It’s exactly 30 years since three children walked towards the exit of New Strand shopping mall in Bootle, Liverpool – their exit frozen in time on CCTV.

The grainy image showing the smallest child, a toddler, holding hands with one of the bigger boys on February 12 1993 was to become one of the most horrific images ever to be caught on screen – a snapshot of one of the most brutal and shocking murders this country has ever seen.

Little James Bulger, who was nearly three, had been shopping with his devoted mother Denise, when she nipped quickly into a butcher’s shop, letting go of her son’s hand to find change from her purse – and within seconds he had slipped outside, and been taken away by two ten-year-old schoolboys.

The baby-faced assailants, identified later as Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, led James to a railway line where they horrifically tortured the toddler, throwing bricks at his body, and left him dead on the tracks.

It was a crime which shocked the nation – with Venables and Thompson becoming the youngest convicted killers in modern English history.

A full 14 years before the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann shocked the world, James Bulger became the nightmare of every parent in the land and the case even changed the way that a whole generation parented.

‘Just a generation earlier, mothers had left their children outside shops unattended in their prams,’ John Troup, a former crime reporter who covered the trial at the time, tells Metro.co.uk.

‘But after James Bulger was snatched in just a matter of seconds, in a pre-planned kidnap, parents were reminded just how unexpected and horrendous things can happen, even in a busy shopping precinct.

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that it changed the way people were with their own children. For some time afterwards, parents were particularly protective of their kids whenever they went out as a family.

‘My own daughter Lauren was the same age as James at the time, and like parents across the country, I didn’t let her out of my sight.’

Troup recalls the case had ‘An extra level of horror.’

He adds: ‘It was on a par with the horror of the Moors Murders in the 1960s, because for two weeks, the whole country was consumed by the disappearance and then murder, of a toddler.

‘It was an appalling event in the pantheon of horrific murders – I think because of the image of James being led to his death, which terrified everyone, and the young age of his killers.

‘Sitting in court, Thompson in particular came across as pure evil. Those two boys skipped school and set off to kill that day. They had pre-planned their crime, and knew exactly what they were going to do.’

One detective who arrested the boys after tip offs from members of the public later recalled walking into the interview room to confront Thompson, and being shaken to find himself facing pure evil.

The shockingness of the crime was further intensified by pictures of the two boys being taken to court on familiarisation visits before the trial began.

Both wore new, white trainers, and one had a lollipop. During the trial itself, the boys played on handheld Nintendo consoles outside the courtroom as they waited to be called inside.

The timeline of the tragedy

Feb 12 1993: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson snatch two-year-old James Bulger from outside a butcher’s shop in Bootle, Mersyside. They are spotted by 38 people as they lead the boy on a two and a half mile walk to the village of Walton. They torture James, throwing paint in his eye and dropping an iron bar on his head.

Feb 14 1993: James’ mutilated body is discovered on a railway track. Police release CCTV images, and a woman recognises Venables, who she knew had skipped school that day alongside Thompson

Feb 20 1993: The boys are arrested. Forensic tests on their clothes find paint samples that match those on James’ body.

November 24 1993: The pair are found guilty and the judge describes them as ‘cunning and wicked.’ Their parents are later relocated to different parts of the country and given new identities after death threats.

2001: Thompson and Venables, aged 18, are released on strict license and given new identities

2010 and 2017: Thompson does not reoffend but Venables returns to prison in 2010 and seven years later after child porn images are found on his computer.

2020: Venables is turned down for parole after serving his minimum 40 months’ sentence

Jan 2023: In her new updated book, I Let Him Go, Denise Fergus reveals that Dominic Raab has told her his reform bill will keep reoffender Jon Venables behind bars for life.

James’ parents Denise and Ralph, praised for their dignity throughout the trial, later split up. Denise – who went on to have sons Michael, Thomas and Leon – is now a grandmother who dotes on her granddaughter. She never lets her out of her sight.

In her newly updated autobiography, I Let Him Go, Denise – who remarried and now has the surname Fergus – recalled how she nipped into a butcher’s shop, and let go of her toddler’s hand to get change. James dashed outside and was snatched – sparking the frantic two-day police search before his body was discovered.

‘Getting my purse out to buy two pork chops for tea was the last thing I did before my world imploded forever. I went into the butcher’s holding my little boy’s hand and I left without James’s hand in mine,’ she writes.

On November 24, 1993 Venables and Thompson were found guilty. They spent eight years in a secure juvenile detention unit, but were released on license in 2001 and were given lifetime anonymity. Venables has returned to jail twice after being found in possession of child abuse images.

Denise Fergus is campaigning for him to remain in prison and says Dominic Raab has personally promised her that proposed parole shake-ups mean Venables will not see the light of day again.

Angry at the protection the system had offered her son’s killers, she wrote in her autobiography: ‘James’ story had become largely about the two people who murdered him and the way in which he died.’

On what would have been James Bulger’s 18th birthday, heartbroken Denise ordered him a cake made in the shape of a bottle of champagne – to mark the day he could have had his first legal drink – and new marble for his gravestone.

She wrote in her book: ‘All these years later it still takes me by surprise that James is in the ground and that my baby has gone. A new gravestone is not exactly the gift you imagine giving your child on such a special birthday.’

I Let Him Go by Denise Fergus, is published by John Blake Publishing.

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