In the dim, bustling aisles of Bootle’s New Strand Shopping Centre on a frigid February afternoon in 1993, Denise Fergus did what countless parents do without a second thought: she briefly turned away from her two-year-old son, James, to pay for pork chops at the butcher’s counter. In that fleeting moment, her world—and the world’s—tilted into unimaginable horror. James was abducted by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who subjected him to a brutal two-and-a-half-mile march through Merseyside streets before torturing and bludgeoning him to death on a railway embankment. Thirty-two years later, Fergus’s memoir, I Let Him Go, lays bare the raw, unrelenting grief of a mother who buried her child, fought a flawed justice system, and rebuilt a life from ashes, all while the echoes of that crime reverberate through British society.

The book, first published in 2018 to mark the 25th anniversary of the murder, arrived as a cathartic outpouring from a woman long silenced by trauma. Fergus, then 50, had spent decades shielding herself from the grisly details of her son’s final hours—details that even today, she admits, she knows less about than many strangers who devoured tabloid headlines. “When I gave birth to my baby, I was full of hopes and dreams for him—but the one thing I didn’t ever imagine was burying my son’s tiny body after his murder,” she writes in the opening pages, her words a gut-punch of maternal devastation. Updated editions, including a poignant 30th-anniversary release in 2023, add layers of reflection on enduring wounds, with Fergus declaring, “Thirty years does seem like yesterday, the wounds don’t ever heal when you have buried a child.”

Fergus’s narrative begins not with the abduction, but with the ordinary joys of James’s short life—a blond, blue-eyed “bubbly” boy who loved tickles, Thomas the Tank Engine, and his mum’s hugs. Raised in Kirkby, Liverpool, in a tight-knit working-class family, Denise met James’s father, Ralph Bulger, at a local pub; their whirlwind romance led to marriage and James’s birth in March 1990. Life was simple: playground romps, family barbecues, and dreams of a council house big enough for more kids. But on February 12, 1993—one month shy of James’s third birthday—Fergus popped into the butcher’s with her sister-in-law, Sarah, believing James safe at her feet. CCTV footage later captured the unimaginable: Venables and Thompson, skipping school, luring the trusting toddler away by the hand, his blue-spotted wellies plodding along as they led him toward Walton.

The hours that followed were a blur of panic for Fergus. “I looked down, and he was gone,” she recounts, her voice in interviews echoing the raw terror of scouring aisles, phoning relatives, and begging strangers for sightings. Police swarmed the centre, but leads were scant until a 911-equivalent call from a concerned witness: two boys dragging a crying child near the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. By nightfall, the search had ballooned into a regional alert, with Fergus chain-smoking in a commandeered police station, her pregnancy with second son Michael (conceived just weeks before the abduction) adding layers of dread. “I felt like I was losing everything,” she writes, haunted by the guilt that would become her lifelong shadow.

James’s body wasn’t discovered until February 14, Valentine’s Day—a cruel irony for a boy who melted hearts with his dimpled smile. Found on the railway tracks near Walton Hospital, the toddler had endured over 40 injuries: batteries forced into his mouth, paint smeared on his face, and a fatal 10-pound iron bar to the skull, his killers hoping a train would mask their crime. The post-mortem revealed the extent of the savagery, details Fergus deliberately avoided during the November 1993 trial at Preston Crown Court, where she was advised against attending due to her advanced pregnancy. “I couldn’t bear to hear it,” she confesses in the book, relying on filtered summaries from family to spare her psyche.

The revelation that Venables and Thompson—school truants from broken homes—were the perpetrators stunned the nation. At 10 years old, they became Britain’s youngest convicted killers since 1687, their trial a media circus that drew global condemnation. Fergus watched the proceedings on TV, her horror mounting as the boys, shielded by hoodies and wigs, giggled in the dock. Sentenced to eight years minimum (later extended to 15 by the Lord Chief Justice), they were housed in secure units—Red Bank for Thompson, with its strict regime, and others for Venables, whose repeated offenses would later shatter any illusion of reform.

Fergus’s memoir doesn’t shy from her fury at the system. A school dropout with no formal qualifications, she transformed grief into advocacy, campaigning against the lenient tariff and petitioning Parliament for victims’ rights. “I took on the legal profession and the government,” she recalls, her efforts culminating in a 1999 European Court of Human Rights ruling that the boys’ trial was unfair—yet another blow, as it reopened wounds without justice. The book details her 2001 House of Lords battle, where she argued for public input in sentencing, a fight that influenced the Victims’ Code but left her feeling “like David against Goliath.” Venables’s 2010 and 2017 convictions for child pornography possession—leading to his recall to prison—reignited her rage; in 2023, she vowed he’d “never be free,” slamming parole boards for secrecy. Thompson, released in 2001 with a new identity, has stayed out of trouble, but Fergus’s disdain endures: “They stole my boy’s future; why should they have theirs?”

The personal toll was devastating. Fergus’s marriage to Ralph crumbled under the strain; he turned to drink, vanishing for days, while she grappled with suicidal ideation. “I wanted to sleep forever,” she admits, describing nights curled on James’s empty bed, inhaling his fading scent. Michael, born months after the murder, grew up in James’s literal shadow—an empty chair at Christmas dinners a poignant placeholder for the brother he’d never know. Divorce followed in 1995, but Fergus found solace with electrician Stuart Fergus in 1996; their sons, Thomas and Leon (now 22 and 21), brought light, though the family navigated therapy and Fergus’s “dark days” of panic attacks and media harassment.

I Let Him Go* humanizes James beyond headlines, with Fergus sharing baby photos, his love for jelly shoes, and “what ifs” that haunt her: “Would he be married? A dad? Taller than me?” She refuses to let him be defined by death, channeling pain into the James Bulger Memorial Trust, launched in 2018. The charity funds holidays for bereaved families and crime victims at a Lytham St Annes lodge, providing over 1,000 breaks despite pandemic hits that drained £70,000 in 2020. Book proceeds bolster it, with Fergus stating, “I want James remembered for his smile, not the brutality.”

The case’s legacy looms large. It sparked debates on youth justice, evil’s origins, and media ethics—Venables and Thompson’s names protected by lifelong injunctions, a anonymity Fergus rails against. Controversies persist: a 2009 Hollyoaks storyline axed after Fergus’s outcry; 2018’s Detaining Justice play slammed as “sick” for fictionalizing the killers. In 2023, a Commons petition with 213,000 signatures debated online harms, with Fergus warning of lax laws fueling child exploitation. Forensic psychologist Paul Britton, involved in 1993, recently shared with her a theory debunking sexual motives, affirming the attack as “plain and simple” murder—no consolation, but closure on myths.

Bootle, once scarred by graffiti memorials and pilgrim crowds, has evolved; the Strand Centre shuttered in 2023, its site a ghost of trauma. Fergus hasn’t returned since, the air too thick with “what ifs.” Yet her resolve endures. At 55, remarried and campaigning, she tells her story to “help families struggling in silence,” from stalking victims (jailed in 2016) to those eyeing parole reforms. Venables’s November 2023 hearing looms; Fergus and ex-husband Ralph vow opposition, their shared solicitor decrying Ministry “letdowns.”

In I Let Him Go, Fergus doesn’t seek pity, but purpose. “I let him go to the butchers, but I’ll never let his memory go,” she writes. Readers praise its unflinching honesty—Goodreads averages 4.3 stars, with one calling it “heart-aching sadness poured from every page.” As Britain confronts its demons—rising child crimes, digital dangers—Fergus’s voice cuts through: a mother’s love, unyielding against oblivion. James, forever two in our minds, lives on in her words, a testament to resilience amid ruin.