James Bulger: A Mother’s Story ITV, 9pm
Revisiting the case that shook a nation
In February 1993, news reader
Trevor McDonald reported on one of the most disturbing stories of his long and distinguished career: the murder of two-year-old James Bulger. Like many people who followed the case, he has been unable to forget the CCTV images of James being led away by his killers, the 10-year-old Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the crime that shocked Britain, McDonald is meeting with James’s mother, Denise Fergus, who invites the veteran broadcaster into her home. She talks frankly about the split second she let go of her son’s hand and her fight for the justice that she feels he has been denied.
While Fergus continues to grieve for her son, she also wants to turn his memory into a positive, and speaks about the charity she has founded in his name, which helps children who have been bullied and families that have been affected by crime.
McDonald also looks at some of the questions raised by the case. Although Britain was seemingly united in shock at the murder, the handling of the trial — which saw Thompson and Venables become the youngest children to be tried for murder in the 20th century — proved highly divisive, and the reporter asks whether the criminal justice system got it right.
McDonald tries to learn more about what could have driven two boys to commit such a brutal act, speaking to the police officer who ran the investigation as well as an officer who remains haunted by the custody suite interviews with the killers.