Soham murderer Ian Huntley dies after prison attack

Ian Huntley, perpetrator behind the infamous Soham murders in England, has died after being attacked by a fellow inmate at HMP Frankland.

The 52-year-old was serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years after murdering schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002.

The search for the missing 10-year-old girls and subsequent murder case “remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation’s history,” says the Ministry of Justice.

“Our thoughts are with their families,” it adds.

Huntley was attacked with a makeshift weapon on 26th February in the high-security prison and was reportedly in a vegetative state before his life support was switched off on the evening of Friday 6th March.

Anthony Russell, another murderer serving time at HMP Frankland, is thought to be the attacker.

The high-profile nature of Huntley’s crimes has meant he has been attacked several times before.

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The Soham Murders  

Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both 10 years old at the time, were first reported missing on the night of 4th August 2002 after leaving a barbeque.

The search to find the schoolgirls made national headlines. 

After a two-week-long manhunt, the girls’ bodies were found in a ditch 10 miles from Soham, their hometown.

Ian Huntley, a caretaker at a local school, as well as then-girlfriend Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at the girls’ primary school, were subsequently arrested after having aroused suspicion during interviews with the press.

In one interview, when talking to Carr about ‘stranger danger’ lessons in the girls’ school, Huntley reportedly butted in to state that, if the girls were approached by a man in a car, he believed Holly would have gone quietly but Jessica would have put up a fight.

Once called “the most hated woman in Britain” by the press for providing Huntley with an alibi, Carr was granted a rare anonymity order and a new identity before being released in 2004.

The Soham Murders, as they have come to be called, remain one of the most infamous British true-crime cases.

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