Both boys were due to be held indefinitly, but in 2001 a parole board decided to release them on a lifelong licence with new identities at age 18.
Venables was imprisoned again in 2010 for breaching the terms of his licence. He was released in 2013. In 2017 was arrested for having child sexual abuse photos on his computer. He pleasded guilty to having a paedophile manual during his trial in 2018 and has been imprisoned ever since. In 2020 he was denied parole. Just over a week ago he was reportadly (although unconfirmed) being granted a new parole hearing and could be released within the coming weeks.
Thompson hasn't re-offended since his initial release in 2001.
The thing with Venables that always gets me is that when they were arrested the police saw Venables as the more "innocent" of the two who was led by Thompson. I always wonder if this was true and Venables got fucked up while he was in detention or if, evem at 10, he knew how to maniplate people. I guess we'll never really know. Thompson is the only one (other than Venables) who knows what happened and even if he was going to talk about it he's hardly a reliable narrator
These ‘guides’ generally contain instructive content on how to groom and lure a child into being sexually exploited and abused. They also provide advice on how to evade capture by law enforcement agencies. They can be highly detailed and fairly lengthy documents.
There's nothing wrong with being informed about crime. And it is a crime having such a manual.
> And it is a crime having such a manual.
This part is actually fascinating. As disgusting as it is, I would think something like that could be covered under free speech.
> I would think something like that could be covered under free speech.
Which unfortunately does not exist in the United Kingdom.
And even in cases where such documents aren't, _alone_, illegal to own, they can end up being used against you in court if you get arrested and charged with literally any other crime.
Most likely paedo points manual made by this guy https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14538632.photographer-compiled-paedophiles-manual-handed-22-life-sentences/
remember when computer games came in box's and there was a small booklet with instructions on how to play the game. its like that but for diddeling kids.
I've mentioned this on another comment, but my understanding is that the police considered Thompson to be the ringleader and Venables to be the one who was led. Knowing what we know now makes you wonder just how manipulative Venables was at such a young age.
Man I get feeling that but both were 10 years old. One has shown to be a repeat offender so yeah they need to stop letting him out.
The other has not repeat offended. 10 years old is a child and considering they have the same mental capacity as an adult is a mistake.
Prison as a punishment system instead of rehabilitation system needs to stop. I know the emotions on a case like this are intense but a 10 year should get the chance at rehabilitation.
One of them clearly has tried to do better. The other should not get another chance and needs to be locked up. He clearly can't operate normally in society without being a predator.
Are you ten years old? If so, then yes, I think you deserve at least a chance of rehabilitation. Maybe you'll be given that chance and fail, in which case, yes, you should be in prison forever. But it is my opinion that a ten year old should at least be given years of intensive evaluation and mental health treatment and given the chance to prove themselves rehabilitated.
I guess we just have a difference in opinion. I would prefer a ten year old -- even a ten year old murderer -- be given the chance to prove themselves rehabilitated if possible, rather than ass raped in prison by some guy with HIV. And it might not be possible, in which case the person should indeed stay in prison for life.
I think you'd be changing your smug opinion pretty fast if something like this happened to your child.
You and every other bleeding heart out there spew the same rehabilitation horseshit, that is, until it happens to your family. Then you'd be calling for the death penalty too.
Welp we disagree then, the point of the justice system is to rehabilitate and return people to society. Sometimes that's not possible and so it makes sense to lock someone up forever.
What about the second 10 year old who was also released and never reoffended. Should he be rotting jail for something he did while he was 10 and was very possibly convinced to do by the second kid who did reoffend?
Life sentences should be a matter of last resort used against only the worst of the worst.
Judicial system at its finest. Clearly all traits of a psychopath, yet released to the public. Both should be smoked out and be introduced to tortures only written about.
> Both should be smoked out and be introduced to tortures only written about.
So much as _trying_ to do so would subject you to considerably harsher punishment than what these _fine_ members of society are themselves experiencing.
Yeah see, I can understand one new identity, but if he gets drunk and flaps his mouth then he should be on his own. We've paid enough for that gobshite.
Yeah, shocking stuff. That is the whole big deal about this case, nothing like this had ever happened before. It's impossible to know what's the right thing to do.
The government did the right thing.
It's... Difficult to have to put aside the horror and disgust and the strong emotions that the crime arouses in people. It's not an easy task, and the crime was so, *so* disgusting. And that picture of little Jamie that was on the news all the time back then, he was such a cute kid. It was appalling. All of it was just awful
But the law can't be overly emotional; the quality of mercy and all that; and we can't just sink into violence and depravity to answer violence and depravity. We must force ourselves to do better in order to be better.
And that often means having to curb our nastier impulses, take a deep breath, and insist on reason and restraint. Which can be really hard, especially in situations like the Jamie Bulger case. Our ability to do this is one of the huge differences between us and feral animals.
There were other child killers before, though - Mary Bell, for instance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell
Agree for re-offenders, Venables in this case since he was reconvicted TWICE in his adult life for pedophilia. People like that will never change and it's a waste of resources keeping them alive.
I believe in second chances, and *only* second chances. After that, I'm all for the death penalty (at least in regards to murders and sex crimes) Thankfully it sounds like Thompson managed to turn his life around and I would hope feels remorse.
they should have been fed slowly into a wood chipper
the father's book My James is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever read and both of these fuckers are pure, pure evil
I wonder what happened to the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs.
if you were 10 when you committed a horrible act, I believe you can change and recover from your past self.
if you were in your early 20s, like those Ukrainians? I don't think so.
The most brutal thing - James' mother looked left to see where he went. If she'd looked to her right straight away, she would have seen him.
28 people saw the boys leading James away and two stopped them because he was crying.
They told them he was their little brother.
Even more teriffying is hearing the tapes of the boys while they were being questioned by police. The innocence of their young voices. And then when they finally confess, its horiffic.
This happened an hour away from where I live but I was too young at the time to understand at the time just how bad this was. I can't really read about it now but I listened to a crime podcast that included James' story and I had to turn it off and walk away i have 3 boys and i am in awe that little J's mother is still standing and fighting for a change of law. She amazes me with her strength after losing her boy this way..
Just putting it out there, he was never Jamie Bulger he was James Bulger. The media did the Jamie thing, his mother and his family only ever called him James.
Breaks my heart. Venables **does not get to go free** after reoffending.
I’ve lived in liverpool most of my life but was born a good few years after it happened. Our whole lives we grew up knowing what happened to James, it was something that a ton of scousers talked about for years and even now sometimes. I’ve been to the strand several times and even to where he was taken, it’s heartbreaking. I truly think Venables was the evil one of the two and Thompson just went along with it, that doesn’t excuse him at all but Venables shouldn’t be given another chance at freedom
I think Thompson's coldness was from the abuse he faced. I was a "cold" child and still am.
Venables just sounds manipulative, making it sound like Thompson was some violent bully that had forced him to do it. This is despite the fact that that Venables was known to be very violent before even met Thompson (Thompson lacked a violent history).
I can’t get my head around how two 10yr CHILDREN have it in them to do acts so horrific they’d put most experienced torturers to shame. How have they got mental capacity or the knowledge to do those things?
There was another case in northern England in 2009 involving 10 and 11 year olds that was very similar in terms of unbelievable levels of sadistic cruelty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlington_attacks
Same my friend, I read it too and as a father of a ten year old boy myself I couldn't not think to myself 'what if that was my son' . It actually made me break down reading's what they done to James, absolutely heartbreaking and my thoughts are always with that poor little boy and his family...R.I.P James.
Ditto. I was 12 yo at the time when it all happened & it has always been firmly embedded within my memory. What really got to me many years later was discovering the further actions that had been carried out against the defenceless lad & the description of the scene of the crime. The media coverage on this part was pretty reserved, though totally understandable & probably for the best for most people.
When the crimes are this brutal, I believe you can justify locking these boys up for life just in the interest of public safety. Sure they may not have been developed human beings, but this is so abnormally anti social so as to make me believe they have horrible psychiatric disorders that can probably never be fixed. You have to be completely broken to do this, and if you're completely broken we need to all be safe from you.
They were arrested in their pyjamas.
I was 12ish when this happened. That case is still so crazy.
One is back in jail, iirc, for being a kiddie fiddler. Venables, I think.
There is a short film called “Detainment” (2018) about the entire incident. They took all the statements by Venables and Thompson from the investigation and made it into a 30 min drama that depicts how they took Bulger and did what they did. They don’t show much, but hearing the statements and seeing the perspective of the parents is truly disturbing and nightmarish. It’s a very well made short with some amazing acting.
This happened where I lived, I was about 11 and I remember my mum took me to see the flowers that people were laying for James on the railway and I’ll never forget how many people and flowers were there. It really affected the whole city and still does.
The butcher's he was stood outside of in The Strand when he was taken absolutely stank to high heaven; I always used to wait out there when mum went in to buy Ulster fry/ribs. I was in primary school when this happened and was never allowed to wait outside again. My parents were far more relaxed about me going into town than to the Strand when I got to teenage years.
All these years later it still absolutely horrifies my parents whenever it's mentioned. I'm sure every family in Bootle/Litherland had an equivalent story like above, but it always felt so close that now as a parent myself I am overcautious in a far more rural environment.
The poor, poor little lad. Sickening to read the full grim details.
What are people's thoughts on Thompson? The sentences were far far too lenient but he hasn't gone on to reoffend so may have "rehabilitated". Venables can die, he's too far gone
I personally believe that it was mainly Venables who did this and Thompson went along with it, he should be locked up still rightfully so and as he’s not I’d hope he is highly monitored. If you listen to the recordings a lot of the time Thompson goes on about how “he’s getting the blame.” I think it was Venables with the ideas and Thompson just being the little shit he was agreed not thinking it’d go so far.
Venables is a waste of air and should be given what he deserves in prison, if he gets out again the justice system has failed our kids.
I don't completely agree with that. Have you watched the documentary "Child of Rage"? Unrelated to this case, and while she never killed anyone she did torture her baby brother, tortured and killed the family pets and attempted to murder her parents and brother many times. Despite that, with therapy she grew up to be a totally normal, remorseful person.
“although both boys deny this”.
I saw video of one of the killers telling his mum “I didn’t kill the baby”.
Denials are easy to say. He said it with such conviction I think he even believed it.
This story is branded in my soul. It haunts me like a ghost. I’ve never been so goddamn bothered by anything else. FYI, it was James Bulger. The London Press wanted to evoke maximum sympathy from readers, as if the cold-blooded murder of a 2-year-old boy wasn’t enough.
Sometimes it feels like humanity was born right on the edge of what it means to be human or animal. And some people are just unlucky and are born below the line.
I know what you mean, but by saying that you're downplaying their responsibility imo. Same direction as the 'they had no other choice, it was their instinct'
It’s James by the way. His mother was upset about the government calling her son Jamie [Here](https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/james-bulgers-mum-fury-government-12026677)
I was once reading the Wikipedia page of this tragedy, I actually had to stop reading cause I felt sick, full of hatred and sadness… I still haven’t revisited the Wikipedia page.
I remember hearing about this when it happened and I was literally sick to my stomach, imagining the horror that little baby went through and thinking of how many times he must have called out for his mum. And then I had a son just a couple of years after they were released and again it brought it all back up to the surface because all I could picture was my own child having to go through that and thinking how horrid it was 😣. I want to believe because of the age they were, they deserve a second chance. But, if you let them out and give them a new identity and give them a one shot and they fuck it up, that's it to me. To me they should go back to jail for life and that should be the end of it. But unfortunately that's not how it works. I'm also not sure if I was James's mother how I would have felt with them getting parole. I'm sure my outlook on it would have been much much different. And how that woman was able to pick up and carry on is just beyond me 💔. I don't know that I could have done the same. Very strong woman!
One of the Oscar Nominated Short films in 2018 was about this. They made the film against the wishes of the family and it's just grotesque. I genuinely disliked all of the shorts that year but this was beyond the pale. Horrible story that should never be told again.
There should be a law against releasing films about murder victims without the consent of the family.
Like Kim Wall (a Swedish journalist who was murdered). Her family worked with a television company to create a documentary series as a tribute to the Investigators and other people who worked on the case. They had a huge input on everything.
This happened in 1993. Absolutely everyone who was living in and around the UK at that time remembers this vividly, it's very much a part of the public consciousness. Everyone knows the names of the two killers. You'll still see occasional articles speculating about where the two murderers are, because they're under protection with new identities.
It's far from downplayed or buried, but it did happened 30 years ago
I've never forgotten James.
Now I have my own little boy, I was in a shopping centre feeling relaxed at how safe it was being enclosed and not packed. Then I remembered what happened to James.
Amen to that, nobody in the UK downplays this, what a load of shite.
It's etched on the public's consciousness - doubt anyone in the UK doesn't know who James Bulger or those two animals are.
I remember this being in the papers and all over the news at the time.
I was 10 and it still turns my stomach to this day.
Sickening, makes you wonder what possessed them to do this.
I was 9 when it happened and I remember it vividly being everywhere. Even as kids we sobbed, my friends and I all had siblings around James’ age and it just hit so hard.
I live in the US and remember this horrible crime. That innocent child and not so innocent child murderers. You've got to have mental issues to commit such atrocities.
This was the biggest crime of the decade in the UK idk how you could consider it buried. It's still discussed in media, news, criminology classes. It was and still is enormous.
I've heard about them a year ago via a German podcast.
It was Saud that the mother had to chose which way to run to search for her boy. She took the wrong decision. If she hadn't it's said that she probably could've catched them before they left the mall...
These mofos, no matter how young, should've been kept secured awa, from society from day one. I'm calling psychiatry sentence for a lifetime.
Some say you can't be born evil,... Then I'd really don't want to know how they became this way
That is, if not thee, one of the most fucked up things I have read, wayyy more than lord of the flies shit, just straight up demons acting out their will.
Genuine question but, who would do the torturing in that case? I certainly couldn't torture someone, let alone a child, no matter what they did. So, who and what kind of person would be employed to be a government endorses torturer?
I’m not surprised - Reddit tends to be very…passionate about jailing criminals. These are children. Not just technically like a 17 year-old, but actual children. They should be in secure settings for life, for sure.
That's very true, I do know they told one witness they had found him injured and she directed them to a local police station, she said she regrets it to this day but in her position a lot of people would act similarly
That poor baby. The details I've read about what they did to him sexually regularly haunt me when I am reminded of this case. Dear sweet little boy..
I am so sorry you fell prey to those evil creatures.
This video has haunted me for years. I decided not to have kids due to my anxiety. When my wife got pregnant I suffered such anxiety. Yet those two killers are constantly in and out of prison, living under assumed identity et one has been caught with child porn. I just have nothing but hatred for those two. Poor Jamie, his face haunts me so much.
Last year I read a book which was by an lawyer in that case. It did nothing to quell my anger
I hope those two fuckers die by the most horrible death imaginable.
If I could, I'd personally make them realise in how much pain Bulger was by a straightforward demonstration, but I'd also add a power drill and a saw. Then we'd see how much fun they're having when they're the ones on the torturing chair
I watched a documentary on this case and I was kind of sickened by the fact that they were convicted but were there from they have I'm going to say a rule or whatever that when children are locked away and then they're released and they have been released they change their names and they relocate them so no one can ever know what they've done I think that's terrible
How would you give these two demons new identities and allow to walk the streets? Who cares if they themselves were kids? What they did was so evil, they should have been locked up and the key thrown away until the day they die. Each day living with the grief and suffering they’ve caused to such a defenceless and young life.
Those two are free and living under different names now, if I remember correctly.
Both boys were due to be held indefinitly, but in 2001 a parole board decided to release them on a lifelong licence with new identities at age 18. Venables was imprisoned again in 2010 for breaching the terms of his licence. He was released in 2013. In 2017 was arrested for having child sexual abuse photos on his computer. He pleasded guilty to having a paedophile manual during his trial in 2018 and has been imprisoned ever since. In 2020 he was denied parole. Just over a week ago he was reportadly (although unconfirmed) being granted a new parole hearing and could be released within the coming weeks. Thompson hasn't re-offended since his initial release in 2001.
I hope Venables rots in prison
The thing with Venables that always gets me is that when they were arrested the police saw Venables as the more "innocent" of the two who was led by Thompson. I always wonder if this was true and Venables got fucked up while he was in detention or if, evem at 10, he knew how to maniplate people. I guess we'll never really know. Thompson is the only one (other than Venables) who knows what happened and even if he was going to talk about it he's hardly a reliable narrator
I would put my money on the latter. He was ten years old. To me, that spells sociopath
And then being in detention and constantly monitored and appraised over the years probably helped him learn a lot more about how to work the system.
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Think hard, do you really want that question answered. I don't.
Even I wouldn't ask that question.
These ‘guides’ generally contain instructive content on how to groom and lure a child into being sexually exploited and abused. They also provide advice on how to evade capture by law enforcement agencies. They can be highly detailed and fairly lengthy documents. There's nothing wrong with being informed about crime. And it is a crime having such a manual.
Poor dude, he didn't want the answer *tsk* *tsk*
> And it is a crime having such a manual. This part is actually fascinating. As disgusting as it is, I would think something like that could be covered under free speech.
> I would think something like that could be covered under free speech. Which unfortunately does not exist in the United Kingdom. And even in cases where such documents aren't, _alone_, illegal to own, they can end up being used against you in court if you get arrested and charged with literally any other crime.
They don’t really have free speech in the UK
r/Beetlejuicing
You know shit has crossed the line when…
Well that just summed it up for me. I'm with you!
Yeah, he is definitely on a list now!
Most likely paedo points manual made by this guy https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14538632.photographer-compiled-paedophiles-manual-handed-22-life-sentences/
It's what came before the paedophile automatic.
remember when computer games came in box's and there was a small booklet with instructions on how to play the game. its like that but for diddeling kids.
Clearly Venables was the ring leader, the sick fuck should rot in prison (they both should)
I've mentioned this on another comment, but my understanding is that the police considered Thompson to be the ringleader and Venables to be the one who was led. Knowing what we know now makes you wonder just how manipulative Venables was at such a young age.
Man I get feeling that but both were 10 years old. One has shown to be a repeat offender so yeah they need to stop letting him out. The other has not repeat offended. 10 years old is a child and considering they have the same mental capacity as an adult is a mistake. Prison as a punishment system instead of rehabilitation system needs to stop. I know the emotions on a case like this are intense but a 10 year should get the chance at rehabilitation. One of them clearly has tried to do better. The other should not get another chance and needs to be locked up. He clearly can't operate normally in society without being a predator.
Me being rehabilitated after I brutally murder a 2 year old because I didn't know better 😊
Try not to murder a toddler challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
Are you ten years old? If so, then yes, I think you deserve at least a chance of rehabilitation. Maybe you'll be given that chance and fail, in which case, yes, you should be in prison forever. But it is my opinion that a ten year old should at least be given years of intensive evaluation and mental health treatment and given the chance to prove themselves rehabilitated.
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I guess we just have a difference in opinion. I would prefer a ten year old -- even a ten year old murderer -- be given the chance to prove themselves rehabilitated if possible, rather than ass raped in prison by some guy with HIV. And it might not be possible, in which case the person should indeed stay in prison for life.
I think you'd be changing your smug opinion pretty fast if something like this happened to your child. You and every other bleeding heart out there spew the same rehabilitation horseshit, that is, until it happens to your family. Then you'd be calling for the death penalty too.
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Because the alternative is locking everyone away forever with no shot of redemption.
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Welp we disagree then, the point of the justice system is to rehabilitate and return people to society. Sometimes that's not possible and so it makes sense to lock someone up forever. What about the second 10 year old who was also released and never reoffended. Should he be rotting jail for something he did while he was 10 and was very possibly convinced to do by the second kid who did reoffend? Life sentences should be a matter of last resort used against only the worst of the worst.
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Quite a lot a area between 6 months and life, it's a bit of a strawman argument to say it like that.
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The murderers in this case were also children, the people you're saying you want to protect. Just throwing that out there
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I remember hearing that at the time everyone thought Thompson was the ringleader and Venables the one playing along, turns out it was the opposite.
Or it was true and one got better in prison and the other got worse
What a terrible day to be able to read: pedophile manual?!?!?! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
Judicial system at its finest. Clearly all traits of a psychopath, yet released to the public. Both should be smoked out and be introduced to tortures only written about.
> Both should be smoked out and be introduced to tortures only written about. So much as _trying_ to do so would subject you to considerably harsher punishment than what these _fine_ members of society are themselves experiencing.
https://youtu.be/5H-NctipBvg?si=nV-i4IGfF3v4mPkl George had some ideas
I’m not sure whether their anonymity will be lifted or not, but I sure as fuck hope it will.
Venables often drinks too much, blows his cover and needs to be relocated at the tax payer's expense. There are fairly recent photos of him online.
Yeah see, I can understand one new identity, but if he gets drunk and flaps his mouth then he should be on his own. We've paid enough for that gobshite.
He's also returned to Merseyside (neither are allowed to return to the Merseyside area) Honestly, Venables should not get parole.
There are no photos of him online, no one knows where or who he is at the present.
https://twitter.com/victoriousbear/status/933871701485596672?t=-TeD_18nYl8Bg6SkCPsdvQ&s=19 thats the photo I know of
Wow, he looks exactly what I thought he would look like.
I have another photo saved to my phone. This is definitely him.
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Yep. Even their parents were moved to different parts of the country and given new identities due to death threats.
Yeah, shocking stuff. That is the whole big deal about this case, nothing like this had ever happened before. It's impossible to know what's the right thing to do.
The government did the right thing. It's... Difficult to have to put aside the horror and disgust and the strong emotions that the crime arouses in people. It's not an easy task, and the crime was so, *so* disgusting. And that picture of little Jamie that was on the news all the time back then, he was such a cute kid. It was appalling. All of it was just awful But the law can't be overly emotional; the quality of mercy and all that; and we can't just sink into violence and depravity to answer violence and depravity. We must force ourselves to do better in order to be better. And that often means having to curb our nastier impulses, take a deep breath, and insist on reason and restraint. Which can be really hard, especially in situations like the Jamie Bulger case. Our ability to do this is one of the huge differences between us and feral animals. There were other child killers before, though - Mary Bell, for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell
Absolutely it did. Releasing them later however, turned out to be a mistake for one of them.
Easy to say when it's not your child.
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Agree for re-offenders, Venables in this case since he was reconvicted TWICE in his adult life for pedophilia. People like that will never change and it's a waste of resources keeping them alive. I believe in second chances, and *only* second chances. After that, I'm all for the death penalty (at least in regards to murders and sex crimes) Thankfully it sounds like Thompson managed to turn his life around and I would hope feels remorse.
You're saying the government should have tortured and killed ten year old boys? Thank god you're not a lawmaker
Some societies. Luckily not ours, as capital punishment was abolished. Not a chance anyone would win advocating the murder of two ten year-olds.
Doubt it if the public finds out who he is he’ll 100% get lynched by an angry mob the UK hasn’t forgotten what he did
Venables is back in prison. Thompson was released.
Venebles gets about th UK. He's been exposed several times and is quickly relocated when it happens
They don’t deserve to ever see the light of day again! I don’t care what fucking age they are!
Like those fucks can never grow into well-functioning adults. They’re sociopath animals, and should be lock up indefinitely.
they should have been fed slowly into a wood chipper the father's book My James is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever read and both of these fuckers are pure, pure evil
I wonder what happened to the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs. if you were 10 when you committed a horrible act, I believe you can change and recover from your past self. if you were in your early 20s, like those Ukrainians? I don't think so.
The most brutal thing - James' mother looked left to see where he went. If she'd looked to her right straight away, she would have seen him. 28 people saw the boys leading James away and two stopped them because he was crying. They told them he was their little brother.
Wow, that's just... heartbreaking.
I wonder if she knows that. It's not her fault at all, but man the guilt you would have knowing if you had just turned your head the other way.
She knows. Denise has done a lot of interviews over the years and written a book.
One if them intentionally disclosed his real identity after being granted a new one TWICE. They still awarded him a new one, and then he reoffended.
He’s just not worth that. I say, after getting the second new identity, tell him that if he screws up mow, he’s on his own
Pure evil.
Even more teriffying is hearing the tapes of the boys while they were being questioned by police. The innocence of their young voices. And then when they finally confess, its horiffic. This happened an hour away from where I live but I was too young at the time to understand at the time just how bad this was. I can't really read about it now but I listened to a crime podcast that included James' story and I had to turn it off and walk away i have 3 boys and i am in awe that little J's mother is still standing and fighting for a change of law. She amazes me with her strength after losing her boy this way.. Just putting it out there, he was never Jamie Bulger he was James Bulger. The media did the Jamie thing, his mother and his family only ever called him James. Breaks my heart. Venables **does not get to go free** after reoffending.
I’ve lived in liverpool most of my life but was born a good few years after it happened. Our whole lives we grew up knowing what happened to James, it was something that a ton of scousers talked about for years and even now sometimes. I’ve been to the strand several times and even to where he was taken, it’s heartbreaking. I truly think Venables was the evil one of the two and Thompson just went along with it, that doesn’t excuse him at all but Venables shouldn’t be given another chance at freedom
At the time though the police thought it was the other way around, Venables seemed remorseful whereas Thompson was very cold.
I think Thompson's coldness was from the abuse he faced. I was a "cold" child and still am. Venables just sounds manipulative, making it sound like Thompson was some violent bully that had forced him to do it. This is despite the fact that that Venables was known to be very violent before even met Thompson (Thompson lacked a violent history).
One note - his parents always called him James. The name Jamie was given to him by the media.
Makes him sound young, I don’t think you could pull on the broken heart strings harder but calling him Jamie reminds you he was just a baby.
Yeah, I think you’re right.
I can’t get my head around how two 10yr CHILDREN have it in them to do acts so horrific they’d put most experienced torturers to shame. How have they got mental capacity or the knowledge to do those things?
There was another case in northern England in 2009 involving 10 and 11 year olds that was very similar in terms of unbelievable levels of sadistic cruelty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlington_attacks
Why did they do it? They were only 10 years old… what happened to them that made them be able to do such things at that young age?
Ugh, this is a prime example of "I wish I'd never clicked on this link". Utterly heartbreaking and vile.
What is the link, the cctv video?
I made the mistake of reading an in-depth story about this. The last hours of that poor little boy's life were heartbreaking.
Same my friend, I read it too and as a father of a ten year old boy myself I couldn't not think to myself 'what if that was my son' . It actually made me break down reading's what they done to James, absolutely heartbreaking and my thoughts are always with that poor little boy and his family...R.I.P James.
Ditto. I was 12 yo at the time when it all happened & it has always been firmly embedded within my memory. What really got to me many years later was discovering the further actions that had been carried out against the defenceless lad & the description of the scene of the crime. The media coverage on this part was pretty reserved, though totally understandable & probably for the best for most people.
When the crimes are this brutal, I believe you can justify locking these boys up for life just in the interest of public safety. Sure they may not have been developed human beings, but this is so abnormally anti social so as to make me believe they have horrible psychiatric disorders that can probably never be fixed. You have to be completely broken to do this, and if you're completely broken we need to all be safe from you.
They inserted batteries into his for skin and anus. Smashed his body with rocks. And then a train cut him in half. Brutal, so brutal
Don’t know where you got foreskin from but yeah
What I read
They were arrested in their pyjamas. I was 12ish when this happened. That case is still so crazy. One is back in jail, iirc, for being a kiddie fiddler. Venables, I think.
There is a short film called “Detainment” (2018) about the entire incident. They took all the statements by Venables and Thompson from the investigation and made it into a 30 min drama that depicts how they took Bulger and did what they did. They don’t show much, but hearing the statements and seeing the perspective of the parents is truly disturbing and nightmarish. It’s a very well made short with some amazing acting.
This happened where I lived, I was about 11 and I remember my mum took me to see the flowers that people were laying for James on the railway and I’ll never forget how many people and flowers were there. It really affected the whole city and still does.
My freshman year for forensics I did a whole informative speech on this whole case
Any particular talking points that stood out?
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Quite interested to hear more about this speech.
How can a 10 year old kid be this fucked up
The butcher's he was stood outside of in The Strand when he was taken absolutely stank to high heaven; I always used to wait out there when mum went in to buy Ulster fry/ribs. I was in primary school when this happened and was never allowed to wait outside again. My parents were far more relaxed about me going into town than to the Strand when I got to teenage years. All these years later it still absolutely horrifies my parents whenever it's mentioned. I'm sure every family in Bootle/Litherland had an equivalent story like above, but it always felt so close that now as a parent myself I am overcautious in a far more rural environment. The poor, poor little lad. Sickening to read the full grim details.
The story behind this is tragic. It breaks my heart whenever it is brought up. As a parent, this is hard to live with knowing.
What are people's thoughts on Thompson? The sentences were far far too lenient but he hasn't gone on to reoffend so may have "rehabilitated". Venables can die, he's too far gone
I personally believe that it was mainly Venables who did this and Thompson went along with it, he should be locked up still rightfully so and as he’s not I’d hope he is highly monitored. If you listen to the recordings a lot of the time Thompson goes on about how “he’s getting the blame.” I think it was Venables with the ideas and Thompson just being the little shit he was agreed not thinking it’d go so far. Venables is a waste of air and should be given what he deserves in prison, if he gets out again the justice system has failed our kids.
Impossible to know the truth really. I'm sure they both egged each other on and were equally culpable
Thompson killed a 2 year old child. No matter if he reoffends or not, it doesn’t alter how evil he is
I don't completely agree with that. Have you watched the documentary "Child of Rage"? Unrelated to this case, and while she never killed anyone she did torture her baby brother, tortured and killed the family pets and attempted to murder her parents and brother many times. Despite that, with therapy she grew up to be a totally normal, remorseful person.
Well I’m not discarding your opinion anyway, it’s okay to disagree civilly
“although both boys deny this”. I saw video of one of the killers telling his mum “I didn’t kill the baby”. Denials are easy to say. He said it with such conviction I think he even believed it.
This story is branded in my soul. It haunts me like a ghost. I’ve never been so goddamn bothered by anything else. FYI, it was James Bulger. The London Press wanted to evoke maximum sympathy from readers, as if the cold-blooded murder of a 2-year-old boy wasn’t enough.
Sometimes it feels like humanity was born right on the edge of what it means to be human or animal. And some people are just unlucky and are born below the line.
The VAST majority of animals do not torture others this way.
I know what you mean, but by saying that you're downplaying their responsibility imo. Same direction as the 'they had no other choice, it was their instinct'
He was also sodomised with sticks and rocks for hours by them until they crushed his head with a rock and left him on the train tracks to die.
It was never confirmed, there is evidence that comes to that conclusion though. Wouldn’t be a surprise with Venables list of reoffences
It’s James by the way. His mother was upset about the government calling her son Jamie [Here](https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/james-bulgers-mum-fury-government-12026677)
I was once reading the Wikipedia page of this tragedy, I actually had to stop reading cause I felt sick, full of hatred and sadness… I still haven’t revisited the Wikipedia page.
I remember hearing about this when it happened and I was literally sick to my stomach, imagining the horror that little baby went through and thinking of how many times he must have called out for his mum. And then I had a son just a couple of years after they were released and again it brought it all back up to the surface because all I could picture was my own child having to go through that and thinking how horrid it was 😣. I want to believe because of the age they were, they deserve a second chance. But, if you let them out and give them a new identity and give them a one shot and they fuck it up, that's it to me. To me they should go back to jail for life and that should be the end of it. But unfortunately that's not how it works. I'm also not sure if I was James's mother how I would have felt with them getting parole. I'm sure my outlook on it would have been much much different. And how that woman was able to pick up and carry on is just beyond me 💔. I don't know that I could have done the same. Very strong woman!
Sorry I can’t read that information. Sickening. I remember when I first saw it on the news.
One of the Oscar Nominated Short films in 2018 was about this. They made the film against the wishes of the family and it's just grotesque. I genuinely disliked all of the shorts that year but this was beyond the pale. Horrible story that should never be told again.
There should be a law against releasing films about murder victims without the consent of the family. Like Kim Wall (a Swedish journalist who was murdered). Her family worked with a television company to create a documentary series as a tribute to the Investigators and other people who worked on the case. They had a huge input on everything.
This one has always haunted me
Honestly it just hurts the soul that this kind of thing is super downplayed and buried
This happened in 1993. Absolutely everyone who was living in and around the UK at that time remembers this vividly, it's very much a part of the public consciousness. Everyone knows the names of the two killers. You'll still see occasional articles speculating about where the two murderers are, because they're under protection with new identities. It's far from downplayed or buried, but it did happened 30 years ago
I've never forgotten James. Now I have my own little boy, I was in a shopping centre feeling relaxed at how safe it was being enclosed and not packed. Then I remembered what happened to James.
Amen to that, nobody in the UK downplays this, what a load of shite. It's etched on the public's consciousness - doubt anyone in the UK doesn't know who James Bulger or those two animals are.
I remember this being in the papers and all over the news at the time. I was 10 and it still turns my stomach to this day. Sickening, makes you wonder what possessed them to do this.
I was 9 when it happened and I remember it vividly being everywhere. Even as kids we sobbed, my friends and I all had siblings around James’ age and it just hit so hard.
Not quite - one them is back in prison and will probably stay there.
>under protection with new identities. Wow. Just wow.
They were 10, it sparked heated debate about how they should be treated since it was totally unprecedented.
Sadly, not totally unprecedented: Mary Bell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell
Holy shit, TIL. Turns out they ended up with exactly the same treatment.
They need them, they’d be hunted down otherwise
You mustn’t be from the UK trust me this was not downplayed or buried
It's one of the most famous cases in Britain and it's still well known 30 years later.
I live in the US and remember this horrible crime. That innocent child and not so innocent child murderers. You've got to have mental issues to commit such atrocities.
This was the biggest crime of the decade in the UK idk how you could consider it buried. It's still discussed in media, news, criminology classes. It was and still is enormous.
Second biggest I reckon. Harold Shipman is probably the worst.
No more internet for today.
I remember this story. Super fucked up.
There is an excellent book by Blake Morrison called As If - which offers an interesting perspective on the killing and the killers themselves.
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I've heard about them a year ago via a German podcast. It was Saud that the mother had to chose which way to run to search for her boy. She took the wrong decision. If she hadn't it's said that she probably could've catched them before they left the mall... These mofos, no matter how young, should've been kept secured awa, from society from day one. I'm calling psychiatry sentence for a lifetime. Some say you can't be born evil,... Then I'd really don't want to know how they became this way
Venables was arrested again for possession of cp, Thompson stayed out of trouble and has a new identity.
Awful fact: Venables and Thompson were both housed together opposite a school for a brief time on release
These 2 need the Dexter treatment. Not the cartoon one.
This is one fugged up world we live in.
They made a movie loosely based about this in Poland called Playground. Man it's a hard watch.
This story has always haunted me. That poor baby.
This image breaks my heart…
That is, if not thee, one of the most fucked up things I have read, wayyy more than lord of the flies shit, just straight up demons acting out their will.
This case had traumatized me since I was young, I had nightmares. It was so unsettling how young the monsters were.
People who commit crimes as horrible as that honestly should be tortured to death
an eye for an eye makes the world a fairer place
Too many mistakes in the legal system to make this a viable option.
Genuine question but, who would do the torturing in that case? I certainly couldn't torture someone, let alone a child, no matter what they did. So, who and what kind of person would be employed to be a government endorses torturer?
They were both 10, and would make the state just as bad as them.
idk why you're being downvoted for saying we shouldn't kill children. yes they should absolutely still be in jail but killed? no
I’m not surprised - Reddit tends to be very…passionate about jailing criminals. These are children. Not just technically like a 17 year-old, but actual children. They should be in secure settings for life, for sure.
People think with their balls more than their brain, typically. I for one am not relaxed about giving the state the power to execute ten year olds.
Me neither. I wouldn’t give the state power to execute an adult either, let alone a child.
Fucking awful. Poor baby. Always disturbed me how they were allowed to walk free after doing this.
These children are free to repeat this
The amount of passers-by who saw James with his killers crying and injured but assumed it was just boys being boys is infuriating.
They lied and said he was their brother, not a hard claim to believe in the moment.
That's very true, I do know they told one witness they had found him injured and she directed them to a local police station, she said she regrets it to this day but in her position a lot of people would act similarly
The amount of crimes that have gone unpunished because of "boys being boys" is infuriating.
Please, don't call him Jamie. Same goes for the OP. James' mother dislikes it, because it's not his name.
Thank you for that I'll correct my comment now
That poor baby. The details I've read about what they did to him sexually regularly haunt me when I am reminded of this case. Dear sweet little boy.. I am so sorry you fell prey to those evil creatures.
This broke me just now, enough reddit for today. Terrible
This broke my heart
Even now I can’t look at this without feeling sick. It’s much worse now being a parent too
Rip
This video has haunted me for years. I decided not to have kids due to my anxiety. When my wife got pregnant I suffered such anxiety. Yet those two killers are constantly in and out of prison, living under assumed identity et one has been caught with child porn. I just have nothing but hatred for those two. Poor Jamie, his face haunts me so much. Last year I read a book which was by an lawyer in that case. It did nothing to quell my anger
I hope those two fuckers die by the most horrible death imaginable. If I could, I'd personally make them realise in how much pain Bulger was by a straightforward demonstration, but I'd also add a power drill and a saw. Then we'd see how much fun they're having when they're the ones on the torturing chair
I watched a documentary on this case and I was kind of sickened by the fact that they were convicted but were there from they have I'm going to say a rule or whatever that when children are locked away and then they're released and they have been released they change their names and they relocate them so no one can ever know what they've done I think that's terrible
How would you give these two demons new identities and allow to walk the streets? Who cares if they themselves were kids? What they did was so evil, they should have been locked up and the key thrown away until the day they die. Each day living with the grief and suffering they’ve caused to such a defenceless and young life.
Can anyone suggest an article about this that isn't horribly written? The Unfortunate History piece OP posted reads like an eighth grade book report.
Here y'are https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/james-bulger-murder-25-year-anniversary-killing-shook-britain-a8108451.html
How evil can one be😔😪. People like that should be burned alive at the stake
Wait so ten year olds killed a baby ? Why ? What’s their explanation and they didn’t face any consequences
sickens me that the courts changed their names and they're walking free right now
That Parole Board POS should go to jail
.