In 1993, CCTV images of a two-year-old boy being taken by the hand and led away from a UK shopping centre by two older children shocked the world.
It was the last recorded sighting of James Bulger. He was forced to walk four kilometres before the pair beat him to death and left his body on a railway line.
But what was to become of the perpetrators, who were both 10 years old?
At the time, children aged as young as 10 could be held responsible for a crime in England so the two boys stood trial in an adult court. The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility (known as MACR) hasn’t changed in England or Wales since.
They were sentenced to eight years – the maximum for a juvenile receiving life imprisonment – and became the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history.
