Hamer joins list of child killers

THE name Michael Hamer will now be added to a list of children who have killed other youngsters.

The shock felt when a child lures another away to their death never dissipates.

In 1968, Britain’s youngest female killer Mary Bell, 11, lured three-year- old Brian Howe and four-year-old Martin Brown away from their homes on Tyneside and strangled them.

Before she was caught, Bell asked Martin’s grieving family if she could see him lying dead in his coffin.

The schoolgirl led police to Brian’s body, which she had slashed with razor blades and scissors.

Bell was found guilty of double manslaughter in 1968. Her cold stare and apparent indifference led people to label her “evil” and “a bad seed”.

She was released on licence after 12 years in jail, fell pregnant by a married man and raised her child under a different name.

In November 1993, Venables and Thompson coaxed two-year-old James Bulger from his mother’s side in a Merseyside shopping centre, battered him to death with bricks and an iron bar, then left his body on a railway track to be cut in half.

The pair spent eight years in youth custody before being released in 2001 with new identities.

In 2003, 14-year-old Luke Mitchell murdered his girlfriend, Jodi Jones, also 14. He slashed her throat some 20 times.

The teenager was ordered to spend a minimum of 20 years behind bars.

Brothers Danny and Ricky Preddie were 12 and 13 when they stabbed 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in the leg with a broken beer bottle in November 2000. Damilola bled to death.

The brothers were found guilty of manslaughter last August after a re-trial and sentenced to eight years in youth custody.