Ian Huntley, the notorious Soham murderer and one of Britain’s most reviled killers, has died following a vicious prison attack.
The former school caretaker’s horrific murder of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman shocked the nation in 2002, prompting widespread questions about how a man with a history of sexual allegations could have been employed in a school.
He received a life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years for the murders after a jury dismissed his fake story about Holly falling into his bath and drowning.
Huntley, who resided with Maxine Carr – a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica’s primary school – lured the best friends into his home in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
The girls, dressed in Manchester United shirts, had left a family barbecue on 4 August to buy sweets, encountering Huntley by chance while Carr was away for the weekend.
For reasons known only to him, Huntley murdered the girls before dumping their bodies in a ditch 10 miles away. They were not found for 13 days.
Their disappearance sparked a search involving hundreds of police officers.
The nation’s media descended on Soham, and it was not long before Huntley drew suspicions about his agitated demeanour.
Reporter Brian Farmer, who worked for the Press Association in East Anglia at the time, interviewed Huntley and was so concerned afterwards that he went to the police.
Mr Farmer, who initially hoped to speak to Carr, was surprised when Huntley began to tell him how he imagined the girls would react to a stranger approaching them, despite not knowing them or working in their school.
The reporter later recalled: “The main thing that struck me when he answered the question was, well, how can he possibly know how they would react?”
Huntley was also reluctant to be photographed, which implied that he did not want to be recognised.
Indeed, in subsequent TV interviews, someone from the Grimsby area, where he grew up, recognised Huntley and told police about him facing a number of accusations of rape in the late 1990s.
During his trial at the Old Bailey, Huntley tried to convince the jury that Holly had suffered a nosebleed and that she drowned in the bath, and he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams.
They did not believe him and he was convicted of two counts of murder. The trial heard that Huntley had cut the clothes from the bodies of Holly and Jessica and tried to burn them in a bin in a hangar at the school where he worked.
Mr Justice Moses told Huntley: “Ian Kevin Huntley, on the 4th of August 2002, you enticed two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, into your house.
“They were happy, intelligent and loyal. They were much-loved by their families and all who knew them.
“You murdered them both. You are the one person who knows how you murdered them, you are the one person who knows why. You destroyed the evidence, which showed no mercy and no regret.”
The girls’ bodies had been found by a gamekeeper in a ditch near RAF Lakenheath.
Carr gave Huntley a false alibi and was jailed for 21 months for perverting the course of justice. She is now living under a new identity.
After the trial, Jessica’s father, Leslie Chapman, said: “I think he was a time bomb waiting to go off, and both our girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I hope the next time I see him, it will be like we saw our daughters – and it will be in a coffin.”
Holly’s older brother Oliver, who was 12 years old when she disappeared, told Radio Times in 2012 that he dreamt of seeing her grown up. He told the magazine: “I wish I could see her now, see what she’d have looked like.”
Referring to their parents, Kevin and Nicola Wells, he added: “We do chat about her quite regularly, which I think is a very nice thing. It’s strange being three of us when there used to be a fourth.”
The case prompted an inquiry into how Huntley slipped through police vetting procedures. The report from the inquiry revealed a “deeply shocking” catalogue of errors across all organisations that had contact with Huntley before he murdered Holly and Jessica.
One of the key recommendations from the inquiry was a Police National Database to ensure suspects could not hide across county borders. This was then launched in 2011, combining intelligence from police forces across England and Wales.
Huntley was a marked man in prison, surviving repeated attempts on his life, and was kept under close protection along with other notorious killers.
In 2010, robber Damien Fowkes slashed him with a home-made weapon, causing a “severe, gaping cut to the left side of his neck” with a 7in (18cm) wound, which required 21 stitches.
Reports in the media since he was jailed said Huntley was known as a loner, arrogant and a moaner, and that he tried to keep close relationships with guards.
In a leaked conversation, Huntley reportedly said: “Every prison you go in is very, very dangerous, there’s no safe place in prison.”
As he clung to life, his only daughter, Samantha Bryan, told The Sun on Sunday: “There’s a special place in hell waiting for him.”
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