Need to know
Two-year-old James Bulger was killed by 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson in a horrific crime that sent shockwaves across the nation – here’s everything you need to know about the murder
Everything you need to know about the murder of toddler James Bulger that sent shockwaves through the UK
- On February 12 1993, 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson abducted two-year-old James Bulger from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle. They led him on a meandering 2.5-mile journey across Liverpool, telling 38 different witnesses that James was their younger brother, or that they were taking a lost child to the police station to prevent anyone from intervening.
- The boys took James to a railway embankment in Walton where they subjected him to a brutal assault using bricks, stones, and a 22lb iron fishplate. They threw stolen blue modelling paint into his eyes and inflicted 42 separate injuries. The two-year-old died from severe blunt force trauma to the head.
- In a calculated attempt to make the murder look like an accident, Venables and Thompson placed James’s body across the railway tracks and weighed it down with rubble, hoping a train would obscure the injuries they had inflicted. While a train did strike the body, forensic experts were able to clearly distinguish the post-mortem damage from the violence of the assault.
- The killers were caught after grainy CCTV images from the shopping centre were broadcast nationwide, leading a local woman to identify them to the police. Forensic evidence later matched the unique blue paint found on James’s body to stains on the boys’ clothing, and found James’s blood on one of their shoes.
- In November 1993, they became the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history and were ordered to be detained at ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’, an indeterminate sentence used for children. They served eight years in secure youth units before being released on life licence with new, legally protected identities.
- While both boys were released on life licence with new identities in 2001, Jon Venables has since been recalled to prison twice, in 2010 and 2018, for possessing indecent images of children. Today, Venables was granted a parole hearing – and it emerged that James Bulger’s mum will hear the voice of her son’s killer for the first time in more than 30 years.
READ THE FULL STORY: James Bulger’s mum will hear voice of son’s killer at Jon Venables freedom bid
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