A jury convicted two schoolboys Wednesday of murdering 2-year-old James Bulger after luring him away from his mother at a shopping mall.
The 11-year-old defendants looked at the jury foreman as he read the verdict - in which the jurors also found the defendants guilty of kidnapping the toddler - but showed no reaction.Ralph and Denise Bulger, James' parents, were in court when the verdict was returned.
Denise Bulger reportedly attended despite doctors' advice that she stay away because of her advanced stage of pregnancy.
Ralph Bulger also was in court with other relatives for the first time since the first week of testimony, when he found himself unable to continue listening to the horrific details of his little boy's kidnapping and long walk to a horrible beating death near a Liverpool railway track.
Jurors still were considering a separate charge of attempted kidnapping in connection with the case of another toddler the boys are accused to trying to lure away before they took James from his mother at a shopping center in the Bootle neighborhood of Liverpool.
Judge Michael Morland said he would accept a majority verdict on the attempted kidnapping count.
Morland told the boys that they would be securely detained "for very, very many years until you are mature and fully rehabilitated and no longer a danger to society."
He also ruled that the two, known throughout the trial only as Child A and Child B, could now be identified. He named Child A as Robert Thompson and Child B as Jon Venables.
Defense lawyers had expected the defendants to be held in-definitely at secure facilities for young offenders, though the facilities remain unidentified.
The boys had pleaded not guilty, despite one boy's confession and the other's admission that he witnessed James' death.
Bulger suffered a violent and prolonged attack at the end of a 2 1/2 mile walk across Liverpool on Feb. 12. He died of 30 blows from bricks, an iron bar, feet and fists; paint was poured on his face; his half-stripped body was left on a railroad track and severed by a passing train.
Security cameras recorded the toddler taking the hand of an older boy and being led away from the shopping mall and his mother onto a busy street.
Those haunting last images of James and the age of his killers, then 10, gave the case international attention.