'I was in the James Bulger trial and one chilling part sticks in my memory'

08 September 2023 , 14:46

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'I was in the James Bulger trial and one chilling part sticks in my memory'

It was the last step which sticks in my memory. They had built it 14-inches high and the two young boys had to struggle a little to mount it.

That step, the last and largest of 24 from their cells below, allowed them to see over the brass rails of the dock. And here, standing side by side, a social worker accompanying each of them, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables stood trial for the murder of James Bulger, aged two years and 11 months.

At 11-years-old themselves, the boys were the youngest ever to be tried for murder - and subsequently found guilty - in Britain. And so, that cold, grey morning on November 1 1993 in Preston’s Sessions House court the pair settled in their chairs, chins just above that brass rail, to hear the evidence against them. I was no more than six-feet behind them, trying to make sense of what I now know to have been senseless.

And, as I sat, I thought of the German-American writer Hannah Arendt who invented that famous phrase “the banality of evil”. She did so to describe Nazi crimes and, most particularly, the grey ordinariness of Adolf Eichmann, the Holocaust organiser. And here was banality once more. “Not Guilty”, they pleaded of course. Not us. No, we didn’t know what we were doing. Thompson had even asked if doctors “could make Jamie alive again?”

Jon Venables has applied for parole (PA)

Venables, the taller of the two, fumbled with a tissue in his left hand, waved to his parents with his right. His young father, an eager, balding man mouthed “OK?” Venables twitched a smile. His mother stared at her high-heeled feet. The boy cried quietly for a few moments, steadied himself, then slipped off both his shoes as if settling himself in front of the telly.

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But, of course, there were no tellies. They didn’t allow tellies in court in those days. So it was left to the likes of people like me to describe to you the braided costume of the judge, the regalia of court officials, the pompous panelling of a room designed as much - like most old courtrooms - for theatre as for justice.

Venables wore a navy-blue blazer, dark, long trousers, a light blue shirt. Almost a school uniform. Thompson, smaller, fatter, slower, also wore dark grey trousers, but with a white shirt and black V-neck jumper. When he entered the court, he did not look around. Perhaps he knew his parents would not be there. After all, what did they really care. Dad had left Mum. Mum had a brood of kids anyway. And me? Little Robert? ‘Runty Rob”? I wet the bed and they took the p**s.

Robert Thompson has a new identity (VIDEO GRAB CHANNEL 4)

He was expressionless. Throughout pre-trial questioning he apparently showed no remorse and even less feeling. A psychiatrist, who questioned him, pronounced him to be a psychopath. I was sure he was the instigator of that killing, not that almost-nice, almost-pleasant Jon Venables. And how wrong my instincts were. Thank God, I never let them find their way into my reports.

We now know that both achieved ‘A’ Levels during their years in detention. We know that Thompson is living, maybe working, under an assumed name, identity unknown. And Venables, habitual jailbird, twice convicted after his release of possessing child abuse images, including those of the rape of a two-year-old.

Now petitioning for his release in time for Christmas. It’s nearly 30 years ago when two white Ford Transits took those boys back to their custody rooms. Nearly 30 years since those baying crowds punched the vans and screamed for justice in Preston’s market square. “Evil” was the word. “Evil, evil, evil.”

But it felt then, as it still does today, that evil explains nothing. It is just a word for something so senseless, so inexplicable, so disgusting as Jamie’s tortured killing that “evil” is meaningless. That child’s murder, the 42 injuries to his body, remains a mystery. Perhaps even to those two creatures, now aged 41, who did it.

Anton Antonowicz