A MAN who was in prison with Jon Venables has claimed he punched the child killer after he bragged about his murder.

A FORMER prison inmate has claimed he punched Jon Venables after he laughed and bragged about the murder of toddler James Bulger.

James Heap says he hit the child murderer in the mouth back in 1994 at the Red Bank Secure Unit on Merseyside, in England.

The 39-year-old says Venables was boasting about murdering toddler James when he hit him in the face more than 20 years ago.

James told the Mirror: “He was playing on a games console when I said to him: ‘Why the hell did you kill that kid?’

“He just laughed. I said ‘What’s so funny?’ But he just kept laughing.”

“I punched him in the mouth. To laugh about that is just sick. He talked about how he took the kid and how he was too good or too clever for anyone to see him. I remember he said: ‘I done it easy.’”

“He said it like it was a normal thing to do, like going to buy a newspaper. Like it was easy to him and nothing to him.”

James added: “It made me want to kill him.”

He said the look on Venables’ face when he laughed about the murder “will stay with me forever”.

He added: “He’s got this mad face when he grins, the most evil little face you’ve ever seen.”

James was 14 and on remand for burglary when the incident took place. Venables was 11 at the time.

He also told of how the murderer, who was recently jailed again for possessing paedophilic images, almost died in another attack two months after their bust up.

The ex-con said another kid tried to “throttle” Venables in there and thinks he would have killed him if guards had been just 20 seconds longer in responding to the assault.

He also said the killer would lie about being inside for burglary and showed no remorse for his heinous crimes.

Venables spent eight years at Red Bank, which James claimed was “like a holiday camp” to him.

The unit was kitted out with a pool table, football tables, a games room with a Super Nintendo games console, a TV and video player and even a full-size snooker table.

He also claimed the murderer got special treatment, such as a his own Game Boy and a personal radio.

James, who was in and out of prison for years before going straight, has also called on the killer’s identity to be revealed.