Jon Venables in new freedom bid: James Bulger’s killer will go before Parole Board within weeks to ask for early release from 40-month sentence for possessing child porn

• Venables was jailed in February 2018 for 40 months after admitting charges
• He had more than 1,000 indecent images of children on his computer
• Venables will be considered for release by a Parole Board within weeks 
• He was initially caged aged 10 in 1994, along with Robert Thompson, for murdering two-year-old James 

James Bulger killer Jon Venables could be freed from prison within weeks if the Parole Board rules he is not a danger to the public.

The murderer, who was sent back to prison two years ago for having more than 1,000 indecent images of children on his computer and a paedophile manual, will be considered for release within weeks.

He was jailed in February 2018 for 40 months after admitting the charges, and only became eligible for release in October last year. 

It was the second time he had been returned to jail since being freed from his sentence for murdering two-year-old James in 1993.

Venables was first jailed at the age of ten with his friend Robert Thompson in 1994 for the torture and murder of James after they lured him away from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside.

He was released on licence in 2001 but recalled nine years later after indecent images of children were found on his devices.

Jon Venables’ will be considered for release by a Parole Board within weeks. Above Venables is pictured in his police photo in 1993

CCTV image shows the moment two-year-old James Bulger was abducted from the Bootle Strand shopping mall in 1993 by Venables, who is seen holding his hand. He and Robert Thompson took the boy before torturing and killing him

James’s father Ralph, 53, has called for him to be kept behind bars and believes Venables will kill again if he is released from prison.

 ‘I don’t believe he will stop until he has killed again’, he told the Mirror.

‘He is a dangerous, predatory child abuser and killer and I am terrified he will strike again and harm another child like my James.

‘Venables might have been ten years old then but now he is a grown man and a predator with a disgusting lust for children. 

‘He is wired wrong and has always been. I warned against his release the last time, but the Parole Board ignored me and instead were hoodwinked by Venables into believing he was reformed.

‘Keeping him in prison is the only way to make sure he can’t target kids again. He was given a second and third chance but blew it.’

James Bulger (Pictured) was two-years-old when he was led from the shopping centre. His 53-year-old father has tried to overturn the lifetime anonymity granted to his killer Jon Venables arguing that it would ‘protect the public’

Venables has spent more than £65,000 of taxpayers money fighting legal challenges to his lifelong anonymity by Ralph Bulger.

In March last year Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane rejected the case, saying the injunction was intended to protect Venables from ‘being put to death’.

‘(Venables) is “uniquely notorious” and there is a strong possibility, if not probability, that if his identity were known he would be pursued resulting in grave and possibly fatal consequences,’ he said.

‘This is, therefore, a wholly exceptional case and the evidence in 2019 is more than sufficient to sustain the conclusion that there continues to be a real risk of very substantial harm to (Venables).’ 

What has happened to Jon Venables and Robert Thompson since James Bulger’s murder?

Jon Venables, pictured as a boy, has been given lifelong anonymity by the courts

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were found guilty of killing Bulger in November 1993 and were sentenced to custody until they reached 18.

They were freed in 2001, aged 18, and given a new identity to protect him from the risk of vigilante attacks.

They were made the subjects of so-called ‘Mary Bell orders’, lifetime anonymity court injunctions named after Mary Bell, who was found guilty of killing two boys at a hearing in Newcastle in 1968.

Only six people have been made subject of the orders; Venables, Thompson, Bell, Maxine Carr, who was convicted of perverting the course of justice in the Soham murders, and two brothers who, aged ten and 11, tortured two younger boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire in 2009.

At the time of Venables’ first release from prison, a psychiatrist ruled that he did not pose a danger to the public and was extremely unlikely to commit any further offences.

Years later it emerged Venables had been detained in Vardy House – a small eight-bed section of Red Bank secure unit in St Helens on Merseyside – where it’s said he made such good progress he was kept there for eight years, despite it actually being a short-stay remand unit.  

Shortly before his release in 2001, when aged 17, Venables was reported to have allegedly had sex with a woman who worked at the Red Bank secure unit where he was being held. The allegations were investigated and a female staff member accused of sexual misconduct was suspended, never to return.

Venables’ release under his new identity went ahead and he is known to have been living independently by March 2002 – some time thereafter beginning a relationship with a woman who had a five-year-old child, although he denies having ever met them.

He was then reported to have had a number of ‘younger girlfriends’ which suggested he was enjoying a delayed adolescence.

As his supervision was apparently reduced, he developed drinking and drugs problems, and he compromised his identity at least twice by telling friends he was a convicted murderer.

In September 2008, he was arrested on suspicion of affray after a drunken brawl and was given a formal warning by the probation service for breaching the good behaviour terms of his licence.

Venables and Robert Thompson were freed eight years after they were first locked up

Later the same year, Venables was cautioned for possession of cocaine after he was found with a small amount of the class A drug.

When a probation officer later visited his home in Cheshire to discuss his fears that he could be in danger, he was attempting to destroy the hard drive of his computer.

The hard drive was later examined by police, who discovered that it contained dozens of indecent images of children.

Venables admitted he had posed online as a 35-year-old woman who had abused her eight-year-old daughter, and was returned to prison.

During his latest imprisonment he was given yet another new identity because of the risk posed by a previous security breach. Venables was paroled again in 2013 and took on his fourth new identity.

He was been sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to having more than 1,000 indecent images of children, in February 2018.

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