The killers of Liverpool boy James Bulger have left their secure care units and are living in halfway houses, it emerged today.
Sources said Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were sent on short holidays in Britain almost immediately after the parole board decision last month.
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They returned from the trips and went straight into halfway houses rather than the local authority secure units where they had stayed since being convicted of the 1993 murder.
A source said: "They were sent away from their care units for about a week, more or less as soon as the parole board hearings were over.
"You might call it a holiday or you might say it was for reasons of security, to get them away from the local authority homes during the initial public uproar."
The regime of a halfway house still placed considerable limits on personal freedom, the source said. "They will probably have less privacy in the halfway house than they did in the secure unit. These houses are not palatial and the boys will be under 24-hour care, at least in the initial stages."
Venables and Thompson were convicted of James Bulger's murder in 1993.
The pair, who were both 10 at the time, abducted him from a shopping centre before taking him to a railway line and beating him to death.
PA