Rikki murder-accused reported to police for touching boy, court told

Rikki, six, was strangled and posed naked in woods near his home in Peterborough in November 1994, the Old Bailey has heard.

The case remained unsolved for more than 20 years until the DNA of James Watson was identified on Rikki’s clothes, that were dumped in a nearby bin.

Watson, who was 13 in 1994, was seen with Rikki on the day he went missing, jurors have heard.

On Friday, the court heard of a complaint to police about an incident involving Watson and a friend of Rikki’s, dating back to April 1993.

Reading an agreed fact, prosecutor John Price QC said that the boy’s mother had reported that her son had told her that Watson had touched his penis.

She provided further detail to a social worker saying that her son had touched himself while getting ready for bed and told her that Watson had done it to him.

The mother had said that the boy’s genitals were red and a doctor confirmed there was a “slight abrasion”.

When the boy was spoken to, he said that he and Watson had touched each other.

Interviewed in the presence of a social worker, Watson denied touching the boy, explaining that he had shown him how to “shake” himself after urinating.

Watson was told by police that the incident “would not be going any further although it would be held on records”, the jury was told.

In a statement in 2015, the boy was interviewed again and did not recall anything about the incident.

However, he said he did “vaguely” remember Rikki as a boy he would walk with outside school, before he was “suddenly” not around.

Giving evidence by video link, the boy’s mother told jurors about a story Watson’s mother Shirley had told the day before Rikki went missing.

It involved a two-year-old child being found “strangled” near the woods by the Welland Estate in Peterborough, she said.

Previously, jurors heard of a statement Watson’s mother gave to police in 1995, detailing a phone call with her son three days before the murder.

In it, she said: “James told me that a baby had been found over the dyke near Welland.

“He wanted me to say if what he had heard was true.

“I told him that I had not heard this before and knew nothing of what was said.”

Giving evidence earlier this week, Shirley Watson, now known as Shirley Cliffe, denied her 1995 statement was true.

Watson, now 40, of no fixed address, has denied murder.