Mother Finds Image of Her Murdered Child in PC Game

Fourteen years have passed since the brutal murder of two-year-old toddler James Bulger. Now his mother, Denise Fergus, relives the tragedy. Fergus recently learned that the computer game Law and Order: Double or Nothing, by Legacy Interactive, contains what appears to be an image of James as he was last seen with his abductors.

According to the Press Association, the image bares a "striking similarity with the footage captured at the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, (UK) which was the last sighting of the two-year-old before he was led to his death." His captors, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were both 10 years old at the time.

Fergus complained about the commercialization of her son's death to the company and referred to the exploitation of her son as entertainment as "sick."
The UK distributor for the California-based entertainment company, Global Software Publishing, has since recalled the game from store shelves.

A Legacy Interactive spokesman told BBC News that they were only made aware of the offending picture on Monday. As a result it is yet unknown if the U.S. distribution of Law and Order: Double or Nothing will be halted or if further restitution by the company is pending.

This incident follows on the heels of a May 27 story by People.co.uk which claims that one of James Bugler's killers, Jon Venables, released from prison in 2001, has recently become a born-again Christian.

According to news reports from CNN and CrimeLibrary.com, Venables and Thompson lured two-year-old James from a shopping center near Liverpool, in February 1993, while the child was unattended outside a butcher shop.

The boys dragged the toddler for over two miles to a railway line where they hit him with bricks, beat him with a 22-pound metal bar, poured paint into his eyes, placed batteries in a bodily orifice, and eventually placed him on the railway tracks, where a train cut him in half.

Allegedly, the gruesome plan was designed to blame James Bugler's death on a train accident.

Both Thompson and Venables have since obtained new identities, have been given the names of dead people, new passports, medical records and even credit cards, reports CNN.

The British media are under injunction from revealing their identities. However, following their release, other countries claimed they would publish their photos.

Surveillance film taken at the shopping center during the abduction was seen worldwide in the hours James was missing. It is this image of James Bulger that is believed to be contained in the Law and Order game.

Legacy Interactive has told news sources that they "are sorry" and that, "We didn't mean to hurt anybody. We will remove the picture and can only apologize to the family."

Source:
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/6768695.stm) June 20, 2007

Guardian Unlimited (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6721325,00.html) June 20, 2007

People.co.uk, by Julian Gavaghan (http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=bulger-killer-turns-to-god ) May 27, 2007

CNN (http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/06/19/bulger.hunt/&method=full&objectid=19205687&siteid=93463-name_page.html) June 19, 2001
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/06/22/bulger.parole/index.html) June 22, 2001

CrimeLibrary.com (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/partners/team_male/9.html)