Who was James Bulger and what happened to his killers?
James Bulger was two years old when he was murdered by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson in Bootle, Merseyside
Jon Venables, who killed toddler James Bulger more than 30 years ago, will next month have his latest bid for freedom heard by the Parole Board.
The 43-year-old, who tortured and murdered two-year-old James in February 1993 after abducting him from a Merseyside shopping centre, will have his case heard by parole chiefs at an oral hearing more than two years after his last appeal.
Venables was jailed alongside Robert Thompson in November 1993 after the pair of 10-year-olds committed one of the most notorious crimes in British history.
Both boys were released on licence under new identities in June 2001, but Venables was recalled to prison in February 2010 after indecent images of children were found on his computer.
He was once again freed in August 2013 and then called back in November 2017 for the same offence, with parole judges considering his case again in September 2020.
In 2023, the Parole Board rejected the bid, finding he still posed a danger to children and could go on to offend again.
The Daily Mirror this week reported that James’s family was informed on Tuesday of the upcoming parole hearing, which it said is expected next month but no date has yet been confirmed by the Parole Board.
Spokesperson Kym Morris, on behalf of James’s mum Denise Fergus, told the paper: “Once again, Denise Fergus has been forced to confront a process that reopens unimaginable trauma.
“Denise was hoping for a redirection … allowing her a measure of peace and protection from further distress. That hope has now been taken away.”
What happened to James Bulger?
James was murdered on 12 February 1993. He had been with his mother at the Strand shopping centre, in Bootle, Merseyside - just north of Liverpool.
As she placed an order at a butcher’s shop, she believed James was by her side when she was being served – but when she looked down, he was gone, as the subsequent murder trial at Preston Crown Court heard.
Two minutes later, school truants Venables and Thompson were captured on CCTV leading her son away, hand in hand.
“We see James being led away by the two killers,” David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, told The Independent in 2017 as he reviewed the footage.
“For all the world it looked like an innocent setting. The fact that there is a visual image about what was going to happen to that little boy, I think, was the beginning of allowing that crime to seep into our consciousness in a way that other crimes did not.”
Venables and Thompson took James around two and a half miles to the north Liverpool area of Walton and led the toddler up a steep bank towards a railway line.
There, the boys threw blue modelling paint, which they had earlier stolen, into James’s eye. They kicked and stamped on him, threw bricks and stones at him and placed batteries in his mouth, before dropping an iron bar onto his head, causing 10 fractures to his skull.
Then they laid him across the railway tracks, weighing his head down with rubble in the hope that his death would appear to be an accident.
Home Office pathologist Dr Alan Williams would later testify that he counted 22 bruises, splits and grazes on James’s face and head. In addition Dr Williams noted 20 more wounds on his body. He was unable to determine which had been the fatal blow.
Merseyside Police pinpointed the moment James was taken and released the still images from it, which would become forever associated with the crime.
Denise and her husband Ralph made an emotional appeal for their son’s return but, two days after his disappearance, the toddler’s body was found, just 200 yards from Walton Lane police station.
A combination of the footage and various sightings led them to Venables and Thompson. Officers charged the boys with murder six days after James disappeared.
Following a 17-day trial in November 1993, they were found guilty and presiding judge Sir Michael Morland named the boys, who until then had only been known as Boy A and Boy B.
He said they were guilty of “unparalleled evil and barbarity”, before ordering their incarceration, with a minimum tariff of eight years.
What happened to Venables and Thompson?
Venables and Thompson were released with new identities in 2001. Their release came with a court order, legally binding worldwide, that banned the publication of anything that reveals those identities.
In 2019, James’s father, Ralph, challenged the injunction as he sought to persuade the courts that the original anonymity order in respect of Venables was no longer sustainable. However, the court ruled against varying the injunction.
While Thompson has rarely been heard from since, Venables was arrested for affray and cocaine possession in late 2008. He was recalled to prison in March 2010 when images of child abuse were discovered on his personal computer.
He was released in July 2013 only to be recalled again in November 2017 for the same offence. He was given a parole review in September 2020 that ended in rejection and was rejected again in 2023.
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