Ann, too, had beaten them with sticks, and had struck one of the boys with a cane. The James Bulger murder View gallery Venables was born on August 12, 1982. Born 10 days apart in August 1982 in Liverpool. Something went wrong, please try again later. When the fisticuffs ended, impressed by each other's performance, they made friends. Every day the public gallery was packed with students, pensioners, mothers, teenagers, all drawn to the courtroom spectacle as to a TV soap. Left to his own devices Jon liked to spend his playtime in fairly sedentary ways. "You look at him and you say to yourself, 'How could you be involved in anything like this?'" 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. That seems the very least they could face for what they did. The breaking point came when Jon was suspended from Broad Square after attempting to choke a classmate with a twelve-inch wooden ruler. Our feelings haven't changed towards him. James mother Denise Fergus has been saying this for a long time, but still we hoped that the boy who savaged a tiny child to death could become a man safe to be in our midst. They said their son met Robert Thompson in September 1991, when Jon was transferred from another school. Mr Venables said it had never crossed their minds that the video pictures from the security cameras in the shopping centre from which James went missing showed their own son. And there were rewards for breaking rules. The teacher had a different perspective, saying that Susan was in fact aware of the issue, and had expressed deep concern. He has had Christmas presents. football, snooker, things like that. He would steal objects that he neither needed nor wanted, then chuck them away in the street. Other parents came in to complain about attention seeking. It is about a Good Guy doll invaded by the spirit of a mass murderer who kills people in gruesome ways. Are they mad? Trauma? His response couldn't have been more different as he sank into the oversized blazer he was wearing. I would get him something like a cartoon.". Instead, she was involved in an ITV documentary with Sir Trevor McDonald that will air on Thursday. Resentful of her husbands lack of involvement with the children, Susan conceded that the couple fought constantly, especially throughout 1983, but maintained that Neil had never been aggressive towards her, nor had she hit him. Ann denied the physical abuse, but later admitted to being cruel to the boys at times. The days James was abducted, February 12 1993, I was a young reporter in my home city of Liverpool. everyone blamed Thompson and. By chance, the rest of Jon's family was driving past and spotted them. These are the words of an officer who was in the police station when DCI Geoff MacDonald of Merseyside Police broke the news to Denise that James was dead. He began telling his father that he believed his parents loved his brother and sister more than they did him, and, at one point, implored his father to send him to school with his siblings.
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