Bulger’s mother ‘thought of ending it’

The mother of murdered toddler James Bulger said she seriously considered suicide in the weeks after his horrific death.

Denise Fergus said she and the two-year-old’s father, Ralph Bulger, hit “rock bottom” as their son’s third birthday approached shortly after he was abducted from Bootle Strand shopping centre in Liverpool and killed in February 1993.

In an extract from her forthcoming memoirs, I Let Him Go, Ms Fergus said: “I think we both hit rock bottom. I certainly felt I had nowhere left to fall.

“Did I try to kill myself? Not quite. Did I think about killing myself ? Absolutely. Very often in great detail.”

Ms Fergus said their grief was compounded by her feeling that Mr Bulger blamedherformomentarily letting go of James’ hand while at the shopping centre. The act cleared the way for child killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson to swoop and commit atrocities that would send shockwaves across the country.

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

In her memoirs, Ms Fergus described her horror at the behaviour of the defendants’ families during their murder trial.