The Boy Next Door

On November 24, 1993, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables became the youngest persons to be convicted of murder in Britain in almost 250 years, when the pair, both eleven, was found guilty of the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Patrick Bulger. I am providing this page for those who are interested in learning more about the lives of these boys prior to their offense. All information on this page is true to my knowledge, and is not intended to diminish or justify either boy’s actions in any way whatsoever.

ROBERT THOMPSON

“All little boys are nice until they get older.” – Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson was born to Robert Sr. and Ann Thompson on the 23rd day of August 1982, in Liverpool, England. The family was already exhaustingly overextended, and Robert, being the fifth edition, was quick to pick up on the coping mechanisms needed to survive in a life of unremitting chaos and enmity.

In a 1993 interview, published in the Guardian newspaper just one day after Robert was convicted of the murder of James Bulger, Ann Thompson was quick to place fault on the neighborhood and the surrounding authorities, who she felt had failed both her and her sons. “The attitude when you live where we live is that you have to be tough or else you don’t survive,” she said. “When you have got people in the area threatening to blow your kneecaps off every moment of the day—that’s just the way they are. They deal with drugs, they deal with everything. Their kids have got everything,” she added, bitterly. “Look at mine. I’m bringing them up on my own, but if I went ‘round and screwed every warehouse, my kids would have everything, too.” Even so, while Robert’s community was rough, his home life was perhaps worse, and could hardly be considered a refuge for the boy.

Ann, desperate to escape the physical and emotional torment of living with her drunken father, was married to Robert, Sr. in December 1971, on the day of her eighteenth birthday. The couple was financially strained from the start, but Ann did what she could to make it work. Regrettably, yet perhaps not entirely unforeseen, the cycle of abuse continued. Big Bobby, like Ann’s father, was a violent alcoholic, who was easily crossed. Both Ann and the children knew well the sting of palm against flesh, and Bobby often used these beatings to ensure that his wife and children conformed. Ann and Bobby fought regularly in front of the children, with virtually all of the fights leading to physical violence. On countless occasions, Bobby battered his wife, once causing her to miscarry, and his temper didn’t stop at his wife. If it suited his mood—which it frequently did—Bobby would beat the boys, curse at them, and threaten to send them to a “home” for children who misbehaved. One of Ann’s sons claimed that Ann, too, had beaten them with sticks, and had struck one of the boys with a cane. Ann denied the physical abuse, but later admitted to being “cruel” to the boys at times.

Finally, in 1988, while on a family vacation, the breaking point came, when Big Bobby, then thirty-four, began an adulterous relationship with a friend and neighbor in her fifties. Eventually, Bobby walked out on his family, but not before beating his wife one final time. “I couldn’t make any sense of it,” Robert later recalled, desolately, when asked about his father’s unexpected departure. Shortly after the breakup, an accidental fire destroyed the Thompson’s home, leaving Ann homeless, jobless, and with little money to support her kids. The family was put up in a hostel temporarily and later relocated by the social services. Depressed, Ann began drinking heavily and was taking narcotics which caused her to hallucinate. For weeks, she stayed in bed, not bothering to tend to the children, and when she finally did reemerge, she readily admitted she “drank from morning to night,” but had stopped taking the pills. She spent much of her time at the pub after that, and rarely stayed in for a meal.

The boys, by now lacking any sense of guidance within the home, took to the streets, robbing, truanting, and some of them experimenting with drugs. Constantly fighting and battering one another, and possibly, too, being hit by their emotionally drained mother, the Thompson brothers often looked scruffy, and, on more than one occasion, were seen bearing bruises and bite marks. The pattern of bullying among the brothers, which had been noted by the Head mistress of the boys’ school, appeared to descend down the line, with the eldest Thompson brother beating the one just below him in age, and that brother beating the brother below him, in turn. This would have made little Robert the target of the fourth Thompson brother, who, in less than a year’s time, had confessed to arson, tried to stab his elder brother in a fit of rage, and had allegedly committed a lewd act against two small children (this incident was overlooked due to lack of evidence; however, because it was always considered a likely possibility that little Robert had been the victim of sexual abuse himself, and since Robert reportedly confirmed this years later, this occurrence involving his elder brother might be thought particularly revealing).

Ultimately, wanting to escape the havoc, most of the boys opted to leave home, and some were placed into voluntary care at Dyson’s Hall, a children’s home just outside of Liverpool. They were sent home to their mother at one point, but after attempting suicide with overdoses, were placed back into care. Not surprisingly, Ann had also attempted suicide in the same manner, some months before. Little Bobby went to visit his brothers every so often, eager to show them the latest playthings he had robbed from the assorted shops nearby. Asked later if he could recall a time when his brother had exhibited any unusually aggressive tendencies, Robert’s brother said no: “He’s frightened of his own shadow.” Nonetheless, in hindsight, it’s safe to assume that by 1993, ten-year-old Robert was “swiftly approaching crisis point.”

Alarmingly, some of the neighboring children later claimed to have seen Robert behave cruelly towards animals, and “pull the heads off of baby pigeons,” although this was never unequivocally confirmed. While Robert was described as a wily child, known to tell lies, most of the St. Mary’s school staff agreed that the boy posed little trouble, and, if and when he attended, was generally well-mannered during class. The primary concern among the faculty was Robert’s growing amount of absences. 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. In quest of companionship, he occasionally bullied his younger brother into truanting with him, and, in an effort to impress his peers, frequently boasted of his late-night exploits on the railway line, but failed to attract much attention. Neighbors later reported that it wasn’t uncommon for Robert to be seen wandering the streets of Walton after midnight, since he was always running off at night. Ann tried to discourage this by hiding his shoes, or by taking him down to the Walton Lane police station and having the officer on duty frighten him into compliance, but to no avail. “Take him home,” the officer would say to her. “He’s your son.”

Unhappily, it was during this critical time that Ann became pregnant with her seventh child, the product of another failed relationship. At first, Robert seemed to respond well to this, taking the initiative to help feed and clothe the baby, and doing what he could to please his mother. Any anxiety or animosity he might have felt was manifested largely through his school-aged thumb-sucking, a habit which elicited titters and taunts from the neighborhood children. It was not until much later, when questioned as to his involvement in the death of James Bulger, that Robert’s resentment towards the new baby became suddenly and painfully apparent. “Why would I want to kill him?” he said, referring to the slain toddler. “If I wanted to kill a baby, I’d kill… I’d kill me own, wouldn’t I?”

By now, Robert had also stepped comfortably into the role of the aggressor, and, following in the footsteps of his elder brothers, began tormenting his eight-year-old brother on a daily basis. Still, despite being clearly intimidated by him, Robert’s brother appeared to share a strangely intimate bond with him. At night, for instance, the two boys would lie in bed together and suck each other’s thumbs. But apart from his brother, Robert struggled to build friendships. 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.

JON VENABLES

Jon Venables arrived at Walton St. Mary’s Church of England School a disrupted and attention-seeking boy, whose behavior was so bizarre at times that one of his teachers considered him to be emotionally unstable. While, on the face of it, there doesn’t appear to be as much external devastation present in Jon’s family history as in Robert’s, his outlandish behavior suggested that internally, Jon was in a state of extreme emotional upset. 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.

Born on August 13th, 1982, Jon was the middle child of Neil and Susan Venables. The couple’s 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. During that time, Susan felt as if she was trapped and overburdened, often taking her frustrations out on her husband, who believed it was her responsibility to take care of the children, and offered her little support in the way of childrearing. The couple fought frequently as to their eldest son’s troubles, which they later learned included mild learning difficulties, and Susan, at times becoming so exasperated by the situation, began to resent her son’s presence. 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. However, given that the tension in the household was persistent throughout the most crucial of Jon’s formative years, the belief that he had moved through the ordeal entirely unaffected is questionable.

In any case, the couple drifted together, and in 1983, just fifteen months succeeding Jon’s birth, Susan gave birth to their third child, a daughter. She was a happy baby, much happier than her eldest brother had been, but as she grew older, Susan began noticing that she, too, appeared “lazy,” and was not as “advanced” as Jon. This would have put Jon in a particularly arduous position, as the couple’s only excelling child, and as author Gitta Sereny observed from her time spent with the Venables’ in 1994, “forcing this middle child, Jon, for a long time, perhaps unconsciously, to compensate his mother for her two problem children, put an enormous weight of responsibility on this child virtually from the time he was born.”

As Susan struggled to manage her two disadvantaged children day to day, Neil was the family’s breadwinner, working as a forklift driver. Financially, the couple appeared to be functioning, but meanwhile, Susan was at the end of her rope with her eldest son, who, having become increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate, had grown terribly unhappy and was having temper tantrums regularly. Resentful of her husband’s lack of involvement with the children, Susan conceded that the couple fought constantly, especially throughout 1983, but maintained that Neil had never been aggressive towards her, nor had she hit him. “…I didn’t, did I?” she said to Neil during their interview with Gitta Sereny. “Not really?”

Ultimately, however, the couple’s indifferences led to separation, and they were eventually divorced in 1986. Neil had been laid off in the months prior, so the couple sold their home, and Neil moved back in with his father, before finally relocating to an apartment in Kirkdale. Susan and the children moved in with her mother for a short time, and then settled in a small cluster of derelict apartments in Old Swan, where Jon attended the nearby Broad Green Preschool. Although Susan couldn’t recall any dramatic change in Jon’s behavior, his teachers there expressed some concern that Jon had become “upset and difficult” following the separation. In the mean time, Susan, finding her new living conditions insufferable, soon decided to move back in with Neil until she could find another place of her own. The two had an aberrant relationship with one another, in the sense that it was almost as though they had never divorced. They went on family outings together, slept together, and when Susan did find a place, virtually coexisted between the two homes. 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.

It was when Jon turned seven that Susan and the children had relocated to Norris Green, one of Liverpool’s larger, more reputable areas. 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 school’s curriculum. The Venables’ decided to place her with their eldest son, in a school for children with special needs. Jon continued to attend Broad Square, where children of the neighborhood openly mocked and poked fun at his siblings, calling them “backward.” Jon was also an easy target due to a squint in his eye. The taunts upset Jon’s already volatile temper, and he began coming home in increasingly low spirits and crying.

With Neil seldom in contact with Susan or the children during this time, Susan was forced to contend with Jon’s escalating troubles alone, sometimes taking her own frustrations out on the children. This happened, more often than not, at night, when they refused to go to bed when told. Jon, who had the most trouble sleeping, appeared fearful of Susan, and was terrified, above all, of her condemnation. He began telling his father that he believed his parents loved his brother and sister more than they did him, and, at one point, implored his father to send him to school with his siblings. Neil explained to him that the school they attended was “special,” and that Jon wouldn’t be accepted.

Then between 1990 and 1991, Jon’s teachers recognized a dramatic change in the boy’s behavior, which was alarming enough for one of his teachers to begin keeping a daily log. According to the teacher, Jon would rock back and forth in his desk, making strange noises (this behavior was later speculated to be Jon’s 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. Constantly restless, his workbooks were empty, and he would often be denied recess because he was so far behind.

It was during this time that Susan, having suffered from clinical depression for many years, had experienced what were later described as “two traumatic incidences,” both of which Jon would have witnessed. She claimed, however, that she was completely unaware of Jon’s erratic behaviors at school, had never seen any evidence to support them (such as cuts on his arms or holes in his socks), and dismissed the possibility that many of the occurrences cited by the teacher had ever taken place. The teacher had a different perspective, saying that Susan was in fact aware of the issue, and had expressed deep concern. Given the Venables’ family history, it was later suggested that Jon could arguably have been affected by an undiagnosed disorder at the time, and was clearly emotionally underdeveloped.

“He caused me such anxiety,” the teacher later recalled of Jon in a statement given to the Merseyside police. “It was so stressful trying to contain him. So much happened whilst I was there involving Jon. I am not sure if in fact he was seen by the school psychologist, but I did complete a form for him.”

The breaking point came when Jon was suspended from Broad Square after attempting to choke a classmate with a twelve-inch wooden ruler. His grip was so strong that it took two people to pry Jon off of the boy. Susan opted to remove him from the school then, and some months later, she reenrolled him in St. Mary’s in Walton. It is here, of course, that Jon met and made friends with fellow eccentric, Robert Thompson. “I thought he was all right,” Jon said of Robert during his police interviews.

While both boys may have felt helpless and inferior in their own settings, together they were fearless, a portrait of machismo, each playing on the other’s strong points. Teachers later reported that whereas the boys were manageable when separated, together their behavior worsened dramatically. It was this empowering chemistry between them that some argued set into motion the life-altering events that would devastate a family, challenge a community, and rock a nation’s core in the disquieting months that followed.