25 years on, portrait of little James with his life ahead of him
PREVIOUSLY unseen pictures of James Bulger are revealed by his mother today, 2 years after his abduction and murder.
The touching images show him as a baby, playing on a trampoline, and dressed up in a white and black outfit.
Denise Fergus, 0, says the photos help bring back cherished memories of the toddler.
The pictures will be shown in a documentary, James Bulger: A Mother’s Story, to be broadcast on ITV tonight.
In the programme, Mrs Fergus tells Sir Trevor McDonald that James’s killers were ‘rewarded’ rather than punished for their horrific crime.
Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were given new identities and granted lifelong anonymity when they were freed on licence in 2001.
Mrs Fergus said: ‘I’ve never had justice for James. I never said, “Lock them up and throw away the key”. I thought doing a proper sentence in a proper prison would be justice. But that never happened. They never got punished for what they did. In fact, if anything, they were rewarded.
‘I did say that if they weren’t punished properly, then they would go on to re-offend and that’s exactly what happened with Venables.’
She also tells how she collapsed when she learned her son had been killed by two ten-year-olds.