TL74 ‘Until my last breath’: James Bulger’s dad fights Venables’ freed0m bid
James Bulger’s dad vows to fight killer Jon Venables after ‘Monster’ makes freedom bid
Ralph Bulger has begged prison officials to keep Jon Venables locked up(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Venables, now 43, tortured and killed Bulger aged just 10 after he and accomplice Robert Thompson kidnapped the two-year-old from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, Merseyside. The 1993 kidnapping saw Venables and Thompson locked up in juvenile detention for indefinite sentences and later transferred to adult prisons, where they have spent the last two decades.
Ralph and Denise Bulger pictured in 1994 with their five-month-old baby Michael as they deliver a petition containing 282,000 signatures to the Home Office calling for their son’s schoolboy killers to be kept behind bars for life. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/Press Association Ima
Speaking to The Sun, Mr Bulger said he, like his ex-wife Denise Fergus, would be attending the parole hearing – which is due to take place at an undisclosed date this year – so he could hear the convicted murderer speak. The defiant dad said he would “stand at the hearing for my son James”, adding: “For my enduring love for him, for justice for him and in defiance of Jon Venables.
“I know I won’t be in the same room as him. I know I won’t be able to see him. But I will hear him and, more importantly, he will hear me – and the devastating impact and pain he has caused to me and my family for 33 years.”
Jon Venables murdered two-year-old James when he was aged 10, in 1993. Photograph: PA
