It took just over 90 seconds for two-year-old James Bulger to be lured away from his mum Denise as she paid for her shopping on a February afternoon 28 years ago.
At just ten years old, his abductors Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were so young themselves that the brutality of James’ killing was unbelievably shocking.
The terrible murder was too much for Denise and her husband, Ralph, to bear. They struggled to console each other and, after having another son, Michael, in December 1993, the pair eventually split.
Now, in a new Channel 5 documentary, Lost Boy: The Killing Of James Bulger, Michael, 27, along with James’ other brothers, Thomas, 22, and Leon, 21, from Denise’s second marriage to Stuart Fergus, talk for the first time about the impact of their brother’s death.
Michael, who was born nine months after James’ disappearance from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, says, “Being James’ brother is not a weird thing. We have always grown up knowing he was there, what he was like, his character. In the household, we talk about James a lot. My mum will give us little stories and insights about what he was like. He has always been a character we wanted to know more about, wishing he was there, rather than someone who was in the background all the time.”
On that fateful afternoon on 12 February 1993, James was enticed away from Denise by the two boys, who were playing truant from school. Within seconds of her reaching for her purse, he was gone. As soon as she realised her son had disappeared, Denise started checking inside shops and ran to the shopping centre reception, where an announcement was made over the tannoy.
The police were informed and arrived to take details of the missing child and start the search. But although missing children were normally found quickly in the shopping centre, James had vanished.
The scale of the search grew, as Merseyside CID became involved and a police helicopter joined the hunt. Investigators poring over CCTV footage from the shopping centre then discovered pictures showing James being led away by two young boys.
Jim Fitzsimmons, Detective Inspector at Merseyside Police, says, “You had to look twice because it was surprising and I remember thinking, ‘What does this mean?’ It was something I didn’t expect to see.”
The fact that it appeared to be two children who had taken James came as a relief to those searching, with even Denise believing the boys wouldn’t hurt her son. But as the days passed, she began to lose hope.
And on Sunday 14 February, police confirmed that James’ body had been found on a Merseyside railway embankment. It was clear from the injuries James suffered that he’d been murdered. His brutal wounds showed he’d been beaten, kicked and had paint and bricks thrown at him. He suffered 42 injuries, such a large amount that later in court the pathologist couldn’t isolate the fatal blow.
Venables was identified by a neighbour who had seen him with paint on his coat on the day of James’ death, and it was quickly discovered that Thompson had been truanting with him.
Both blamed the other and during police interview tapes, and presumably referring to his younger brother, Thompson said, “Why would I wanna kill him when I have got a baby of my own… if I wanted to kill a baby, I would kill me own, wouldn’t I?”
On the sixth day of the murder investigation, Venables admitted killing James, saying first they had considered throwing him in the canal beside the shopping centre, before taking him to the railway embankment.
Thompson and Venables, who were 11 by the time they faced trial at Preston Crown Court, were the youngest murder defendants in the UK in more than 100 years.
After a 17-day trial in November 1993, they were found guilty of James’ abduction and murder.
But despite the judge saying that they had committed an act of “unparalleled evil and barbarity”, Denise and her family were distraught to find that they would only be sentenced to eight years. Various appeals followed, with the sentence at one point being increased to 15 years. But their sentence was ultimately reduced down to seven years and eight months, which meant they wouldn’t serve time in an adult prison.
They were released on licence under new identities in 2001 and although Venables has been recalled to prison numerous times, Thompson has not been heard of since.
But their actions that day have left a scar on the UK’s collective memory and on James’ family.
In the documentary, Leon says, “Still now I can’t really fathom exactly what happened – I don’t really want to know all the details about it.”
Thomas agrees, describing the abduction and murder as “sickening”.
And his abduction left his mother afraid history would repeat itself. Michael says, “Going through school I wasn’t allowed on school trips or to go to the shops with my mates. The only place I was allowed was either in the front garden or literally outside the gate with my mates, but I would have to be in view of the window, so if I went out of sight, Mum would be straight out.”
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Leon says their mum would always walk behind her children in shops, so she could see where they were at all times – but says, “We are a closer family because of what happened; we do spend more time together than some other families.”
Michael has just become a father himself. His daughter was born in November, with Denise announcing the arrival of her “beautiful granddaughter” via Twitter.
Sharing a picture of her holding the baby, Denise wrote, “So I can now finally say that our beautiful granddaughter Peyton Kirsty has arrived, we are so over the moon.”
And Michael says, “Becoming a dad, seeing it from my mum’s eyes, it’s going to make me more protective and hold the baby closer than I think anyone could.”
Lost Boy: The Killing Of James Bulger, Channel 5, Weds 10 and Thurs 11 March at 9pm
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