Rikki Neave’s mother denies using her murdered so as drug runner

The mother of Rikki Neave told a court today (tues) that she no longer had a relationship with her children because of the ‘lies’ told about her abusing them.

Rikki’s body was found in woods in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in November 1994, after he was strangled, stripped naked and left in a ‘star pose’.

Before he went missing, he lived in Redmile Walk, the Welland Estate, Peterborough with his mother Ruth, his three-year-old sister Rochelle and baby sister Sheradyn.

James Watson, who would have been 13 at the time, is now 40 and standing trial at the Old Bailey for Rikki’s murder.

Watson was arrested after sophisticated technology found a ‘definitive match’ between his DNA profile and samples taken from Rikki’s clothing after a new investigation was opened into the case in 2015.

Ruth Neave stood trial at Northampton Crown Court for his murder in 1996 and was cleared by the jury.

She later admitted abusing her children and was jailed for seven years.

Ms Neave was cross-examined via video-link today, wearing a cream jumper and thin white scarf.

The mother previously told the court that she was ‘bullied’ into admitting child neglect as she insisted she did not murder Rikki.

She said: ‘I thought I was pleading guilty to smacking the children and that was it.’

Jenni Dempster, QC, defending Watson, asked: ‘You suggest your barristers bullied you or just the solicitor?’

‘The barristers and everybody else,’ Ms Neave replied.

Ms Dempster went on: ‘It’s not true, is it Ms Neave, that you were bullied into anything?

‘Yes it was,’ she responded.

‘You pleaded guilty to serious charges of cruelty and neglect because you were guilty,’ the barrister pressed.

‘No I was not guilty,’ Ms Neave said, raising her voice on the word ‘not’.

Jurors heard Ms Neave appealed her seven-year sentence and was refused.

Ms Dempster said: ‘And so it comes to this does it, that you now say in 2022 you were not guilty of the cruelty and neglect charges save that you smacked your children from time to time. Is that what it comes to?

Ms Neave responded: ‘Yes it is actually’

‘That, Ms Neave, is nonsense isn’t it?’

‘No it’s not nonsense,’ she insisted.

Ms Dempster told jurors that the judge who sentenced Ms Neave said she was ‘guilty of appalling and systematic cruelty’ to her children and that she was ‘wholly unfit to be a mother’.

‘Actually,’ Ms Neave said, ‘Because there was so much press…of course the judge was going to say I’m guilty because he had read the papers.

‘Everyone else read the papers and it was all lies.’

The mother said she had expected a probation order after pleading guilty and was shocked when she received the seven-year prison sentence.

Ms Dempster said: ‘To your mind all you had done was smack your children.’

‘That’s correct,’ Ms Neave replied.

The barrister continued: ‘Do your children still have a relationship with you?’

‘No they don’t,’ the witness replied, ‘Due to social services and your lies, no I don’t.’

Watson, of no fixed address, denies murdering Rikki between 28 and 29 November 1994.

Ms Neave went on to tell the court that she started to take drugs such as amphetamines in 1993 when she met Dean Neave.

She would inject to get high and started to dealing herself.

‘Oh I was dealing drugs yeah,’ she said, ‘To put food on the table.’

Ms Dempster read out a statement of Ms Neave’s which said, about how she dealt drugs: ‘Some people came to my house and others wouldn’t.

‘I would have to meet others at the park and give them drugs.’

She told the court today: ‘I never said that. That is not my wording.’

Ms Dempster went on to suggest that Ms Neave had taken drugs on Sunday November 27, the evening before Rikki went missing, when Dean Neave was visiting her.

‘Nope. I don’t have to think, I know I never took any that night,’ the mother replied.

‘Let’s make this clear – I never took drugs on that night or any other night after that.’

The barrister continued that Dr Wood, who met with Ms Neave in August 1996, recorded her saying that she had last had speed on that Sunday afternoon.

‘No no no,’ Ms Neave said.

‘I don’t believe that for one second I would say that.’

Ms Dempster went on: ‘One of the things you told police during the course of your interview was that you had bought, on Sunday 27th, four or five wraps of amphetamine for Dean and his friends.’

‘Yes,’ Ms Neave replied, ‘But it was nothing to do with me.’

‘He gave me the money to get them.

‘I never bought them and I never had the money.’

The barrister then asked: ‘How did you use your children in connection to your drugs use?’

Ms Neave laughed in response.

‘I never used my children to get my drugs.’

Ms Dempster suggested that Ms Neave sent her eldest, Rebecca, out to pick drugs up for her.

She added: ‘I suggest that it was well known and true.’

‘No I’m sorry to say,’ the witness replied, ‘I never used the children to get drugs for me.’

Ms Dempster then suggested that when Rebecca was taken into care Rikki ‘filled the role that Rebecca then left’.

Ms Neave leaned back in her chair to laugh again.

‘Oh you are just laughable you really are.

‘It is absolutely ridiculous.’

Ms Neave squirted washing up liquid into Rikki’s mouth as he gasped: ‘Sorry Mum, I love you,’ the court heard.

The charge Ms Neave pleaded guilty to in 1996 included neglect and cruelty, in relation to Rikki, from 4 March 1988 to 28 November 1994, the court heard.

‘It spanned cruelty from the day he was born to the day he died or the day he was reported missing,’ Ms Dempster said.

‘He bore the brunt of your ill treatment didn’t he?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Ms Neave replied.

‘He was treated the worst wasn’t he?’

‘No,’ Ms Neave repeated.

Ms Dempster asked about an incident on 21 December 1991.

‘After midnight did you lock Rikki outside the house?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘In his pyjamas?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was three years and nine months old I suggest. He was screaming outside I suggest.’

‘Was he?’ Ms Neave asked. ‘Nope, nope did not happen.’

Ms Dempster continued: ‘You accepted that, in the course of an interview with police, in fact you said one of the things you disagreed with, you said his pyjamas were quite fleecy instead of thin.’

‘No, I did not say no such thing.’

The barrister went on: ‘When police brought him inside that night from the rain…’

‘It wasn’t raining,’ Ms Neave interrupted.

‘You grabbed Rikki from the arms of the police officer didn’t you?’

‘Nope.’

‘And you held him with your left arm around his neck in front of the police officers.’

‘No, no, I’m sorry but that is so rubbish.’

‘Until Rikki went red in the face.’

‘No sorry.’

‘One of the police officers had to physically remove your arm from around his neck.’

‘Incorrect.’

‘And so any neighbour reporting Rikki outside screaming…has got that wrong?’ Ms Dempster asked.

‘And then a police officer reporting that you had held Rikki round the neck with your left arm has got that wrong as well?’

Ms Neave responded: ‘Yep.’

Moving on a year, Ms Dempster asked about an occasion in 1992 when Ms Neave was accused of throwing Rikki against the corner of a sofa.

A neighbour of the Neave’s told the police about the incident, it is said.

‘She used to babysit your children on occasion didn’t she?’ Ms Dempster asked.

‘No she did not,’ Ms Neave replied.

‘I would not trust her.

‘She’s evil she is.

‘Did you know she used to open the door in the middle of the night, leave her son on the floor naked while she nipped out and got a bottle of gin while it was freezing cold.

‘I had to go around there and pick the baby up.’

Ms Dempster pursued: ‘Did you throw Rikki against the corner of the sofa..causing a cut to his mouth?’

‘No, I did not.’

The barrister explained that the incident was part of the child cruelty charge the witness pleaded to years ago.

‘If I had known what it was, I wouldn’t have pleaded guilty to it,’ Ms Neave said.

Ms Dempster continued: ‘[The neighbour] also said when Rikki was cheeky…she saw you grabbing him around the throat and pushing him against the wall.’

‘No.’

‘To the point I suggest where you actually lifted Rikki up by his throat…until his feet were off the ground.’

‘Considering I was six stone back then…actually I couldn’t even lift him up,’ Ms Neave said.

‘It didn’t happen,’ she insisted.

‘More lies being told about you, you say?’ Ms Dempster asked.

‘It is all lies. 15 minutes of fame again.’

Of an incident on 8 April 1994, wherein police reported that Rikki had a black eye, Ms Neave said his stepfather, Dean Neave, was responsible.

Turning to the summer of that same year, Ms Dempster asked the witness whether she could recall an occasion where an alleged friend, Debbie Graham, visited her house.

‘Was there an occasion at 209 [Redmile Walk] when Debbie Graham came around and Rikki answered the door and said he hadn’t been to school?

‘Debbie Graham asked Rikki, “Why haven’t you been to school today?” but you… said, “He’s not gone to school because I’ve kicked him black and blue.”’

‘No, it never happened at all,’ Ms Neave said today, adding that was yet another example of ‘people telling untruths’ about her.

Further into 1994, Ms Dempster asked whether Ms Neave recalled being at a friend called Tina’s house in Redmile Walk.

Ms Neave said no.

‘Did you grab Rikki by the back of the neck, pull him to his feet and slap him across the face?’ Ms Dempster asked.

‘Nope. Not true.’

The barrister pressed: ‘In August of 1994 did you lose your temper with Rikki after he called you a slag?’

‘He didn’t call me a slag,’ Ms Neave refuted, adding that he had called another woman the derogatory term.

Ms Dempster continued: ‘He having made that remark, you grabbed him, you forced him against the wall, you pushed his head back, you forcibly opened his mouth and you put a bottle of washing up liquid into it and then you squeezed it.’

‘No that never happened,’ Ms Neave said.

‘I put some fairy liquid into his mouth, but it was empty.

‘Yes it was, I told police that that bottle was nearly empty.’

Ms Dempster went on: ‘Through Rikki’s attempts to spit out washing up liquid.. he said sorry mum I love you.’

‘No.’

‘Before he vomited,’ Ms Dempster started.

‘No, he didn’t vomit actually,’ Ms Neave said.

The barrister said: ‘You admitted this in a police interview in 1995 but now you are denying it, why?’

Ms Neave responded: ‘I’m not denying anything.’

The trial continues.

Ends