Soham murderer Ian Huntley dies after prison attack
Ian Huntley, the former school caretaker convicted of murdering two 10-year-old girls in Soham in 2002, died in hospital on Saturday morning following a violent assault by a fellow inmate at HMP Frankland, a high-security prison in County Durham.
Huntley, 52, was found lying in a pool of blood in a prison workshop on 26 February after being attacked with a makeshift metal bar. He suffered significant head trauma and was placed on life support, from which he never recovered. Durham Constabulary confirmed his death on Saturday and said a police investigation into the circumstances of the incident remained ongoing.
According to BBC sources, triple killer Anthony Russell, 43, is suspected of carrying out the assault. Durham Constabulary said it was preparing a file for the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration of charges.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation's history, and our thoughts are with their families."
The murders that shocked a nation
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, best friends both aged 10, disappeared on 4 August 2002 after leaving a family barbecue in Soham, Cambridgeshire. It is believed they were on their way to buy sweets when Huntley, then 28 and working as a school caretaker, lured them to his home and killed them.
The photograph of the girls in matching red Manchester United football shirts became one of the most recognisable images associated with a criminal case in modern British history. Their disappearance generated sustained national media coverage and prompted extensive police searches across the flat fenland landscape surrounding Soham.
Thirteen days after their disappearance, the girls' bodies were found in a ditch approximately ten miles away, near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. Huntley was arrested the same day. He was subsequently convicted in December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 40 years.
His girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr, who worked as a teaching assistant at the girls' school, was jailed in 2003 after being found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice by providing Huntley with a false alibi. She was released in May 2004 and granted a new identity.
The case also prompted serious questions about how a man with a history of sexual allegations against him had been permitted to work in a school.
A history of prison violence
The brutality of his crimes made Huntley a persistent target throughout his incarceration. In 2005, while held at HMP Wakefield, a convicted murderer threw boiling water over him. In 2010, an inmate at HMP Frankland slashed his throat, requiring 21 stitches; that prisoner was subsequently jailed for life.
The Sun, citing a source close to the matter, reported that the most recent attack had left Huntley blind and that he had never been expected to regain consciousness. "Huntley never recovered from the battering and never stood much of a chance of doing so," the publication quoted its source as saying.
Huntley's only daughter, Samantha Bryan, 27, told The Sun on Sunday following the attack that "there's a special place in hell waiting for him".
HMP Frankland, where Huntley had been held, houses some of Britain's most dangerous criminals, including murderers and rapists.
Press Association reporter Brian Farmer, who covered the case in East Anglia at the time of the murders, recalled an unsettling encounter with Huntley during the initial police investigation. Farmer told Sky News he had been so concerned by what Huntley said during an interview -- in which the caretaker began describing how he imagined the girls would react to a stranger approaching them -- that he subsequently went to the police with his concerns.
