The Murder of James Bulger

 

James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a 2-year-old boy from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, on Friday, 12 February 1993. Thompson and Venables led Bulger away from the New Strand Shopping Center in Bootle as his mother had taken her eyes off him momentarily. His mutilated body was found on a railway line 2.5 miles (4 km) away in Walton, Liverpool, two days after his abduction.

Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with abduction and murder. They were found guilty on 24 November, making them the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history. They were sentenced to detention at Her Majesty's pleasure until a Parole Board decision in June 2001 recommended their release on a lifelong license aged 18. In 2010, Venables was sent to prison for breaching the terms of his license, and was released on parole again in 2013. In November 2017, Venables was again sent to prison for possessing child abuse images on his computer.

The Bulger case has prompted widespread debate about how to handle young offenders when they are sentenced or released from custody.

Murder

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) evidence from the New Strand Shopping Center in Bootle taken on Friday, 12 February 1993, showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint, some of which were later found at the murder scene. One of the boys later revealed that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the shopping center, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.

That same afternoon, Bulger, from nearby Kirkby, went with his mother, Denise, to the New Strand Shopping Center. Whilst inside the A. R. Tym's butcher's shop on the lower floor of the center at around 15:40, Denise, who had let go of James' hand whilst paying for her shopping, realized that her son had left the shop. Thompson and Venables approached James Bulger, took him by the hand and led him out of the shopping center. The moment was caught on CCTV at 15:42.

Thompson and Venables took Bulger to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, around a quarter of a mile from the New Strand Shopping Center, where they dropped him on his head and he suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal. An eyewitness during the trial said that when he saw Bulger at the canal, he was "crying his eyes out". During a 2.5-mile (4 km) walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene. Two people challenged Thompson and Venables, but they claimed Bulger was their brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to a police station. At one point, the boys took Bulger into a pet shop, from which they were ejected.

Eventually, the boys arrived in the village of Walton, and with Walton Lane police station across the road facing them, they hesitated and led Bulger up a steep bank to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Anfield Cemetery, where they began torturing him.

One of the boys threw blue Humbrol modeling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger's left eye. They kicked him, stamped on him and threw bricks and stones at him. They placed batteries in Bulger's mouth and, according to police, may have inserted some into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, the boys dropped a 10-kilogram (22 lb) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, on Bulger. He sustained 10 skull fractures as a result of the bar striking his head. Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries – 42 in total – that none could be isolated as the fatal blow. Thompson and Venables laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After they left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger's severed body was discovered by some schoolboys two days later on 14 February. A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger's shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist's report, which was read out in court, found that Bulger's foreskin had been forcibly pulled back. When Thompson and Venables were questioned about this aspect of the attack by detectives and a child psychiatrist, Eileen Vizard, the pair were reluctant to give details and also denied inserting some of the batteries into Bulger's anus. At his eventual parole, Venables's psychiatrist, Susan Bailey, reported that "visiting and revisiting the issue with Jon as a child, and now as an adolescent, he gives no account of any sexual element to the offense."

The police quickly found low-resolution video images of Bulger's abduction from the New Strand Shopping Centre by two unidentified boys. The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was soon adorned with hundreds of bunches of flowers. The family of one boy, who was detained for questioning but subsequently released, had to flee the city due to threats by vigilantes. The breakthrough came when a woman, on seeing slightly enhanced images of the two boys on national television, recognized Venables, who she knew had played truant with Thompson that day. She contacted police and the boys were arrested.

Legal proceedings

Arrest

The fact that the suspects were so young came as a shock to investigating officers, headed by Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, of Merseyside Police. Early press reports and police statements had referred to Bulger being seen with "two youths" (suggesting that the killers were teenagers), the ages of the boys being difficult to ascertain from the images captured by CCTV. Forensic tests confirmed that both boys had the same blue paint on their clothing as found on Bulger's body. Both had blood on their shoes; the blood on Thompson's shoe was matched to Bulger's through DNA tests. A pattern of bruising on Bulger's right cheek matched the features of the upper part of a shoe worn by Thompson; a paint mark in the toecap of one of Venables's shoes indicated he must have used "some force" when he kicked Bulger. Thompson is said to have asked police whether the two-year-old had been taken to hospital to "get him alive again".

The boys were each charged with the murder of James Bulger on 20 February 1993, and appeared at South Sefton Youth Court on 22 February 1993, where they were remanded in custody to await trial. In the aftermath of their arrest, and throughout the media accounts of their trial, the boys were referred to as "Child A" (Thompson) and "Child B" (Venables). Awaiting trial, they were held in the secure units where they would eventually be sentenced to be detained indefinitely.

Trial

Up to five hundred protesters gathered at South Sefton Magistrates' Court during the boys' initial court appearances. The parents of the accused were moved to different parts of the country and assumed new identities following death threats from vigilantes. The full trial opened at Preston Crown Court on 1 November 1993, conducted as an adult trial with the accused in the dock away from their parents, and the judge and court officials in legal regalia. The boys denied the charges of murder, abduction and attempted abduction. The attempted abduction charge related to an incident at the New Strand Shopping Center earlier on 12 February 1993, the day of Bulger's death. Thompson and Venables had attempted to lead away another two-year-old boy, but had been prevented by the boy's mother.

Each boy sat in view of the court on raised chairs (so they could see out of the dock designed for adults) accompanied by two social workers. Although they were separated from their parents, they were within touching distance when their families attended the trial. News stories reported the demeanor of the defendants. These aspects were later criticized by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 1999 that they had not received a fair trial by being tried in public in an adult court. At the trial, the lead prosecution counsel Richard Henriques successfully rebutted the principle of doli incapax, which presumes that young children cannot be held legally responsible for their actions.

Thompson and Venables were considered by the court to be capable of "mischievous discretion", meaning an ability to act with criminal intent as they were mature enough to understand that they were doing something seriously wrong. A child psychiatrist, Eileen Vizard, who interviewed Thompson before the trial, was asked in court whether he would know the difference between right and wrong, that it was wrong to take a young child away from his mother, and that it was wrong to cause injury to a child. Vizard replied, "If the issue is on the balance of probabilities, I think I can answer with certainty." Vizard also said that Thompson was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the attack on Bulger. Susan Bailey, the Home Office forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Venables, said unequivocally that he knew the difference between right and wrong.

Thompson and Venables did not speak during the trial, and the case against them was based to a large extent on the more than 20 hours of tape-recorded police interviews with the boys, which were played back in court. Thompson was considered to have taken the leading role in the abduction process, though it was Venables who had apparently initiated the idea of taking Bulger to the railway line. Venables later described how Bulger seemed to like him, holding his hand and allowing him to pick him up on the meandering journey to the scene of his murder. Laurence Lee, who was the solicitor of Venables during the trial, later said that Thompson was one of the most frightening children he had seen, and compared him to the Pied Piper. After his appearances in court, Venables would strip off his clothes, saying "I can smell James like a baby smell." The prosecution admitted a number of exhibits during the trial, including a box of 27 bricks, a blood-stained stone, Bulger's underpants, and the rusty iron bar described as a railway fishplate. The pathologist spent 33 minutes outlining the injuries sustained by Bulger; many of those to his legs had been inflicted after he was stripped from the waist down. Brain damage was extensive and included a hemorrhage.

The boys, by then aged 11, were found guilty of Bulger's murder at the Preston court on 24 November 1993, becoming the youngest convicted murderers of the 20th century. The judge, Mr Justice Morland, told Thompson and Venables that they had committed a crime of "unparalleled evil and barbarity ... In my judgment, your conduct was both cunning and very wicked." Morland sentenced them to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, with a recommendation that they should be kept in custody for "very, very many years to come", recommending a minimum term of eight years. At the close of the trial, the judge lifted reporting restrictions and allowed the names of the killers to be released, saying "I did this because the public interest overrode the interest of the defendants ... There was a need for an informed public debate on crimes committed by young children." Sir David Omand later criticized this decision and outlined the difficulties created by it in his 2010 review of the probation service's handling of the case.

Post-trial

Shortly after the trial, and after the judge had recommended a minimum sentence of eight years, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, the Lord Chief Justice, recommended that the two boys should serve a minimum of ten years, which would have made them eligible for release in February 2003 at the age of 20. The editors of the Sun newspaper handed a petition bearing nearly 280,000 signatures to Home Secretary Michael Howard, in a bid to increase the time spent by both boys in custody. This campaign was successful, and in July 1994, Howard announced that the boys would be kept in custody for a minimum of fifteen years, meaning that they would not be considered for release until February 2008, by which time they would be 25 years old.

Lord Donaldson criticized Howard's intervention, describing the increased tariff as "institutionalized vengeance ... [by] a politician playing to the gallery." The increased minimum term was overturned in 1997 by the House of Lords that ruled it "unlawful" for the Home Secretary to decide on minimum sentences for young offenders. The High Court and European Court of Human Rights have since ruled that, though the parliament may set minimum and maximum terms for individual categories of crime, it is the responsibility of the trial judge, with the benefit of all the evidence and argument from both prosecution and defense counsel, to determine the minimum term in individual criminal cases.

Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary, gave a speech in Wellingborough during which he said: "We hear of crimes so horrific they provoke anger and disbelief in equal proportions ... These are the ugly manifestations of a society that is becoming unworthy of that name." Prime Minister John Major said that "society needs to condemn a little more, and understand a little less." The trial judge Mr. Justice Morland stated that exposure to violent videos might have encouraged the actions of Thompson and Venables, but this was disputed by David Maclean, the Minister of State at the Home Office at the time, who pointed out that police had found no evidence linking the case with "video nasties".

Some British tabloid newspapers claimed that the attack on Bulger was inspired by the film Child's Play 3, and campaigned for the rules on "video nasties" to be tightened. During the police investigation, it emerged that Child's Play 3 was one of the films that Jon Venables' father had rented in the months prior to the killing, but it was not established that Venables had ever watched it. One scene in the film shows the malevolent doll Chucky being splashed with blue paint during a paintball game. A Merseyside detective said, "We went through something like 200 titles rented by the Venables family. There were some you or I wouldn't want to see, but nothing—no scene, or plot, or dialogue—where you could put your finger on the freeze button and say that influenced a boy to go out and commit murder." Inspector Ray Simpson of Merseyside Police commented: "If you are going to link this murder to a film, you might as well link it to The Railway Children". The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 clarified the rules on the availability of certain types of video material to children.

Detention

After the trial, Thompson was held at the Barton Moss Secure Care Center in Manchester. Venables was detained in Vardy House, a small eight-bedded unit at Red Bank secure unit in St. Helens on Merseyside. These locations were not publicly known until after the boys' release. Details of the boys' lives were recorded twice daily on running sheets and signed by the member of staff who had written them. The records were stored at the units and copied to officials in Whitehall. The boys were taught to conceal their real names and the crime they had committed which resulted in their being in the units. Venables' parents regularly visited their son at Red Bank, just as Thompson's mother did, every three days, at Barton Moss. The boys received education and rehabilitation; despite initial problems, Venables was said to have eventually made good progress at Red Bank, resulting in him being kept there for the full eight years, despite the facility only being a short-stay remand unit. Both boys, however, were reported to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, and Venables in particular told of experiencing nightmares and flashbacks of the murder.

Appeal and release

In 1999, lawyers for Thompson and Venables appealed to the European Court of Human Rights that the boys' trial had not been impartial, since they were too young to follow proceedings and understand an adult court. The European Court dismissed their claim that the trial was inhuman and degrading treatment, but upheld their claim they were denied a fair hearing by the nature of the court proceedings. The European Court also held that Michael Howard's intervention had led to a "highly charged atmosphere", which resulted in an unfair judgment. On 15 March 1999, the court in Strasbourg ruled by 14 votes to five that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the fairness of the trial of Thompson and Venables, stating: "The public trial process in an adult court must be regarded in the case of an 11-year-old child as a severely intimidating procedure."

In September 1999, Bulger's parents appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, but failed to persuade the court that a victim of a crime has the right to be involved in determining the sentence of the perpetrator. The European Court case led to the new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, reviewing the minimum sentence. In October 2000, he recommended the tariff be reduced from ten to eight years, adding that young offender institutions were a "corrosive atmosphere" for the juveniles.

In June 2001, after a six-month review, the parole board ruled the boys were no longer a threat to public safety and could be released as their minimum tariff had expired in February of that year. The Home Secretary David Blunkett approved the decision, and they were released a few weeks later on lifelong license after serving eight years. Both men "were given new identities and moved to secret locations under a 'witness protection'-style programme." This was supported by the fabrication of passports, national insurance numbers, qualification certificates and medical records. Blunkett added his own conditions to their license and insisted on being sent daily updates on the men's actions.

The terms of their release included the following: they were not allowed to contact each other or Bulger's family; they were prohibited from visiting the Merseyside region; curfews may be imposed on them and they must report to probation officers. If they breached the rules or were deemed a risk to the public, they could be returned to prison. An injunction was imposed on the media after the trial, preventing the publication of details about Thompson and Venables. The worldwide injunction was kept in force following their release on parole, so their new identities and locations could not be published.. Blunkett stated in 2001: "The injunction was granted because there was a real and strong possibility that their lives would be at risk if their identities became known."

Subsequent events

In the months after the trial, and following the birth of their second son, the marriage of Bulger's parents, Ralph and Denise, broke down; they divorced in 1995. Denise married Stuart Fergus and they have two sons together. Ralph also remarried and has three daughters by his second wife.

The Observer revealed that both Venables and Thompson had passed A-levels during their sentences. The paper also told how the Bulger family's lawyers had consulted psychiatric experts in order to present the parole panel with a report which suggested that Thompson is an undiagnosed psychopath, citing his lack of remorse during his trial and arrest. The report was ultimately dismissed. However, his lack of remorse at the time, in stark contrast to Venables, led to considerable scrutiny from the parole panel. Upon release, both Thompson and Venables had lost all trace of their Liverpool accents. In a psychiatric report prepared in 2000 before Venables' release, he was described as posing a "trivial" risk to the public and unlikely to reoffend. The chances of his successful rehabilitation were described as "very high".

The Manchester Evening News published details that suggested the names of the secure institutions in which the pair were housed, in breach of the injunction against publicity which had been renewed early in 2001. In December that year, the paper was fined £30,000 for contempt of court and ordered to pay costs of £120,000.

No significant publication or vigilante action against Thompson or Venables has occurred. Despite this, Bulger's mother, Denise, told how in 2004 she received a tip-off from an anonymous source that helped her locate Thompson. Upon seeing him, she was "paralyzed with hatred" and was unable to confront him.

In April 2007, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed that the Home Office had spent £13,000 on an injunction to prevent a foreign magazine from revealing the new identities of Thompson and Venables.

On 14 March 2008, an appeal to set up a Red Balloon Learner Center in Merseyside in memory of James Bulger was launched by Denise Fergus, his mother, and Esther Rantzen. A memorial garden in Bulger's memory was created in Sacred Heart Primary School in his hometown of Kirkby, the school he would have been expected to attend had he not been murdered.

In March 2010, a call was made by England's Children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson to raise the age of criminal responsibility from ten to twelve. She said that the killers of James Bulger should have undergone "programmes" to help turn their lives around, rather than being prosecuted. The Ministry of Justice rejected the call, saying that children over the age of ten knew the difference "between bad behavior and serious wrongdoing".

In April 2010, a 19-year-old man from the Isle of Man was given a three-month suspended prison sentence for falsely claiming in a Facebook message that one of his former colleagues was Robert Thompson. In passing sentence, Deputy High Bailiff Alastair Montgomerie said that the teenager had "put that person at significant risk of serious harm" and in a "perilous position" by making the allegation.

In March 2012, a 26-year-old man from Chorley, Lancashire was arrested after allegedly setting up a Facebook group with the title "What happened to Jamie Bulger was f**king hilarious." The man's computer was seized for further investigations.

On 25 February 2013, the Attorney General's Office announced that it was instituting contempt of court proceedings against several people who had allegedly published photographs online showing Thompson or Venables as adults. A spokesman commented "There are many different images circulating online claiming to be of Venables or Thompson; potentially innocent individuals may be wrongly identified as being one of the two men and placed in danger. The order, and its enforcement, is therefore intended to protect not only Venables and Thompson but also those members of the public who have been incorrectly identified as being one of the two men."

On 26 April 2013, two men received suspended jail sentences of nine months after admitting to contempt of court, by publishing photographs which they claimed to be of Venables and Thompson on Facebook and Twitter. The posts were seen by 24,000 people. According to BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, the purpose of the prosecution was to ensure that the public was aware that Internet users were also subject to the law of contempt.

On 27 November 2013, a man from Liverpool received a fourteen-month suspended prison sentence for posting images on Twitter claiming to show Venables.

On 14 July 2016, a woman from Margate in Kent was jailed for three years after sending Twitter messages to Bulger's mother in which she posed as one of his killers and his ghost. The sentence was reduced to 2+1⁄2 years on appeal.

On 25 October 2016, a man was jailed for 26 weeks for stalking Denise Fergus. He had previously received a police warning for stalking her in 2008.

On 31 January 2019, a man and a woman pleaded guilty to eight contempt of court offenses at the High Court after they admitted posting photos on social media that they claimed identified Venables. Both received suspended prison sentences.

On 13 March 2019, actress Tina Malone was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence for posting Venables' identity on Facebook.

In January 2020, a 53-year-old woman from Ammanford in South Wales received a prison sentence of eight months, suspended for 15 months. In November 2017, she had published an alleged photograph of Venables on Facebook with the advice "share this as much as possible." Lord Justice Davis said that the offense was "close to the line" for an immediate prison sentence, but suspended the sentence after an early admission of guilt and remorse by the woman.

Later life of Jon Venables

Relationships and other misdemeanors

Shortly before his 2001 release, when aged 17, Venables was alleged to have had sex with a woman who worked at the Red Bank secure unit where he was held. In April 2011, in the aftermath of his 2010 imprisonment, these allegations were outlined in a Sunday Times Magazine article written by David James Smith, who had been following the Bulger case since the 1993 trial, and again later in a BBC documentary titled Jon Venables: What Went Wrong? The female staff member was accused of sexual misconduct and suspended; she never returned to work at Red Bank. A spokesman for St Helens Borough Council denied that the incident had been covered up, saying: "All allegations were thoroughly investigated by an independent team on the orders of the Home Office and chaired by Arthur de Frischling, a retired prison governor." Venables began living independently in March 2002. Some time thereafter, he began a relationship with a woman who had a five-year-old child. It is not known whether Venables had already begun downloading child abuse images at the time of dating the woman, though he denies having ever met the child. In 2005, when Venables was 23, his probation officer met another girlfriend of his, who was aged 17. After a number of "young girlfriends", it was presumed that Venables was having a delayed adolescence. After a period of apparently reduced supervision, Venables began excessively drinking, taking drugs, downloading child abuse images, as well as visiting Merseyside (a breach of his license). In 2008, a new probation officer noted that he spent "a great deal of leisure time" playing video games and on the Internet. In September that year, Venables was arrested on suspicion of affray, following a fight outside a nightclub; he claimed he was acting in self-defense and the charges were later dropped after he agreed to go on an alcohol-awareness course. Three months later he was found to be in possession of cocaine; he was subjected to a curfew. On two separate occasions, Venables revealed his true identity to a friend.

2010 imprisonment

On 2 March 2010, the Ministry of Justice revealed that Jon Venables had been returned to prison for an unspecified violation of the terms of his license of release. The Justice Secretary Jack Straw stated that Venables had been returned to prison because of "extremely serious allegations", and stated that he was "unable to give further details of the reasons for Jon Venables's return to custody, because it was not in the public interest to do so". On 7 March, media reports said that Venables had been accused of child pornography offenses. In a statement to the House of Commons on 8 March 2010, Straw reiterated that it was "not in the interest of justice" to reveal the reason why Venables had been returned to custody. Baroness Butler-Sloss, the judge who made the decision to grant Venables anonymity in 2001, warned that Venables could be killed if his identity was revealed.

Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, said that she was angry that the parole board did not tell her that Venables had been returned to prison, and called for his anonymity to be removed if he was charged with a crime. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice stated that there was a worldwide injunction against publication of either killer's location or new identity. Venables's return to prison revived a false claim that a man from Fleetwood, Lancashire was Venables. The claim was reported and dismissed in September 2005, but reappeared in March 2010 when it was circulated widely via SMS messages and Facebook. Chief Inspector Tracie O'Gara of Lancashire Constabulary stated: "An individual who was targeted four-and-a-half years ago was not Jon Venables and now he has left the area."

On 21 June 2010, Venables was charged with possession and distribution of indecent images of children. It was alleged that he had downloaded 57 indecent images of children over a 12-month period to February 2010, and had allowed other people to access the files through a peer-to-peer network. Venables faced two charges under the Protection of Children Act 1978. On 23 July 2010, Venables appeared at a court hearing at the Old Bailey via a video link, visible only to the judge hearing the case. He pleaded guilty to charges of downloading and distributing child pornography, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

At the court hearing, it emerged that Venables had posed in online chat rooms as 35-year-old Dawn "Dawnie" Smith, a married woman from Liverpool who boasted about abusing her 8-year-old daughter, in the hope of obtaining further child pornography. Venables had contacted his probation officer in February 2010, fearing that his new identity had been compromised at his place of work. When the officer arrived at his flat, Venables was attempting to remove or destroy the hard drive of his computer with a knife and a tin opener. The officer's suspicions were aroused, and the computer was taken away for examination leading to the discovery of the child pornography, which included children as young as two being raped by adults and penetrative rape of seven- or eight-year-olds.

The judge, Mr Justice Bean, ruled that Venables's new identity could not be revealed, but the media were allowed to report that he had been living in Cheshire at the time of his arrest. The High Court also heard that Venables had been arrested on suspicion of affray in September 2008, following a drunken street fight with another man. Late that year, he was cautioned for possession of cocaine.

In November 2010, a review of the National Probation Service handling of the case by Sir David Omand found that probation officers could not have prevented Venables from downloading child pornography. Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said that only 24-hour surveillance would have stopped Venables.

Venables was eligible for parole in July 2011. On 27 June 2011, the parole board decided that Venables would remain in custody, and that his parole would not be considered again for at least another year.

New identity

On 4 May 2011, it was reported that Venables would once again be given a new identity, following what was described as a "serious security breach" which revealed an identity that he had been using before his imprisonment in 2010. Details of the breach could not be reported for legal reasons. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice commented: "Such a change of identity is extremely rare and granted only when the police assess that there is clear and credible evidence of a sustained threat to the offender's life on release into the community." The incident occurred after a man from Exeter posted photographs on a website devoted to identifying paedophiles, allegedly showing Venables as an adult and giving his name.

2013 parole hearing and release

In November 2011, it was reported that officials had decided that Venables would stay in prison for the foreseeable future, as he would be likely to reveal his true identity if released. A Ministry of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the reports. On 4 July 2013, it was reported that the Parole Board for England and Wales had approved the release of Venables. On 3 September 2013, it was reported that Venables had been released from prison.

2017 imprisonment

On 23 November 2017, it was reported that Venables had again been recalled to prison for possession of child abuse imagery. The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the reports. On 5 January 2018, Venables was charged with unspecified offenses relating to indecent images of children.

On 7 February 2018, Venables pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images of children for a second time. He pleaded guilty via video link to three charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing a paedophile manual. He admitted being in possession of 392 category A, 148 category B, and 630 category C child pornography images, and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. In September 2020, he was denied parole.

2019 legal challenge to lift anonymity refused

On 4 March 2019, Bulger's father Ralph lost a legal challenge to lift the lifelong order protecting Venables' anonymity. Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane turned down the request, saying that the "uniquely notorious" nature of the case meant that "There is a strong possibility, if not a probability, that if his identity were known he would be pursued resulting in grave and possibly fatal consequences."

Potential overseas resettlement

In late June 2019, it was reported that British officials had considered resettling Venables in either Canada, Australia or New Zealand due to the high costs behind protecting his anonymity. British authorities had reportedly spent £65,000 in legal fees to keep Venables' identity a secret. In response to media coverage, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern remarked that Venables would need an exemption under the Immigration Act and that he should not "bother applying".

In popular culture

In August 2001, a stage play titled The Age of Consent by Peter Morris was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The play featured a 18-year-old character called Timmy who was due to be released from a secure unit after luring a toddler away from his mother and beating him to death. The play generated controversy because of the similarities between the character and James' killers. Although she had not seen the play, Denise Fergus denounced it as a work that was "just designed to try and shock people and grab publicity" and that "anyone who would stoop so low as to use my son's death as a subject for comedy is sick and pathetic." In response to the controversy Peter Morris stated that the humor in his play was "never at the expense of the various people, Mrs Fergus included, who have suffered so much in the aftermath of James's murder". He asserted that the work "is emphatically not a comedy" but instead "intended as a serious moral examination of what contemporary society is doing to children."

In June 2007, a computer game based on the television series Law & Order, titled Law & Order: Double or Nothing (made in 2003), was withdrawn from stores in the UK following reports that it contained an image of Bulger. The image in question is the CCTV frame of Bulger being led away by his killers, Thompson and Venables. The scene in the game involves a computer-generated detective pointing out the picture, which is meant to represent a fictional child abduction that the player is then asked to investigate. Bulger's family, along with many others, complained and the game was subsequently withdrawn by its UK distributor, GSP. The game's developer, Legacy Interactive, released a statement in which it apologized for the image's inclusion in the game; according to the statement, the image's use was "inadvertent" and took place "without any knowledge of the crime, which occurred in the UK and was minimally publicized in the United States".

In 2008, Swedish playwright Niklas Rådström used the interview transcripts from interrogations with the murderers and their families to recreate the story. His play, Monsters, opened to mixed reviews at the Arcola Theatre in London in May 2009.

In August 2009, Australia's Seven Network used real footage of the abduction to promote its crime drama City Homicide. The use of the footage was criticized by Bulger's mother, and Seven apologized. On 24 August 2009, co-hosts on Seven's breakfast show Sunrise asked whether the killers were now living in Australia, in an apparent tie-in with that week's episode of City Homicide. They answered the question the next day, relaying the Australian government's denial that the killers had been settled in the country.

A storyline in Hollyoaks, set to begin in December 2009, was canceled after the makers gave Bulger's mother Denise Fergus a special screening. The storyline was to feature Loretta Jones and her friend Chrissy, who had been given new identities before arriving in the village, after being convicted of murdering a child at the age of 12.

The critical theorist Terry Eagleton introduced his 2010 book On Evil with the story of Bulger's murder.

In January 2019, the short film Detainment was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 91st Academy Awards. The film is based on transcripts of the police interviews with Thompson and Venables after their arrests. The nomination was criticized by Bulger's mother, who was not consulted before the film's release. Bulger's mother circulated a petition to have the film removed from the nominations. The film's director, Vincent Lambe, said that he would not be withdrawing the film, saying "it would defeat the purpose of making the film".

In January 2019, the short film Detainment was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 91st Academy Awards. The film is based on transcripts of the police interviews with Thompson and Venables after their arrests. The nomination was criticized by Bulger's mother, who was not consulted before the film's release. Bulger's mother circulated a petition to have the film removed from the nominations. The film's director, Vincent Lambe, said that he would not be withdrawing the film, saying "it would defeat the purpose of making the film".