JON Venables told his lawyer he did not want to be free because he feels safer from attack in custody.

Laurence Lee said the jailed pervert knows people are out to kill him in revenge for torturing and murdering toddler James Bulger in 1993, reports The Sun.
Last month Venables was sent back to jail for another 40 months after being caught with more than 1,000 vile abuse images and a manual on how to rape young children.

Venables, now 35, has been given a new name — but he is said to have been moved jails after inmates found out his real identity.

One prisoner reportedly chucked scalding water in his face and he is now guarded round the clock by six wardens.

But lawyer Laurence Lee, who defended the child killer in the 1990s, said Venables feels safer behind bars and will not seek early parole.

He told Mirror Online: “He knows what will happen to him if he is out.

“In the remand centre (after his murder arrest) he said, ‘I don’t know why there are always two people marking me wherever I go because I don’t want to get out.’

“He said quite clearly that he knew what would happen to him on the outside.”

Mr Lee said Venables will also be a target in prison “but he’s brought it on himself — I’ve got no sympathy”.

Venables and his friend Robert Thompson were just 10 when they abducted little James, two, from a shopping centre in Bootle in November 1993.

Images showed the toddler being led by the hand before he was marched three miles and tortured to death beside a railway line.

The boys were the youngest ever to go on trial for murder in Britain.

They served eight years in separate custody units and were given lifetime anonymity on their release in 2001.