How Rikki Neave’s killer almost got away with it: Murder-obsessed teenager kept dead pheasants in his room and masturbated over children’s clothes and then fled to Europe as net closed after police found his DNA in cold case review in 2015
- Watson was identified in a 2015 cold case review but fled police after his arrest
- Trial heard about killer’s morbid fantasy’ and ‘sexual interest’ in small children
- Strangled Rikki, six, before leaving his naked body in a star shape in woodland
A petty criminal who lied about being a policeman’s son was today found guilty of murdering schoolboy Rikki Neave, finally bringing the killer to justice after nearly 30 years.
James Watson, 40, a convicted arsonist with ‘morbid fantasies’ and a ‘sexual interest’ in small children, strangled Rikki, six, before leaving his naked body in a star shape in woodland in Peterborough in 1994.
Watson had long evaded the authorities before a cold case review in 2015 used new scientific techniques to identify his DNA on Rikki’s clothes, which had been dumped in a wheelie bin near the murder scene.
It gave a chilling new context to disturbing behaviour that had included keeping a dead pheasant in his room and being caught pleasuring himself over kids’ clothing.
After he had murdered him, Watson made photocopies of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph with the front page dominated by a picture of a smiling Rikki as sick trophies.
When police questioned him following the breakthrough Watson – who the trial was told was gay and HIV positive – implicated himself by mistake.
He tried to explain away the DNA being there by claiming he had helped Rikki up to peer over a fence at some diggers – but detectives knew there had never been a fence at the time of the murder.
After the appalling killing between November 1998 and October 2008 Watson was convicted of a series of crimes, including carrying a loaded air rifle in public, engaging in sexual activity in a public lavatory, and stealing from his father’s house while his dad was in hospital.
He also had theft and burglary convictions – 17 for theft, eleven for burglary.
In 2009, he forced entry to an unmanned British Transport Police station, stole equipment and set it on fire.
The killer, who grew up in care, absconded following his arrest over Rikki’s death in 2016 by taking a ferry to the Continent, and would go on to taunt police by sharing a string of holiday photos from Portugal showing him drinking beer, sun-bathing and even posing nude.
James Watson, 40, was today found guilty of murdering schoolboy Rikki Neave nearly 30 years ago. He is pictured in 2016 after fleeing to Europe following his arrest
Watson fled the UK in a mobile home, boasting to a friend: ‘The best thing is I don’t even have a passport. I just walked out of our country’
Watson boasted in one message: ‘The best thing is I don’t even have a passport. I just walked out of our country.
‘Me and a mate left the UK in a mobile home. Booked it on the ferry, drove on and that was that. No checks, nothing.’
But his plans to flee to Thailand soon collapsed, and he sent emails to his probation officer begging to be helped back home after he ended up homeless and wandering the streets of Portugal.
On July 14, he contacted his probation officer by email telling them he wanted to return to the UK.
The next day, Watson’s probation officer replied: ‘Whereabouts are you? How can we support you getting back to the UK?’
Watson wrote back: ‘I am in a world of sh**, I left with that Collin under the assumption that he was going to Thailand and I could see a bit of Europe for a few days.
‘It never turned out like that.
‘Now I am homeless and living on the streets in Europe.
Watson strangled Rikki, six, before leaving his naked body in a star shape in woodland in Peterborough in 1994
‘I stayed in a room with some people I met but that was not long term now I don’t know what my next plan should be?
The probation officer referred the matter to the police.
Detective Sergeant Gan Thayanithy sent an email to Watson that same day.
On August 2, Watson was arrested in Lisbon at the Consulate building, he consented to the extradition and he returned to the UK ten days later.
Two years later in April 2018, Watson was convicted of a sexual assault in which he briefly touched the penis of a man over his clothing while he was asleep.
Watson said he intended to do this, but he woke up ‘completely disgusted with myself’.
Watson’s trial heard disturbing details about his fascination with murder and dead animals, with a former girlfriend telling how he once killed a sparrow with a stone.
Watson had long evaded the authorities before a cold case review in 2015 used new scientific techniques to identify his DNA on Rikki’s clothes, including this jacket
Rikki’s clothes and shoes (pictured) had been dumped in a wheelie bin near the murder scene
A white shirt worn by Rikki, who was stripped naked and deliberately posed in a star shape after his death
A small pair of sock worn by the six-year-old schoolboy, who was killed in a ‘swiftly executed’ attack
The muddy trousers recovered from the scene after being dumped into a wheelie bin a short distance from Rikki’s body
Watson’s half-brother, Andrew Bailey, was friends with Rikki’s stepfather Dean Neave, and took Watson to visit the Neave family home ‘a couple of times’ when he was aged 11 or 12.
Mr Bailey went on to ‘distance’ himself from Watson after he told him he was gay at the age of 11.
In 2016, Watson admitted to sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy in April 1993, when he was 12.
Asked why he kept a dead carcass of a pheasant at the children’s home, he said he was ‘against animal cruelty’ but found the iridescence of pheasant feathers ‘fascinating’.
Watson’s defence depended on casting doubt on the evidence he murdered Rikki and suggesting the child’s abusive mother, Ruth, had been responsible instead.
However, Ruth was cleared of her son’s murder 26 years ago, and today the jury in Watson’s case found there was enough evidence to convict him.
Prosecutor John Price QC set out a detailed version of the events of November 28, 1994 that would end with Rikki’s sexually motivated murder.
Mr Price told jurors that the pair were seen walking from the city’s Welland Estate.
‘It was a sunny late autumn day and they were going to a place both of them knew well and both had visited many times before, at least during daylight — they were going to the woods,’ he said.
Watson’s defence had depended on casting doubt on the evidence he murdered Rikki and suggesting the child’s abusive mother, Ruth, had been responsible instead
Watson’s trial heard disturbing details about his fascination with murder and dead animals, with a former girlfriend telling how he once killed a sparrow with a stone
The killer – who grew up in care and was described as ‘vulnerable’ – is pictured as a child
‘Some time after the two boys arrived in the wood, from behind and without warning James Watson ambushed Rikki Neave and strangled him to death using a ligature, whether it was the collar of the jacket Rikki was wearing or something applied on the collar.
‘Rikki was wearing the jacket when he died and it was still zipped up because the zip left a telltale mark on his neck.
‘James Watson then stripped the child’s body. He had an abiding sexual interest in small children which he had already acted on in the previous year, an interest reinforced with a morbid fantasy about the death of a child known to have been on his mind as recently as three days earlier.’
Mr Price said one of Rikki’s shirt buttons came off and was placed on a nearby leaf as Watson ‘did whatever he was doing’.
Watson then posed Rikki’s body ‘much as he did with a dead bird’ he killed months later, before taking Rikki’s clothes and dumping them in a bin.
Afterwards, Watson became ‘fascinated by the consequences of his own act’, copying newspaper stories on Rikki’s death, Mr Price said.
But when he talked to teachers he did not reveal he had been with Rikki that day, only mentioning it to police when they called days later, the court was told.
Rikki was murdered near his home in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire on December 5, 1994 and his body was dumped in some nearby woods, circled
His account was not questioned or challenged for more than two decades, during which time Watson acquired a ‘considerable amount of forensic experience’, Mr Price said.
Before police told him about the DNA link to Rikki’s clothes, Watson had prepared an explanation — that he had picked him up to look through a hole in a fence, Mr Price suggested.
The prosecutor said: ‘He would tell them how, all these years later, the memory of the little boy peering through the hole in the fence still made him chuckle when it came to his mind.’
That was, Mr Price said, Watson’s ‘really big mistake because it never occurred to him all these years later it would be possible to conclusively prove that the high fence was not there’ on the day Rikki was murdered.
In a police interview in April 2016, Watson admitted to sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy in April 1993, when he was 12.
Asked about the admission at his murder trial, the killer pleaded ignorance. Later, he broke down and tearfully told the court: ‘I’m a complete a***hole’.
Source: Read Full Article
