This heartbreaking picture shows the moment the four-year-old sister of James Bulger saw the grave of the brother she will never meet.
Pictured in Liverpool, Ralph Bulger was moved to tears as he held the hand of his daughter at the grave of his murdered son.
The little girl, whose father Ralph claims helped mend his broken heart, laid a posy of carnations at the headstone of her big brother who died more than two decades before she was born.
This heartbreaking picture shows the moment the four-year-old sister of James Bulger saw the grave of the brother she will never meet
It comes a week before the 25 year anniversary of the murder of James Bulger by two ten-year-olds.
‘My beautiful daughter makes my life worth living, and it feels right to bring her to say hello to James now.
‘I don’t want her to live in the shadow of her brother’s dark and brutal killing’ Ralph, 51, told the Sunday Mirror.
‘Instead I want her to learn the happy things about his life, and how he was a much-loved and beautiful little boy.’
Ralph has chosen not to reveal the name of his daughter, but instead uses the moniker ‘Princess’ to refer to her.
Ralph says his daughter is ‘very much like James’ and ‘full of mischief’. He hopes that she will ‘get to know all the wonderful things about her big brother’.
‘James was like a human dynamo from the moment he woke up to the second he dropped off to sleep at night.
‘He was exhausting to keep up with but he was so happy. And that’s exactly how his sister is now’ he said.
Jamie Bulger was killed 25 years ago next week. The tale of two 10-year-olds killing the two-year-old captured the nation
Faces of evil: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were just 10 years old when they carried out one of the most infamous murders in British criminal history
The four-year-old doesn’t yet know much about her big brother, as he is ‘too young’ but her father is being careful about the way he introduces him into her life.
James Bulger was only two when he was abducted from a Merseyside shopping centre by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10.
They tortured and killed the two-year old and then left his body on the train tracks two and a half miles away.
Ralph Bulger’s solicitor reads out a prepared statement following a parole hearing at Liverpool Crown Court for Jon Venables in 2011
The pair served eight years for murder and were released on license in 2001, but Venables has been sent back inside twice since his original release.
He was jailed in 2010 and again in 2017, both cases involved accusations of possessing indecent images of children.
The father has consistently campaigned for his son’s killers to stay in jail, insisting they are a danger to all children.
Denise and Ralph’s marriage broke down but she found love again with Stuart Fergus. The couple are pictured here with her son Michael and their children, Thomas and Leon
Ralph and Denise Bulger, parents of James, during an emotional police press conference in the aftermath of his death
Ralph’s marriage to James’s mother Denise broke down after the death of their son.
The builder has found love again with partner Natalie and Denise remarried Stuart Fergus and also had more children.
He says: ‘I had to make a choice to start living again. Natalie and Princess gave me a second chance at happiness.
‘My heart was broken and I was a lost soul, not knowing how to live without James but not knowing how to die either.
Ralph is trying to move on with his life after spending 20 years fuelled by ‘anger and hurt’.
TIMELINE: JAMES BULGER’S MURDER AND THE CONVICTION OF TWO KILLERS
1993
- February 12: Two-year-old James Bulger is snatched during a shopping trip to the Strand shopping centre, in Bootle, Merseyside.
- February 14: The toddler’s battered body is found by children playing on a freight railway line 200 yards from Walton Lane police station, Liverpool, and more than two miles from the Strand shopping centre.
- February 18: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both 10-year-olds, are arrested in connection with the murder of James, and later charged. They are the youngest to be charged with murder in the 20th century.
- February 22: There are violent scenes outside South Sefton Magistrates’ Court in Bootle, when the two primary school pupils, then known as Child A and Child B, make their first appearance.
- November 24: Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, now both aged 11, are convicted of James Bulger’s murder following a 17-day trial at Preston Crown Court. They are ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, the normal substitute sentence for life imprisonment when the offender is a juvenile.
1994
- July: The eight year sentence tariff set by the trial judge, which has already been increased to 10 years by Lord Chief Justice Lord Taylor of Gosforth, is increased again to 15 years by the Home Secretary Michael Howard.
1997
- June: The Law Lords rule by a majority that Mr Howard has acted illegally in raising the boys’ tariff.
1999
- March: The European Commission on Human Rights finds that Thompson and Venables were denied a fair trial and fair sentencing by an impartial and independent tribunal.
2000
- March: Home Secretary Jack Straw says he will not set a date for Thompson and Venables’ release.
- October: Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf reinstates the trial judge’s original tariff, paving the way for their release.
2001
- January: James Bulger’s killers win an unprecedented court order from High Court judge Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss which grants them anonymity for the rest of their lives.
- June: Thompson and Venables are freed under new identities.
2008
- September: Venables is arrested on suspicion of affray after he and another man become involved in a drunken street fight. He is given a formal warning by the Probation Service about breaching the good behaviour expected of him as a condition of his licence.
- Later the same year he is cautioned for possession of cocaine after he was found with a small amount of the class A drug, which was said to be for personal use. The public remains unaware of both offences until 2010.
2010
- March 2: Venables is returned to prison after breaching the terms of his release, the Ministry of Justice says. It kick-starts frenzied media speculation over the nature of the alleged breach.
- April 16: Prosecutors handed a police file over the latest allegations.
- June 21: A judge at the Old Bailey lifts media restrictions, allowing it to be reported that Venables has been charged with downloading and distributing child pornography.
- July 23: Venables pleads guilty to the charges. He is sentenced to two years in prison. James Bulger’s mother Denise Fergus attacks the length of sentence as ‘simply not enough’.
- July 30: A judge rules Venables’ new identity must be kept secret because of the ‘compelling evidence’ of a threat to his safety, saying ‘unpopular’ defendants had as much right to protection from retribution as anyone else.
2013
- April 26: Two users of social media who breached the injunction banning the revelation of the new identities of Venables and Thompson receive suspended jail sentences.
- July 4: Sources reveal Venables has been granted parole.
2017
- Veneables is in prison again after allegedly being caught with indecent images of children.
2018
- January: He is charged with possession of child porn and awaiting trial
