Darren Vickers, who was 28 years old, befriended and moved in with a grieving family to hide the bad things he had done. He was pretty sure he was the cause of their pain. What a bad guy.
Background
Jamie Lavis was an ordinary eight-year-old boy. He was fun, cheeky, and naughty, and he thought everyone who smiled at him loved him. As sad as it is, the world is full of people who act like sheep but are really wolves.
His mother, Karen, said that Jamie was small for his age and dressed like a five- or six-year-old, but he never let that stop him from living the best life he could. He often went outside to play with his friends and siblings, but he always made sure to be home before sunset because he was afraid of the dark.
All of this changed, though, on May 5, 1997. As usual, Jamie, the boy, went outside in the morning to play with his friends. No one thought he would never come back.
Around 5 p.m., when the family sat down for dinner, nobody panicked or thought the worst because Jamie wasn’t there. But a few hours after dinner, his family got worried and went out to look for him around 8 o’clock.
When the police asked the Lavis why they had waited so long, they said that at first they thought Jamie had lost track of time or was at a friend’s house, but after hours of asking around and looking, everyone said they hadn’t seen him at all that night. They decided to call the police at that point.
What had happened to Jamie?
As soon as the police arrived, everyone, even those who didn’t live near the Lavis home, heard the terrible news.
For days, hundreds of people joined the search, but nothing was found. Since time was of the essence, the Lavis family and the police asked the public on national TV for any information that could help find their daughter. Surprisingly, in just a few minutes, the station was flooded with phone calls from people telling the same story.
They had seen Jamie hang out at the bus stop for a few minutes before he got on the 219 bus at 10:30 am. One of the family members said that he might have gone to buy his mom a birthday present because her birthday was coming up soon and Jamie was excited and looking forward to it. Sad to say, he never came back home, so we never got to celebrate.
The snake in the grass
Since the Lavis family was on TV, almost everyone knew about them. This was especially true for people in their neighborhood who weren’t their friends or didn’t know who they were before. One of them was Darren Vickers, a bus driver who was 28 years old.
A few days after the public call, he went up to Jamie’s older sister and said something very interesting. From his own mouth:
He wouldn’t happen to be wearing a dark blue rebook tracksuit, would he?. the sister nodded yes.
But no one had looked at the surveillance cameras yet, and even though everyone knew his jumper was blue, no one had mentioned that it was made by Reebok. So, if he didn’t leave with them, how did he know such exact information? Time would have to tell.
The 219 bus was driven by Darren Vickers, who lived three blocks away from the Lavis. He said that on May 5, 1997, Jammie bought a bus saver and spent the whole day on the bus looking out the window. At the end of the day, he dropped him off at the same station where he had picked him up.
Still, British transportation law said that kids his age couldn’t buy daily savers, so the public and police knew the man was lying, and everyone had their eyes on him.
Even though everyone could see through his lies, the Lavis family let him move in with them because they thought he was really determined to bring their son home alive. He spent every moment with the family and went to any possible sightings that people told them or the police about.
His strange behavior started to worry people, and one officer said that the family started to trust him more than the police, which made their job harder.
During his trial, his family told the jury that they were also shocked by Darren’s involvement in the case and with the Lavis. They said that he had changed in a big way, and that he didn’t care if he lost his job because he stopped going to work when he moved in with them.
On top of that, he had completely ignored and cut off contact with them, blocking their phone calls and not answering them no matter how hard they tried to get in touch with him. But they didn’t think he would be a suspect or a convicted ki*ller when he showed up.
Witness
The longer The more press conferences Darren held, where he spoke for the family and said things that seemed to contradict each other, the less people believed he was honest and innocent. Witnesses on the 219 bus told the police that Daren was lying about Jamie’s behavior and their relationship on that day.
They said that Jamie had turned the bus into a playground, and they thought he was related to the driver because he sat close to him and handed out bus tickets, played, and changed gears sometimes.
The police were sure that Darren had done something to make Jamie feel safe and trust him. When they watched the CCTV footage, they saw that Darren had been fooling everyone from the start. He was seen getting off the bus, walking up to Jamie, talking to him while playing with his hair, and then the two of them walking back together and leaving.
However, the evening footage never showed any sign of the driver or Jamie , as Vickers had claimed.
The police looked at his profile quickly and again saw that Darren had never been a good person. Darren was a former child molester who also lied to the bus company about his past work references. The police brought him in right away to question him, but the Lavis family was very angry.
They waited outside for days, telling him that he was now part of their family and should be set free. Even the boy’s mother told the news that the police had done a terrible job and had to arrest Darren to make it look like they were doing something. Even though the police were sure he was guilty, they didn’t have enough evidence to put him in jail, so they had to let him go.
Joyful screams could be heard outside the station, and later, a party was held to welcome him home. To keep up his act, Darren pretended that what the police did hurt him a lot. He told his family that he didn’t know how to clear his name after all the false accusations were made against him, and he was afraid that his good name was ruined forever.
Because they believed his lies and wanted to protect him, Darren’s family let a local news crew come into their house, record him, and send the message back to the public.
“I had nothing to do with Jamie Lavis’s disappearance, and the Lavis family, friends, and everyone else backs me.”
Radio Interview
His small-time arrogance in the speech made a lot of people angry. Some people wanted to talk to him directly before making a final decision, and Darren let them. He didn’t know that he couldn’t fool everyone.
He called a radio station and told the story again. Then he asked people to stop blaming him for everything and get off his back. As soon as the radio lines opened, Darren was flooded with questions, so after answering a few, he did the smart thing and ran away. Based on what they knew about Jamie and what they learned from the interview, the police decided that Jamie was de*ad and that Darren did it.
But because of how the family reacted when Darren was arrested before, the police couldn’t tell them what they thought and knew they had to come up with a plan to keep them apart. Darren had committed driving offenses in the past that he had not taken care of, so the police used those to bring him back to jail.
Finally, their plan worked, and after a few hours of talking, the Lavis family realized that not only had they been tricked, but by letting the devil into their home, they had also given him a place to dance to their pain.
When Karen looked down and said she had to leave, her face said it all.
The discovery of Jamie’s remains and more
Soon after he was caught, a lot of teens went to the police station to talk about how awful the driver had been to them. Even though they didn’t know the driver, they told the police that he had befriended them before and tried to get them into the woods by giving them alcohol and cigarettes one night.
When the police went to check on the Lavis family, they didn’t expect Jamie’s older brother John to tell them about a similar case. When the 11-year-old told his story, Darren took him to the woods, gave him a cigarette, and said that was where his brother was. This happened a few days after Darren moved into the family home. But if he talked to anyone, he would be back where he started, and no one would ever see him as Jamie.
The confession scared, tormented, and hurt the young man. He shook, swore he would never talk again, and kept his promise. The oldest sister also said that Darren’s actions toward John sometimes made her feel weird. He cared about him so much that he bought him things like expensive shoes and a bike. Still, she quickly turned a blind eye, like the rest of the family, and saw him as the fallen angel everyone needed during that hard time.
After looking for days in the mentioned woods, clothes that fit little Jamie were found near a golf course wrapped in tarp and hidden. As they were being taken out of their wrappings for forensic testing, a small person’s jaw dropped, and everyone looked down with sad faces.
A few days later, more parts were found, but not all of them. They all belonged to little Jamie. A young man’s life had been taken in a brutal way, but one person whose job it was to protect passengers and not ki*ll them. After that, Little Jamie was laid to rest.
Trial and sentencing
The jury was shocked when they heard some of Darren’s lies when he was testifying. He told them he had done nothing wrong and that Jamie’s father, John Lavis, had k*illed his son even though he couldn’t explain why.
To make matters worse, Darren told the court that Jamie’s mother, Karen, was cheating on him and that she and Jamie’s father were having an affair before Darren moved in with them. Daren said that the baby Karen was going to have was his to back up his lies, but people with big mouths said things without any proof. The rumor spread through the city like a tornado, so the grieving mother had no choice but to do a DNA test to shut up the people who were calling her names behind her back.
The rest of the family couldn’t believe that the 28-year-old had never loved or cared for them the way they had. He had only moved in to try to hide what he had done, which was part of a plan in case things went wrong.
The police say that Darren went to the station to pick up Jamie on purpose, knowing that he was going to do bad things to the boy. He had also let him do whatever he wanted all day on purpose so that he would not be able to resist getting into his own car later. Sad to say, he was never taken home. Instead, he was taken to the woods, where he was sexually abused, ki*lled, and cut up.
After seven weeks of deliberation, Darren Vickers was found guilty and given a minimum 25-year prison sentence for life. Soon after he was sentenced, he told the top investigator in secret that he had done everything they had thought he had done from the start.
But as soon as the public heard about the confession, Darren called a news station and said the officer had lied against him.
It didn’t take long for reporters to find out that while Darren was in jail, he had boasted and told his fellow inmates everything without showing any regret. On the other hand, his mother didn’t give up and kept trying to get him out of jail.
Since Darren has been in jail, things have been so hard. I also feel like I’m in jail.”I’m doing everything I can to help him get out of jail. Ann Price has really fought for us, and I’ve worked hard with her.” Wendy, Darren’s mother, said.
Darren Vickers can now apply for parole, but police officers thought the jury made a mistake by changing their decision. Detective Roy Rainford, who was in charge of the investigation at the time, was angry and upset about the situation.
“Darren Vickers shouldn’t be let out of prison at all. He will be unsafe for kids.” I agree with him in every way.
That’s the sad story of young Jamie, and writing it was one of the hardest and most emotional things I’ve ever done. I hope he is at peace now and that his family can move on. Please, let’s tell our kids to be careful around strangers, even if they seem nice. God bless and take care.
