How They Caught Ian Huntley E-Book

Dylan Frost

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 196

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Ian Huntley is a notorious and much despised true crime figure in Britain. You'd probably be hard pressed to find any living person in Britain more hated than Ian Huntley. Huntley was convicted for killing the ten year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in the small town of Soham in Cambridgeshire in 2002. So how did this awful man finally get captured and convicted for his crimes?

Leseprobe

How They Caught Ian Huntley

Dylan Frost© Copyright 2025 Dylan Frost

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ContentsWho is Ian Huntley?How They Caught Ian Huntley Part 1How They Caught Ian Huntley Part 2How They Caught Ian Huntley Part 3What Happened to Ian Huntley Afterwards? Photo CreditWHO IS IAN HUNTLEY?Ian Huntley is a notorious and much despised true crime figure in Britain. You'd probably be hard pressed to find any living person in Britain more hated than Ian Huntley. Huntley was convicted for killing the ten year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in the small town of Soham in Cambridgeshire in 2002. It was a truly awful case and a most distressing and sad one for the media to cover. Sometimes with true crime cases the killer is caught almost by accident (see Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer) but it was some solid police work backed up by information from the public which sealed the fate of Huntley. Huntley made mistakes too which came back to haunt him but for a time he seemed to be making a surprisingly good fist of riding out the situation and hiding his guilt. It took nearly two weeks for the police to realise that Huntley was the culprit and the person responsible for the missing girls. Until that point he hadn't even been treated as a suspect. Huntley was an active member of the group of volunteers who gave up their time to help search for Holly and Jessica. He was hiding in plain sight. Huntley would even invite police officers to his home for a cup of tea during the search for the 'missing' girls. He cultivated friendly relations with both the police and the media. It was all a carefully orchestrated charade by Huntley. He had killed the girls and now he was posing as the last person anyone would suspect of harming them. This required a remarkable piece of acting but Huntley almost pulled it off. On August the 4th, 2002, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had left a late afternoon Sunday family garden barbecue to go to the sports centre and buy some sweets from the vending machine in the village of Soham in Cambridgeshire. They never returned. Ian Huntley lived just across the road from the sports centre. He seized his chance to lure the girls into his house and no one ever saw them again. The two girls had an 8-30 PM curfew imposed by their parents so were usually always home by that time. At 9-45 PM that night, the girls were still not back and Jessica was not answering her Nokia mobile phone. It had (suspiciously) been switched off. The two girls were reported missing by their parents and a huge police search was quickly underway. Police and volunteers searched through the night to no avail. This was a most distressing case that quickly attracted national media attention. A large media presence descended on Soham and news crews became a familiar sight to locals. Ian Huntley was the 28 year-old caretaker at Soham Village College. This was not the school Holly and Jessica attended. They went to a primary school. Holly and Jessica knew Huntley's girlfriend Maxine Carr because she used to work as a teaching assistant at their school. They did not know Ian Huntley at all though. They'd seen him around town a few times but that was about it. Ian Huntley told the police he was probably the last person to speak to the girls before they went missing because they had walked past his house early in the evening while he was in the garden with his dog. Huntley was shrewd. He volunteered this information because he thought it would make him less suspicious. In reality he had murdered the girls and hidden the bodies in woodland a forty minute drive away. Huntley said he was washing his dog when the girls passed and after a brief conversation (Huntley said the girls asked how Maxine was) they seemed happy and cheerful when they wandered off. All of this was a lie. Huntley then lingered on at the scene of the crime in the middle of a police investigation and escalating media scrutiny of the case. In this one might argue that he had little choice. To flee would be to draw suspicion. He even ended up as a fairly regular person for local reporters to interview. Huntley was meek and articulate when he spoke to the media. He was perfectly calm and even conveyed a projection of simulated empathy. Huntley was trusted in the community and assisted the police in searching the school buildings and playing fields. Huntley even had some contact with one of the parents of the missing girls. He was playing the part of the concerned local citizen almost perfectly. There was a very small window in time where Ian Huntley might possibly have felt as if he was in control of events in Soham. He might even have felt he stood a slim chance of getting away with his crimes. The clips of Huntley on the news now are fascinating in retrospect. It's amazing, given the circumstances, how calm and collected he was and how he simulates sadness and empathy. It was often said of Ian Huntley that he seemed to enjoy the attention when he lingered on in Soham after murdering Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Huntley gave television interviews for the nightly news and was prominent at community meetings and candlelight vigils. He seemed to be taking satisfaction in the (ultimately mistaken) belief that he had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes. When the two girls in Soham went missing and Ian Huntley was interviewed on television, no one watching at home had a sudden sixth sense that he was the person responsible. Huntley was not overtly and obviously suspicious. Huntley had managed to move the bodies of Holly and Jessica after he killed them to a quiet country ditch near RAF Lakenheath about twenty miles away. He had then tried to burn the bodies to destroy the forensic evidence. Once this was done he blended back into the Soham community and posed as a good citizen who was upset about the missing girls and ready to help the volunteers and police find them. So how did this awful man finally get captured and convicted for his crimes? Well, let's take a deep dive into how they captured Ian Huntley...HOW THEY CAPTURED IAN HUNTLEY PART 1The disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman triggered national media coverage and frantic activity in Soham. Mass searches were undertaken by volunteers in the surrounding countryside. The town became a hive of activity. Eyewitness sightings of the girls swamped police telephones, CCTV was scoured, and any possible lead was pursued. Child abduction cases in a 200 mile radius were researched to see if there might be a connection. The police investigation to find the girls was named Operation Fincham. The police quickly deployed a helicopter and a police dog handler. Traffic police with four wheel drive vehicles searched the local fens. There were soon television appeals by the distressed parents - who were naturally desperate for any information witnesses might have concerning the missing girls. However, the two girls everyone was looking for proved to be elusive. The hours turned to days with no sign or Holly or Jessica. This was potentially a tragic development. In missing child cases the general rule is that if they aren't found within 48 hours then they are most likely not alive anymore. Soham clung to the desperate hope that Holly and Jessica were still alive and would be returned to their families. Sadly, they were already dead. They died just before seven in the evening less than three hours before they were reported missing. Ian Huntley was the only person in Soham who knew the girls were dead and he was keeping that dark secret to himself. Some would contend that Huntley might not have been the only person who knew the fate of the girls as the police and volunteers went about their work. Some observers in this case (including the prosecution at the trial) believe that Huntley's girlfriend Maxine Carr knew more than she ever revealed. Maxine Carr is a complex component in this case as we shall see in the chapters which follow. There are conflicting theories concerning how much Carr did or did not know. Despite vilification in the media though, Maxine Carr was not Myra Hindley * - who she was (rather unfairly and much to her annoyance) frequently compared to by the tabloids. Maxine Carr wasn't even in Soham when the girls were killed by Ian Huntley. She had nothing to do with the deaths of the children. The salient question in relation to Maxine Carr is whether or not she deduced or was told that the girls were dead and assisted Huntley in covering this up. This theory contends that Maxine Carr wanted to preserve her new life in Soham and her relationship with Ian Huntley to the extent she was willing to assist in covering up the fact the two girls had died in her house. It always felt like a stretch though to attribute such heartless motives and cold behaviour to Maxine Carr. She had always come across as a kind and responsible person when she worked as a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's primary school. Carr denied she knew anything about what had happened between Huntley and the two victims and was found not guilty of assisting an offender. Ian Huntley would later claim that he told Maxine Carr the girls were dead and she orchestrated the clean up operation to keep this a secret. There was never any proof this was the case though and Ian Huntley is not exactly someone you'd take at his word. Carr supplied Huntley with a false alibi which was of great assistance to him but the evidence suggests she did this because she believed Huntley to be innocent. The media arrived in Soham in some numbers when the girls were reported missing. The local community were doing all they could to help the police in any fashion available. There were meetings to organise searches, vigils, and a general coming together during this worrying time. One person who was very prominent in all this community activity was Ian Huntley. As perhaps the last person to see the girls before they vanished and the caretaker at the school, Huntley quickly assumed a position of responsibility and importance. He liased with police who required access to the school grounds and was also sought out for media interviews. Huntley's interviews were those little snippets you see on news bulletins where they talk to local people in relation to some crime case that is breaking. They were not exactly in depth interviews but Huntley was bold nonetheless to  acquiesce to them. He did not believe that a brief news interview would be a risk to him. On the contrary, Huntley believed that him speaking to journalists made him trustworthy. So you had this missing child case going on and in the midst of it you had Ian Huntley, the man who had killed the girls, attending vigils, having cups of tea with police officers and getting on first names terms with members of the media pack covering the story. It was all misdirection by Huntley. He was not on any suspect radar at all in the early days of the investigation. Huntley's girlfriend Maxine Carr had worked as a teaching assistant at the school (St Andrews Primary School) where Holly and Jessica were pupils and knew the two girls well. She was a few years younger than Huntley at 25 and had met him in a nightclub. Huntley is presumed to have lured the two girls into his house with the (false) promise that Maxine Carr - their beloved former teaching assistant - was inside waiting to talk to them. Huntley and Carr had moved south to start a new life. Carr even had plans to start a family. Though she resembled a meek and mild plain Jane, Maxine Carr was said to be quite promiscuous and flirty. Huntley was always suspecting her of having affairs. Carr liked to go to pubs and clubs and have a good time. The relationship between Huntley and Carr could get volatile at times with arguments but they had a loyalty to one another and their relationship was clearly serious because they shared a house and had moved one hundred miles away from home together. Huntley had quickly embedded himself into the Soham community with his job at the school and didn't stand out. He had a girlfriend (had Huntley lived alone it is probable he would have become a suspect much sooner - almost immediately in fact) and was trusted by the community. The school where he was employed had found him to be dutiful, sensible and trustworthy. Huntley seemed like a decent and kind young man at first glance. He wasn't what he appeared to be though. It was all an act. The real Ian Huntley was a monstrous character and the last person in the world you would trust with a child. Ian Huntley was born in Grimsby in 1974. Though he was quite intelligent he left school early because he wanted to get a job. Huntley was quite a transient sort of character and moved around a lot before settling in Soham. Both Huntley and Carr had a number of dead end factory jobs in the past so getting a job in a school down south felt like a step up for both of them. Carr was devastated with her teaching assistant job didn't become permanent. Huntley was married when he was very young but it didn't last long and he was left embittered when his wife moved in with his brother. What the people of Soham didn't know was that Ian Huntley had a disturbing past and an unhealthy interest in young girls who were still children. Ian Huntley was basically a pedophile and a prolific one too. Back on Humberside, where he used to live, he had been reported to the police nearly a dozen times for relationships with or sexual assaults on underage girls. Some of the victims were as young as thirteen. His youngest victim was eleven. Huntley had also been arrested for burglary and accused of rape. The school that employed him in Soham knew nothing of Huntley's past. Had the police been aware of Huntley's dodgy past it seems certain he would have been arrested as the prime suspect the night that Holly and Jessica went missing. Huntley had somehow managed to avoid any convictions mostly because the police couldn't get an airtight case or the victims didn't want to go through a court case. He had also been lucky because of a lack of co-ordination between social services investigations and even the police. There was no doubt that Huntley was a creep and a dangerous sexual predator. Amazingly, despite all of this, he was able to move to Soham and a secure a job working at a school. One would really like to think this couldn't happen today. The headmaster at Soham Village College later admitted that he didn't even bother to check Huntley's (fake) references when he gave him a job. Huntley had not just been arrested on Humberside he had also been investigated by the social services there and in Lincolnshire more than once due to allegations that he was carrying on with underage girls. In the wake of the Soham case, social services admitted they failed to connect Huntley to all the incidents alleged to him and if they had then action would have been taken and he might well have been in prison up north rather than working as a school caretaker in Soham. At the time the vetting system for background checks on employees was not very sophisticated or organised. When he got a job at the school in Soham, Huntley's details were then passed onto the police for a background check but the police were swamped at the time because a new background check system was about to come in and employers wanted to use the old system (which was free) before it was phased out. As a consequence of this, despite working at a school and being surrounded by children, no detailed background check on Ian Huntley actually took place in Cambridgeshire before he tragically murdered the two girls in Soham. The police and social services on Humberside did not pass on any details about Huntley. In fact, they had actually deleted a lot of the information about him due to there being no convictions. Ian Huntley, despite his dreadful history and obsession with underage girls, had completely slipped through the net. He was able to start a new life in Soham with a blank slate. No one had a clue about his past or what sort of person he really was. Huntley could create a character for himself to play in Soham and he played this part with great assurance. He was now the salt of the earth school caretaker. A man that everyone seemed to trust. The police in Cambridgeshire also made an initial mistake because the background check on Huntley (when he got the job at the school) was for the name Nixon not Huntley. Huntley had used his mother's maiden name when he applied for the job. It seems pretty obvious that Huntley did this to avoid his dodgy past on Humberside coming to light. The police in Cambridgeshire later claimed that they sent another fax to the police on Humberside asking for details about Huntley and included both names (Nixon/Huntley) in the fax. The response came back that Huntley was 'clean' and there was no trace of him at all in the criminal record system. This is because he had no actual convictions from court cases. The fact that Huntley had been investigated for sexual activity with underage girls a dozen or so times and been accused of rape and robbing a house was not passed onto the police in Cambridgeshire. If all these details had been passed on then there is no way Huntley would have been employed at a school. With no job waiting for him (and a caretaker's cottage with reduced rent to live in to boot) Huntley would not have been able to move to Soham in the first place and Holly and Jessica would be alive today because they never would have met Ian Huntley. Ian Huntley was what you might describe as an unpleasant con artist. His life was a web of lies. He was posing as the friendly school caretaker and pillar of the village community but in truth he was an evil and deeply disturbed man. One of the problems with any background check on Huntley is that Humberside social services later admitted that the investigations into Ian Huntley for underage sexual activity were done by different people independent of other investigations. As a consequence of this they failed to notice that Huntley was the connection and common denominator in so many of these cases. So in the end, largely thanks to bureaucracy and an unwieldy investigation and vetting system, Ian Huntley managed to slip through the net. Lincolnshire police also said something similar. They expressed regret for not charging and convicting Huntley for the underage sex allegations he collected in that jurisdiction but said that at the time they didn't detect a pattern. They didn't know Huntley had done this a dozen or so times. There were profound ramifications from this case with governmental investigations into how Huntley had managed to be employed at a school with such a grim history of sexual abuse and allegations. In 2007, Huntley was actually convicted of sexually abusing an eleven year-old girl - a crime to which he confessed and did not deny. By this stage Huntley was obviously in prison for life so having those charges added to his slate didn't make much difference to his circumstances. Ian Huntley was a short man with close cropped hair that already showed signs of turning grey despite the fact he wasn't yet out of his twenties. He looked a bit like a slightly pudgy schoolboy despite being in his late twenties. He had the faintest wisp of a moustache and chin beard - as if he wanted to grow facial hair but wasn't actually capable of doing so. As far as killers and criminals go, Huntley was an excellent actor. He came across as sympathetic and upset when he spoke about the missing girls to other members of the community and the media. Huntley was pretty convincing posing as this concerned young man who was helping to rally the community and find the girls. If you met Huntley in day to life in those days when Holly and Jessica were missing you wouldn't dream that he was the person who had killed the girls. Huntley came across as gentle and harmless. Even a bit dorky. Huntley was therefore able to blend into the fabric of town and fly under the radar. Most people who encountered Huntley seemed to like him. On August 4, 2002, not long after late afternoon had slipped into early evening, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had passed the house of Ian Huntley. It seems that Holly and Jessica had left the family barbecue to go and buy confectionery or crisps from the sports centre vending machine. The sports centre and the school were very close to Huntley's house. Holly Wells lived about 600 yards from Huntley's house she it wasn't as if the two girls had walked very far. The parents of the girls thought Holly and Jessica were in the bedroom while the barbecue went on. It was only when someone checked on them after six they realised the two girls were gone. Huntley, who said he was outside with his dog, did not know the girls but they knew he was the boyfriend of Maxine Carr and this was where she lived. So the two girls completely trusted Ian Huntley and had no reason to be wary of him. The two girls believed that Maxine Carr was in the house. Carr was away though visiting relatives. Huntley did not tell the girls about this. He pretended Maxine Carr was inside. Huntley's story of the girls wandering by just as he happened to be outside with his dog is viewed to be suspect. The more likely theory is that Huntley saw the girls walking in the direction of his and so went outside to ensure there would be some sort of interaction as they passed. Huntley invited the children into the house to speak to Maxine Carr but Carr was in reality not even home. She was away up north visiting relatives and Huntley was alone in the house. Holly and Jessica had been taught at school not to trust strangers but it is easy to see why they sensed no danger from Huntley. They were 600 yards from Holly's house and presumed that Maxine Carr was inside the caretaker's cottage. The two girls thought they were completely safe. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman both died soon after entering the house of Ian Huntley. What actually happened in that house is something that only Ian Huntley knows the precise details about. Due to the decomposition of the bodies by the time they were found (and the fact they had been partially burned) it was impossible to establish for certain whether the two girls had been sexually assaulted but that was clearly why Huntley had lured them into the house in the first place. There is no other reason why Huntley would have engineered a situation where two ten year-old girls he barely knew came into his house. His urges and sick obsession with underage girls had got the better of him and he saw opportunity when he spied the two girls walking in the direction of his house. It seems certain that Huntley either sexually assaulted and molested the girls or least attempted to do this. When they fought back and struggled he killed them. It could be the case that he killed them after molesting them because he knew he couldn't just let them go home. Huntley needed the girls to stay silent about what had happened and there was only one sure way to make certain of that. The two girls were judged to have died through asphyxiation. The pathologist couldn't be certain due to decomposition but there were no injuries which suggested any other type of violence. Huntley had strangled the girls. This is the generally accepted theory on what happened. After the girls died, Huntley put the bodies in the boot of his car and drove twenty miles away. He was quite lucky in that his house was detached so he had relative privacy. After a forty minute car journey, Huntley dumped the bodies in an irrigation ditch near the Lakenheath airbase. This was a shrewd place to hide the bodies. It took two weeks for the bodies to be found. A gamekeeper noticed them while on a remote footpath. Huntley set fire to them to destroy any forensic evidence and - so he hoped - destroy the bodies altogether and make them impossible to identify. This was not wholly successful but the damage and decomposition did make it impossible to establish if Huntley had raped the girls.