Family of Jamie Bulger condemns decision to scrap Crimewatch

THE family of Jamie Bulger, whose murder was solved after a Crimewatch appeal, has condemned the decision to scrap the show as “utter madness”.

Stuart Fergus, who is the toddler’s stepfather and charity manager at The James Bulger Memorial Trust, called on another television network to take on the show after BBC executives announced it had been scrapped after 33 years.

“Crimewatch is an institution. It was there to help bring justice for Jamie,” Mr Fergus, 42, said. “It’s an informative programme, not a documentary or a soap that’s on three to five days a week. It’s on every couple of months and has helped solve cases.”

Denise Fergus’s son was two when he was snatched from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993. CCTV footage showing two boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, leading the child away was screened on the programme and led to their arrest and conviction for murder. The toddler had been beaten with bricks and iron bars and his body dumped on a railway line.

Mr Fergus said: “Not only was it very informative it also helped people look after themselves and their homes... I think there will be uproar from other families.

“At the end of the day the BBC do what they want, they don’t care about anyone,” he added.

When Crimewatch celebrated 30 years of broadcasting in 2014, the BBC revelled in how one in three cases that it featured ended in an arrest, and one in five resulted in a conviction.

At its peak, in the Eighties and Nineties, it could get up to 15 million viewers. The programme was recently relaunched in a weekly format with hosts Jeremy Vine and Tina Daheley., but it attracted only around 1.7 million viewers, well below the five million that a prime-time show is expected to get. Crimewatch Roadshow, the show’s spin-off on daytime television, will continue, the BBC confirmed.