Serial Killers 2 Week 3

Jon and Robert
Serial Killers 2
Week 3

"The violent child is the most potent image of violated innocence that we have. If humankind is capable of this, then perhaps we are beyond redemption." — Ian McEwan
Mother Denise Bulger walked into the Strand shopping mall with her son 3 year old James and her brother’s girlfriend to shop and to return some things. They took their time shopping and enjoying their day. It was a school day, so most children were in school and the mall was peaceful. James was getting a little restless and beginning to get a little whiny. Denise left the boy for a moment with the brothers girlfriend in the store as she went across the hall to get him something to snack on. Leaving him at the doorway alone.
Jon Venerables and Robert Thompson were cutting school that day and decided to go to the mall to steal some things and cause some trouble. They were both rambunctious 10 year old who had a long line of problems. They met when Jon had tried to strangle out of anger a classmate in his old school. He was sent to another school for a fresh start. His parents wrote it off to the fact that he was stressed over their latest separation, which had been a regular occurrence with his family His parents had made it a habit to keep separating, then reuniting. He was the middle of three children, both siblings had severe developmental problems. The instability of his home life made all of the children act out in anger getting them all in trouble often, but nothing too serious. Jon was a puny child, much smaller than the other kids his age and very frail in his appearance.
Robert was known around the neighborhood for his antics. Whenever something happened, the police always came to question him, and often it was him who did it. He was an abused child with 5 abused siblings. The son of an alcoholic mother and abusive father who later had abandoned the family for good. With all of the abuse in the house, Robert had to contend with the abuse from his older siblings who had grown very violent and gave the abuse they suffered back to him. He in turn focused his abuse on his younger brother. He had an odd relationship with his little brother. At night they would use each other as a comfort blanket of sorts, sleeping together and sucking each other’s thumbs. However, there were times that Robert was mean and brutal to his little brother, once even abandoning him at a canal. This canal would soon be notorious.
Jon and Robert were in the mall that day cutting school and getting into trouble. They enjoyed stealing. Not to keep the things they stole, most of the time they abandoned the things they took. They would run up and hit old people, then run, take things and throw them threw the mall. They were growing more and more destructive and more and more stupid as the day went on. One of the two boys suggested to the other to take a child and get it lost to scare it’s parents. Unfortunately, the other agreed. They approached a child while his mother was distracted and lured it to them, the child came, but mom turned and saw and they quickly pretended to be playing with the kid and sent it back to their mother. Almost caught. They then tried again, this time finding Denise Bulger distracted buying food and her child James standing at the door. They took him by the hand and lured him with them down the hall and right out the door. Not much is known about the reason that the kids decided to take this kid out of the mall to get it lost, but they did. They walked the child around town for a while when the reached the canal, the place Robert had abandoned his brother. It was here that they first hurt James. One of them picked him up and dropped him on his head forming a large bump and bruise with a cut that bled down his head. The boys ran away as if this was going to be the end of it, they had taken a step further than planned and the baby was now hurt. Someone came along and saw the child and at the same time, the two boys either felt sorry for what they had done and wanted to get the boy, or wanted to do more harm returned to the child acting as if it was their little brother took him and comforted them as the woman went about her business. Almost caught again. The two boys left the canal with James and lost their plan I think as they just began wandering around the city hanging out at shops, holding James hand as he cried for his mother. A fire broke out down the road, so they stopped in to see that for a while, then headed off walking in plain daylight with the child. A motorist was driving by and witnessed Robert kick the boy in the ribs in what he described as a “persuading kick” but the motorist did and said nothing, just kept driving. Almost caught again.
“A woman saw James running between the two boys and assumed they were playing. At another intersection, James began to cry for his mother again. He ran off and almost ran into traffic, but Robert caught him and pulled him back. Motorists watched the boys as they crossed the street and could see that James was crying, dragging his heels. Some thought James was crying because he was not allowed to run free. But others wondered where the parents were.
Jon carried James by the legs, while Robert held him by the chest. They awkwardly carried the boy to a grassy plateau by a reservoir where they sat on a step and rested, placing James between them. A woman walking her dog passed them by and noticed that little James was laughing. But moments later, another person saw Jon punch James, grabbing him and violently shaking him. For some inexplicable reason, this witness pulled her curtains, shutting out the scene. It was growing dark.” (CrimeLibrary.com) Almost caught again.
A little later a young woman noticed the little boys injuries on his head that had been covered with a scarf and wanted to escort the kids to the police station down the street to have them look at it. The boys lied and lied, and she knew it but had a small child of her own so she asked a person walking their dog if they could watch her daughter while she escorted them to the station. The dog walker said no because the dog did not like children. The boys lied and said the station was on the way home and they could get there fine alone. The woman allowed them to leave and went on her way. Almost caught again. This would be the last chance anyone got to stop the vicious kids.
The boys got tired of walking and had no real plan so they headed to the railroad tracks, and that is where things went to another level. Jon flung some blue paint into the eyes of the child, something he had seen on Child’s Play 3 with his father who watched nothing but horror movies. He did this to dehumanize the child. To make him look like something not human to deal with what they were about to do with him. The boys then began throwing stones at him, then hit him with bricks. Then after hurting him near fatally, the inserted AA batteries into his rectum to try and bring him back to life like some kind of robot. They then beat him more and left his body halfway on a set of train tracks with his face covered in bricks. The boy was left their alive, but died later before or after his body was cut in half at the waist by a passing train. The boys went home to their lives and the search for the killers had begun. The body was found by some children playing soccer and reported. The mall tapes were examined to show the two kids escorting the child out of the mall. The kids had not even tried to cover up the murder as they came home with blood on their clothes and blue paint on their jackets. They were caught and interrogated. While being questioned, they each blamed only each other accidently admitting to several things before they cracked and Jon admitted to killing the boy, but then explained how it was Robert who did the most damage. The boys were found guilty and sentenced to 8 years in juvie, then they would be transported to the adult prison at the sentence discretion of the Lord Chief Justice which was a judge in England. In later years, different politicians at the anger of the citizens increased the sentence to 15 years, which was later found to be illegal. In the end, the court awarded the parents of the killers their defense money they had paid to the lawyers and deemed that the trial was unfair because the prosecution had elevated the seats of the killers to make them look older. The boys had their sentences reduced to 8 years and promised identity protection for the rest of their lives. In 2001, the boys were released with new names, birth certificates and everything else and moved to Australia to live free and happy.
Matt. 18:6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
This is a little different in this series because most of the killers were mass murderers and this is the story of one death. But it isn’t the amount of people killed we are looking at today, it is the gruesomeness of the children that killed another child. This was not some grown up, sick dude that stalked and killed, these were kids themselves, ten year old kids. What causes a ten year old to do such things? What made these two different from any other ten year old.
Abuse. Neglect. Rejection.
Last week we talked about how no one else could be blamed for the actions that you commit because you had the choice, you had many ways out. How about a child influenced by and with another child who had been raised in a lifestyle of abuse and anger? In the case of a child, you must look first to mental insanity, then to the home life of the kids to even attempt to figure out what went wrong. The kids were both deemed sane by psychiatrists, being that they understood that death was forever and that they had taken someone’s life, so now they had to look at their upbringing.
Many people want to kill these two freed men because they feel justice was not served. I read they only spent 8 years in juvy and even got solid educations, and I think, wow, how unfair for taken the life of another person, a child, and how they did it. However, we need to understand that a kid is a kid who needs to be taught and disciplined, loved, nurtured, and trained into a grown up. 10 years old is not a grown up, it is a child who neither of them got the love, and nurture, and discipline, only pain. They learned only pain and rejection and they acted out.
For this one we have to look and point the finger at the parents. People think that they can act however they want and do whatever they want and it will have no effect on the kids. It means everything. This may seem premature and out of the ordinary here for me to talk about parenting to teenagers, but one day, most of you will have kids and my prayer is that you remember this night.
Back to verse. It is clearly our responsibility to raise our children in Christ. To give them all they need to survive this nasty world.
Prov. 22:6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
This is the point to reproduction. Our kids are not our own, they belong to God and are entrusted to us to teach them about God, their Father in Heaven, their Creator. We do not have the choice to raise “Our kids” “Our way.” The Bible says that in the last days people will be lovers of themselves, which means people will be selfish and live however they want forgetting how it effects others, especially themselves. Parents are given the responsibility to give their children all of the things God gives us because as a parent, we model Jesus to our children. When we choose to put ourselves first, we hurt those that are being put behind us. These two kids didn’t deserve to be abused, they didn’t deserve the neglect or rejection. They were just kids. They made a series of bad choices that were only reflection of the bad choices their parents had continually made in their lives. All the knew was pain. They were developmentally able to grasp what they were doing and that there was a way out and something better because hey were controlled by their circumstances.
Matt. 10:21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.
If God asks you what you did with the people he has entrusted to you, what do you want to say. You don’t have kids now, but it is important for you to formulate a plan now for when you do how you are going to parent those children. Are you going to tell God “I just fell out of love with the father or mother, that’s why we split the family up?” Are you going to tell Him you were drunk all time? How about you just have a bad temper and take it too far sometimes. Are you going to say those things to God, because He isn’t listening. We need to make a plan right now to give our children a Godly upbringing and protect them from the evils of this world. A child should never feel abuse, or rejection, or brokenness. A child should be happy and full of love and hope.

This is a picture of the victim.


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