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Robert & John Tompson & VeneiblezManiacs
Country:
 Great Britain |
Robert Thompson and Jon Venables: The Child Murderers
A Tragic KidnappingDenise Bulger went shopping one day, taking her two-year-old son James with her. However, she was momentarily distracted and when she turned back to her son, he was gone. The search in the store yielded no results - the little boy seemed to have disappeared.
Worried, Denise rushed to the nearest police station. The fact that forty minutes had passed since the boy went missing raised concerns - it was a significant amount of time, especially considering his young age. It was clear that he had been taken, and possibly kidnapped. Inspector Albert Kirby took charge of the case, ordering photographs of the boy to be distributed throughout the town. He also reviewed the footage from the surveillance cameras installed in the store where James had disappeared. In the video, he found what he was looking for - the boy was seen walking among the busy shoppers. A twelve-year-old boy approached him, took his hand, and they headed towards the store exit together.
Inspector Kirby concluded that the boy in the video was not James, but another child with his brother. However, when he showed the footage to James' mother, she positively identified him as her son. She believed that children had taken him and that they might have wanted to play with him or were playing a prank.
The inspector didn't want to crush the mother's hope, but he privately thought that the children might have given the boy to an adult or had taken him from the store at someone's request. In these cases, the worst should be expected - too much time had passed and there were no leads. An announcement was made on the radio about the missing child, and people started coming to the police station, claiming to have seen James on the street with two teenagers. However, none of the witnesses bothered to ask where the children were going or why, even though their behavior attracted attention as they forcefully dragged a crying and resisting little boy.
Thanks to numerous witness accounts, the detective managed to determine the approximate route the teenagers took with the child. They were heading towards the outskirts of Liverpool, where over one hundred and fifty police officers were deployed. The search turned out to be futile, and it was only towards the end of the second day that two policemen, walking along the railway track, noticed what initially seemed like a large broken doll. Coming closer, they discovered the horrifying truth - it was James, or rather, what was left of him after being hit by a train.
A forensic examination determined that before the body was hit by the train, the child had been beaten to death with stones and an iron rod (these murder weapons, stained with blood, were found nearby on the railway embankment). The boy's face bore the imprint of a strong blow from a man's boot heel.
The kidnappers of two-year-old James were soon found. They turned out to be ten-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The teenagers were immediately arrested and questioned by investigators, including psychologist Britton. In a short time, the investigators had no doubts that they had kidnapped the child, but when it came to the murder, there was still uncertainty. The main suspects vehemently denied it.
Even the experienced police officers couldn't fathom how ten-year-old boys could commit such a heinous murder with deliberate intent. They were aware of their delinquency, as petty thieves and troublemakers at school, but to kill a child...
As the investigation progressed, more interesting details about the suspects' lifestyle emerged. The boys were often bored, wandering the streets of the outskirts of Liverpool, getting into fights, watching horror movies at video stores, and playing computer games. They only saw a fun and exciting life on the screen - gangsters, shootings, desperate fights, and adventures. They probably got the idea to create their own gang and live the lives of their favorite movie characters. They invited some of their classmates to join their gang, but they were scared and refused when they heard that the "gangsters" planned to "kill someone."
Of course, it cannot be claimed that they were consciously preparing to commit murder. Perhaps it was just a childish bravado, an attempt to appear cool in the eyes of their classmates. Or maybe it was more than that. When the results of the examination of the suspects' clothing, which revealed traces of James' blood, were revealed, there were no more doubts about their involvement in the murder. It was also discovered that the imprint from the heel on the victim's face perfectly matched a boot belonging to Robert Thompson.
Although the suspects continued to deny their guilt throughout the investigation and trial, the case was ultimately sent to the Royal Court. England had not seen such a trial in the last 250 years. According to English law, the names of juvenile offenders are not disclosed until they receive their final sentence, so for eight months from the day of James' disappearance until the verdict, they were referred to in court as Boy A and Boy B.
Under these pseudonyms, the child murderers were known and despised by the entire country, while their families and close relatives, who, of course, knew their real names, had to leave their homes and hide from public rage and the real threat of revenge.
The trial lasted seventeen days, during which the jury, presided over by Judge Morland, meticulously examined all the circumstances of the sadistic murder of the child. The court was interested in every detail concerning the killers: not only the details of the kidnapping and the murder technique of James, but also the life circumstances that led Robert and Jon to the defendant's bench.
Particular attention was given to the content of the movies that the future murderers watched on television, in theaters, and at video stores. The film "Child's Play 3" was mentioned most frequently during the investigation and trial. Its plot involved a doll named Chucky, in which an evil spirit inhabited, causing death, chaos, and destruction. In the end, the brave boys - the heroes of the film - managed to defeat the evil. After a long chase, they caught up with the doll and smashed its head to pieces.
The resemblance between the movie plot and the real-life murder was impossible to overlook. The screenplay seemed eerily similar to what the killers did to little James on the railway embankment on the outskirts of Liverpool. The on-screen life had crossed over into reality, bringing death with it. It was soon discovered that Neil Venables, who was still living with his family at the time, had rented the cassette of this film and brought it home. It was likely that the boys saw it then and remembered the storyline, using it for their sadistic games.
Throughout the trial, the suspects and psychologists were unable to explain why they brutally beat and killed the innocent child. Moreover, both Robert and Jon refused to tell investigators and the court what actually happened on the embankment, insisting that they had only hit James with tiny, "just tiny" stones. Emotionlessly, they described how the dying child called out for his mother as they struck him. He just called and called...
The child murderers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were placed in special "secure units" - single cells during the investigation, trial, and after the verdict. They were provided with good conditions - they could watch television, read books, play with toys, and Jon even had his favorite video game console in his cell.
As for the verdict of the Royal Court, which thoroughly examined all the circumstances of the case, it was severe. Judge Morland announced that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables would be kept in custody for "a very, very long time" until they completely changed and no longer posed a danger to society.
Source: The Most Dangerous Serial Killers
