GLENN MULCAIRE WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO REVEAL THE NEW IDENTITIES OF THE BULGER KILLERS IN 2001.

Описание: Chapter Sixteen: Thompson and Venables: Deconstructing a System
In February 1993, the shocking murder of a toddler attracted so much publicity that even someone as little interested in the news as me, could fail to be aware of what had happened. Two ten-year-old children, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, abducted, tortured and killed a toddler, James Bulger. Although appalled by reports of the murder of this innocent little boy, I could not have known then the impact the conviction of the two who were responsible would later have on my life both personally and professionally.
The first enquiry Greg tasked me with after I had set up Nine Consultancy Limited, was to find out the current whereabouts of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, how they spent their time, the conditions they were being kept in and, in particular, how much freedom and privileges they were allowed. Timing wasn’t great. It was November 2001. I was reluctant to leave Alison to deal with the house move and everything that went with it in order to travel north on this top-secret job for Greg. It was a baptism of fire; I was still finding my feet in the job and already I was on the motorway two hundred fifty miles from home. I hated being away but the issue was clearly of massive public interest and, even more importantly for me, was a job well worth doing.
For a first job, the enquiry into Thompson and Venables proved seminal. Drawing on a wide range of techniques and travelling to the north west, it became a blueprint for future operations. The investigation gave me an insight into the weaknesses in tax-funded government agencies that I exploited in order to access and share knowledge I believed ought to be in the public domain. The experience with the killers of James Bulger, demonstrated just how unsophisticated social services and the probation service could be and offered an excellent example of the methods I developed to access that which was not to be accessed.
When Miskiw initially commissioned the job, I didn’t even have an office set up. I was working away, late into the night, on a cobbled together desk in the attic in our new home. I found the groundwork for the investigation unexpectedly difficult. Good preparation is the bedrock of any enquiry. Learning everything there is to know of a case, demands careful research and wide reading around every aspect of what is already known about the subjects being scrutinised. I had no idea when I began looking into what had happened to James Bulger, how, very, very hard that would prove to be. Uncovering the details of what Thomson and Venables had done to this little boy often wedged a lump into my throat that was hard to shift and sometimes brought me to tears. The information I accessed was harrowing and it was difficult to digest the horror that appeared in front of me. It is something that I can never un-know. For me, the pursuit of these two murderers became much more than just another job for a paying client and persisted long after the News of the World task was completed. I made it a personal mission and in the years that followed, there was barely a moment when I didn’t know exactly where the men they grew into were located, nor what they were doing.
Back when the investigation began though, the I couldn’t have foreseen the impact it would have on me. In the seven or so years since their conviction, largely because of the efforts of James’ mother and father, questions about the location and long term arrangements made for the two murderers, had regularly been the subject of press speculation but little was actually known about what had become of them.
Unsurprisingly, they attracted considerable media attention and the public outrage at what they had done made them vulnerable. These facts entitled them to be protected while serving out their sentences and later to facilitate their re-entry to ordinary life. Previously, the authorities used court injunctions to hide certain prisoners’ identities, but these were far too easy to navigate around and earlier that year, the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement (MAPPA) had been introduced in order to upgrade security and ensure the continued protection of those being hidden.
However, basic errors were made in the design and application of MAPPA. It was riddled with weaknesses and human error that I found easy to e
I was thrown in at the deep end of a complex enquiry which put the breaching of MAPPA defences centre stage. With just a modicum of application though, it took me a less then a day to suss out the inner workings of this costly but rather pitiable scheme. As I progressed, I was gobsmacked at just how straightforward this had proved to be. Of course, the powers that be would never want it known just how easy it was for a bloke with a little bit of kit and a lot of guile to slice through their ramparts like a hot knife through butter..read book for more.