EXCLUSIVE
THE brothers of murdered toddler James Bulger have spoken for the first time about growing up without him in their lives.
James’s brother Michael, 27, and halfbrothers Thomas, 22, and Leon, 21, tell how mum Denise leaves an empty chair for her lost son at the Christmas table.
Michael, born nine months after his brother’s murder, said: “My mum likes to see James as not sitting there but being there, present with us, while we’re having Christmas dinner.
“Being James’s brother is not a weird thing. We’ve grown up knowing he was there, what he was like, his character. We talk about James a lot. We don’t pretend he is there but we talk about him as if he is.”
A new documentary,
Lost Boy: The Killing of
James Bulger, revisits the abduction and murder of two-year-old
James in 1993. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 10, led him from Denise in a Liverpool mall.
His brothers tell how, growing up, Denise rarely let them out of her sight. Michael says: “I wasn’t allowed on school trips or to go to the shops with my mates.
“The only place I was allowed was either in the front garden or literally outside the gate with my mates.
“I’d have to be in view of the window, so if I went out of sight, Mum would be straight out, ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Don’t go down there’.”
Leon says: “If we were walking around a shop she would always make sure she was behind us so she could watch us in front of her. She wanted to know where we were at all times.”
The documentary includes details of the search for James from police officers involved in the case, and never-beforeheard tapes of police interviews with his killers, Venables and Thompson.
James’s body was found two days after the boys, who were playing truant, abducted him. He died on a railway embankment after suffering 42 injuries.
In a chilling recording, Thompson impersonates James saying: “I want me mum.” In another, Thompson, who had a baby brother who looked like James, asks: “Why would I wanna kill him when I’ve got a baby of my own?
“If I wanted to kill a baby I’d kill me own, wouldn’t I?”
Denise, who split from husband Ralph in 1993 shortly after having Michael, went on to marry Stuart Fergus, with whom she had Thomas and Leon.
She says that even after 28 years the pain of losing James is still unbearable.
She says: “I was holding his hand and within seconds of me reaching for my purse to pay for some chops at the butcher’s he’d gone. I shouldn’t have let go of his hand.
“It’s hard for me to say but it’s the truth.
“He’ll never be forgotten by us. Every single day, even after all these years, I miss him. Every single day without James, he’s missed.”
But Denise has managed to keep his memory alive. Michael says: “My mum will give us little stories and insights about what he was like.
“He has always been a character we wanted to know more about. He’s never not been part of the family.”
■ Lost Boy: The Killing of James Bulger, 9pm on Channel 5, Wednesday and Thursday next week.