Justice for James

Friday, June 1, 2001

Justice for James

Poor little James Bulger, just eight years ago,
With his Mom to a butcher in Merseyside did go.
The two-year-old baby could not have foreseen
Two ten-year-old truants on the hunt to be mean.

Taking his hand gently, one led James away
But not, oh dear no, to have fun, joke or play.
After bashing his head and unspeakable pain,
They lay the boy down in the path of a train.

And now as the boys are about to be free,
The British are angry, as angry can be.
Anonymity, money and a life all anew
And the press nicely muzzled, not a thing they can do.

Yet way down in Texas, mosquitoes and rain,
Have spawned something worse that will boggle the brain.
Postpartum depression, and a nation in shock,
A gag-ordered execution for the wife of a jock?

So random the numbers, who on earth's killing who?
A woman drowns five while a baby goes blue,
From a murder by ten-year-olds, not one, but two.
There's only one thing that is left we can do!

NOISE

Then in cold blood they seized trusting, innocent two-year-old James from a shopping centre at Bootle, near Liverpool.
They led him away by the hand and dragged him, in floods of tears, to a railway line two miles away.
It was there that they subjected James to horrendous physical torture before battering him to death.
In an attempt to cover-up the murder they put his body on the line to be hit by a train so it might seem like an accident.
Official Justice for James web site, Campaign for Justice for James Bulger

On February 12th 1993, James Bulger was abducted and brutally killed by two ten year old boys in Liverpool, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates, a Texas mother drowned her five children in the family bathtub. Police found the oldest Noah, 7, still floating face down in the bathtub where they died. The other four, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, six months, were wrapped in a sheet on the bed. Two days later, on June 22nd 2001 Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were granted release on parole. Annoy.com linked the two cases with this cover, which was misunderstood by many in the U.S. who did not know about the James Bulger case, and assumed the kids in the bath were the Yates children.
Annoy.com, February 18, 2002

We see them everywhere. Those security cameras that hang in corners, bolted to the ceiling, silently monitoring us as we shop. Do they make us feel safer? Or do we ignore them, assuming nothing bad happens in the safe haven of our suburban shopping centers? Like millions of cameras installed in almost every modern shopping plaza, they are set up to identify shoplifters and thieves. But on February 12, 1993 in the calm of a Friday early afternoon, the security cameras at the Bootle Strand Shopping Center near Liverpool, England, captured the most tragic of thefts -- on this day, something priceless was stolen.
Shirley Lynn Scott, The Death of James Bulger: Tragic Child Abduction Caught on Tape, The Crime Library

Two-year-old James Bulger was beaten to death on a railway line in Liverpool in February 1993 by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, themselves only ten years old.
The Loss of a Child, TIME looks back at the death James Bulger, Photo Essay

Harris County prosecutors have sent more people to death row than any other county in Texas, which lead the nation in executions during the last decade. Andrea Yates now faces that fate if convicted during a trial capturing international attention.
John Springer, Court TV, Kids drowned, mother faces execution