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James Bulger: Is Jon Venables dead? Truth behind Twitter trend about killer's murder

Jon Venables was just ten years old in 1993 when he kidnapped and killed 2-year-old James Bulger

The internet is full of surprises as well as fake news. Recently, James Bulger's killer Jon Venables was found trending on Twitter in the UK and shockingly, it was all about his 'death'. Rumors started coming in that he had been killed in Port Talbot, Wales, and some even claimed that his eyes had been gouged out.

A user tweeted, “Allegedly Jon Venables has been murdered.” Another added: “Rumours Jon Venables has been murdered. If this is true, justice has been served.” However, before the hoax became bigger, the Ministry of Justice debunked the claims as “absolute nonsense”. A spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Justice told the Daily Star on October 6, “I can confirm this is not true,” before calling the news “nonsense”.

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Who is Jon Venables and what is he doing now?

Venables was just ten years old in 1993 when he kidnapped and killed Bulger, 2, in Bootle, Merseyside. The toddler was with his mother at New Strand Shopping Centre when Venables took him away with the help of his friend, Robert Thompson. The abduction led to search efforts after it was initially thought that Bulger would soon come back well and alive.

Even after CCTV footage showed the two boys taking him away from the shopping center, police did not panic. They thought that Venables and Thompson would have taken him to play. However, they couldn't have imagined what happened next. The child’s remains were discovered next to a railway track two miles away from the place he was kidnapped at. Soon it was revealed that the little one was killed after being tortured.

Later, the duo was arrested and found guilty of killing Bulger. They became the youngest people to be sent behind bars for killing in more than 250 years. Since being convicted for murdering Bulger, Venables has been in and out of the jail frequently. From 1993 to 2001, he was inside the eight-bed Red Bank secure unit in St Helens, Merseyside. But in June 2001, he was released and given a new identity.

However, seven years later, Venables was again taken into custody on suspicion of affray after a drunken brawl. At the time, authorities gave him a formal warning. The same year, he was also warned for possession of cocaine after a small amount of the class A drug was found with him.

In February 2010, Venables again went to jail for violating a life license by keeping child abuse photos. In July of the same year, he was awarded two years of imprisonment for downloading and distributing indecent pictures of kids. He was set free in 2013. But his freedom did not last long as the 39-year-old was again put behind bars for 40 months in February 2018 for possessing over 1,000 indecent photos of children. It has been said that Venables is currently held in a maximum Category A jail, the location of which has not been revealed.

Meanwhile, after it was confirmed that Venables had not died, several people tweeted about it. A user wrote, “Well that’s a crying shame.” Another one said, “I think people just wanted to remind him that they'll never forgive him no matter how much protection he gets.” “You could have left this for a bit longer, for once the entire UK was hoping for the same thing. We stopped being divided over brexit, covid, politics, refugees, and began to agree on something. Now you've dashed our hopes,” the third user added.