JAMES Bulger killer Jon Venables’ former lawyer says his anonymity should be lifted after he admitted having more than 1000 indecent images of children.

Laurence Lee represented 10-year-old Venables after his arrest for the abduction and brutal murder of two-year-old James in Liverpool in February 1993.

Along with fellow murderer Robert Thompson, he was given a new identity and granted lifelong anonymity when he was freed in 2001 but has been sent back to prison after his latest offence, reports The Sun.

Mr Lee, who represented Venables until he was jailed in 1994, has now backed James’ dad Ralph Bulger’s calls to unmask him.

He told Good Morning Britain: “I have every sympathy with the Bulger family and if I were in their shoes I would be clamouring as loudly as they are for his anonymity (to be lifted).

“He’s had his chances, he’s committed two very, very serious sets of offences and anonymity has been wasted on him a lot of people would say.

“As a boring lawyer that has to be balanced — because there’s a difference between being a decent human being sometimes and having to look at it through a lawyer’s eyes — if there was no anonymity we would be returning to the mob rule scenes that we faced outside Bootle Juvenile Court back in February 1993.

“That is why in all probability his anonymity will not be lifted but I have every sympathy for anybody who says that it should be.”

Also speaking on the program, the Bulger’s former Family Liaison Officer Mandy Waller agreed Venables anonymity should “possibly” be lifted, adding: “It’s very doubtful it will be lifted, they’re going to take the view they have to safeguard Venables, which is sad really.”

Mr Bulger has called Venables’ new secret identity a “failed experiment” and claimed the authorities have been unable to stop him being a danger to others.

Remembering his first encounters with Venables at Lower Lane Police Station in Liverpool in 1993, Mr Lee said the killer was clearly capable of evil.

He said: “When I first set eyes on him in the cell he looked like an eight-year-old ... very polite, very respectful like his mum was and I thought, ‘Well he can’t possibly be involved in something as evil and heinous as this.’

“Indeed when the first interview took place you would have never thought he was involved he was such a convincing little liar.

“It was only in subsequent interviews it was clear he’d been lying and of course when he was found out he broke into hysterical tears and was hugging his mum and hugging the officers — it was then I realised he was capable of this awful, heinous crime.”