Parole hearing for Bulger killer

Venables and Thompson could get new identities

The parole board has been meeting for the second of its hearings to decide whether to release the killers of Liverpool toddler James Bulger.

Robert Thompson was attending the hearing which was being held at a secret location.

On Tuesday the panel completed its deliberations of the case of Jon Venables who was also convicted of the 1993 murder.

Venables and Thompson, both now 18, could be freed within days, initially into a hostel, if the board hearings decide they are no longer a threat to the public.

Thompson and Venables' cases are being dealt with separately - it is possible one could be released and not the other.

The decisions must be made within seven days of the end of each hearing.

The pair were both 10 when they abducted James Bulger from a shopping precinct in Bootle, Merseyside before torturing him and battering him to death.

James Bulger was lured to his death

The trial judge set the tariff - the minimum time they must spent in custody - at eight years.

This was increased to 15 years by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, and this was later confirmed by Labour's former Home Secretary, Jack Straw.

But Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf ruled last October that it would not be beneficial for the boys to be in the "corrosive atmosphere" of an adult prison.

Vigilante fears

Thompson and Venables are protected by a High Court injunction banning the publication of anything which may lead to their identification after their release.

But the murdered boy's mother, Denise Fergus, has said it is inevitable the pair's identities would be revealed if they were released.

Speaking through her spokesman Norman Brennan, she said it did not matter how much the authorities spent trying to protect Venables and Thompson.

"It will be impossible for them to keep their identities a secret from girlfriends they meet in the future, or drinking friends," she said.

Venables' former lawyer, Laurence Lee, said he believed that life for the two teenagers in the outside world would be both a charade and a "nightmare" trying to keep their identities secret.

There have been fears that the pair could be vulnerable to vigilante revenge attacks after a CCTV picture of Robert Thompson was believed to have been circulated via the internet.

Opponents of the pair's release staged a protest at the Parole Board headquarters in London on Monday.

Retired Liverpool detective Albert Kirby, interviewed for the BBC's Eyes of the Detective programme, said that "nothing could equate to the grotesqueness" of the Bulger killing in the 34 years he served on the force.

Eyes of the Detective will be broadcast on BBC Two on Thursday 21 June at 2100 BST.