It was the chilling CCTV image that changed everything - and to this day, it remains imprinted on the national psyche. Grainy footage showed missing James Bulger, two, being led from The Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, by two young boys on February 12, 1993. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables – then aged just 10 – would walk the toddler, with his hand trustingly placed in theirs, two miles to his violent and sadistic death.
When reporters were called to an urgent press briefing the morning after James’s disappearance, none expected to be at the centre of a story that would shock the world. Ex-Press Association journalist Mark Thomas said: “It’s not that unusual for a child to go missing and 99 times out of 100, they’ll turn up.
On Valentine’s Day, 1993, all hope of finding little James was extinguished when a group of schoolboys playing near a railway line in the Walton area came across his body. The toddler had been attacked with house bricks and a metal bar, and his body crudely laid over the railway track to make it appear as if he had been killed by a passing train.
Retired Det Supt Albert Kirby, who led the murder inquiry, said in 2013: “The biggest thing we all faced as the evidence was coming in – the CCTV images followed by the various sightings – was having to accept the possibility that the people who murdered James were very young.
Venables and Thompson were quickly arrested and crumbled in interviews, despite insisting they were innocent at trial. In 2001, both were released at the age of 18 after spending eight years in young offenders’ institutes with new identities. Thompson, now 42, has not reoffended. But Venables was recalled to prison in 2010 and 2017 after being caught with child sex abuse images. He was turned down for parole in 2020.
James’s heartbroken mother Denise Fergus has always fought to get justice for her son. And last year, James’s brother Michael Fergus called for Venables to remain locked up. He said he could never forgive the killers and added: “They took away my older brother who I never got to meet.
Aaron Campbell
Little Alesha MacPhail, six, was dragged from her bed, raped and murdered by 16-year-old Aaron Campbell in 2018. Alesha, from Airdrie in Scotland, was only a few days into a family holiday on the Isle of Bute when she was abducted and killed. Campbell was sentenced to life for the youngster’s murder, and ordered to serve a minimum of 27 years in jail, which was later reduced to 24.
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe
The torture-obsessed killer of Brianna Ghey, 16, revelled in the “fame” of her horrific crime. Scarlett Jenkinson and accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe lured the transgender teen to a park where they stabbed her 28 times. They were both aged just 15 when they brutally attacked Brianna in Culcheth, Cheshire, in February 2023.
By the time she turned 11, Mary Bell had already taken the lives of two toddlers. Her first victim, Martin Brown, four, was found strangled in an abandoned house in May 1968.
The Murder of Shawn Seesahai
Two 12-year-old boys were jailed after killing a man with a machete. The pair – who cannot be named due to their age – set upon 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai in a Wolverhampton park in November 2023. They were both convicted of murder and given life with a minimum of eight years.
