30 years after James Bulger was killed, brother praises their mum

THE brother of James Bulger has praised his Supermum” for trying to give him a normal childhood despite his sibling’s murder.

Michael Fergus says Denise never broke down in front of him and his two other brothers, but did everything she could to shield them from the horror of James’s killing by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson.

He said: I feel like I’ve been brought up by Supermum or Wonder Woman. She points us in the right direction. Anything that we’ve ever hit a wall with, she’s always been there to help.

“But life was often not normal. I don’t blame my mum for it at all but because of what they did to James we weren’t allowed past the gate.

“T had all my friends coming over saying, let’s go into town, let’s do this... So I would go and ask the boss and she’d always say No’.”

James was a month shy of turning three when he was snatched by Venables and Thompson, both 10, at a Liverpool shopping centre on February 12 1993. His tortured body was found two days later, two and a half miles away by a rail line.

The crime shocked the world and Denise and her family had to pick up the pieces of their lives.

The boys were convicted of murder in November 1993 and detained indefinitely. They were freed aged 18 with new identities in 2001 after eight years in offenders institutes.

Thompson, 39, has not reoffended but Venables was sent back to jail in 2010 and in 2017 after being caught with child sex abuse images.