Rikki Neave murder accused stands by recent claim he touched victim

Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of James Watson (right), appearing in the dock at the Old Bailey in London

James Watson was only 13 at the time it is alleged he killed six-year-old Rikki in Peterborough on November 28 1994.

Rikki was found strangled, stripped and posed in a star shape in woodland the next day.

Watson, now 40, was charged with Rikki’s murder after his DNA was allegedly found on the youngster’s discarded clothes.

He has accepted being seen with the victim on November 28, when both children should have been at school.

Giving evidence on Monday at the Old Bailey, Watson told jurors that was the “first and only time” he had met Rikki.

According to his statement at the time, Watson had gone to the Welland Estate and was watching a digger when Rikki approached him at 12.30pm.

He had stated: “Rikki said ‘that’s a big tractor isn’t it?’ I said ‘it’s not a tractor it’s a digger’.

“I then moved away and asked the workmen what they were doing. Rikki was walking back towards Redmile Walk.”

Watson accepted the evidence of residents who had seen him, saying he had no independent memory of it now.

“Pretty much all I can tell you is what I have read from other people’s statements,” he told the jury.

He said he spent four minutes with Rikki and only remembered years later that he had picked him up during the encounter.

Police had come to see him in prison because they wanted him to be “clear”, Watson said.

Asked why he did not mention it before, Watson said: “I believe I picked him up today but I cannot remember.”

On the purpose of doing it, Watson said: “To look at the workmen working beyond.”

Afterwards, Watson said he went to see his former foster mother before returning to school to get a taxi back to the children’s home where he was living.

He denied going to the woods where Rikki was found dead, but said it was a place he would go when he lived with his father on the Welland Estate.

Watson had been taken into care after his father, a serving officer with Cambridgeshire Police, was arrested and subsequently jailed, the court was told.

He could not stay with his mother because of the person she was living with, the jury was told.

Watson, of no fixed address, denies murder and the trial continues.