Jon Venables, the killer of two-year-old James Bulger, is allegedly about to be sent abroad to start a new life and UK taxpayers will pick up the bill.
The move is said to come as officials have grown tired of constantly having to create new identities for the child killer who was granted lifelong anonymity after he was found guilty of murder aged 10.
Venables, now aged 36, has been given numerous different identities since his conviction in 1993 but is continuously outed by outraged members of the public.
Jon Venables, the killer of two-year-old James Bulger, is allegedly about to be sent abroad to start a new life and UK taxpayers will pick up the bill
A source told the Daily Star: ‘Venables is costing a fortune.
‘The thinking is that it would be cheaper to get rid of him abroad, than keep forking out.’
Venables will most likely be sent to Canada but Australia and New Zealand are also options.
James Bulger was killed by Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10, on February 12, 1993, after the pair snatched him from his mother in a Liverpool shopping centre.
Both murderers were granted lifelong anonymity once they were released from custody and Thompson has never been heard of again.
Venables, on the other hand, has been jailed twice more after admitting to owning more than 1,000 ‘sickening’ child porn images as well as a paedophile manual.
The move is said to come as officials have grown tired of constantly having to create new identities for the child killer who was granted lifelong anonymity after he was found guilty of murder aged 10
Earlier this year it was revealed that legal battles to keep his identity secret had cost UK taxpayers £65,000.
Venables’s lawyers were paid £8,100 in legal aid while government lawyers were paid close to £57,300.
James Bulger’s father, Ralph, 52, has said he will spend his life trying to overturn the ruling that his son’s killers may remain anonymous to ‘protect the public’.
However, High Court judges ruled against the bid because they believed it would endanger Venables’s life.
At the time President of the High Court’s Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane said: ‘(Venables) is ‘uniquely notorious’ and there is a strong possibility, if not a probability, that if his identity were known he would be pursued resulting in grave and possibly fatal consequences.
‘This is, therefore, a wholly exceptional case and the evidence in 2019 is more than sufficient to sustain the conclusion that there continues to be a real risk of very substantial harm to (Venables).’
Earlier this year it was revealed that legal battles to keep his identity secret had cost UK taxpayers £65,000. Pictured is James Bulger
James’s father Ralph (pictured) argued that revealing Jon Venables identity would protect the public after he was sent back to prison twice, in 2010 and again 2018, for having child abuse images
Deputy Chief Constable Andy Cooke, national policing lead for protected persons has previously said that they will get relocated to various places in the UK and abroad.
He said: ‘That doesn’t mean we are going to relocate them to the Copacabana, but they do get a say.’
Mother-of-two Anna Dienne works with charity FAMS, which supports the families of children murdered, and told the Daily Star: ‘Millions has been thrown at protecting him and yet he cannot stop himself. He needs locking up, and the key thrown away.
‘The taxpayer has protected him, we are protecting him. It’s despicable.’
Robin Makin, acting on behalf of the Bulgers, claimed that authorities are using the anonymity order to avoid scrutiny for failing to keep Venables from re-offending following his release from prison.
The idea behind the lifetime anonymity order for Venables and Thompson, made by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, was that it would aid the rehabilitation of the killers.