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Closed-circuit television (CCTV), surveillance from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on Friday 12 February 1993 showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target.[7] The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly.[8] Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint,[9] some of which were later found at the murder scene. One of the boys later revealed that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the shopping centre, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.[10]

That same afternoon, Bulger, from nearby Kirkby, went with his mother, Denise, to the New Strand Shopping Centre. Whilst inside the A. R. Tym's butcher's shop on the lower floor of the centre at around 15:40, Denise, who had been temporarily distracted, realised that her son had disappeared.[3][11] Thompson and Venables approached him and took him by the hand, leading him out of the shopping centre.[12][13] The moment was caught on CCTV at 15:42.[14][15] Thompson and Venables took Bulger on a meandering 2.5-mile (4 km) walk across Liverpool to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal.[8][16] During the walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people.[17]

Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene.[18][19] Two people challenged Thompson and Venables, but they claimed Bulger was their younger brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to the local police station.[20] At one point, the boys took Bulger into a pet shop, from which they were ejected.[16] Eventually the boys arrived in the village of Walton, and with Walton Lane police station across the road facing them, they hesitated and led Bulger up a steep bank to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Anfield Cemetery, where they began torturing him.[8]


James Bulger being abducted by Thompson (above Bulger) and Venables (holding Bulger's hand) in an image recorded on shopping centre CCTV
One of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had stolen earlier, into Bulger's left eye.[21] They kicked him, stamped on him and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger's mouth and,[22] according to police, some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found.[3] Finally, the boys dropped a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, on Bulger.[23][24][25] He sustained 10 skull fractures as a result of the bar striking his head. Dr Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries —42 in total— that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.[26] Thompson and Venables laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After they left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train.[27] Bulger's severed body was discovered two days later on 14 February.[8] A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.[27]

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger's shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist's report, which was read out in court, found that Bulger's foreskin had been forcibly retracted.[23][28] When Thompson and Venables were questioned about this aspect of the attack by detectives and a child psychiatrist, Dr Eileen Vizard, Thompson and Venables were reluctant to give details; they also denied inserting some of the batteries into Bulger's anus.[3][17][29] At his eventual parole, Venables's psychiatrist, Dr Susan Bailey, reported that "visiting and revisiting the issue with Jon as a child, and now as an adolescent, he gives no account of any sexual element to the offence."[3]

The police quickly found low-resolution video images of Bulger's abduction from the New Strand Shopping Centre by two unidentified boys.[8] The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was adorned with hundreds of bunches of flowers.[30] The family of one boy, who was detained for questioning but subsequently released, had to flee the city due to threats by vigilantes. The breakthrough came when a woman, on seeing slightly enhanced images of the two boys on national television, recognised Venables, who she knew had played truant with Thompson that day. She contacted police and the boys were arrested.[31]

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