2 Killers, 11, Are Imprisoned Indefinitely in Child’s Death

Two 11-year-old boys were convicted and imprisoned indefinitely Wednesday for luring a toddler from his mother and beating him to death with bricks and an iron bar.

The savagery of 2-year-old James Bulger’s death at the hands of the defendants, who were 10 at the time of the Feb. 12 killing, stunned Britain and set off nationwide soul-searching over the rise in juvenile violence.

A fuzzy security videotape of James being led from a Liverpool shopping mall by an older boy was broadcast around the world.

Sixty-one people remembered seeing James struggling with his killers, but only a handful intervened. Those who did were told that the boys were taking the child home or to a police station.

“Yes!” the toddler’s father, Ralph Bulger, said in a soft voice when the jury announced the guilty verdict. James’ mother, Denise, appearing in court for the first time, said nothing.

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who could be identified by the media during the trial only as Child A and Child B, were given an indeterminate sentence by Judge Michael Morland, who explained that meant they would be locked up “for very, very many years.”

“In my judgment your conduct was both cunning and very wicked,” Morland told the boys.

The boys showed no emotion when they heard the verdict.

Prosecutors said the boys dragged James 2 1/2 miles across Liverpool to an isolated railroad track, where they punched and beat him with bricks and an iron bar, splattered him with blue paint and partly stripped him. When his body was found two days later, it had been sliced in half by a train.

The boys will be held in facilities for children and young offenders until age 21, when they will be transferred to the adult prison system.