‘Cold, calculated and scheming young man’
The teenage killer had been a lonely child, without a father figure, seeking the company of younger children after being bullied by his own peers.
His crime will inevitably draw comparisons with the killing of toddler James Bulger by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson — although Hamer, at 14, was older than the ten-year-olds who tortured and murdered two-year-old James.
Hamer had been planning to abduct Joe for at least three weeks even to the extent of practising his letter-writing to lure his victim away from home.
He thought through his crime, identified his vulnerable prey, then concocted a plan to conceal his murder.
His father is a policeman, who left his mother while she was still pregnant.
Contact between father and son was “infrequent and intermittent”, Manchester Crown Court heard, and Hamer felt rejected and isolated.
After school he would spend hours alone, in his bedroom on his computer.
He struggled with his school work and was in a number of low-achievement classes for school subjects.
Joe, though born with a disabling illness, was popular, likeable and clever.
“One of his explanations for doing this to Joe was that he wanted someone else to feel as he did — in other words, frightened and intimidated,” said Det Supt Martin Bottomley, who led the murder hunt.
Hamer told police he “just flipped”.
