On the 12th of February 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson separated 2-year-old James Bulger from his mother and led him to his death. Both just 10 years old, they were the youngest killers the UK had seen in 250 years. Next Monday marks the 25th anniversary of James’ death. Journalist David James Smith researched the case, resulting in the book The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case. A new edition of the book is being released to mark the anniversary of the crime. He joined Damien O’Reilly on the Today programme.
Damien expressed his surprise at the number of interactions the boys had had with locals before James’ death. David called it a “long, meandering journey”.
“There were very many witnesses on this quite long route…They didn’t take him directly to kill him. A number of those people obviously recognised that something might be wrong. I think James Bulger had been dropped, had a graze, an injury and people asked what was the problem. And one or other of the boys – and I think mostly it was Jon Venables – would speak up and tell a convenient lie.”
When the police identified Venables and Thompson as the perpetrators, they were tried in an adult court. David described the first time he saw the boys in court.
“There’s no excusing or escaping the terrible crime they committed…but I think sometimes people lose sight of the fact that they were so little themselves. It was quite shocking for me going up to see them in court for the first time…they were sitting on chairs and their legs were dangling from the seats because they couldn't reach the ground.”
While David stressed that “it’s impossible to be exactly sure what it was that led them to commit this crime” and that he’s “not sure that they would be capable of explaining it themselves”, he does believe that their childhood may have had an impact on their behaviour.
“The best explanation that I think I’ve read was by a psychologist, a very eminent psychologist, who examined Robert Thompson at the time of his release in 2001. And he described it in terms of Lord of the Flies, the famous book about children who become feral and uncivilised, as it were. And he implies that this is what happened to these two boys. And that in the end, they were trapped with this child. They’d taken him and they didn’t know what to do with him and he was a source of fear and anxiety. And the destruction of James Bulger was what needed to happen for them.“
Since the pair’s release, Jon Venables has been imprisoned twice for possessing images of child abuse. An outcome, David says, that surprised those who had worked with Jon in prison.
“He was seen to have made great progress. He was perceived to be somebody who was fully rehabilitated…Very eminent experts were saying that he was no risk to the public. And the very opposite turned out to be true.”
As for the fate of Robert Thompson?
“He came out [of prison] in 2001 and we haven't heard a word from him since.”
Listen back to the whole segment on the James Bulger case here.
CCTV photography courtesy of Getty and BWP Media.