Phil Roberts had only started again yesterday, but his cigarette intake was soaring rapidly. Already it looked like being a two-pack day. They were hard work, these interviews.
Like Michelle Bennett, Phil Roberts had interviewed in several child abuse cases. Kids were much more difficult to deal with than adults. Their imagination was brilliant and they were the best liars in the world. You only had to think back to your own childhood, to the things you’d got away with.
Roberts thought Bobby was a crafty little lad, but his shuffling feet were a giveaway, and the false crying, the crying without tears, was transparent.
From the beginning, Roberts had tried to develop a rapport with Bobby. Close up in the chair, bent forward, trying to provoke a smile with the odd light remark, touching Bobby on the knee occasionally … it was totally false but it created the right mood.
There was no room now to think about James Bulger, or react in horror to Bobby’s disclosures. That, you could never do. What was required now was tunnel vision, thinking down a straight line, to the truth of what had happened.
It was now two fifteen, and Bobby’s sixth interview began with his suggestion that Jon might have taken the batteries for his Game Gear. He might have taken them and they fell out of his pocket. What, on the railway line? Wherever you found them. Well, the batteries were scattered, they weren’t found together. It was unlikely that they had fallen from Jon’s pocket.
Phil Roberts says that, just like the paint, he thinks Bobby knows more about the batteries. Bobby fences. Okay, then I’ll say that he took them. No, no, they don’t want that. They want the truth.
Bobby repeats his story that he ran off from the railway after the paint was thrown. He will not be budged from this. The officers say that if baby James was bleeding and his blood is found on Jon or Bobby’s clothes then it means they were there when baby James was bleeding. Bobby asks how they know it’s baby James’s blood. Jacobs says they know what baby James’s blood is because they’ve got the body. Where? Well, it doesn’t matter where, Bobby. It’s probably been to the hospital first. What for? To take blood out of his arm like they’ve done to yours. They’ve taken him to try and get him alive again? No, says Ann. Bobby says, yeah, well, I was told he got chopped in half. Well, he couldn’t come alive again, could he, if he’s got chopped in half?
Bobby says the blood might have been his because he was bleeding from a cut. He demonstrates how he scratched the cut on his face. Jacobs says he couldn’t do that with his shoe, and the blood’s been found on his shoe. Bobby begins crying. I never murdered him. Youse are just trying to say that I murdered him. What happened that afternoon? Come on, Bobby.
We left him there. Why aren’t you doing it to Jon? Jon has got the same. Ask Jon, I never touched him. We will be asking Jon. How can you be asking Jon if you’re here?
Jacobs goes through the sequence of events Bobby has described to them. Jon held his hand, Jon took him from the Strand, Jon took him up to the reservoir, threw the hood into the tree, threw the paint. Now, says Jacobs, they don’t know, it might be Jon that’s done all this stuff. Yeah, well, why would I want to hurt a little boy? Well, we don’t know.
Bobby is crying again. He says Jon might have kicked James in sly. How? He doesn’t know. They go back over the story again, pointing out that Bobby had at first denied things and then admitted them. Roberts says he was right about those things, and he’s right about this as well. Yeah, well, I never killed him. Who did then? Well, not me.
Bobby is sobbing now. They ask if he wants to stop.
Ann. It will be all over in a few minutes if you just tell them the truth.
Bobby. Jon threw a brick in his face.
Ann. Why?
Bobby. I don’t know.
Roberts. Right, try and stop. Right let’s, we’ve got, we’re getting there aren’t we. We’re getting to the truth now.
Bobby. Yeah, well, I’m going to end up getting all the blame ’cos I’ve got blood on me.
Bobby repeats that Jon threw the brick. James just fell on the floor. Then Bobby left the railway, he got down the lamppost at the edge by the big white house. They got down the lamp-post. He is asked again, and repeats the story. Roberts says something else happened. Bobby says Jon was on the railway and he was down the lamp-post. Ann asks what the baby was doing. Bobby says he was on the floor crying. Awake or asleep? What do you mean? Was he like asleep, or … He was awake.
Roberts asks Bobby why he didn’t try to stop Jon. Bobby did. He tried to pull Jon back, but he just threw it. He was standing right in front of James, with Bobby just behind him. When the brick hit James his face started bleeding. He wasn’t screaming, he was crying. He fell onto the floor and blood was just pouring everywhere. Bobby demonstrates how James fell to his knees, and fell face forward. He was fully clothed.
Ann has begun crying, and Phil Roberts suggests a break from the interview. He says Bobby hasn’t told them the full truth, he’s blaming everything on Jon. I’m not. You are. ’Cos I took things to eat. We’re not bothered about stealing Bobby, we never have been. You know that. We want the whole truth.
They press Bobby, who insists that he has told the truth. He never touched the baby. He went down the lamp-post.
Bobby begins crying. I never touched him. I never touched him. That’s all I seen. No it isn’t. It is. We already know about things that happened and it doesn’t explain a lot of things. And were you there like, and seen me? No. Well, that’s what youse are trying to say.
The officers try to explain the basics of post-mortem examinations to Bobby. A clever man, a pathologist, looks at every part of the body and can see where it’s been hurt. Bobby says why would I take flowers over to the baby if I killed him. I know the truth, says Roberts. So do I, says Bobby, I was there, you weren’t. He begins crying again. Yeah, well, it’s all our family, it’s always our family that gets the blame. Your family might have been blamed in the past … but on this occasion we’re right though, aren’t we? No, ’cos I never touched him.
Jacobs. Well, tell us what happened, then.
Bobby. He threw another brick.
Jacobs. And where did that hit him?
Bobby. (pointing to his body) On there.
Jacobs. On the chest?
Bobby. On the belly.
Jacobs. What kind of brick was that?
Bobby. A half one.
Jacobs. And what happened then?
Bobby. And then he hit him again.
Jacobs. What with?
Bobby. There was like a big metal thing that had holes in.
Jacobs. A big metal thing with holes in, where was that?
Bobby. When it hit him?
Jacobs. No, where was it, where did he pick it up from?
Bobby. Off the … you know, where the railway track’s like that.
Jacobs. Yeah.
Bobby. In the middle of them.
Where did he hit him with that? In the head. Now which part of the head? Up there. On the top of the head, what did that do to him, to James? Knocked him out. Did it? What happened then? And then he hit him again.
The buzzer sounds.
What with? A stick, and then he threw that. A stick? And you threw that? No, he threw it. Where did he throw it? You know, the nettles. Yeah. By where he’s found. Yeah. He threw them into there. Where, where did he hit him with the stick? In the face. In the face, whereabout in the face? I don’t know where, he just went like that and hit him. The tape finishes, the interview ends.
They change the tape in two minutes, go through the caution again, and continue. Ann is crying. It’s three o’clock.
Bobby says the stick was a little branch off a tree, lying on the floor. James was knocked out. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were open. Might he have been dead? Bobby doesn’t know. They went then, and left him there. He thinks James was lying on his back, over the railway track.
The batteries? Jon might’ve took them for his Game Gear. Did he have some batteries with him? Who? Jon. Yeah, he took them out and threw them. He threw one at James’s face and threw the others away.
The officers go over the sequence of events again. Bobby describes how Jon threw the metal bar on to the top of James’s head. And then they went. They went to the video shop. Bobby tried to see if the baby was still alive, and he wouldn’t move. He was trying to see if he could still breathe. I’ve got me ear against his belly and he wasn’t breathing.
Roberts. And you didn’t say anything to Jon?
Bobby. Who?
Roberts. You.
Bobby. No, only in the video shop I did.
Roberts. What did you say to him in the …
Bobby. I asked him, is he coming up, to do the message.
Roberts. Is that when you spoke to him?
Bobby. Yeah.
Jacobs. Why did, why did he do all this, why did Jon do all this?
Bobby. I don’t know. That is what I don’t know.
Roberts. You say you didn’t do anything at all?
Bobby. I only pinched.
They again say they’re not bothered about Bobby stealing. He says it’s on the tape, it’ll get brought up another day. No, it doesn’t matter.
Phil Roberts says he doesn’t think Jon’s done everything. Bobby says yeah, well, I never. Roberts thinks Bobby hit him. Well, that’s what you think. Roberts says there’s only one person here that knows the whole truth. No, I’ve just said all the truth, says Bobby.
They finish the seventh interview at ten past three.
Ann is in shock now, disturbed and terrified by what is happening. She says she cannot sit in on any further interviews. She barely knows what’s going on around her. Later that day, she is in the bridewell when a uniformed officer passes through. Ann hears him whistling the death march. It might be a deliberate wind-up, it might not. She mentions it to Jason Lee, who mentions it to the interviewing team. The whistler does not reappear.
Bobby seems more concerned about his mum’s welfare than anything else. He asks the policeman, excuse me, can you get me mum a glass of water so she can have a Beecham’s Powder? Excuse me, can me mum have a cup of coffee? Can you get me mum a doctor ’cause she’s not well? There was talk of getting a psychiatrist to see Ann. She said it wasn’t her that needed a shrink, it was Bobby and Jon. She just couldn’t take it all in.
Later, when she regained her senses, she asked Bobby, why the fuckin’ hell didn’t you do something, why didn’t you go and tell someone? How could you stand there and …? Bobby said, but I tried to get him off, he just kept hittin’ him and hittin’ him and hittin’ him and I couldn’t do nuttin’ about it.
Ann said, well how could you take a bloody flower over? Bobby said, ’cause then baby James knows I tried to help him up there and I’m thinking of him now.
Bobby asks his mum, if you die before me dad, will you come back and haunt him? Too friggin’ right I will, said Ann, I’ll bleedin’ haunt him every day. Bobby said, yeah, but that’s because he’s hurt you, but if he hadn’t’ve hurt you and you died, you wouldn’t come back and haunt him then, would you? Ann said, well, no, I’d have no cause to, would I? She thought it was a funny question for Bobby to ask.
*
In the Lower Lane interview room, Michelle Bennett and Dave Tanner told Susan that, after listening to Jon’s last interview they both felt that he wanted to talk about the incident, but was inhibited by the way she consoled him. He didn’t want to upset her. Susan realised that because she didn’t think Jon was involved, she might have been making it more difficult for him to talk.
The officers said she would have to be strong, and reassure Jon that his parents loved him and that he could say anything to them. If Jon did know anything about the killing of James Bulger he might be able to talk if he felt safe and secure that his parents would always love him.
Susan spoke to Neil for a while and, at three o’clock, they went to see Jon in the detention room. As they went in, they called Dave Tanner to join them, and he stood by the door.
Jon’s mother and father sat either side of him on the bench. They put their arms around him, and said they would always be there for him. They loved him very much, and wanted him to tell the truth, no matter what it was. They weren’t going to tell him off. They would understand.
Jon became upset and was crying. He climbed into his mother’s lap, and she cradled him like a baby, hugging him close. Through his tears he said that he wanted to tell. ‘I did kill him,’ Jon said.
They were all very distressed. After a while Jon turned to Dave Tanner. ‘What about his mum, will you tell her I’m sorry?’
Jon said he had been going to give himself up and, as Mark Dale came in, he added, ‘Can I tell you about Robert trying to get another lad away?’
The officers waited a while before returning to the interviews. Susan said she could not go back in, and Neil said he would replace her. Dave Tanner called Jim Fitzsimmons at Marsh Lane to tell him what had happened.
Jim put the phone down and turned to Geoff MacDonald across the desk. ‘He’s coughed it. Yeah. He’s having it.’ They went up the corridor to tell Albert Kirby. Jon’s admission was the breakthrough they had been waiting for. No cough, no job.
Later, Jim spoke to Michelle Bennett. If Susan was not going to be in on the interviews, he did not want an all male environment. Now he wanted Michelle to go in. She said that, from listening, Mark Dale and George Scott had built up a good relationship with Jon, and it would be wrong to break the bond. But Jim is sure he’s right. He doesn’t want all men. He just doesn’t want it, but they’re telling him it would be wrong to break up the partnership. Okay, he says, leave it as it is. Stick with it. Decisive bastard aren’t I, thinks Jim.
Jon’s sixth interview begins at four o’clock, with Mark Dale saying that he knows it took a lot of doing, Jon making his admission, and he knows Jon was upset, as they all were. He asks Jon to tell them exactly what he did that day, from the beginning.
Jon describes going to the Strand with Robert, and says that Robert got three tins of paint from Toymaster, by putting them under his sleeve. Then this other kid came up, and Robert says let’s get this kid lost. They walked him through TJ Hughes, Robert going, come on mate, and then his mum came up behind them and got him. Why did Robert want the little boy to follow him? I know, he said let’s get him lost outside so when he goes into the road he’ll get knocked over. What did Jon say to that? I said it’s a very bad thing to do, isn’t it.
They found James outside the butchers. They both saw him, and it was Jon’s idea to walk towards him, but it was Robert’s idea to kill him. Jon said to Robert is that boy lost or something? Robert walked up to him, and they were walking round, and Jon took his hand. They were looking for his mum for a bit, then they got fed up and went outside to the canal. The boy couldn’t talk at all, he was just going I want my mummy, all the time.
Robert said, lets throw him in the water. Jon said if you wanna, like. He was only going to throw him in the shallow thingy. Robert was persuading him saying kneel down and let’s look at the water and all that, but he wouldn’t. Robert picked him up and threw him on the floor, and that’s where he got the bump on his head.
Neil goes to take a sip of the drink Jon has with him in the interview. That’s mine, says Jon. Well, let your dad have a drink, says Dale, I think he might just need one.
Jon describes how Robert picked James up, under his arms, lifted him up to about head or chest height, ’cos he was heavy, Robert said, and slammed him down on the floor. He landed on his head. Was he crying then? Yeah. I should imagine he would be.
They ran away from him, but came back, and he was already walking up. Jon doesn’t know why they went back. Just to walk around with him.
Jon goes through the walk they took, remembering the three girls laughing, to the reservoir where the woman spotted them. James was all right then. They were taking him to Walton Village. Why? I don’t know, we didn’t know what to do until we were walking through, I took his hood off and threw it up in the tree. Hang on. Jon’s jumping the gun a bit there.
They cut through from Bedford Road to County Road, and along Church Road West. They didn’t talk to anyone by the Breeze Hill flyover. They didn’t go that way. They climbed on a wall by the entry to get on to the railway.
Jon’s getting upset now. He can’t tell them anything else. Why? ’Cos that’s the worst bit. Okay, right, now let me tell you, I know that’s the worst bit but you know what you did and you know if you try hard you’ll be able to tell us. What you need is to have a little rest, think about it, and just tell us what happened.
Jon. We took him on the railway and started throwing bricks at him.
Dale. Who did?
Jon. Robert, he just said, he said, just stand there and we’ll get you a plaster or something.
Dale. Why did he throw bricks at him?
Jon. I don’t know.
Dale. What else did he do, apart from throwing bricks?
Jon. Threw the big pole at him.
Lee. What’s that?
Dale. Threw a big pole at him, is that what you said?
Jon. That knocked him out.
Dale. What was the pole made of?
Jon. Steel.
Dale. Like a bar?
Jon. Yeah, off the track
Dale. Where did the stick, where did the stones and bar hit him?
Jon. In the head.
Dale. And you say the bar knocked him out?
Jon. Yeah, on to the railway track.
Dale. And then, and what happened then?
Jon. He was just lying there.
Dale. Okay, keep going.
That’s what happened. We just ran to Walton Village into the video shop and she, then she told us I’ll give you a pound if you do this and we did and that’s when my mum caught me and we went to the police station. I went home then.
When they left him, James was lying on the track, bleeding all over, from his face.
Is it finished now? ’Cos I can’t speak any more. Do you want a little break, do you want to have a little drink? No, I’ve said all that’s, I’ve said it now. Okay, if you don’t want to say any more. No, I don’t. No. You don’t have to.
Scott says can he just ask something about the paint. Jon says the second one went on him and the third one on the train track. And all those things that happened to James, they were all done by Robert? Some from me. Tell me what you did? Just threw two bricks at him, that’s all I done ’cos I wouldn’t throw anything big at him. How big were the bricks you threw? Only teeny, little stones. Where did they hit him? On the arms, I wouldn’t hit him in the head.
The stones that Robert threw were like a building brick. Jon didn’t want to throw anything at him. Why did he throw those stones at James? I only threw three or five, they were only dead little ones though, the white ones. He doesn’t know what harm they did and he doesn’t think he did anything else.
Jon thinks it was quite a long time after the stones that James was hit with the iron bar. He thinks it was only one hit. Jon was saying stop it, stop it, like that. He said, let’s go now.
Dale. I shouldn’t really have to ask you this, but what do you think of those things?
Jon. They’re terrible. I was thinking about it, all the time.
Lawrence Lee says as soon as you want this stopping, Neil, you say so. Okay, terminate it, says Neil.
Later that evening, the two boys had to make their first appearance in court, so that the police could request a further detention. They were taken to South Sefton Magistrates Court in Bootle, just around the corner from the Strand. Albert Kirby made the application, which was granted. Lawrence Lee stood to thank the police for their delicate handling of the case.
Seeing the boys for the first time, Albert Kirby and Jim Fitzsimmons were astounded by their size. They had been told the boys were short, of course, but had not expected them to be this small. The two officers watched the two children and wondered.
In the court Bobby and Jon did not once look at each other. Afterwards, they were led to the secure car park at the back of the court to be driven to their respective police stations. Jon was already inside his unmarked car, and Bobby was just walking past. They turned and caught each other’s eye. They both smirked. A look which some of the officers who saw it interpreted as an evil smile.