James Bulger: the UK’s most shocking crime?
When a toddler was abducted from a Liverpool shopping centre, no one could anticipate the horror that was to follow…
It was a crime that shocked the world. Even now, 26 years ago next week, who doesn’t remember the images of two-year-old James Bulger being led away to his death by two 10-year-olds?
On 12 February 1993, the day he went missing, James’s mum, Denise, had taken her son to the Strand shopping mall in Bootle, Merseyside. As she placed an order at the butcher’s, she momentarily let go of James’s hand.
They were only out of contact for a split second, but when Denise looked down, her toddler was gone. A massive search was launched. The haunting images of James trustingly clutching the hand of one of the children meant the story went worldwide.
James had fallen into the clutches of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. They walked him two-and-a-half miles to a railway track and they were seen by no fewer than 38 people. Most assumed that they were brothers, and the older boys told the few people who did challenge them, that they were taking the visibly upset little boy to a police station.
What happened next was unthinkable. Venables and Thompson threw blue modelling paint into James’s eyes, kicked and stomped on him, threw bricks and stones at him and put batteries in his mouth.
Then they dropped a 22lb iron bar on James’s head and laid him across the railway track, leaving his bruised, broken body to be hit by a train.
When he was found, two days after his disappearance, there were 42 injuries to his tiny body, all so bad the pathologists couldn’t say which one had been fatal.
Suspicion fell on Thompson and Venables when a woman noticed one of the boys had blue paint on his clothing, and they were later arrested. Their mug shots proved an eerie reminder of how young they were, with Venables standing at just over 4ft 7in tall.
When they were eventually found guilty, they became the country’s youngest murderers in 250 years.
The strain proved too much for Denise’s marriage to James’s dad, Ralph and the couple separated in 1994.
And their heartache continued when, just eight years later, in June 2001, Venables and Thompson, then 18, were released from prison and given new identities to protect them from vigilante attacks.
Thompson seemed to have been rehabilitated, yet Venables squandered his new-found freedom. He drank, took drugs and told friends he was a convicted murderer. Twice, he was found to have indecent images of children and is currently in prison for a third time.
Last year, director Vincent Lambe failed to tell the Bulger family about Detainment, a short film he was making based on the police interviews. The film has even been nominated for an Oscar, causing them further grief.
They are doomed to be haunted by the horrific crime forever.