A phone vote on the Liverpool Echo has revealed the city's overwhelming feelings over the possible release from prison of Jamie Bulger's killers.

The paper had its biggest response yet to a poll, with almost 42,000 people taking part.

The readers voted five to one in favour of keeping Robert Thompson and Jon Venables locked up.

The vote was taken as the two boys, both now 18, faced parole boards this week which will decide on their fate within days.

The pair are widely expected to get the go-ahead for release, triggering a process to set them up with new lives with changed identities.

And the Echo has called the vote an overwhelming message to the parole board on the prisoners' future.

They were aged just 10 when they battered two-year-old James to death on a railway track after abducting him from the Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle on February 12, 1993.

They have spent eight years in separate secure local authority units and Lord Justice Woolf has now ruled they have served long enough to punish them for their crime.

The poll, by phone and through the Echo's Internet site, asked: "Do you think Thompson and Venables should be released now?"

A total of 41,962 people voted, with 35,017 answering "No" and 6,945 saying "Yes".

Commenting on the poll, Thompson's solicitor Dominic Lloyd said the result showed the response to newspaper polls and petitions in 1993 was almost 100% for lifetime detention for the pair.

He said: "I think a lot of the hysteria has gone and people are starting to think of the issues that the case raises rather than focussing on the crime itself."

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