fun to be with" and always had plenty of friends. A video still of James Bulger, aged 2 years old, being led away in the 'New Strand' shopping centre. And there were rewards for breaking rules. Still, despite being clearly intimidated by him, Roberts brother appeared to share a strangely intimate bond with him. They passed 36 people, with one recalling how they urged the boys to take their 'little brother' home because he was 'crying for his mummy'. Then between 1990 and 1991, Jons teachers recognized a dramatic change in the boys behavior, which was alarming enough for one of his teachers to begin keeping a daily log. Not their punishmentand exclusion from society for the rest of their childhood. They saw it with their eyes. Tweet. Susan Venables's bent body shrank deeper into itself. What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget. Not for long though. has prompted a public outcry for an investigation into issues surrounding the case. They looked, moved, fidgeted, scratched, cried - even sucked their thumbs - just like any 11-year-olds. But he liked collecting trolls, little doll-like creatures with ugly faces and spiky fluorescent hair. IN A letter to her son written soon after he was sentenced, Ann Thompson wrote: no matter what you did or didnt do, Im your mother and I will stay with you no matter what happens.. By then, Robert and Jon had abducted James Bulger from the Strand and attempted to drown him in the nearby canal. James Bulger would now be weeks away from his 23rd birthday. Susan seemed happy with the arrangement, although, for the children, this type of relationship would have been just one more confusing anomaly to cope with in the wake of an already confusing time in their young lives. If it suited his moodwhich it frequently didBobby would beat the boys, curse at them, and threaten to send them to a home for children who misbehaved. Keep them apart or he'll get into trouble, they said. The taunts upset Jons already volatile temper, and he began coming home in increasingly low spirits and crying. "You look at him and you say to yourself, 'How could you be involved in anything like this?'" Half way through the 1992-1993 school year, Robert had already racked up nearly 50 unauthorized absences, and was falling significantly behind in his schoolwork. fn ye vw la. S. Susan venables. The most startling moment of the trial came when, in lieu of giving evidence in person, the boys' taped interviews with police - recorded just after their arrest - were played in court. The Crown Prosecution Service released a statement in January confirming Venables had been charged. his mother was told that it was important that she stayed in his life and stood by him. So he came home. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? They played a double act towards the children: his mother, Susan, aged 36, a sharp woman with a hawkish look, was the hard one. A pathologist later said that there were so many injuries - 42 in total - that not one could be isolated as causing the little boy's fatal wound. Susan Venables, now 53, suffered from severe depres-sion and struggled with her two other children, an older son and younger daughter, who suffered learning difficulties. He started with Liverpool, but by the time of the murder he had switched to Blackburn Rovers. as he was known in court - Jon Venables. Lock him in it.'. Verdict day came. There is, like, a little paint factory. "I think my son's concentration wasn't the way it should have been, but he wasn't slow. They were in the Strand shopping centre in Bootle when the brother wandered off. He would go to bed. So, when he first began his association with classmate Jon Venables, in September 1992, Robert was happy to have finally befriended a boy like Jon, who could almost always be persuaded to follow in his lead. She initially enrolled the two younger children in Broad Square Elementary, but it soon became clear that her daughter was struggling to keep up with the schools curriculum. I just heard an almighty screech. Truanting, or 'sagging off', had become a way of life for Robert. "All he said when we've said 'Why didn't you run away?' Hes your son., Unhappily, it was during this critical time that Ann became pregnant with her seventh child, the product of another failed relationship. By now the Venables were reunited as a result of the court case. "Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, [Thompson and Venables] were tried in an adult court. According to the teacher, Jon would rock back and forth in his desk, making strange noises (this behavior was later speculated to be Jons jealous attempt to emulate his elder brother, in order to receive the same special attention), bang his head on the desk or walls repeatedly, glue bits of paper all over his face, wedge himself in between desks, throw himself on the ground, throw chairs across the corridor, rip projects off the classroom walls, cut holes in his socks, and intentionally cut himself with scissors. 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. What happened to James Bulger? everyone blamed Thompson and. He denied having had any films that were not mainstream, or that were pornographic, in the house. The family was put up in a hostel temporarily and later relocated by the social services. If I wanted to kill a baby, Id kill Id kill me own, wouldnt I?. Moments later, we were told, Jon Venables uttered the words, We did it. The right will draw attention to the broken homes, the single parents, the persistent truancy. He would throw things at other children, cut himself deliberately with scissors and stick paper all over his face. UK news in pictures 15 February 2023. Fiction Writing. We feel so sorry for him because he must be going through so much torment. Kids fantasise about such things. On Monday night's documentary, Robert Thompson's solicitor Dominic Lloyd said: "Many years after the trial a juror said 'we found them guilty of murder but we didn't have the option to find them guilty of being two very bewildered and frightened little boys who made an awful mistake and need a lot of help'.". She was a woman as large in personality and physique as the burdens she carried. The guilty verdicts came quickly - within five hours. however, as the incident in the playground shows, the ever-present threat of discovery cast a constant shadow over anyone related to the two murderers. 'I can't read hard words,' he said. Meanwhile, Thompson has not re-offended since his release, and is believed to be in a long-term relationship with a man who knows who he really is. The couple, who are living together again after a partial separation, said their feelings towards Jon had not changed despite the terrible crime. I wonder how many parents looked at their sons of a similar age that week, sure in the knowledge their own children could never be so wicked, but asked themselves anyway "what would I do if?". When the court was played Jon's taped descriptions of how they had truanted they simultaneously smiled. He had been stripped from the waist down,. The attitude when you live where we live is that you have to be tough or else you dont survive, she said. Take him home, the officer would say to her. View the profiles of people named Susan Venables. The fathers of both Robert and Jon were without work. Lawyers for the pair argued that the adult court venue and publicity made it impossible for the schoolboys to be given a fair trial. He was jailed for two years before being granted parole again in July 2013. For his parents, the fact they were children was actually a cause for hope at that point. But viewers were shocked when experts "defended" the 10-year-old murderers saying they made "an awful mistake". Last November he was arrested and recalled to jail on suspicion of possession of images of child sex abuse. The breaking point came when Jon was suspended from Broad Square after attempting to choke a classmate with a twelve-inch wooden ruler. rk ye. Robert always wanted to stay out late and encouraged Jon to join him. "We are committed to driving sustainability in the leather industry, through the commitment of. Once he stole decorating borders from a DIY shop which he discarded at regular intervals to mark his way home. But just as he was entering the school gates he met Jon and they decided to sag off together for the fourth - and final - time. 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. Who knows. 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. "He is easily led. The couple was financially strained from the start, but Ann did what she could to make it work. 'We have never really been apart,' Mrs Venables said. "Just TV programmes and little things remind me of the good times we had together . On the walls hung oil paintings of local judges and magistrates, their surfaces crinkled with age. Neil explained to him that the school they attended was special, and that Jon wouldnt be accepted. "One mystery surrounding the murder of James Bulger case is why the 'experts' insisted that Jon Venables was rehabilitated. . His mother called him hyperactive since, even more than his friend, he was scarcely able to sit still. When she turned around moments later, her son was gone. There was almost total silence there apart from the sound of shoes on the ground. In contrast he has had no contact with his father despite an approach soon after sentencing. He said he was frightened of Robert's older brother. Yet, even while Susan admitted to being under huge emotional strain on a daily basis, the couple later denied that her constant hysterics would have encroached on Jon in any way, considering he was still in infancy at the time. At the trialnine months laterI would learn that Robert Thompson had been among those people. Jon Venables said the class teacher tried to entice Robert by offering him a prize for a week's continual attendance - he did, but the prize never came. See today's front and back pages, download the newspaper, order back issues and use the historic Daily Express newspaper archive. NEIL Venables was warned by friends not to let his son play with the other boy. Mrs Thompson worked as an office cleaner until two years ago, when she got pregnant again by another man, who also left her. In Crosbies corner shop Ian, the next oldest to Robert, was able to tot up the shopping in his mind before the cash register rang up the total. It is here, of course, that Jon met and made friends with fellow eccentric, Robert Thompson. Venables, who was said to have been subjected to regular beatings by his mother Susan, titled the drawing 'My Dads house'. ', They sagged off in the afternoon and walked around the shops in County Road, near Walton. We have found 88 people in the UK with the name Susan Venables. And now The Bulger Killers: Was Justice Done? After a while he tried to commit suicide to get back in. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Parents of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson talk about their sons, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Ironically, Jon was the child who caused his parents least anxiety. The case is doomed to be picked over by every faction within the caring professionals and politics. Neither gave evidence to the court, but were found guilty after an officer told how Venables admitted the murder, saying, "We did it. 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. They fled the city, never to return. The couples first child, a son, had been born with a cleft pallet, and when Jon was born, much of the Venables focus was on getting their eldest son into speech therapy. . A police officer remembered Venables being so small that his legs didn't touch the floor as he sat in the custody office after his arrest. "He tends to be a bit hyperactive so his concentration did go a bit, but apart from that he is quite bright, no worries.". Mrs Venables walked around the area for hours, searching for him. Her husband came back to Walton now and again to see his mother, but he never came to see the boys. I remember watching her then on TV, her sobbing plea for information and thinking how much guts it must have taken to get up that day and face a roomful of journalists and photographers. In any case, the couple drifted together, and in 1983, just fifteen months succeeding Jons birth, Susan gave birth to their third child, a daughter. Our feelings haven't changed towards him. so they were put in a lower year. The abduction and brutal murder of this two-year-old by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who were just 10 at the time, prompted a conversation in Britain that we are still having today. But I still kept him in if he was naughty or anything like that.'. Boy A - Robert Thompson - was the shorter and more rounded of the two. JON Venables's family was far from affluent, but it was not as close to the breadline as Robert's. ", Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. "The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 that's too low.