Exclusive: Denise Fergus talks about her heartbreak after the murder of two year old son James Bulger 25 years ago

DENISE FERGUS OPENS UP ABOUT SON JAMES BULGER 25 YEARS AFTER HIS MURDER

In a TV exclusive Denise Fergus joined us to talk about her son James Bulger who was just two years old when he was abducted by 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson and killed in 1993.

Denise has now written a book about James 25 years on.

'It might be 25 years but it doesn’t feel like 25 years to me. I never got to see James grow up,' Denise said. 'He never got to know his first day at school, he didn’t get the chance to do that. I still see him as a baby, I can’t see him being a young man. It’s really weird.

'My other boys have grown up before my eyes. It’s amazing to see them. I love seeing that but there’s always that one missing.'

Talking about the title of the book, ‘I Let Him Go’, Denise said: 'I did, I let him go. I was the last one with him. And yeah, my mind is full of "if only I’d stayed in that day", "if only I’d taken the buggy", which I always did - I always took the buggy, he was always strapped in it. It was just that one day I didn’t.'

Speaking of James’s disappearance in the shopping centre Denise said: 'It was so, so quick. He came into the shop with me, he stood at the side of me, I had hold of his hand and I said to him, "Wait there, stay there", and as I turned to get my bag and my purse to pay, I looked down and he’d gone. The person that I was with, she was standing on the other side of the shop, I shouted over to her, "Where’s James?" and she went, "Oh, he’ll just be outside" and I’m going, ‘"He shouldn’t be outside!" That’s when I run out and unfortunately I took the wrong turning. They were going one way as I went the other.

'There’s only two ways you can go. Unfortunately I went the wrong way.'

Asked if she still feels somehow responsible, Denise said: 'It doesn’t eat me up anymore, I’m not torturing myself because it wouldn’t be fair on my other three boys if I kept on thinking like that. I didn’t want my feelings rubbed off on them. I wanted them to have normal lives, I wanted them to grow up and have the lives they should have. I didn’t want to carry the burden on me the whole time, but it’s still locked inside me, it’s still there.'

And Denise explained the reason for writing a book 25 years after losing James.'Everyone sees James as a picture, I don’t, I’ve still got memories of James and they are lovely memories that I’ve got of him and I wanted to share those memories with everyone. They’ve given me so much support over the years I thought it’s about time now I put it in my own words in a book and share them with everyone,' she said.

And Denise shared her favourite memories of little James too.

'I didn’t want to lose any memories at all of James, no parent does when they lose a child,' she explained. 'But over the years they start going to the back of your mind without you even realising it. Writing the book everything has come back to me, all the lovely memories. I don’t go back to the day he went missing, I don’t want to go back there. The memories that are put into the book are mine to keep. Now they’re in paper and I can look at them anytime I want and I can see them memories for myself.'

Denise also shared her thoughts on the two boys who killed James, saying: 'I never said they should be locked up forever. I’ve never said that. What I wanted, I wanted them to come out of the young offenders and go into a proper prison. I wouldn’t have had to fight the way I’ve fought if that had happened because they’d have done the time. Obviously they would have walked, but because they’ve done no proper sentence, I believe - and I strongly do believe this - that they were rewarded for that crime. They were never punished. They were never in an adult prison and they were never told, ‘What you’ve done you will pay for it, you are going to go to prison’. They were just given the best of everything. They spent 8 years in a young offenders and then they were supposedly rehabilitated and let go.'

Of whether the 10 year old boys intended the crime, Denise believes they did.

'They were out to take a child that day. They tried to take a child two weeks before they took James. They tried to take a little girl before James. Fortunately for that mother, she caught them. It was unfortunate for me. They planned it, they knew what they were going to do,' Denise said.

Watch the video to see the full, emotional chat with Denise.