All language subtitles for Lost.Boy.Killing.of.James.Bulger.S01E01

HE SIGHS

There's the charge sheet
from 20th February.

Can I read the charges?
Yeah, yeah.

"On 12th February 1993,

"Bootle,
in the county of Merseyside,

"you unlawfully took or carried away
James Patrick Bulger

"against his will.

"On 12th February 1993, at Walton
in the county of Merseyside...

"murdered
James Patrick Bulger."

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If you've got me baby,
just bring him back.

If I'd have turned left,

I'd have got James back.

The idea that it could be done
by juveniles, or even children,

was...

You know, it was off the scale.

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This could be any child, you know,
it could have happened to anybody.

I rememberjust feeling sick
to the pit of my stomach.

I thought, oh, please God,
this can't be true.

I'm Michael Fergus, James's brother.

We shouldn't be looking at him
on the news

about a kid being murdered,
he should have been here with us.

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We have a spare chair
around the Christmas table,

it's always been empty.

I shouldn't have let go of his hand.

It is hard for me to say, but...

it's the truth.

I shouldn't have let go.

I've always lived in Liverpool.

I think it's a great city.

Basically we're like one big family,

you know,
we all look out for each other.

You know, it's just...
It's just an amazing place to be.

Even back in the '905
it was the same.

BARKING

Where I lived, in...

Well, everyone knows Kirkby,
I think.

Not far from my mum, I'd say
a two-minute walk from my mum's.

The area was really nice,
nice area to live,

people obviously were friendly.

Nice little flat.

Wasn't big, but, you know,
that's the way I wanted.

I had my little family in there.

Always wanted to be a mum.

Coming from a big family,
I was one of the babysitters anyway,

so I was always minding
one of the kids,

which I always loved doing.

Always loved being around kids.

I couldn't wish for anything
better at that point.

James was loved by all.

But as he started
taking more and more steps,

he didn't then walk into a room,
he'd run into a room.

You knew when James was here
because all's you'd see

was the blonde, bouncy hair running
as he ran past you.

He wouldn't leave my side, really.

No matter where I sat,
where we were all at me mum's,

no matter where I sat,
James was always on my knee.

He loved to make people laugh.

He was a little character.

It was a really cold morning.

I did put a big, thick coat on him.

His hat, his gloves,
scarf, everything.

A girlfriend of me other brother
comes walking in.

She says, I'm going to
Bootle Strand, do you want to come?

Said, I won't be long,
I'm just taking something back.

I went, yeah, I'll come with you.

The buggy is in the hallway.

That's the only time
I left that buggy.

I never left that buggy anywhere.

Whether I folded it up and carried
it under my arm,

I never left that buggy anywhere.

That was the only day I left it.

That was the biggest mistake
of my life.

The Strand shopping centre
in Bootle

is probably the only shopping centre
in Bootle, actually.

It's been there since 1966 I think,

and it was beginning
to show its age a bit,

in terms of the exterior, and some
of the shops are a bit run-down.

I was actually the beat officer
for The Strand for about a year

so I got to know all the shops

and all the set out of The Strand
really well.

The Strand itself
was very, very busy.

I think it was probably used
by everybody in Bootle

in terms of their shopping.

We weren't long in The Strand
at all.

On my way out, I decided to stop off
at the butcher's,

to get that night's tea in.

We were going home from there.

James was starting to run
around all the shop

and I thought, this is not good.

Trying to catch him... I mean,
he was a lot quicker than me,

they're like little dodgers,
aren't they?

And I had hold of his hand,

and within seconds
of me reaching for my purse

to pay for the chops
that I'd bought,

I looked back down and
that's when I discovered he'd gone.

I've run to the reception

and said, you know,
me little boy's gone missing,

and they said, OK,
we'll put over the Tannoy, and...

we'll get the word out there.

I decided to continue
looking for James meself.

The thing
that was in them shops then

was all these rides
that you put money in.

Cos James loved them rides,

and I thought, I'm going to find him
on one of them,

so I went to every ride
in that shop.

I was getting told certain shops
had him on certain floors

so I was going to that shop
and describing him.

No, we haven't got him.

So-and-so's got him in their shop.,

So I was running to that shop,
getting told the same.

The longer it gets...

I mean, I think
even a minute of losing your child

seems like an hour.

Your head's
just all over the place,

you just want sight of them,
you just want to grab hold of them.

I got a call
saying that there's a child missing.

And being on The Strand,
you get a lot of missing children.

You would normally
sort ofjust finish putting details

in your pocket notebook
of the child,

alerting the radio room
as to what was going on,

and then the child would be found,

and that would be the end of it.

Soon as you heard them words,
the police are getting called,

then you know it's serious.

40 minutes, when I got there,
was always...

was quite a long time
before we even started.

I went into The Strand.

Denise at that time,
obviously she was very, very upset

so it was quite difficult at times
to make out what she was saying,

and to sort of keep her on the
details that we needed from her.

She wanted to say...
let's get out there,

and I'm saying, no, we need...
We need things off you,

We need some details.

I do remember when I met Mandy
and she was trying to calm me down.

"Come on, I'll walk around with you
and let's see if we can see him."

I went, he's not in here.

I went, he's not,
I've looked everywhere,

I've been in the car park,
I've been everywhere.

He's not in here.

Well, I was trying to find out
what sort of little boy James was,

you know, would he go with someone?
Was he sort of friendly?

Did he know his name and address,
things like that, you know,

would he be able to
sort of give his name to anybody

if he was stopped or anything?

And whether or not,
you know, he would...

he was the sort of kid who would
wander off on his own or not.

It was getting out late on
as well, started getting dark,

you start getting
more and more worried.

With him being so small,
he didn't know the area,

and, you know, I had him visions
of him being out there

somewhere in the dark,
freezing cold,

and I just need to get him back.

You have this thing, this golden
hour when you're searching,

and James had been missing
for about 40 minutes

so...already we'd eaten into that
before we even started,

so things started being geared up
at the station, people coming out.

We had the traffic cars out
using the Tannoy system,

sort of giving out the messages.

We then gave all the details
to all the taxi drivers,

they put it out over their systems.

All the bus drivers were told.

I had dealt with missing children,
nothing on this scale.

I can remember, actually, the call,

it was an unusual call, because they
were informing me about an incident

that would generally not
be escalated to the CID.

The scale of the investigation,
even prior to my arrival,

was significantly higher
than you would expect.

This wasn't a normal situation.

The helicopter had been out,

the Operational Support Division,

they were actively engaged
in the search.

All of the available officers
in Bootle

were involved in the search.

Well, we don't treat it as anything
other than a missing from home,

and on the balance of probabilities,

James is going to be found.

And we stayed on The Strand
for quite a while,

and then eventually we decamped back
to the station

because there was nothing
we could do,

and Denise really, really didn't
want to go, and cut up.

You know, I mean, obviously...

there wasn't that much
we could do for her

in terms of sort of calming her down

because, by that time,
he'd been missing three hours.

The shops were shutting.

The police asked me to go
to the police station...

and I did find it really hard,

cos I thought,
once I leave here...

It's leaving that place,

it's leaving the point of
where you last seen your child.

And you're leaving that shop
without him,

but you walked in with him.

And it's just...

such a hard thing, it was such
a hard thing for me to do.

I didn't want to leave it,

I wanted to stay there
until I got him back,

I wanted someone to bring him
into that shop and go, he's OK.

Well, I asked for
all of the key holders

for every shop of The Strand
to return to their shop.

They had just short of 200 shops,

so we had to get 200 people
back to The Strand,

and get the stores open.

James had gone missing
quarter to four,

and he hadn't been seen since,

so there's a strong possibility

that he's wandered into one of the
many shops...

TJ Hughes' was quite close.

...and he's hidden.

And as the keyholders
were contacted and arrived,

we would then go through...

They would go through
every single shop,

and basically do a thorough search.

You get one go at, you know, going
in there and doing it properly.

I was really,
really worried about James

because of the proximity
of the canal.

That was my big fear,
actually, at that time,

is if James had have been wandering,

and the thought of, you know,
access to that canal is...

is relatively easy.

The Operational Support Division
had a full team

of 18 constables, two sergeants,
and an inspector.

At that point in time, we were
actually searching as best we could,

given the light we had.
We were searching the canal.

Me head was everywhere, it
just felt it was going to explode.

I thought, you know,
this has got to be serious, now.

I remember one of them walking in
with a pair of old shoes.

Never said anything to me,
just dangled them in me face.

And I went, no, they're not James's.

I don't think
they knew what to say, or...

were they blaming me?

I don't know.
I really don't know.

I just remember him walking in
with these shoes,

dangling them in front of me face,

me saying they're not his,
and off they went again.

We had to interrogate
the CCTV system.

About...ten past one,
we were still there.

And I got a message
from one of the detectives

who said
he'd seen something on cameras

that he really wanted me to look at,
as soon as possible.

This was a timelapse system.

It was 16 cameras, I think it was
taking an image every three seconds.

Clearly, you could see James,
hand-in-hand with...

two other boys,

and being led away,
in The Strand.

You had to look twice,
because it was surprising.

And I remember...

having to think...

What does that mean?

It was just...

It was just something
I just didn't expect to see.

From that moment then,

the focus and the priorities
changed.

We knew that James hadn't
walked out of The Strand alone.

He had walked
or had been certainly guided

away from his mother
by two other boys.

It was an abduction.

Denise finds James missing

at something like
just before quarter to four.

She's looking around for him.

In less than one and a half minutes,

James is being led
out of The Strand.

James is abducted from
way over the far end of The Strand,

which is sort of right across
the other end, on the ground floor,

and he's marched, at some speed,

from one end of The Strand
to the other end of The Strand,

hand-in-hand,
walking out through this door.

James has walked across here

and if you go there
just before the canal bridge,

there's a Post Office
to your right-hand side,

they took him down there.

So this would have been
a really busy area,

it's a busy entrance.

James would have walked past
lots and lots of shoppers.

CROSSING BEEPING

Denise would just have realised
that James had gone missing.

She'd be searching
the neighbouring shops,

she'd be asking people,
have you seen my...

Have you seen me little boy?

I'd be thinking he's nearby,
as everybody would.

Yet the shocking thing for me

is that it would have took
just over one and half minutes,

one minute 31 seconds
I think it was,

from James to being taken
to actually leaving The Strand.

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I do remember the press conference.

I didn't care about the cameras.

I didn't care about the people
behind the cameras.

I was just more concerned
about getting my voice out there,

to get James back.

I wanted to let people
know that he was mine, not theirs,

and if you've got him,
I need him back, I want him back.

He was just behind me
at the butcher's,

I turned away from him for a minute,
and by that time, he'd gone.

I went along with...

other journalists to cover
the press conference that morning.

By that time, we were
beginning to realise

that something serious
had happened...

...but obviously the full details
were yet to emerge.

We do have
a number of video photographs

from the precinct itself,

showing the boy quite clearly

apparently following two youths

that we're very anxious to trace.

It may well be
that the child did follow them,

so it is very important
that we do trace these two boys.

That moment, I think, when
we went to that press conference

and we were told two boys
had led James away,

and we were shown those images,

was when the whole dynamic of
the story started to change again,

and we'd moved on
from potentially a tragic accident

to something
more sinister than that.

Denise, is it possible
for you to tell us in your own words

the sequence of events yesterday?

When I lost him, you mean?

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If you've got me baby,
just bring him back.

Thank you very much,
ladies and gentlemen.

In that circumstance,
you're not nervous of cameras,

you're not nervous of reporters,

you not nervous of anything,
you just want one thing.

And nothing else matters.

Your first thought is,
well, it's two kids taking him away,

that's good,
rather than sort of being an adult.

Two children taking him off,

perhaps they've taken him home,

perhaps they're sort of taking him
off to play, something like that,

you know? How bad can it be?

Because they were
clearly juveniles...

...I felt in my own mind, I don't
know whether it's me being positive,

that...it's likely
to be less sinister,

then if it was an adult.

You know, it might be a prank
that's gone wrong.

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I felt relieved.

Ithought
I'm going to get him back again.

There's no way they're going to
be able to hurt him,

they're too young to hurt him.

I had every hope
of getting him back.

When I saw the images,

it gave us something to go to.

But it was confusing.

So then I said, we know
what we've got, we need a bit more,

but that system
wouldn't allow you, then,

to track somebody
through The Strand

as you would expect
that you could do now.

It had to be the same process
of going through.

I said, keep going,
and see what else we get,

see how many other images we get,
and see whether we can track them,

which way would they be going,
what camera?

REPORTER: Close-ups
of the security photos

don't reveal
the youths' identities,

but police say
they're both white teenagers,

one wearing a leather jacket.

I'm Jonathan Munro, and at the time
of the James Bulger murder,

I was the North of England
correspondent for ITN.

In many ways, those images
prompted a massive public interest

in the story, but of course that
also led to a lot of false leads.

PHONES RINGING

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Throughout Saturday...
it was just reacting

to the high volume of information
we had.

There was a lot of information
coming in.

Too much information
for our team to process.

You know, we had so many people
coming forward,

sightings in Chester,
we had sightings in Stockport.

We had sightings
in the West Midlands.

We had, you know,
people who were genuinely...

had seen the footage,

genuinely trying to support
the investigation.

The log...

incident log was inundated
by people calling,

volunteers calling, you know,
to search.

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Parents were keeping tight hold
of their children today

outside the shopping centre
from where two-year-old James Bulger

was apparently abducted.

They were extremely concerned

that the people who were
taking him away on camera

were obviously very young
themselves,

and questioning about whether they
were from the same community,

and who might they be?

All day, police divers have been
searching

the Leeds Liverpool waterway.

The already serious fears
for James are increasing further

as he faces his second night
away from his parents.

So far, the underwater search
has been fruitless.

But the fact that frogmen have been
called in at such an early stage

is an indication of the level
of concern for his safety.

Through that day, then,

we were really analysing
everything that was coming in,

and looking at the CCTV.

Well, we've got, you know, James...

James being led away by two boys.

Who have we got around them?

We need to get those images out

because we need to identify the
people who were the witnesses,

because they're seeing them
full on.

But at the same time,
our focus was on really searching.

There were police
everywhere in Bootle.

They were
searching the tunnels, the roads,

the drains, the shops...

You couldn't move
without seeing police officers,

all very stern-faced,
all very, very determined...

to make progress on this enquiry.

I got a feeling it wasn't looking
good as the days were going on.

I thought if two lads had him,

what if they're too scared
to pass him back, now,

because it's gone out there?

You know, it's all over the news,
all over the papers...

Were they too frightened
to now pass him back?

I remember we were looking out the
window,

and Denise said there's
a girl, there, or a boy, there,

with a little child, sort of thing,
it could be James.

So we had to send somebody out
to see who it was,

but obviously, it wasn't James.

She was just sort of clutching
at straws by that time.

So all these thoughts
were going around in me head,

and in the end,
I didn't know what to think.

All that I wanted was to get him
back safe and sound.

It's now well over 30 hours

since James went missing
from this shopping centre.

The already serious concerns
for his safety

have been further heightened

as he faces his second night
away from his parents.

I sort of...

had this view that, you know...

that he could still be found.

Despite the fact
that we'd seen him taken away,

I really believed that we'd...
we'd find James on Saturday.

I really did.

And then...

And then on the Sunday,

they just said you need to go up
to Walton Lane, because...

...they found a body.

Police officers combed wasteground
near a reservoir this morning.

A member of the public
said she saw a boy like James

with some youths here yesterday.

Local residents were
asked to check their gardens,

but so far there's no sign
of the missing toddler.

We were informed of a missing child
at 20 past four.

At 20 past four, James was
not far short of the reservoir.

So at 20 past four,

everybody is looking round in
shops for a boy that's missing,

and these boys,

with purpose,

with determination,

with speed,

are a mile away!

We were told of

the first significant sighting
of James

after The Strand shopping centre.

And that was him being seen
by a woman

with two boys
in the Breeze Hill area...

...close to what was described
as an enclosed reservoir.

One of the things that did strike me

was that it did seem to be
an extraordinarily long distance

from The Strand,

and you begin
to think to yourself...

Just how far have they taken him?

And how did they manage to take him
that far?

That makes you start thinking
is there another person involved,

because...how could these two boys
possibly have transported

this little boy that distance
in that space of time?

And yet, there they were, just the
three of them, seen by the witness.

We were still trying to understand
what was their motivation.

Who was telling them to do this?

Was there someone else involved?

What on earth were they doing?
And where on earth was James?

That was still very much
the thought

that was running through
all our heads at this point.

I decided that I would
take Denise out in a police car,

and just give her some fresh air,
basically,

just to sort of keep her occupied
for a while.

Mandy said, come on, we'll go for a
little drive round,

just to see if we can see him.

And as we're driving round,
Mandy gets a call...

We hadn't been out
very long, actually,

we were just
sort of driving round Bootle,

and I got a call saying, come back
to the police station immediately,

and switch your radio off.

So obviously I'm sitting next to her
so I'm hearing what's going on,

and I went, how come you're being
called back to the station?

She went, I don't know.
I went, you do.

She went, no, I don't.
She went, honestly, I don't know.

I went, you do. I said, because
I know. I said, they've found him.

And I knew, I knew then

that he'd been found.

And I knew
it wasn't going to be good.

Lying protected under a police tent,

the body of a boy
found this afternoon by officers

hunting for two-year-old
James Bulger.

The body was discovered
on a railway line

right next to a police station
in Walton, Liverpool,

over two miles
from where he disappeared.

They just said, you know...

you need to go up to Walton Lane,
because...

there's a body on the railway.

The scene was...

was kept contained,

you know, on...
on...

Where there's a body like that.

And I must admit, I...
I... I went...

...assuming it was going to be...
an accident.

Really did.

But very, very quickly,
you know, you realised that...

...it certainly wasn't an accident.

Inch by inch, the police have
searched the railway line

where two-year-old James Bulger's
body was found.

It had been spotted earlier
by four schoolboys, playing.

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Cos I said, it's a baby!

I was praying it wasn't James.

I still wasn't convinced until
I actually saw it with my own eyes.

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It must have been about four
o'clock, my bleeper went off again.

And I remember
my husband thinking

oh, not again, you've already
been out once today, what is it now?

But then he knew.

He said,
that's not going to be good news.

I contacted force control room,
and...

the words, "We found him."

And I said, "Alive?"

"No."
It was just no.

So...you have to go
and tell the family.

People were coming in to see me,
they were talking to me,

but I couldn't hear a word
they were saying.

It's almost like someone
places a veil over your face,

a black veil,
and you can't see beyond that veil.

You...
You hear voices, but you...

You can't hear their words.

It's... It's an experience that...

I would never wish
on me worst enemy.

She let out this terrific scream,

and then just sort of...

Just sort of collapsed
in on herself.

But it was just terrible to hear.

Ijust...

felt numbness.

KIDS SQUAWK

I was a mum without her baby.

But even then,
I think I was still in denial,

I think I thought, you know,
they got it wrong,

it...can't be,
this can't be true.

Your ultimate objective was always
to return James safe and well

to the family.

And...

Yeah, the realisation that
wasn't going to happen was...

Yeah, it was...

Yeah, it was devastating.

SIRENS WAIL FAINTLY

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A lot of the bobbies
have got kids of their own.

Everybody's lost their own kids at
some time in a shopping centre or...

on the beach or something like that,
so it could be anybody.

And I think that was it.

This could be any child, you know,

it could have happened to anybody.

I did go for the identification
of James's body when...

James's uncle went to identify him.

And he came out of
the identification a broken man.

An absolutely broken man.

I think he thought
he was tough enough to do it,

and the realisation of what
he'd actually seen was just...

He came out, and he was
just speechless and broken.

It was...
It was terrible to see.

The circumstances surrounding
the way the body was left...

...at that time, we couldn't really
have an opinion

on what had happened.

What was clear, though,
you know, it was...

Yeah, it was devastating,
devastating injuries...

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So once we had
a positive identification,

there was a lot of anger
in the city.

Who could do such a thing?

Why haven't they been caught yet?

Somewhere, some parent must know
the time their children were out,

the time they've come back,
and the clothes they were wearing.

It's got to be, somebody must know.

At this point,

the gravity of what was occurring
really struck home to everybody,

that here we had a situation
where we knew

two boys had led this toddler away
from his mother

in a shopping centre,

and here, now,
virtually two days later,

we're confronted with the news
that his body's been found,

and he's been brutally murdered,
and...

the question then is could it
have been the boys that did it?

Or was there somebody else involved?

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Six o'clock on the...

Monday morning,
and then all hell broke loose.

PHONES RINGING

Phones constantly ringing,

and it was all hands on deck as well

just to deal with the constant
barrage of media enquiries.

The blurred images
of two youths seen taking James away

are now all over the city.

The public say detectives
hold the key to finding them.

You know, you have a situation where
we see

two boys taking James away.

We don't know what's happened
to James, but clearly it's...

going to be a bad situation.

And as a result of that the media
were very, very quick to respond.

The story became
who were the boys in the CCTV?

That was what
the police were focused on,

it's what the media were focused on,

and it led to...

a real suspicion in the area

about anybody who could have fitted
that description.

You saw children of James's age,
and maybe a little bit older,

being led by reins,
so that they couldn't run away.

You saw them having their hands held
incredibly tightly

by their mums and their dads.

SIRENS WAIL FAINTLY

We were working our way
through any leads.

The different photographs,
the different images,

working on the CCTV.

It was bringing together
all of those images,

but there was so much going on,

the images were such that
you couldn't make out any detail.

When I gave the description, I think
I said something between 12 and 15.

Then we were just looking
at any child

that was either flagged up
through our own police systems

as somebody who...
could be either one of the boys.

I think a lot of people
were thinking,

well, maybe it's this person or that
person,

or this group of boys
or that group of boys.

It's natural, because it's a vacuum,

and it's therefore being
filled by uncertainty,

and, you know, frankly, gossip.

There's nothing wrong with that, in
the sense that it's human nature,

but it's a very,
very difficult thing.

People were looking at, you know,
10, 11, 12, 13-year-old boys

just half thinking,
I wonder...

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There was massive pressure
on the police to solve it,

there wasn't a television bulletin
or a newspaper in this country

that wasn't leading
on the James Bulger murder,

and that is pressure, you know,
there's no question about that.

They were following up leads, tips,

information from members
of the public all over Merseyside

and even beyond.

I think, over the course of the
investigation,

over 60 individuals,

60 boys were either brought in
for questioning, or questioned.

So I repeat the appeal
that we've made.

Anyone, friends,
family or whatever,

you know, we must interview
these two boys,

because if we don't,
we can't guarantee anyone's safety

until they've been arrested.

You know, I wasn't concentrating

on what was going on
in the outside world.

You just don't know
where you are, you...

You don't know who
you're talking to, or...

You don't know what's going on,

and although you're getting told
what's going on,

nothing's sinking in.
You just want to shut yourself away

from the outside world.
I just locked myself in a room,

and when I finally got to watch
the news, I could see their...

You know, how angry people were,
and, you know...

I felt and I sensed
the love for James in the city.

One of the points
in where James's body was found,

that evidence meant that James
had travelled probably on foot

from The Strand...

...to Walton Lane.

The appeal went out to anybody...
within that route to come forward.

There was a business called Amec
on the corner of Hawthorne Road

at the roundabout with Breeze Hill.

They had a camera that was covering
their car park,

and when the...owner returned
to work, he had a look at it.

He saw the images
of James with two boys walking past.

When the images came back to us,

there's a small wall,
and we thought...

...that gives us a benchmark,
maybe, for height.

We thought that...

perhaps the height of the two boys
who'd abducted James...

...might be not as tall
as that we might have considered.

You know, it's what not 100%,

because of the poor images,

but we had to
open our mind to the fact

that instead of looking
at a 12 to 15-year-old,

you know, we might be dealing
with smaller children here.

It was difficult to consider
that anybody could carry out

those type of injuries
to another individual,

certainly
someone as helpless as James,

but the idea that it could be done
by juveniles...

or even children,

was...

You know, it was off the scale.

I was in Marsh Lane,
in the office going through

some of the information
that had come in.

And...

we got a breakthrough.

I got a call from a police officer
in Walton Lane

who told me
somebody had been into Walton Lane.

She was a bit beside herself,
really.

She'd been...at a family friend's
on Friday 12th,

and their son,
he'd come home...

in a right mess.

Dirty, bits of paint on his jacket,

and he'd been sagging with
another lad from the same school.

He's only ten.

He looks a bit like it could
have been him on the photo,

but you know, it's probably not.

That's all she said.
"I just want to let you know."

And his name is Jon Venables.

So we were constantly getting really
good information

from various sources,

from, you know,
people who had just seen people,

people who knew people.

A neighbour, I believe it was,
called in to say that

she thought that Jon Venables might
have had something to do with it.

Jon had been out playing truant

on the day of the murder case,

and he'd come home
with his coat covered in paint.

She said he went to St Mary's School
in Bedford Road,

so I got the number
of the headmistress.

And she told me
a bit about his background,

he hadn't been there that long.

I said to her,
look, was John Venables...

at school on Friday?
And she said, no,

he was sagging
with Robert Thompson.

I said, can you tell me
about the Thompson family?

Who she knew really well. The fact
that he was a persistent truanter...

The Thompson family
lived in Walton village, there.

Relatively close
to where James was found.

So there was enough in that, really,
to make me think,

hmm, this is something that I need
to look at a little bit closer.

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We went to the home address
as we had it from the school.

And his father was there,
and basically said that...

that Jon wasn't there,
but he was in his mother's address,

which was in Norris Green.

And a couple of members of the team
went up to Norris Green

and said, listen,
this is why we're here.

We want you to come to Lower Lane,
ask some questions.

Have you got the coat
you were wearing when you went...

you know,
when you were sagging on Friday?

A few things are said, odd things,

not necessarily admitting
being in The Strand but...

I think Venables said
at one stage, you know,

are you going to speak to Robert?

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And then I see Thompson.

And his eyes are everywhere.

And never did I ever see,

from the moment I met him

to all the time
I was dealing with him with Phil

and the other detective sergeant

did I ever see him in fear.

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I got a call off Phil,

and I remember him
saying, Jim, these are...

these are little children.

He said, I can't consider
that this little lad'd do this.

É

So they were arrested at seven.
The first interviews...

didn't take place until five PM.

There was a lot of work seeing
and analysing what we already had.

But from the first moments
that they were brought in,

Venables mother had said
what Venables had said.

He was going to say
he wasn't in The Strand.

We knew Venables
had been in The Strand,

even before we started
interviewing them,

that they'd been in The Strand.

The boys were together.

We knew they'd been together,
we knew they were in The Strand.

We knew we had
the boys who had abducted James.

BEEP

There was a bit of evidence
that was vital

in how we developed our interview
strategy,

following evidence
we got from this shop here,

which was formerly the
Bradford & Bingley Building Society.

The manager reported to the police
that on the morning of the 12th,

two boys,
whom they were 100% convinced

were the same boys
who abducted James,

they were hanging about
by the door

and they had their fingers
all over this pane of glass,

so what the detective did
when fingerprinting,

take all the marks
from all of the glass at the front,

and as a result of those lifts,
those fingerprint lifts,

we were able, then,
to match them immediately

to Jon Venables' fingerprints.

Despite what he said,
he was in The Strand.

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£

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BEEP

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I'm Dominic Lloyd,

and I was Robert Thompson's
solicitor at the time of the case.

A solicitor arriving
at a police station

can normally expect to do
a lot of waiting.

In this case,
there was none of that.

We started work straight away,

cos that's the only work
that was being done there.

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You've got a social worker

and a defence solicitor...

and then you've got two big, burly
detective sergeants

all in a room.

He wasn't frightened.

He wasn't fazed by any of it.

Some people might say, cos he didn't
understand what was going on.

He knew what was going on.

THOMPSON LAUGHS

I really could not bring myself
to believe

that he had any involvement in this,

just from his youth,
just from how small,

how young,
how childlike he was.

Robert Thompson's interviews,

he admitted quicker
he was in The Strand.

I think at one stage really early on

he says he saw James
with his mother.

And then his interviews
quite quickly get to the stage

where he has Jon taking his hand
and taking him out.

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INTERVIEWER: No, just a second,
listen to me, Bobby...

We knew, even before we started
interviewing him,

that he'd been in The Strand

because the fingerprints
on Bradford & Bingley,

they put him there.

WAILING

At the end of interview three,

we tell him that
Robert Thompson has already told us

that he's been in The Strand.

And then he admits
being in The Strand.

And then he admits, you know,
being with James,

and...

and then taking James.

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They wanted blood, they really did.

I think they'd have ripped him
to pieces.

Bastards!

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It's horrid, really.

I... Still now,

I can't really fathom thinking about
exactly what happened.

I'm not going to stop at this, I am
going to keep fighting for my son.

He's not here to defend himself,
so I'm going to do it for him.

The forensic evidence was chilling.

The youngest defendants
to face murder charges this century

arrived at Preston Crown Court
this morning.

He just kept on getting
back up again...

He wouldn't stay down.

For everyone who says,
you know, you should let it go,

why should I let it go?

I'm never going to let this go.

It was my son that they took.

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