FORUM: Deeds beyond theologians or nature vs nurture debate

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Published: 14 April, 2011
by Illtyd Harrington

Deeds beyond theologians or nature vs nurture debate 

Ask her how old she is and she will  tell you precisely to the second… 

Florence is my most challenging and implacable visitor. Looking like Alice in Wonderland – a gross deception – she has the unravelling court techniques of Perry Mason. 

Her question surprised and disturbed me. “Why did two big boys kill a little boy by a railway track?”

After a while I realised she’d picked up on the murder of little Jamie Bulger by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson in Merseyside 20 years ago. 

An avalanche of answers have failed to convince. Here was something unpredictable, inhuman and a ghastly deed. The explanations came from theologians, religious pundits – it was the devil; it was caused by a dysfunctional families;  bad welfare conditions. Confusing and unsatisfactory.  No one could come to an acceptable conclusion. 

The violent death of a child wrenches the heart of any civilised person. What draws a child to premeditated murder? It is bewildering and then you get lost in the labyrinth of nature versus nurture.

Perhaps our children are more susceptible to the daily ration of violence, pornography and explosive car chases.

It blunts the detail of everyday existence. And reality becomes fantasy.

I don’t know why but I tried to convince Florence that James’s death was caused by very stupid behaviour. A very bright child, she gave me a sceptical look.

Steven Sondheim some time ago wrote a song called Children Will Listen for his show Into the Woods.

I found out later that Florence had heard about a new life study of Jon Venables and his subsequent gross neglect and abandonment by those who had been given the unique set of circumstances in which to look after him. He is now in prison after a costly programme to protect and rehabilitate him obviously failed.

Who now remembers Mary Bell aged 12, who strangled two children who had shown her affection? Apparently she is now a devoted mother.

Then there is the case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. They were middle-class, upmarket, students who murdered a 14-year-old neighbour. They believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen who could commit the perfect murder. The most radical defence lawyer Clarence Darrow helped them avoid the death penalty after arguing: “It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university,” 

That case was the inspiration for Patrick Hamilton’s play Rope in which two friends murder another friend and conceal him in a large chest from which they serve meals. 

I once interviewed Emlyn Williams who had observed the trials of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and wrote a book: Beyond Belief. A recording of the two as they murdered a young boy was played at the trial and traumatised everybody who heard it.

Denis Avey is one of those characteristically unbreakable British NCOs. He has written in The Man who Broke into Auschwitz his blood-soaked time in the desert war. His best friend was blown apart while he was sitting at his side and he “mercy-killed” a dying Italian major whose head was blown open.

But it was as a prisoner of war in Poland,  camped adjacent to L757 – one of the Auschwitz compounds – that he experienced some of the unspeakable barbarity dealt out to the Jewish prisoners by the SS on forced labour in the nearby works of IG Farben. Russian prisoners were nearby working in equally bad conditions.

Strong-headed, he changed uniforms twice with a Dutch Jew to expose the truth of what was happening. It was worse than Dante’s 12 Circles of Hell. Relentless work, no food and no hope. This was the real Murder Incorporated.

The shock rendered him incapable of telling his story, for he was trapped in a recurring nightmare. An SS officer smashed his eye with a revolver. 

There was one even more gruesome incident which he could not erase. They take everything away from the prisoner, his possessions, his pride and his self-esteem  and then they kill him slowly.

It was a vicious incident towards the end of the war that really traumatised him. 

As the Russians approached from the East,  the human skeletons from Auschwitz and the remaining POWs were lined up to board a train. Their destiny was to go on the infamous march of death, when a screaming baby annoyed an SS officer. He smashed the baby’s head in. That was Avey’s breaking point and he shrank into impotence and rage. This was the contorted face of the master race.

In an introduction to the book the Highgate historian Sir Martin Gilbert says: “This is a timely reminder of the dangers that face any society once intolerance and racism take shape. It could happen anywhere where the veneer of civilisation is allowed to wear off or is torn off by ill-will and destructive urges.”

• The Man who Broke into Auschwitz by Denis Avey, Hodder and Stoughton, £20.

• Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story is at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden, until April 30.