I'll never forgive them. An expert has told me they WERE murderers ..being children was no excuse

AS she spent yet another heartbreaking Christmas without her son, Denise Fergus took comfort from a government plan that Jon Venables would never be free, and from the words of a police forensic psychologist. 

- BY BEN GRIFFITHS

Professor Paul Britton, who was on the case in 1993, had recently shared details Denise had never heard before, revealing to her for the first time that he did not think Venables and Robert Thompson’s attack on two-year-old James was sexually motivated.

Prof Britton also told her their age – both were 10 at the time of the killing – was no excuse. They were murderers, plain and simple.

It was Denise’s first conversation with Prof Britton since her son’s murder and, in an exclusive interview with the Mirror, she said: “For 30 years there were lots of details about James’s death that I have wanted to avoid, but I finally felt strong enough to hear it.

He was clear that once Venables and Thompson were named as possible suspects, in the frame, he knew very quickly that they were guilty.

“And whilst others were blind-sided and distracted by the fact that they were such physically small children, which some thought meant that it was impossible they could have committed such a crime, his brain quickly defined them as murderers.

“Just hearing that fact alone, I felt something fundamental shift in me.

“That has been such a block over the years. The excuse that they were ‘only children’ themselves who didn’t deserve the adult labels of ‘murderers’ has always been hard for me to bear.

“Hearing it from someone trained and impartial was an important and healing moment.