John Venables and Robert Thompson were sentenced to life imprisonment, even though they were only ten years old at the time of the murder. Their crime sent shockwaves throughout Britain. On February 12, 1993, the mother of two-year-old James Bulger left her son at the door of a butcher store, thinking it wouldn't take her long to get back because there was no line at the store. She didn't think it was the last time she would see her son...John and Robert were outside the same store doing their usual things: stealing from people, shoplifting, stealing things when the clerks turned their backs on them, climbing on chairs in restaurants until they were kicked out. The guys had the idea to kidnap the boy, then make it look like he was lost.
John and Robert forcibly dragged the boy onto the railroad tracks, where they threw paint at him, brutally beat him with sticks, bricks, and iron bars, pelted him with rocks, and sexually abused the little boy, then laid his body on the tracks, hoping that the boy would be run over by a train and his death would be mistaken for an accident. James' body was recovered, but forensic examinations revealed that the boy had died before the train ran over him.
