Murderer 'will be a danger to children for rest of his life'

POLICE OFFICER WHO HELPED FAMILY OF BOY KILLED BY PAEDOPHILE SAYS FIEND SHOULD NEVER BE RELEASED

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

IN A FEW months a paedophile who committed one of the most chilling child murders Greater Manchester has seen will be considered for release from his life sentence, the M.E.N. can reveal.

Darren Vickers, 56, has already served his minimum 25-year period behind bars and could be freed as early as February next year.

He is in jail for the May 1997 abduction and murder of eight-year-old Jamie Lavis, a schoolboy from Openshaw who he groomed and snatched after he boarded the bus he was driving. A quarter of a century on, it remains one of the darkest days in Manchester's criminal history, the awful crime compounded by what happened wards.

Little Jamie's parents hoped for the best but feared the worst when he went missing on a bank holiday Monday. His body would only be discovered two years later.

In the days after Jamie vanished, killer Vickers wormed his way into his parents' lives, playing the part of an innocent bus driver haunted by the knowledge that he was the last person to see the child before he went missing.