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Another murder that haunts me is the 1993 SENSELESS abduction of 2-year-old James Bulger, from a shopping mall in Merseyside, England. Little James was led by his tiny hand (the image caught by CC cameras is frozen in time and was seen worldwide) by a ten-year-old boy, away from the safety of his mother, who had turned her attention to a butcher for less than two minutes.
The boy was Jon Venables who, with his pal Robert Thompson, also 10, led “Jamie” away from his mother and on an over-two-mile hike to some train tracks and, ultimately, to his terrible death.
Little Jamie was seen being led by these two 10-year-olds by no less than 38 people in and around town, some who even asked the boys about him, as he had a gash on his head early when the boys dropped him head-first onto concrete because he wouldn’t look at his own reflection in a pond. When they did finally reach the railroad tracks, the boys splashed his face with blue paint that they’d stolen in the mall. He was then beaten, — and beaten, and beaten — with an over-20-pound metal bar, large concrete bricks, and rocks about his entire body by both the boys. When the boys were later questioned about why they had beat him so MUCH, they said, “He just kept getting back up!” Jesus.
The boys beat this child so badly that his head was literally caved in by their dozens of blows to the head with sharp rocks. Batteries, AA’s that were also stolen, were inserted into him (it’s questionable exactly how and where) and his private parts had been manipulated. Then the boys laid his broken body over the train tracks and covered his face with stones, apparently thinking it would be seen as an accident by a careless boy who played on the tracks. He was not dead when put on the tracks, but died before the train came and literally cut his tiny body in two.
The train operator said he’d thought it was “a doll” but then saw only clothes, he’d thought, until he realized, to his horror, what he was seeing was the top half of a toddler boy; the other half, stripped of clothing, was found some distance away.
I cannot, CAN not, fathom what this discovery must have done to this man, and what in God’s name Jamie’s mother, Denise, surely went through — it is absolutely unthinkable, this crime, yet this happened to her only child. . . it must have been horrific… God knows how she made it through their trial, which put them out of the public for only eight years.
Incidentally, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were released when they were 18, and England provided them with new, secret identities, college degrees, two-bedroom homes, and anonymity for the rest of their lives. Even though Venables has married and HAS A CHILD, his wife does not know that the man she married was one of the Merseyside killers. Thompson allegedly got into problems with heroin and is now on methadone maintenance. His life partner, a man, shares his home.
I cannot begin to imagine how the parents of Jamie Bulgar must feel, knowing these “men” are out and free to do as they please. Incidentally, Jamie’s mother recently learned where one of the killers, Robert Thompson, lives now and went there to confront him. But, she says, she “saw the pure evil in his eyes” and was utterly speechless, and “he was ’round the corner, and then gone” before she’d said a word. He had not recognized her, she believes.
Jamie Bulger was the same age as my three daughters, and I know I watched them with a whole new consciousness after these terrible murders, and I’d bet a lot of mothers did the same. He was a beautiful little boy and I will never forget what these monsters did. That case just continues to haunt me. . . probably always will.
Sorry if my post was too long. . . . I did try to edit, but it’s not my strong suite.

I held the revolver in my head and pointed it at the face of the other person. I didn’t know what I was doing. Or what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted something terrible to happen and I wanted everything that was going wrong in my life to stop. And I wanted nothing to happen, and finally I felt so tired that I couldn’t hold on to my gun or my anger or any emotion. Everything was gone or going, and I dropped the gun, and for the next five years I walked around like a dead man.

And when I came back to life, I was somebody else. A bookkeeper, a student, a guy waiting to become a clerk in some quiet bank.

I’ve been him ever since.

xo.

The second was too local, too close to home and still too unimaginable for me to spend any time thinking about though I find myself each day pondering it. A father was driving a car with his five children to meet their mother at the mall in Spokane, here where I live in November, 2005. Another driver, crossed the line and hit them head on. All five children died and the mother, 7 months pregnant with her sixth child, went to the hospital two weeks after her children died to forgive the driver of the other car. Forgiveness it seems of a kind I cannot imagine. The driver still has not been prosecuted and rumors errupt that he was on his cell phone but the community waits and struggles to process the information. Is it murder? I’m not sure but accident somehow seems too trivial. Five lives–2 years old, 5 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old and 12 years old. And the parents get out of bed each day to raise their sixth child, in a sense, an only child. Their kind of forgiveness and depth is beyond amazing to me.