the faces of ten-year-old murderers tonight the first new pictures of Thompson and Venables new revelations about their years in custody and threats to hunt them down if they’re released   it’s eight years since two ten-year-old boys murdered James Bulger the anger is still there I am fully and utterly in favor of doing anything to keep those lunatics those evil wicked vile people into prison Thompson and Venables I don’t think they have been punished in any shape or form they have not served a long sentence

they have not been treated like criminals it’s a regular topic on pete prices phone in and the response is always the same hello Lesley eiope violently what can we do here where do we start peace again what should we do with them we keep them locked off for life because at the end of the day it’s Ralph and Denise and the rest of their families and friends that are doing a life sentence not then peace thank you very much for talking to us Lesley let’s go to another call hi Paul we should honk and put in Jupiter really

you would have hung two little ten-year-old boys yeah one never old enough to appreciate the punishment so you would have waited till they got older and then hung them yeah so you kept them locked up and then hung them yeah all right Paul thank you very much for that give us a ring go one five one four seven two the two killers are now eligible for parole and Pete price is among those campaigning to keep them locked up public opinion seems firmly on his side it’s a very emotive subject for people of KB I can’t begin to think age

 these pictures of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables have never been seen before taken at the time they were charged they’re also the last pictures you’re allowed to see a court order means more recent ones can’t be shown we can’t speak to anyone involved in their care or custody or say where they’re held the legal restrictions mean very little hard information has ever emerged about Thompson and Venables in the last eight years recently the Lord Chief Justice said they’ve made remarkable progress how do we know how has the system dealt

with ten-year-old murderers what treatment if they had are they still dangerous up until now we’ve only heard from those who want to keep them locked up for life so tonight we take a deeper look at their time in custody and some of what we found is so controversial it’s not surprising it’s been kept quiet the secrecy is in stark contrast to the very public way this case unfolded we all recognize the images the Strand shopping center in Bootle a young child being led away by two older boys police hoped it was just teenagers messing

around and two year-old James would be returned safely  for two days the hunt for James dominated the news and it seemed the whole country shared the bulges anguish then a group of boys playing on the railway line found a child’s body James had been cut in half by a train well it’s fairly obvious that from the pattern of injuries that he hadn’t been killed by the train I mean been run over by the train but he had a lot of head injuries so it was we weren’t dealing with a train death so tell me what what the post-mortem

established then about the injuries the post-mortem showed that he had a lot of what are called split wounds and lacerations mainly to his head which were the result of being struck heavy blows with the bricks and the iron bar that were found at the scene a two year old battered to death apparently by other children it seemed impossible to believe over the next few days about 60 youngsters were questioned then police were tipped off about two younger boys truanting from school when James went missing so when they said ten-year-old

boys you think oh well it’s got to be done the informations come in so we’ve gotta go and see him an interview you know they could possibly be the one oh no I didn’t I don’t think the other detectives did as well  Phil Roberts led the team that arrested Robert Thompson he lived a few hundred yards from where James’s body had been found Robert came down he was neat tidy clean ready for school so I thought well I’ve got to tell him so I sat him down and sofa I went down on my knees sort of I’d iContact said Roberts I’m here because I’ve

changed Maurice is you know she said but we’ve been told that you might be involved in it then he started sort of panicking to cry but not crying with tears just no tears but crime he was afraid more than anything Robert was taken to Walton Lane police station his mother went with him a couple of miles away on the Norris green estate another team arrested Jon Venables and took him to know Elaine police station the first thing I notice about John is that he looked far younger than the ten years that he was in actual

fact he looked like an eight-year-old little cherubic angelic looking face supported by his mum who was a nice polite person would never have dreamt that he could be capable of a crime like this Robert was remarkably young that would be the first thing that struck you he was younger perhaps than anybody had ever seen in a custodial setting before let alone the seriousness of the offense he was just so small he was clearly very vulnerable that’s that’s the the clearest memory I have of it just seeing someone so small so young in amongst so

many adults in such a difficult situation gently gently police began the questioning always bearing in mind they were dealing with ten year olds in the second interview Robert admitted they’ve taken James but blamed it all on his friend John these are the actual sound of the police interviews  

just just calm yourself down boom it’s okay alright yeah it was it was like pulling teeth everything was coming slowly and you had to have a lot of patience to interview a guy you stole a young boy like that you had to do everything slowly once yep luckily the one sauce yes great forgot that you knew I was difficult to get the next step because everything was Juna interview step by step by step if lie admit lie admit well I admit the other team was having an even harder time with Jon Venables for the first four interviews he lied he was never

even in the Strand so halfway through the second day police told him Robert had already admitted they were both there suddenly there was silence and he said yes we were in the Strand but honestly mum we never grabbed a kid and there was the most terrible wailing and he jumped out of his seat very tactile boy and he hugged the police officers and he hugged his mum and he was screaming and crying we didn’t harm him child who never grabbed a kid mum and that was the first I thought I oh my god this if this is the first of many

breaches of the dam we’re gonna be submerged he said that it Serbia were in this run and if you saw the little boy me neither me neither of the God’s honest truth God’s honest truth and tell me ever me never it’s too scared he’s probably too scared and you said if you’re talking by the hand and led him out of the strong shops  but slowly the appalling truth began to

emerge from the strand they’d walked James up to the nearby canal Robert made the child kneel and look in the water hoping he’d fall in and drown and earlier in the day they tried to snatch another young boy but his mother had caught them just in time so all the time it’s a it’s a spiral and it’s a downward spiral where they’re where their desire to to actually increase the severity of their wrongdoing it gets higher and higher and higher and they seem to be at some point on the point of no return both boys took equally a leading part in

the day’s activities you will see at times where Jon Venables takes the lead hand they need any entices James away and in other parts the witnesses indicate well robert was carrying James across the road and John’s standing by  more than 30 people saw them dragging James along the child was crying his head bleeding but nobody intervened and this is where it ended the railway tracks at Walton just a few freight trains rumble through on their way to the docks despite two days of questioning neither boy would admit what

happened here the breakthrough came with Jon Venables police thought he wouldn’t tell the truth because he was frightened of his parents reaction so between interviews susan Venables told her son they’d love him whatever he’d done and then he made what were the first admissions and it was yolk I killed the baby I’m very sorry can he tell his mom I’m sorry I think he said and then from then he made certain admissions or certainly that he was he was present and inflicted some of the injuries caused on on James so he’s

saying the same house look at him full in the face and he didn’t fall over what they’re saying while he’s doing all this why he wants him to stay down probably back at Walton Lane Robert Thompson denied taking any part in the killing however there was strong forensic evidence that he kicked James in the face there was blood on his shoes try and stop

 to the public it was disbelief a to ten-year-old boys committed a murder to us it was relief and it was dismayed to ten-year-old boys could be so violent towards a young child public anger was almost unprecedented there was a near riot the first time the two appeared in court nine months after the killing a formal crown court trial 

the accused known only as a and B back in 1993 the lor assumed that a child of between ten and fourteen didn’t always know right from wrong the prosecution had to prove they did so the trial hinged not on whether they killed James there was never much doubt about that but whether they fully understood that taking him away from his mother and battering him to death was seriously wrong that was all the legal system needed to know the jury found them guilty of murder and for juveniles there’s only one sentence to be detained

during her majesty’s pleasure the judge then made a decision which has become a major factor in this case he identified the boys their school photographs are now recognised by almost everyone in the country  but at the same time the judge ordered that no details of their future in custody could be revealed it means Thompson and Venables will always be remembered but only as murderers however they’ve changed whatever progress they’ve made that’s been kept secret  st. Mary’s Church of England Primary

School in Liverpool eight months before Jon Venables and Robert Thompson became murderers there now 18 but they’re fixed in the public mind as ten-year-old monsters evil freaks of nature any other views especially in Liverpool tend to stay hidden I I didn’t look upon Robeson as being evil you know as in my eyes and what I’ve seen of robbers he was a normal little boy that got up to mischievous things like every other little boy her son was also its Aunt Mary’s one of Roberts few friends much of the time the pair of them truant ‘add

I used to take him to school I’d put him in one case and he’d sneak out the other gate without me knowing I then found out that the used to go to the shops pinched biscuits and sweets and the other den but at unaware the den was and he also plays on the railway track she knew her son was out of control but didn’t know what to do about it at times the boys roamed around until after midnight just couldn’t find him I used to walk the streets looking for a man you know I just couldn’t find him anyway I was worried both I didn’t inform the

police because I thought if I informed the police then the welfare come on your back and before you know it have to say so you know I just sort of you know plotted on and just hoped that he was all right Robert Thompson’s mother felt the same she didn’t want social services interfering but her son indeed her whole family was far from all right I think ironically that the Robert’s family were emerging from a terrible terrible period of chaos but it was too late for Robert Roberts father had left the home about four years earlier and

made great drama and trauma his mother was drinking heavily at that time Robert was the fifth of six children and I think it was quite a lot of bullying going down the ages and Robert was kind of at the bottom of the pile the family which was desperate for help it was fragile it was damaged it was vulnerable and you have a ten-year-old boy at his prime school with just on half of his education missing because of truant it was apparently not informing had been done about that Jon Venables had only joined the school

that year he was moved from broad square jr. where his behavior had become worse and worse his teacher said John used to revolve along the walls pulling down work he’d curl up under a group of desks so no one could reach him he stuck paper all over his face he cut himself with scissors and also cut holes in his socks finally he tried to choke another boy with a ruler across his throat he’s listening to me that John displayed in many more signs of being you know seriously behaviorally disturbed he had an older brother and a younger sister

they both had learning difficulties were attending a special school his parents had quite an unstable relationship they’ve been separated for a while I think again in the months before the murder they were attempting some kind of reconciliation instability is always very difficult for children to deal with so moving school was seen as giving John a fresh start instead it brought him together with Robert Thompson they were two small boys from difficult families running wild together but they appeared no different to countless other children

until they murdered James Bulger they were 10 years old when they were first locked up the public expected them to be punished for their horrific crime but children under 15 can’t go to prison they go instead to secure units run by local authorities these youngsters may have committed serious crimes albeit risk of harming themselves because they’re out of control for the majority of young people coming to secure accommodation is a huge shock there is a bravado as they walk through the door because that’s what a teenager would

expect they will walk in they will strut in sometimes some of them come in crying some of them are brought in kicking and screaming but the reality is that the wants they’re insecure accommodation they have become quickly aware that the adults are in control of their lives and that’s the first four or five days or indeed longer can be a huge shock often we youngsters arrive with very little structure in their lives they’ve what I would describe was lived on the margins of society in the sense that they don’t go

to school they’re out late at night the whole kind of days is different from everybody else’s day they’ve often arrived with very poor health backgrounds no educational achievement records and sometimes even as basic as they don’t know how to brush their teeth these are children’s homes not prisons and the emphasis is on welfare the days are tightly organized normal school hours meals at set times at night they’re locked in their rooms there are also regular sessions with psychiatrists to try and change the attitudes and

behavior which led to them getting into trouble we’ve got a system of secure accommodation which is one of the best in Europe we know we’ve got effective treatment and we know it works the outcomes we can also predict those children who are likely not to benefit and likely to remain at risk in the long term but for the majority who are amenable to treatment the outcome is good   Leon McEwen was 13 when he was sentenced to five years for arson he ended up in the same secure unit as Robert Thompson

Leon knew who he was although it was never discussed the night decks I’ve read the papers and listen to the news not so they mainly want to hear what he did from his mouth cause it’s for sick were you ever there when there were any stories on the news about the killing yeah like one time it was odd to sat there and it come upon the news I remember it was about I showed you his picture and I commemorative stuff turned off and he went like barging into a dream and you could the early Mike I him with her stuff got me what I was saying he’s

swearing and stuff that we can’t say where Thompson or Venables are held for legal reasons but they’re not in any of the units shown in this program  the regime in all of them is similar Thomson like everyone else has his own room these room was probably like the pact or light of the all unit clubs there so long me liverpool posters that like pictures i like my way painted like much thick people and stuff like that and the other like a liverpool do they decide how the for spire of an interview i like he was lending the pc from education he

stopped that i need him as well for to his work on yeah I used to cook meals for this like his family I could be out a visit like a summoner Clark used to take his pummel adult and I the education but I had a [ __ ] leading black class I liked his families to sit there I used to cook them a meal all these revelations will undoubtedly add to the outrage in Liverpool where people already feel James bulges killers have been pampered not punished certainly the facilities insecure units are excellent but keeping children locked up like this

is expensive on average it cost somewhere in the region of three thousand pounds a week but I regard that as an investment for the future if I can effect positive change in a youngster return them safely to the community then perhaps we won’t spend large sums of money they incarcerated them for the for the majority of their adult life but for an awful lot of people especially the victims of crime they’re not interested in any of that they simply want to know where is the punishment I think by looking up a young person 13 10 11 12 13

by restricting their Liberty for a period of months and sometimes years you are doing that swimming pool gymnasium those are part of the those are part of the things that young people need in order to develop a sense of worth what you want me to do do you want me to lock a young person up lock them up in an environment that brutalizes them that actually restricts their liberty in a sense that is negative or do you want me to effect positive change so that the end of the process young people come out having made progress and change and less

likely to commit further offenses so the punishment is being locked up but even that’s not straight forward recently public angers been stoked up again by a number of press stories okay so this is Venables and it’s saying that he’s been released several times from his secure unit with his father to go to Old Trafford and they’re saying that he’s also allowed out once a week to play football against teams of local school boys who don’t know his identity stories started appearing as soon as it became clear the

killers were eligible for parole this summer Robert Thompson has apparently been to a Manchester shopping centre but we’ve discovered he’s been shopping quite often in fact he’s been coming out for years it’s called mobility mobility is time out of the secured unit and can take a number of forms the U in the unit that I manage mobility is always supervised by at least one member of my staff team and that will in a typical young person will start with a small amount of mobility and perhaps build up some more extensive

mobility its purpose is to prepare young people from moving from a very enclosed secure environments back into the community so we’ll take place in the latter stages of their sentence but according to our research Robert Thompson got his first taste of freedom little over a year into his sentence this is Rivington pike in Lancashire early in 1995 Robert came here for a long walk supervised by staff from the unit like all mobility it had to be specifically approved in advance by the Home Office and this was just the beginning of

regular trips out which until now have been kept absolutely secret  in 1996 Robert began monthly visits to a Sports Centre it is just cost remember the stuff thinking back about free I was little just used to stuffy so we went swimming other miles or whatever I used to know we went out because ladders they said to stuff or where he barely said a whole bed to this shopping center with with him stuff like that part apart with them or wherever Robert also likes going to garden centres and it’s not unusual now

for him to leave the unit at least once a week according to our investigation he’s been all over northern England from sellafield in Cumbria down to jor-el Bank in Cheshire he’s had days out in Chester and in York over the years Robert Thomson’s trips have got longer and further afield in line with standard policy on mobility sometimes it can both simply starting off with perhaps an hour out of the unit and having a walk in a local park moving up to perhaps going to following some educational type program and they might go to local museums of

complete work that they’ve been undertaking education perhaps to a local shopping centre to buy the clothes that they need from the money that they’re allowed and that’s that’s about letting them that’s about them for returning to the community it’s about promoting independent skills it’s about allowing them just to handle some kind of money on one hand it appears a sensible and humane policy you can’t lock children away for all their formative years and expect they’ll just slot back into society rehabilitated but when those children

are James bulges murderers it’s not surprising the Home Office won’t talk about it is there a real sensitivity about discussing mobility it sounds like the government the Home Office they would really rather people didn’t talk about this they really don’t want people to know exactly what’s going on well I’m sure the government of the Home Office have very real security concerns when it comes to discussing mobility particular the detail of mobility in these individual cases I respect those concerns is it actually an embarrassment

that they really don’t want to admit that having locked up young offenders we do let them out again I I don’t know what the motivation is but I think it’s it’s clear that there are real security concerns whether that’s the the prime motivation I can’t say  in the end the only justification for this policy of welfare rather than punishment will be has it worked how much have Robert Thompson and Jon Venables changed in the last eight years first progress that I could see with academic that he was doing very well at

school he was doing well with his particularly with his arithmetic and his English was very good and you may say that he was a captive audience as it were didn’t have the same distractions as a schoolboy at large would have Robert Thompson has also caught up on his education we’ve discovered he’s taken GCSEs in English maths history science and textiles and he’s since gone on to pass a-levels last year the Lord Chief Justice said the killers had now served enough time to punish them they shouldn’t be sent to

the harsher environment of a young offenders Institute because that would undo all the good work that’s changed them almost beyond recognition in my personal opinion one adjective to describe him that stands out about him more than probably anybody else he is a remarkably thoughtful young man for a man of his age careful thoughtful considerate of other people’s feelings to a degree that is in my view exceptional amongst 18-year old people but is it time to let them out we’ve discovered the parole board will meet

next week to decide if Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are still dangerous if they’re released James Bulger’s father has said they’ll be hunted down and people may already be making plans to do just that DJ Pete Price is among several well-known Mercy ciders who support the justice for James campaign the aim is to keep Thompson and Venables locked up at the forefront of the campaign James’s mother Deniz they’ve always had the

backing of the popular press that’s helped by the fact that another organizer Chris Johnson runs a news agency in Liverpool he’s also Denise’s press agent they know time is running out The Killers could be released this summer a campaign to stop that is picking up pace you know always always I think like justice are to be saved I think you need to go in the big jail it’s a thing to be of Jesus at the moment you can’t give this example not if you go out and run we made a child there’s somebody then you’ll get the

education that you should have got anyway and then you’ll get all of these things that’s up for you in lights and make it easy for ya shouldn’t be about then coming out there my main concern is that it probably could still be a danger and certain if you Flo commit legal crimes at what stage do you believe that they want the view that Robert Thompson is still violent has been fueled by two recent press stories an official-looking report describing a fight was in fact a complete forgery which Scotland Yard is now investigating there never was a

fight there was a scuffle with another boy but he turns out to have been a drug addict who provoked the argument and then sold his story to the press in terms of the press interest these two boys continue to be demonized and there is a you know a kind of vengeful mood around the case which I feel that the newspapers do a lot to stoke  I’ve always felt that people needed to put those two boys out of the frame of human reference that was so difficult to imagine any child of ours committing such a crime that people had to kind of

describe them as evil to dismiss them almost and that you know there was a need for them to be demonized and made us feel better there’s always been talk that they mutilated James and sexually abused him after eight years those rumors have suddenly been spelled out in the press the injuries described were absolutely horrific we checked every detail with the pathologist who did the postmortem and none of this is true there are a lot of opinions which are held by people about this offense which are inaccurate as to what happened as to what was done

which caused me an enormous amount of concern as to why the public is seem to want to bring those stories into existence when the crime itself was bad enough to me it seems to devalue the crime and the life that was taken to try and make it worse as though that were not bad enough in contrast to the false press stories the real developments have taken place quietly both Thompson and Venables have had years of regular and difficult sessions with psychiatrists John has described having flashbacks where he saw James bleeding on the

ground he’s also had nightmares where he dreamed of giving birth to somehow bring James back to life two years after the trial when he blamed it all on Robert Jon Venables admitted his guilt a serious crime inflicts tremendous hurt and damage on other people and part of the process is that the young person has to take that on board and acknowledge it taking on the responsibility for their actions but most painfully taking on the emotional consequences of their actions and that’s a very difficult and painful

thing for anybody to do Robert Thompson lost faith with his first psychiatrist and demanded a new doctor but he wouldn’t open up to her until she agreed to an extraordinary deal she’d only write down minimum details of what he told her only then did he also admit killing James he still wouldn’t talk freely because he said it wasn’t sorted out in his own head it was five years after the murder before Robert finally expressed remorse for what he’d done the psychiatrist views will carry great weight when Thompson and Venables appear

before the parole board next week they’ll also be detailed reports on every aspect of their lives in custody is this a particularly difficult case do you think yes with the extent of the media coverage it’s a real hot potato and how much is that going to affect their decision shouldn’t shouldn’t affect it at all they should concentrate on the evidence they have before them in the dossier and the impression they form of the individual who is making the application before them and what is your brief I mean what are you trying to get

at to assess the dangerousness of release if there is any danger then we would not be in a position to recommend release we’ve got to be satisfied that the prisoner can safely rejoin society safety cuts two ways would Thompson and Venables themselves be safe if they were released James Bulger’s father has already said in public they’d be hunted down and that does seem to be the view in Liverpool but the point I wanted to make was that someone’s gonna pop at them someone’s gonna have a go at them and that’s the

point whatever happens it will be discovered where they are and we will be waiting for the headline in the paper that they have been killed oh they will be killed wherever they go they will be killed we’ve got these draconian laws that are protecting these two when they come out and in fact the Internet will make a nonsense of that well I think you’re right because they’re gonna be haunted and haunted for the whole of their lives now I think that you know Deniz and Ralf will probably take some comfort from that and

already there are stories that an up-to-date picture exists of Robert Thompson a court order means television and newspapers can’t publish it but that doesn’t mean it’s not being circulated the internet is almost impossible to police it’s not just websites it’s the huge volume of email traffic someone connected with the justice for James campaign has emailed me the photograph it’s a picture of a teenage boy and either side of it the original schoolboy photos of Thompson and Venables so is this part of the campaign I don’t know

of the justice for James campaign circulating any photographs that’s news to me I’ve got the photo I can show it to you I mean you know there you go this was sent to me by someone from the campaign and they got it from someone else in the campaign I mean this is a dangerous policy isn’t it I mean this isn’t certainly is not anything to do with the justice for James campaign it’s nothing that I know of in terms of it being circulated certainly officially by anyone in the campaign it’s not official policy it can’t be published are you saying

that’s not something you’d approve of then circulating well it’s not for me to approve or otherwise I I don’t I mean undoubtedly people are very angry in Kirby worldwide so I don’t know I don’t know what the photograph is and I don’t know who circulated it but lots of people know about it the campaign recently held a fundraising evening at a Liverpool pub James’s mother Denise was there fifteen hundred pounds was raised there was talk of using some of that as a reward for whoever tracked down the killers and

displaying a picture of Robert Thompson as a wanted poster so I mean just to clarify Denise does not want them to be hunted down she is certainly not encouraging anybody to do that I think well I don’t know anything about that you just shown it to me so it’s a mystery to me will you be saying to people look whatever that photograph is whether or not it’s Thompson stop circulating it because it’s a dangerous thing to start to doing I would have to say to them that they should not circulate it in Britain whether they

decided that the internet was so big that it couldn’t be stopped is a matter for them I wouldn’t seek to tell people what to do it certainly wouldn’t be done by the justice for James campaign and it certainly wouldn’t be done in this country if somebody abroad wanted to do it then we couldn’t stop them   the Internet is difficult to control but so is a mood of retribution we’ve discovered other teenagers in custody have already been mistaken for the Bulger killers and beaten up and a woman in Wales was mistaken for one of their

mothers people threatened to firebomb her home but is the picture Robert Thompson Leon spent two years locked up with him so have a look at that is that him could be the eyes and the eyebrows are like he’s poor it’s not that clear just face you can’t be certain man is that because the quality of the photograph yeah can’t really see the face and look at the face looks a bit lagging here it’s just a body as well but you can’t be hundred percent certain  they were 10 years old James Bulger would be the same age now if they hadn’t

killed him whether his parents can ever forgive only they can decide the issue for the legal system is so much simpler if Thompson and Venables are safe to be released then it’s time to let them out I’d like to see robust again you know a nice guy like you you know I’d like to ask them why and what went wrong them you know could you have come to me and told me what he was doing and you know I talked to rob us I wouldn’t sort of tell him to go away cuz there’s a reason for everything isn’t