Robert Thompson & Jon Venables
Robert was born on 23rd August 1982 to Ann and Robert Thompson. The couple already had four sons aged nine, seven, five and four. The seven of them lived in a modest terraced house in Liverpool where Robert worked as an electrician whilst Ann stayed at home.
It was not the happiest of homes. Robert Thompson senior was a heavy drinker who often beat Ann. She, in turn, would hit the children. She’d often been beaten with a belt during her own childhood and had married on her eighteenth birthday to escape her violent home. But there were some relaxing times, such as when the couple bought a caravan and took two-year-old Robert and his older brothers on weekend trips to Wales.
When Robert was a month shy of his second birthday, his parents provided him with yet another baby brother. He was initially protective towards this younger child.
Robert was a polite and timid little boy who liked to watch cartoons and play with the neighbourhood children. He was very concerned about his depressed and exhausted mother and did all that he could to give her support. But life was difficult for him, as he was now being hit by his elder brothers as well as by his mum and dad. His mother’s weight ballooned to eighteen stone and his father pointed out a house that he said was a home for disobedient children. He threatened to leave them all there.
Social workers became involved when one of the children, aged four, was found with a cigarette burn and bite marks. Another child would later have bite marks on him too. It was clear that there were multiple acts of violence going on in the household though no one was ever charged.
Then, when Robert was six, his father left to live with an older woman, a friend of the family. A week later the Thompsons’ home burned down and they were rehoused in a hostel for the next two months.
Ann turned to drink and soon spent much of her time at the pub. She’d later admit that she put a bottle of whisky under her pillow most nights and that she’d start drinking from it when she awoke in the morning. Later in the day she’d go to the local pub. Some of the men there called her a slag and said that she should be at home with her large family. She’d shout at them and hit them if they persisted in their remarks.
Robert’s oldest brother, a teenager, was unfairly left in charge. Unable to cope, he hit his siblings frequently and tied them up or locked them in the pigeon shed.
The six unparented boys became increasingly lost and unkempt. One of Robert’s brothers took him out on stealing binges. Another brother became an arsonist. One brother was investigated for molesting younger children but this couldn’t be proved so no charges were brought
In 1990, when Robert was eight, one of his older brothers was taken into care. Within months a second of his brothers went into care and eventually a third brother followed suit.
Ann now entered into a new relationship and had another baby. She stopped drinking, but still had little cash as the family were all on welfare. Ann was too busy with the new baby to take the younger children to school so Robert continued to play truant. He also began to steal things for his baby half-brother and for his mum.
He’d just turned ten when Ann allegedly hit one of his older brothers with a cane. It was the last straw for the boy as he’d been trying to look after the family and get the others to school each morning. He asked to go into care and didn’t see much of his siblings after that.
In January 1993, Robert took his eight-year-old brother to the canal, kicked him and punched him and left him there. The child made his way to the nearby Strand shopping centre in a very distressed state. He told his teacher that his brothers all hit him, but that Robert hit him the most.
At this stage one of Robert’s older brothers tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of paracetamol. Another brother would later attempt suicide, just as his mother Ann had done in the early days of her marriage. The boys had their stomachs pumped out in hospital and they both survived.
Robert himself was clearly in distress. His nails were bitten away and he constantly sucked his thumb. At ten years old, he still sat on his mother’s lap and rocked back and forwards. By now he was often staying out until after midnight, wandering the streets and lighting fires on the railway to keep warm.
Robert kept asking other children to join him on the darkened streets – or keep him company when he played truant during the day – but none of them dared. Sometimes he’d give his eight-year-old brother a pound to stay with him, but his brother (an intelligent child who still enjoyed school) often told the teacher. So Robert was very pleased when a new boy called Jon Venables joined his class and soon agreed to truant with him.
Jon was born on 13th August 1982 to Neil and Susan Venables. The couple already had a three-year-old son who’d had an operation for a cleft palate and who would later be diagnosed with learning difficulties.
The family lived in Liverpool, an area of high unemployment, so Neil often couldn’t find the work he was trained for, driving forklift trucks. Neil and Susan both had a history of serious depression and Susan’s own childhood had been very strict.
When Jon was one year old, his parents gave him a sister. All five of them lived in a nice terraced house with a little front lawn. But Susan felt lonely and isolated at home on her own during the day and her eldest child’s constant screaming drove her mad.
The couple had an increasingly unhappy marriage and they divorced when Jon was three. At this stage Susan went back to her mother for three years, then she moved in with Neil. Later she got a council house of her own but she still spent much of her time at Neil’s home. He, in turn, lived with his father, before getting his own place and finally moving back to his father’s house after his father died. Unsurprisingly, all of these changes caused the three children stress.
Susan found it particularly hard to cope – and social service reports would later allude to ‘two traumatic incidents.’ Reporting on these, author Blake Morrison says that they seem to have been suicide attempts.
By now, Jon’s older brother was attending a school for children with special needs. His younger sister was diagnosed with the same learning disorder and, in time, she also would attend the same school.
At five, Jon went to an ordinary school – but he was teased by the other children who wrongly called his siblings retarded. He started to ask if he could attend a special school too.
By the time Jon was six his older brother was becoming frustrated by the number of things he couldn’t do and was having tantrums. Social workers arranged for him to go to foster carers for one weekend each month to give his mother a break. Susan kept a nice home and Jon was well fed and clothed, but she was very controlling towards him. She hit the children, especially at night when they didn’t want to go to sleep. Jon found it particularly hard to sleep and had lots of cuddly animals to ‘guard’ him in bed. He often felt tired, bit his nails and had bad dreams. But he did what he could to please his mother, reading quietly in a corner when at home or attending church where he joined the choir.
The Venables worked out a joint custody arrangement so that Susan had the children from Monday to Wednesday and Neil had them from Thursday to Sunday. When one parent couldn’t cope, they’d send the children to the other’s house.
By the time Jon was ten, he was so disturbed that his concerned teacher kept a journal of his behaviour. The child would rock back and forwards in his chair, bang his head against the wall and cut himself with scissors. He threw things at other schoolboys and stuck pencils in the neighbourhood children. Finally he tried to choke another boy with a ruler – and it took two adults to set the victim free.
Jon was suspended and in autumn 1991 was moved to a new Church Of England school where he met Robert Thompson. The boys very quickly became friends. Jon hadn’t played truant before – but Robert soon convinced him of how much fun it was and Jon’s attendance deteriorated significantly.
Jon continued to bully younger children and many of them feared him because of his quick temper. He also remained self-destructive, throwing himself about the playground and often disrupting the class. An experienced teacher noted that the child was clearly desperate for attention – after all, most of the attention at home was going to his siblings as they had special needs. The teachers could see that he wasn’t a bad boy, that his antics were a desperate plea for help.
But there were happier times, when the family settled down to watch videos together. And Neil rented adult-certificated videos to watch by himself after the children had gone to bed. Jon sometimes got up early and watched the video so it’s possible he saw at least part of an adult film that Neil rented called Child’s Play 3. The story revolves around a toddler-sized doll called Chucky which is possessed by the soul of a serial killer. It’s basic shock-horror, the strapline being ‘Don’t fuck with the Chuck.’
Chucky eventually dies – with blue paint on his face – on the train ride in a funfair. To most children it would just have been a scary story, but to a boy as disturbed as Jon, it might have meant more…
On 12th February 1993, the two boys slipped out of school and eventually made their way to The Strand, a large indoor shopping centre. There, they stole a little pot of blue modelling paint and a packet of batteries.
Jon started to entice away a two-year-old boy but his mother called him back. He tried and failed to attract another little boy’s attention. Then they saw a third toddler, James Bulger, hurrying from a butcher’s shop whilst his mother queued inside.
Jon beckoned to James, who happily followed him and took his hand. The trio were filmed by the security cameras. James was a month short of his third birthday, a happy and trusting child.
Jon and Robert now took the toddler on a two and a half mile journey during which he understandably became increasingly tired and distressed, asking for his mum. But the ten-year-olds, probably egging each other on, felt no empathy for him. (In their own lives, they hadn’t been shown much empathy.) They let him fall on his head, leaving a bad graze, and they both swung him by his arms.
Numerous people saw the three of them but just assumed it was two brothers taking their younger sibling home. One woman offered to take the toddler to the police station at which Robert looked ready to run away – but Jon told Robert to take James’s hand again and said that they would take him to the police by themselves.
At last Jon and Robert reached an isolated part of the railway. The exact sequence of events will probably never be known, but at one stage they stripped the toddler below the waist. Jon admitted to taking James’s shoes off but said that Robert had taken off his trousers and underpants. He said that the child was unconscious at this time.
Jon would later say that Robert touched the toddler’s private parts. It’s very likely that Robert had been sexually abused himself – and children who have been molested often feel compelled to repeat the abuse. What’s certain is that the toddler’s foreskin was retracted and his lower clothes had been removed.
This possible sexual exploration was preceded or succeeded by escalating violence. They threw the blue modelling paint and at least one of the batteries at the toddler, who continued to cry.
Jon and Robert had a childish view of how easy it was to silence a Chucky-sized child. Robert said ‘Stay down, you divvie’ and both boys were clearly shocked when the toddler kept getting up.
They threw stones and bricks and hit him with a heavy metal bar, fracturing his skull in several places. They kicked him and stamped on him. Blake Morrison said that the violence probably lasted for five minutes. They also put some of the batteries in his mouth in what was possibly a naive attempt to bring him back to life. Leastways, his mouth was damaged and Jon later told his father that they’d put the batteries there.
The children placed the body over the freight line, presumably to make the injuries look like a train accident. Blood was coming out of the unconscious toddler’s mouth and they didn’t like to look at it, so they put bricks over his face. Shortly after this, James died. Cause of death was fractures to the skull. Later a freight train cut the little corpse in half, the driver thinking that he’d run over a large doll.
After killing the toddler, Robert and Jon went on to the local video shop. They were filthy, and Jon had some of the modelling paint on his jacket, but they acted normally. At ten years old they couldn’t fully comprehend the enormity of what they’d done. They’d been on the railway from approximately 5.30pm to 6.45pm and Susan had been looking for them for much of this time.
She saw the boys entering the video shop and she hurried after them, grabbed Jon by his hair and started hitting him. She grabbed Robert by the wrist – and witnesses said she had him on the floor – and dragged him out of the shop, at which point he started to cry so she let him go. Susan then dragged Jon to the nearby police station for a telling off. The policeman shouted at Jon and he cried some more.
Susan took Jon home and started hitting him again. He fell on the floor but she kept hitting him. His father shouted at him too. Then Susan sent him straight to bed saying that he couldn’t have his evening meal.
Meanwhile, Robert went home and told his mother that Jon’s mother had hit him in the face – so Ann went to the police station to complain about this alleged assault, saying that Susan was an alcoholic. The policeman couldn’t see any mark on Robert’s face so the two Thompsons went home. But it meant that, within hours of James’s death, both juvenile killers were briefly in the police station in a distressed and dishevelled state.
At this stage the toddler was only reported as missing and it was hoped that he’d be found alive. The police were searching the centre’s shops in case he’d fallen asleep in one of them and were also looking for a known paedophile who’d been in The Strand shopping centre that day. They had no reason to suspect two sad-faced, frightened little boys.
The footage taken in the Strand was soon shown on television and a friend of the Venables phoned in to say that it looked like Jon. The abductors were known to have stolen blue paint – and the phone caller said that Jon had had blue paint on his jacket. He was arrested at his mother’s house. When Susan saw the police she thought they’d come to give him an additional telling off for playing truant. The police already knew that Jon had truanted with Robert so Robert was arrested too.
The boys were taken to different police stations and interviewed separately. At first both boys denied being in the shopping centre but by Robert’s second interview he admitted to being there but said that Jon had taken the child.
For his first four interviews, Jon continued to deny going to The Strand. Then the police told him, truthfully, that Robert had admitted they were there. He became hysterical – and journalists who heard the tapes have said they never want to hear a child in such distress again.
Jon was visibly distressed during much of the twelve hours of interviews that spanned three days. Robert cried less often, but his body language showed that he was also very anxious. Robert had been teased for years for ‘acting girlish’ and for sucking his thumb, so he was now trying to act tough.
Having admitted taking the toddler (whom they called ‘the baby’) they said that they’d left him by the canal. But eventually Jon sobbed ‘I did kill him.’ Robert continued to protest his innocence but his shoe print was found on James’s face so it’s clear that he kicked the child.
Jon said that it had been his idea to take the toddler – but that it had been Robert’s idea to kill him. Jon said that he had only thrown stones at James, not bricks like Robert had, but he admitted to stamping on him. Robert said that Jon had hit the child with a metal plate and had kicked him – and James’s blood was indeed found on Jon’s shoes.
At other times it was clear that the gravity of the situation hadn’t registered with the ten-year-olds. They were happy when offered a bar of chocolate or a Chinese takeaway and often asked if they could go home. Their lawyers said that they were more like eight-year-olds than ten-year-olds. Robert was more worried about his mother than about himself, wondering if she could have a glass of water and a headache powder and asking if she could see a nurse.
The police were convinced there was a sexual motive to the crime – and the fact that James had been stripped below the waist does tend to confirm this. Both children found it very difficult to talk about sex.
Yet they were clearly preoccupied with it. When questioned about ‘dirty marks’ (meaning marks made by mud), Robert said ‘Oh, you mean sex marks.’ He said that Jon would lie and say that he, Robert, touched the toddler’s private parts.
Jon also showed increased anxiety when being asked about a possible sexual assault. He suddenly launched himself at his father and started punching him, screaming ‘You think I know, Dad, but I don’t.’
When news of the children’s arrest reached the locals, many of them gathered outside the various houses where they believed the culprits or their families were and threatened to hang them. Completely innocent children were implicated by rumour and had to flee their homes.
When the case went to court, men and women launched themselves at the van shouting ‘Hang the bastards.’ A man would later call a phone in radio programme with the suggestion that the judiciary should have hanged these disturbed ten-year-olds.
Commenting on the situation years later on a television programme, a spokesperson for Consequences (which helps victims’ families) said ‘this lynch mob mentality didn’t really care who they took their anger out on’ and added ‘Britain was disgraced in that time.’ It’s certainly ironic that a crowd, ostensibly horrified by a violent murder, were willing to carry out two violent murders. And other members of the public with the same mindset attacked women in the street after mistaking them for the mothers of the boys.
Aware of the level of hatred, the two children became increasingly anxious. They were sent to secure units, where they had nightmares and Jon soiled himself twice. They were afraid to play outside – and Robert apparently comfort ate – so they each gained over two stone, a third of their original weight. They were terrified of never having any friends, of going to prison. Robert continued to say that Jon was guilty of all the violence – and Jon was too upset to talk about it.
Their childishness showed through their attempts to be grown up. Jon said that he’d like to be a Sylvester Stallone type figure such as Rocky – then added that he’d also like to be Sonic The Hedgehog. Robert, who had sometimes spent all day in the local video shop watching cartoons, admitted that he liked to collect trolls.
Nine months after the murder, Jon and Robert (now aged eleven) were tried at Preston in an adult court. Jon’s lawyer later admitted to being petrified when entering the packed courtroom and said it must have been terrifying for the two boys.
Jon cried frequently and often looked back at his parents, but they kept their heads bowed. Robert looked defiant – but he would later tell his mother that he felt like crying but didn’t want everyone to think that he was a baby. The press misinterpreted this and described him as diabolical, a fiend. Ann was occasionally in court, heavily tranquillised.
Numerous witnesses testified to seeing the two boys with the increasingly tired and occasionally sobbing toddler. Another witness had seen James laughing. It doesn’t seem that the original plan was to kill him as they had taken him into the local pet shop and had spoken to the assistant there. They had also spoken to two other boys they knew, saying that James was Jon’s little brother and that they were taking him home.
Forensic evidence was introduced that proved James’s blood was on Jon’s shoes and that Robert’s shoeprint appeared on the toddler’s face, suggesting a glancing blow rather than a deep, bruising one. The toddler’s lower lip was badly damaged, probably by the batteries. Death had been due to heavy blows to the skull.
There was little doubt that Robert and Jon were the killers so the trial centred around whether they knew it was wrong to take a child from its his mother, injure him and leave him on the railway line. Psychiatrists testified that the boys were of average intelligence and were fit to plead.
The children’s interviews were played over the speakers, their voices high and unbroken. Robert looked upset when he heard Jon say that he, Robert, was girlish. (Robert, who spent much of his time in the secure unit knitting gloves for his baby brother, was happiest spending time in the playground with the girls.)
Attending the trial, author Blake Morrison noted that the court was only interested in the children’s intelligence, not in the mental disturbance both obviously had.
Robert had put a flower on James’s tribute site – and one court observer later said that this ‘wasn’t the normal action of a ten-year-old.’ But Robert wasn’t a normal ten-year-old. He’d been neglected, kicked, punched, tied up, tortured and possibly sexually molested. How much normality could the rational world expect?
After six hours of deliberations the jury came back with unanimous Guilty verdicts for both boys. Jon cried and Robert looked confused. Moments later, out of sight of the many spectators, he would hyperventilate. The judge told them that in his judgement their conduct was ‘both cunning and very wicked’ and that they would be ‘securely detained for very, very many years.’
After the eleven-year-olds had been taken from the court, the judge said that violent videos might have played a part. This came as a surprise to those who’d noted the background of violent parenting, violent siblings and violent school bullies. He wished everyone a peaceful Christmas and thanked Mr and Mrs Venables and Mrs Thompson for trying to get Jon and Robert to tell the truth.
In search of a scapegoat, the tabloids picked up on the judge’s comment about violent videos and had a field day with stories of evil horror films and ‘born bad’ boys.
But other authors – each of whom wrote a book about the case – brought more understanding to the discussion. Mark Thomas quoted a report on reducing delinquency which said ‘poor parental supervision, harsh, neglectful or erratic discipline, parental discord and having a parent with a criminal record’ were the childhood factors ‘consistently and significantly linked to later teenage offending.’
David Jackson wrote that the ‘suggestion that the killing was a freak happening… erodes our personal responsibility for understanding and challenging the individual and social forces that have produced such a numbing event.’
David James Smith was equally aware that children of ten don’t think in the same way as adults do, offering a Rousseau quote which tells that ‘childhood is the sleep of reason.’ He also spoke honestly in a later Despatches television programme about how unhelpful it was to demonise these damaged boys. And Blake Morrison wrote that ‘between the ages of eight and fourteen, most of us do something terrible, performed in a childish, first-time daze.’
Other journalists came forward with their own stories of destructive acts they’d carried out in childhood. One could remember prodding a distressed toddler repeatedly into a lake, egged on by his equally bored friends.
Both boys came from the family backgrounds that make a child most likely to become extremely violent. That is, they had abusive childhoods, had fathers who were absent in Robert’s case and passive in Jon’s case. Both had dominant mothers – and Jon’s mother was also over-protective. Both had seen violence in the home.
Both experienced a fear of abandonment – Jon in particular was shown to be terrified of his mother’s rejection. Both lived in environments that were emotionally chaotic. The final factor is that the mother may come to fear her children – and Ann Thompson had been hit by one of her older sons.
It’s likely that many factors came together on the day that the boys lured little James away from his mother. It seems that the original idea was Jon’s – he’d been so excited at school the day before that his teachers couldn’t get any work out of him. The theft of the batteries and the blue paint (the latter appearing in the Chucky film Child’s Play) suggest he may have had some vague plan – based on childish logic – to have access to his very own Chucky-sized living doll.
Robert was initially less interested in keeping the toddler, and was ready to hand him over to a concerned passerby. But Jon told him to take the child’s hand, and he did. There was clearly a strong folie a deux element to the crime, for Jon admitted later that he did things with Robert that he was too scared to do on his own.
Having taken the toddler to an isolated location, it’s likely that Robert – who appears to have been sexually abused – examined him intimately then felt deeply ashamed of this act.
Author David Jackson would later speculate that the boys, forced to grow up too quickly in a violent macho culture, were ‘splitting off their fearful, baby parts and projecting them onto baby James.’ It’s likely that both boys were jealous of their siblings; Jon’s brother and sister were given extra attention because of their developmental problems. And Robert saw Ann, now sober, caring for her new baby in a way that he couldn’t remember being cared for, given that she’d been a battered wife then a single mother with a drink problem during his formative years.
The public continued to hate the boys, rather than simply hating their murderous actions. Perhaps reacting to this, the judiciary kept increasing their sentence. The trial judge had originally given both boys an eight year sentence but the then Lord Chief Justice increased this to ten years. Later still, the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, increased this to fifteen years but this last increase was quashed by the English judiciary.
For the next eight years, Jon and Robert remained in separate secure units for juvenile offenders. After a year in such a facility, Robert was given a few hours of freedom by being taken on a long supervised walk. As he moved into his teens the staff would sometimes take him into town to buy clothes when he’d outgrown his old ones. These outings are formally known as ‘mobility’ and are a way of preparing the child to re-enter the outside world.
Jon was also taken on supervised outings, sometimes accompanied by his dad. There’s more information available about Robert’s post-trial years because the Despatches team, who produced an investigative report on the boys for Channel Four, were able to talk to a boy who had spent time in the same unit as Robert but they apparently couldn’t find a youth who’d spent time in the unit that housed Jon.
The boys both had regular sessions with psychiatrists to help them come to terms with what they’d done. Though Jon had admitted to the police that he’d killed James, it was another two years before he was able to admit his guilt again. Robert apparently remained in denial for much longer; it was five years before he took responsibility for his earlier actions and showed remorse. Even then, he was only able to talk about the crime when his psychiatrist promised not to write most of it down.
The Lord Chief Justice said that the boys had made remarkable progress – and a visitor to the secure unit said that Robert was now an exceptional young man, very thoughtful and caring. He was also an academic success, having gained five GCSE’s and gone on to take A Levels. Jon had also made exceptional progress. His earlier writing had been semi-literate, but he’d now made great strides in English and Maths. A psychiatrist specialising in children said that ‘for the majority who are amenable to treatment, the outcome is good.’
In December 1999, when the boys were seventeen, the European Court of Human Rights decreed that they’d been denied a fair trial, that – as eleven-year-olds – they shouldn’t have been tried in an adult court with a jury. This wasn’t altogether new thinking: at the time of the trial, many European newspapers had expressed shock that young boys were being tried in such a public way.
The European Court now said that, due to their exceptional youth and distress, the children hadn’t been in a position to instruct their lawyers and mount a fair defence.
There was also an awareness within the juvenile justice system that if the boys weren’t released at age eighteen they would have to be transferred to adult prisons. There they’d return to a life of intimidation and violence, the life they’d known before.
Two disturbed little boys had apparently been rehabilitated to become caring teenagers. If they were imprisoned with hardened adults, they’d very likely become hardened again – and would be a danger to the public when eventually released.
Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, said that ‘because of their behaviour they are entitled to a reduction in the tariff’ and that, subject to a parole board decision, they would be freed early in 2001. They were subsequently released.
Sadly, large sectors of the British public remain antagonistic to these boys. The tabloid press has sometimes fuelled this, printing ‘new facts’ about the death that suggested the brutal crime was even more brutal. The Despatches team investigated these allegations and found them to be lies. An interviewee on the television programme The James Bulger Story explained that ‘in tabloid press terms there is no such thing as rehabilitation,’ and that one bad act made you bad forever in tabloid land.
But occasionally there is a glimmer of understanding, an awareness that you can feel horror and disgust at little James’s death without having to forever hate the ten-year-olds that murdered him. A neighbour, speaking on the Despatches programme, remembered a Robert who was far from the monster the media portrayed him as. She said that she’d like to see him again and added simply ‘I’d talk to Robert, I wouldn’t tell him to go away, cause there’s a reason for everything, isn’t there?’
And David Smith wrote in his introduction to The Sleep Of Reason that ‘Many people… think kids pretend they’ve been beaten to get off the hook. A good slap never did them any harm. Anyone who has seen or experienced the effects of this kind of abuse, or spent time observing and listening to young offenders, will not be so dismissive.’
Gitta Sereny wrote honestly of the case saying that ‘Unhappiness in children is never innate, it is created by the adults they ‘belong to’: there are adults in all classes of society who are immature, confused, inadequate or sick, and, under given and unfortunate circumstances, their children will reflect, reproduce and often pay for the miseries of the adults they need and love.’