If I’d turned right I would have saved my little boy’s life, says Bulger mother

The mother of murdered toddler James Bulger has spoken of her biggest regret nearly 25 years on from his death, saying: “If I’d turned right instead of left, I’d have saved his life.”

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson killed two-year-old James in Liverpool in 1993, after abducting him from the Bootle Strand shopping centre. She added that she still blames herself for letting go of his hand as she went to pay for pork chops.

Venables and Thompson, who were 10 at the time of the killing, were jailed for life but released on licence with new identities in 2001.

“People often ask me if I blame myself for what happened that day – for taking my eyes off him for that split second; for letting go of his hand as I looked for my purse; for not seeing what the CCTV footage later showed: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson beckoning James away from my side and out of the shop at 3.39pm”, Ms Fergus wrote in The Mail on Sunday.

“If I had taken the right turn and gone around the corner, I would have seen James being led away, just four short minutes after he had left my side, trustingly holding hands with the boys who were about to murder him”, she wrote.