JAMES BULGER'S MUM'S PLEA 'PLEASE DON'T FREE MY BABY BOY'S KILLER'

Denise is fighting to keep the vicious murderer of her two-year-old son behind bars

- Phillip Koch

It was the brutal murder that had us struggling to understand how two 10-year-old boys could abduct, torture, and kill a two-year-old. The grainy CCTV imagery of Jon Venables leading James Bulger by the hand, with his accomplice Robert Thompson just ahead, remains a haunting one.

The two small primary school boys looked as though they could be the toddler's big brothers on an outing.

For James' shattered parents, Denise Fergus and Ralph Bulger, this was when their waking nightmare began. And 29 years since that terrible day, they continue to fight for justice for their baby boy.

"There is no doubt in my mind that he is still capable of evil," Denise told a UK newspaper last week as she prepares to mount a fight to keep Venables behind bars as his parole hearing for other offences approaches.

“He is one of the biggest dangers to society and will offend again. My biggest fear is that Venables will put another family through what we've been through."

HORRIFIC CRIME

Venables and Thompson, both now 39, abducted James from a shopping centre in Bootle in the north-west of England on February 12, 1993, and took him to nearby train tracks where they left his brutalised body to make his death appear like an accident.