Murder Of James Bulger
James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables (born 13 August 1982). Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while accompanying his mother. His mutilated body was found on a railway line two-and-a-half miles (4 km) away in Walton, two days after his murder. Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with Bulger's abduction and murder.
The pair were found guilty on 24 November 1993, making them the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history. They were sentenced to custody until they reached adulthood, initially until the age of 18, and were released on a lifelong licence in June 2001. In 2010 Venables was returned to prison for violating the terms of his licence of release.
The case has prompted widespread debate on the issue of how to handle young offenders when they are sentenced or released from custody.
Read more about Murder Of James Bulger: The Murder, Subsequent Events, Depictions of The Case in The Media
Famous quotes containing the words murder of, murder and/or james:
“As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig seat, without walls above or around me, I remembered how far on every hand that wilderness stretched, before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and wondered if any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire; for Nature looked sternly upon me on account of the murder of the moose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.”
—William James (1842–1910)