This case is a special one for me because it happened not far from where I lived, not long from me being the same age as the two victims. I followed it in the press at the time and I even remember seeing Ian Huntley giving interviews on the news. My parents and I drove to the village to put down flowers for them. I can give it a lot of credit for sending me down the career path I have. At one point I considered turning the case into a book, like my book about Dennis Nilsen, but I decided against it. It turns out that I really didn’t want to have to imagine what happened to them in that space of time we don’t know about. So here, with no speculation, is the case of Holly and Jessica.
Killer: Ian Huntley
Victim(s): Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Aimee Chapman
Dates Active: 4 - 5 August 2002
Location: Soham, Cambridgeshire
Method of murder: Asphyxiation
Timeline
1.9.1991 | Jessica Chapman born
4.10.1991 | Holly Wells born
3.1996 | Huntley charged with burglary
9.1997 | Huntley sexually assaults 11-year-old
1998 | 15-year-old girl has Huntley's baby
4.1998 | Huntley arrested for rape of 18-year-old
5.1998 | Huntley arrested for rape/beating of 18-year-old
2.1999 | Huntley meets Maxine Carr and begins dating
3.1999 | Huntley and Carr move in together
6.1999 | Huntley proposes to Carr
9.2001 | Huntley hired as senior caretaker at Soham
| Village College
2.2002 | Carr meets Holly and Jessica working at St.
| Andrews Primary School as a teaching assistant
4.8.2002 | Holly and Jessica reported as missing
17.8.2002 | Holly and Jessica's bodies found
17.8.2002 | Huntley and Carr arrested on suspicion of murder
5.11.2003 | Murder trial begins
17.12.2003 | Huntley sentenced to life in prison
Holly and Jessica were two normal 10-year-old girls. Best friends. They loved playing together or with other friends, wearing friendship bracelets or matching outfits, and enjoyed school. They even got along well with all the staff at their school, including their teaching assistants.
They were having a normal day on the 4th of August 2002. It was the summer holidays and they had time to do whatever they liked. They enjoyed a lunchtime barbeque at Holly’s house and then played computer games and listened to music with another friend. They got changed into matching Manchester United football kit shirts - one of which was borrowed from Holly’s brother. After dinner, they went back to playing in Holly’s bedroom.
They decided to get some sweets a little after 6 pm, and didn’t tell anyone in the house when they left to head for a familiar vending machine at the local sports centre.
At 8 pm, Nicola Wells went upstairs to tell the girls to say goodbye to their other guests. But the girls weren’t there. She searched the home and gardens along with her husband but found no sign of them. She called Leslie and Sharon Chapman at 8.30 pm, who told her the girls weren’t there - and they were worried, too, that Jessica hadn’t come home yet. Both families scrambled to search for their children.
At 9.55 pm, Holly and Jessica were reported missing to the police.
What followed was a media frenzy. Two young, pretty, carefree girls from white households in small-town England had disappeared into thin air. Over four hundred police officers, several hundred local volunteers, and even United States Air Force personnel from nearby air bases began to search for them over the following days.
The search was intense. Over 260 registered sex offenders were questioned and ruled out. The media constantly showed the last photograph taken of the two friends: Holly and Jessica wearing their matching football shirts. CCTV footage of their arrival at the sports centre was shown nationwide. Appeals from both families were televised and more than 2,000 phone calls with potential leads came from members of the public.
On the 7th of August, a candlelight vigil was held for the girls, with prayers uttered for their safe return. Individuals came forward with sightings: Mark Tuck said he’d seen “two little Beckhams” walking on Soham’s Sand Street around 6.30 pm. Karen Greenwood saw them walking arm in arm along College Road a few minutes afterwards. It was established that the last person to see them had been Ian Huntley, a caretaker at their school. The girls had come by to visit his girlfriend, Maxine, who was formerly a teaching assistant of theirs before failing to get a full-time job at the school.
But Maxine was in the bath, so Ian just told the girls that she hadn’t got the job they were hoping for. They expressed that they were sorry about this and then walked away in the direction of the library, and when Ian went back inside his home, that was the last time they were seen by anyone.
The news frenzy continued. Over the days to come, Huntley became something of a focal point for the news cameras. As the last person to see them alive and also an employee at the school, he became something of a spokesperson for the community. He expressed time and again how frustrated they all were at the lack of progress, how desperately they hoped the girls would be found alive, and how he wanted anyone who might have taken them to just bring them back.
As another week began, hope faded.
On the 17th of August, it was taken away for good.
Keith Pryer was a gamekeeper in Suffolk, working near RAF Lakenheath. He had noticed an odd smell near one of his pheasant pens several days earlier but thought nothing of it. Returning on the 17th with a couple of friends, he decided to check out what was causing it, noticing that it had worsened.
He approached an irrigation ditch near the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath and looked five feet down to the bottom. There, he saw something that horrified him and his companion, making them sick to their stomachs. It was the burned and decomposed bodies of two small girls, thrown down there and abandoned.
Holly and Jessica had been missing for 13 days. It was clear almost immediately that it had to be them, but forensic tests finally confirmed it on the 21st of August.
On the 30th of August, a memorial service was held to remember the girls at Ely Cathedral. Football clubs across the country held a minute’s silence before their matches to honour the two young fans.
Despite the hunger for news on the story, the media observed the family’s wishes for privacy; neither of their funeral services were photographed or reported on.
But as the girls were laid to rest, there was a question that needed to be answered.
What had happened to them on the night of the 4th August, the night they were brought and laid in that ditch?
There was evidence to work with, even if the killer had tried to destroy it. For example, analysis of nettles in the ditch allowed forensic determination that they had been there for two weeks - meaning they had been killed and dumped soon after going missing.
Acting on suspicions, searches were conducted at the school. Items that told the story even further were found: the girls’ Manchester United shirts, burnt and cut, had been hidden in a bin at a hangar on the property. Fingerprints were found on the bin; after searching the home of the owner of those prints, fibres on the shirts were found the match those in the house, on his clothes, and even on his person.
Both the home and the individual’s car had been recently cleaned, but not well enough. The car had a chalky dust on the wheels and exterior which matched that found along the road to the ditch where the girls had been found.
The police had already been watching this suspect for a long time. Since the first day of the investigation, in fact. And they continued to watch him closely, inviting him to press conferences just to see his reaction in person.
On the 17th of August, the same day the bodies were discovered, they arrested their suspect.
Ian Huntley was their killer.
It soon transpired that Carr and Huntley had woven a web of lies to hide his involvement. While they claimed to police and the press that Maxine was in the bath when the girls visited their home, she was actually visiting her mother in Grimsby. This was easily proven, meaning there was no alibi for the time the girls disappeared and no proof that they had simply visited and then left.
Maxine confessed all after she was arrested. She told the police that Ian had called her that night, told her the girls visited and that they’d had to come inside because Holly had a nosebleed. They had sat on the bed and then left, he said, and - because he’d previously been falsely accused of raping a minor - he was too afraid to tell anyone the truth, so she had better give him an alibi. She had agreed.
That false accusation, as it turned out, was probably not very false. Huntley had been accused of rape or sexual assault - sometimes of minors, sometimes of eighteen-year-olds - at least four times before Holly and Jessica disappeared. Each time, due to a technicality or a lack of evidence or the perceived consent between Huntley and the complainant, the charges failed to stick.
Even if they had, it seems it would have made no difference to his position. When Huntley was taken on as a senior caretaker at the school, no background checks were carried out to assess whether he was suitable for the role. He was simply employed, possibly because of the fact that his father was also a school caretaker in the local area.
All of this added up to a man who should in no way have been permitted access to young girls, ending up in a position not only with access but with authority. They trusted him. They trusted Maxine. In Holly and Jessica’s case, they liked Maxine so much they would easily have been lured into the home with the promise of seeing her.
Tragically, that was all it took for Huntley to go one step further than the rape and beatings he had administered before - and to finally take not just one life, but two.
I know this one’s a little shorter than usual. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the Soham case, but I didn’t want to go too far into Huntley and Carr. I don’t know - for me, this story is about two innocent, trusting little girls who deserved a lot better. You’ll notice there are no footnotes here because I put down almost all of this from memory, barring getting the dates down accurately.
I don’t know about you, but this one is a little heavy for me. Maybe because it’s a bit close to home. Anyway, to wash it down, here is some vintage Russell Brand material from before he became, well, present-day Russell Brand about an article regarding Ian Huntley in prison. It starts around the 3:38 mark.