Stage 3

This is the investigation plan. Good organisation is absolutely crucial in this stage for a successful investigation. The investigator will have to use their knowledge and experience to plan which actions they need to take in order for the investigation to be carried out properly. The investigator should take advice from their team when needed. The investigator will need to identify the most appropriate line of enquiry, determine the objective, identify the action that will make sure the objective is achieved, direct investigative actions to gather the most amount of material possible to generate further lines of enquiry and then manage the community impact.

The lead officer in the James Bulger case was Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby. To start their investigation, they looked at the evidence they had which was the description of James Bulger given by his mother, and the CCTV recordings from that day in which they could see James Bulger holding a young boys hand with another young boy in front, they also had information from people who had phoned up from seeing that James Bulger was missing on the news. The very first objective Albert Kirby and his team needed to achieve was to find James and find who the young boys where on the CCTV. The CCTV images where put out into the media, asking for the boys on the CCTV to come forward or for anyone to contact the police if they recognised the boys.
The police had received phone calls from people saying they had seen James in Walton and one phone call saying they had seen James by the canal. From these phone calls they had more of an idea where to search. Albert Kirby and his team decided the action to take was to send out an underwater search in the canal for James and other searches on land but they were unsuccessful in finding James. The police need to consider the impact this would have on the surrounding communities. For this case, people left their homes to help search for James. Parents of young children that lived in the community became worried for their child's safety.

On Sunday the 14th of February, four boys who were near the railroad found a young boy's body and reported it to the police in Walton station. The body was identified as James Bulger. He had suffered from 42 injuries, mostly to his face and his head. This changed the case from a missing person case to a murder case. This means that the police were no longer just searching for boys who abducted James, but they were searching for who murdered him.

This stage is important as with the correct investigation plan, the police can solve the crime as fast as possible. It is very important that a case of this type is solved as quickly as possible, for the safety of the community. The investigation plan in this case was very well done as they did all the correct procedures such as used the media to get the information out to the public, sent out searches and asked for any information from the public.