Bulger killer ‘made trips to Liverpool’ despite ban

JON VENABLES has made several trips to the city where he murdered toddler James Bulger since being released, it was reported yesterday, despite a ban on him doing so.

The 27-year-old has visited nightclubs and a pop concert in Liverpool and even watched Premier League side Everton at Goodison Park, the Daily Mirror said.

But he has reportedly not visited Bootle, the city district where he and Robert Thompson snatched James 17 years ago and took him off to his death.

After being released on licence and with a new identity in 2001, Venables was ordered not to return to Merseyside, among a series of other conditions.

The further revelations about his behaviour come after it emerged this week that the killer was recalled to custody for breaching his licence.

It has also been claimed Venables will have to be given a second new identity costing the British taxpayer £250,000 (€278,000), as fellow inmates are already aware of the 27-year-old killer’s real identity.

Ministers are refusing to give details about what he did, despite demands for more information.

Victims’ rights champion Helen Newlove, whose husband Garry was kicked to death by a gang of yobs outside their home in Warrington in 2007, said it was cruel not to tell James Bulger’s parents the full details.

She urged the prime minister to think again after he and Justice Secretary Jack Straw declared the new allegations faced by the toddler’s murderer must remain secret.

Newlove said: “It is another case of the victims not coming into it and the criminals being protected.

“What Jack Straw has said is ludicrous. Venables has breached his parole and should be staying in jail.

“Venables and Thompson have been given everything on a plate and now we’re not even allowed to know the circumstances surrounding this – it is a disgrace.”

Venables was taken back to prison last week after reportedly fighting with a work colleague and developing a drug problem.

There are fears the recall could see his new identity being discovered, because of fellow prisoners’ suspicions about special treatment.

In 1993 he and Robert Thompson, both just 10 at the time, led two-year-old James from a Liverpool shopping centre on a two-mile walk to his death.

They battered the little boy and left his body on a railway track for a train to cut it in two.

Yesterday the prime minister said that although he understood the public “outrage” surrounding Venables’ licence breach, the government would not comment on individual cases.

He said: “I want to be absolutely clear that what matters is that the justice system is allowed to run its course and justice is done, whatever wrongs are committed.”

James’s mother Denise Fergus and her ex-husband only found out about Venables’s recall hours before news broke in the media on Tuesday.

She has said the public deserve to know what Venables had done, and was said yesterday to find it “insulting” that Gordon Brown was “hiding behind the excuse” he could not comment on individual cases.