TWENTY years ago Det Sgt Phil Roberts planned to spend his Saturday afternoon off-duty playing rugby for Welshpool Town, but instead he was called by work to help investigate the disappearance of a two-year-old toddler.

That was Saturday, February 13, 1993. Eight days later DS Roberts charged Robert Thompson for the abduction and murder of James Bulger.

Jon Venables was also charged and on November 24 that year they were both found guilty of murder.

Phil, now 62, was on the case for just over a week. In that time he organised a team of officers to arrest Venables and headed the team that arrested Thompson, questioned him and ultimately charged him.

“The first thing people often ask me is ‘are they are evil?’ I answer ‘yes they are evil, absolutely evil’,” said Phil, a former pupil of Llanfyllin High School.

“They have to be evil because of what they did to poor James Bulger. A lot of people ask how I can say such a thing, but I know exactly what they did. I worked on the case and saw all of the evidence.”

Some of the evidence was so brutal that four photographs were never shown in Preston Crown Court due to their horrendous graphic detail, Phil told the County Times.

What the court heard was that the toddler-killers walked James three miles across Liverpool, leading him to a canal, where he sustained injuries to his head and face. Eventually they led Bulger to a railway line where they attacked him.

At the trial it was established that at this location one of the boys threw blue modelling paint into James’ left eye, kicked him and hit him with bricks, stones and a 22-pound iron bar and placed batteries in his mouth.

“I was having a pint in one of the pubs in Bootle when my boss walked in and asked me to gather two teams together – one to arrest Thompson and one to arrest Venables. I chose the people I wanted on the case and opted to lead the team that went after Robert Thompson,” said Phil.

“The next morning I knocked on Thompson’s door and his younger brother answered. He was actually quite astute because he told me he and his brother, Robert, had just been to lay flowers at James Bulger’s memorial. When I heard that the first thing I thought was ‘it can’t be him’.

“Anyway, I asked to speak to his mother and we arrested her son. We locked him up for a bit and then began to interview him.

“He totally denied everything. He never showed any remorse during any stage of the interview. I understand Venables did.

“He acted whiter-than-white in interview and in many ways he was very clever in a conniving, streetwise sort of way, but in the end he shot himself in the foot by giving me a detailed account of what James Bulger was wearing.

“This is where we thought ‘we’ve got him’ because no 10-year-old would remember what he was wearing in such detail unless they had reason to.

“He had other failings too. He would begin to shake his legs when asked a difficult question and I think his mother knew he was guilty because she refused to sit in the interview after day one. You could tell she just knew.

“As the interview went on Thompson admitted walking him to the canal and then the railway station, but when it came to the actual killing he blamed it all on Venables while in the other interview I understand Venables blamed it all on Thompson.

“I never asked why they did what they did. Law states you charge someone as soon as you have sufficient evidence to do so and that’s exactly what we did. We never asked anyone why, regardless of how much we often wanted to.”