The Tragic Loss of Innocence: The 2002 Soham Murders
Today’s case begins in the British town of Soham in Cambridgeshire in 2002. It’s a fairly peaceful, rural, quiet market town with a population of just over 10,000 people, but the peace and tranquility of the town would be shattered one late afternoon in early August. News began to spread that two 10-year-old girls were missing, and the search was on to find them. The events that had actually transpired in Soham that day would shock the small community, enrage the nation, and even travel across seas. This is the case of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, 20 years on.
Soham, Cambridge. Two of the families that called this town home were the Wellses and the Chapmans. 10-year-olds Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amy Chapman, born to Kevin and Nicola and Les and Sharon respectively, were the closest of friends. They were playful, fun, and loved the outdoors, spending almost every day together in school and out of it. Holly was a little quieter, and Jessica was a lot more outgoing, but they complimented each other perfectly. Everyone said, “They bounced off each other really well, never failing to make the other laugh and never having any fights.” One thing that made them closer still was their love of sports, and they would often watch and play football together.
Sunday, August 4th, 2002. It was a swelteringly hot summer’s day, and the girls had made plans to enjoy the weather and spend some time together. Jessica was recently back off a 2-week holiday, and the girls were definitely due a catchup. Just before noon, Jessica left her house on Brook Street to go to Holly’s for a barbecue. Holly lived nearby in Red House Gardens, around a 10-minute walk away. On holiday, Jessica had bought Holly a necklace with the letter H and two dolphins on it, and she carefully packed this to take with her. The girls and their friend Natalie played some games at Holly’s and listened to music for about half an hour before Natalie went home.
Shortly after this, the 10-year-olds changed into some Manchester United football shirts. One was Holly’s, and the other was her brother Oliver’s. The shirts had David Beckham’s name on the back, their favorite football player. Just after 5:00 p.m., Holly asked her mother to take a picture of them wearing the shirts. The girls were beaming and clearly so happy to be reunited after 2 weeks apart. After this, everyone sat down to eat. Holly and Jessica then went back upstairs to Holly’s room to carry on playing on the computer. A little after 6:15 p.m., they both left the house without mentioning it to anyone.
Just before 6:30, CCTV in a car park outside a sports center captured the girls walking together, and it is thought that the direction they were going in was to one of the shops to buy some sweets. They then walked along a path which led to Soham Village College. At 6:33, they were spotted in the neighboring streets of College Road and College Close. At 8:00 p.m., the families, thinking the girls were upstairs, realized they were actually not in the house, and after a search of the area, Holly and Jessica were reported missing just before 10:00 p.m.
Within hours of their disappearance, police from three forces and hundreds of townsfolk had joined the hunt for Holly and Jessica. “Disappearance is incredibly out of character. They haven’t been missing before. Very well-balanced, very bright young girls.” Everyone was rattled by the girls’ disappearance, and it seemed something was very wrong right from the beginning. They knew the area well, and most people knew them, so the idea that they had simply walked off and gotten lost seemed very unlikely. The community looked out for each other, and everyone was in agreement that if someone had seen them or recognized something was wrong, they would have stepped in to help.
The police based their headquarters at the girls’ primary school, and it’s safe to say that the disappearance of the girls took over the media and was front-page news for most days. It’s now the biggest investigation into missing children the force here has ever had. The photo of the girls in their football shirts taken just hours before they had disappeared was released to the media and is one we think many will remember. The search parties were huge and growing by the day, and people were traveling from everywhere to report on the case and help in any way they could. Police had looked over the girls’ primary school as well as the secondary school just down the road, Soham College, but nothing turned up.
As the days passed, although police didn’t say it, it was becoming clear that Holly and Jessica had probably been met with harm. This afternoon, both Holly’s and Jessica’s parents joined the police in making a desperate appeal for help. “I don’t allow her up the street on her own at all, at all. We don’t have her anywhere on her own. They both be friends. Jessica doesn’t like the dog. We love them so much. We just want to know. Just everyone, anyone who’s got children must know what we’re going through.” Both sets of parents were adamant their daughters were taught that talking to or trusting strangers was not something they should do, and the head teacher of their school agreed, saying, “The possible danger from strangers is something we have impressed upon the children from an early age.”
This made the police think they had potentially been approached by someone they knew and possibly trusted. The reward for any information about the girls was now sat at a huge £1 million. Investigators questioned every registered sex offender in the Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire area. Over 260 registered sex offenders from across the UK were also questioned, but all of them were eliminated. The girls’ favorite player, David Beckham, himself even made a plea for their safe return, telling Holly and Jessica, “They weren’t in any trouble, that their parents loved them and needed them home.”
One person that was keen to talk to police and share his story was the caretaker of the secondary school, Soham Village College, 28-year-old Ian Huntley, and he was someone that fast became a regular face in the media. Jeremy Thompson was the presenter for Sky News at the time, and he secured what would become widely circulated interviews. “The timeline on that Sunday night, the 4th of August, puts the girls here right in the forecourt of the Village College, the local education center. We know they’d been to the sports center just across the road a few minutes before to buy some sweets and were carrying on walking through what would have been very familiar territory. Their primary school, St. Andrews, is just across the back of the Village College here.”
“Seemed fine, very cheerful, happy, chatty. I didn’t see anything on to. Nobody hanging around, you know, just seem like normal happy kids.” “Safe and well?” “Yeah, yeah, absolutely.” “And you may as it turned out been the last person to actually chat to them before they vanished?” “Yeah, that’s what it seems like, and it’s a mystery. Absolutely.” “Yeah, absolutely. I mean all everybody around here, I mean I’ve been speaking to a lot of people and and what they’re saying is you know while there’s no news then there’s still that glimmer of hope and that’s basically all we’re all hanging on to.” “And there was nothing that Sunday evening that gave you a glimmer of suspicion that anything was wrong?” “No, not at all.”
He declared himself to be probably one of the last known people who had seen the girls that day. Ian and his partner, Maxine Carr, lived together, having met in Grimsby in 1999. They then moved to Soham for their jobs in 2001. 25-year-old Maxine was actually a teaching assistant at the girls’ primary school. Holly and Jessica adored her and would often draw her pictures and write her notes. A month before, in July, Maxine applied for a full-time teaching assistant position at the school, but she was unsuccessful. Holly had burst into tears when she had found out and gave her a hand-drawn card which read, “I’ll miss you a lot. Thank you. See you around school. Miss you. Love, Holly.”
“Well, um, it’s been uh, probably the worst night so, so far last night we’ve had uh, and experienced friends and family searching in pits in rivers looking the shallow graves for our children.” What started as someone wanting to tell the media their story quickly became a problem for Ian. Everyone now wanted an interview with him, and he started asking the reporters to make sure the footage of him stayed local. “It doesn’t help the fact that I was one of the last people to speak to them, if not the last person to speak to them, and I keep reliving that conversation and thinking perhaps something different could have been said. Perhaps kept them here a little bit longer, maybe changed events, ask them where was going or anything, which um, stops all this from happening.”
“Your neighbors think about your neighbors who’s to the left of you, who’s to the right and think of any strange behavior or anything like that, and I think it’s a very good idea. It’s it’s very frustrating knowing that we have people that way inclined amongst us and us not knowing who they are. It’s um, it’s just very upsetting, you know, and to think that I might be the last friendly face that these two girls had to speak to. I don’t want any of the uh, the national press to um, to have all of this interview. I’m doing this just for local television as I believe um, the children are still local and um, it’s only relevant really to the local areas. It’s not going to be in the uh, the national interest um, to hear what I’ve got to say really.”
Police retrace the last known steps of the missing 10-year-olds. Girls dressed in identical clothes follow the route Jessica and Holly took 6 days ago. Detectives now say there is no evidence that Holly and Jessica went to meet someone they contacted in an internet chat room. Clarence Mitchell reports from Soham. Taking their walk towards the unknown, these are the last identified steps of Holly and Jessica, recreated by two young girls from a drama company in Cambridge. They were wearing identical clothing and jewelry to the missing 10-year-olds. Their Manchester United shirts, the same, along with their sports trousers, their hair too, styled as closely to Holly and Jessica’s as possible. The aim? To jog people’s memories of last Sunday.
Just after 6:00, they were seen a number of times in nearby Sand Street, heading towards the local sports center where they were caught on CCTV cameras, and at quarter to 7, the pair was spotted in the area around the War Memorial in the High Street. All the locations were based on confirmed sightings of Holly and Jessica. Detectives are hoping it’ll lead to a breakthrough. “There may be members of the public out there who don’t realize that they have seen something significant, or if they have seen something, don’t think it’s important to us, and I will appear to those people after they’ve seen the reconstruction to please contact us.” Having examined the girls’ computer, detectives now say there’s no evidence they were using chat rooms or had arranged to meet anyone just before they vanished.
Around the reconstruction, the intense searching continued. Soham’s drains, a new focus for specialist police search officers. This evening, the hunt for the girls and whoever may be holding them is about to widen in circles, stretching miles across the spaces of the Cambridge Fens, but the girls are still missing despite one of the biggest manhunts Britain has seen. Clarence Mitchell is in Soham now. “Clarence, how confident are police that they will get new leads following today’s reconstruction?” “Yes, the police are very hopeful indeed. They’ve brought in extra officers to handle the calls from the public that they’re hoping will come in, but the full scale of it won’t be clear probably until sometime tomorrow, and that’s why they’re hoping that vital clue that will lead to the breakthrough will come from the reconstruction. They believe the girls are still alive, are probably being held together, and very much against their will.”
This led to thousands of calls coming in with tips and leads. The small, unusually fairly quiet police station was becoming overwhelmed, and Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson was asked to take over the investigation. He said the first thing he did, as unusual as it sounded, was scale things right back. He explained that the case had traveled so quickly across the nation, they needed to change their focus and start at the beginning, local and close to the girls’ homes. A full look at Holly and Jessica’s last known steps were looked at again, and this time far more thoroughly. Everything was a fairly quick walk away from the girls’ homes. The pair lived just around the corner from each other and a short distance from their primary school, with lots of little shops along the route. They wouldn’t have any reason to venture too far out.
Detectives had interviewed many, many people by this point, and the overwhelming consensus was, not one single person had seen the girls anywhere past College Close, the road that Ian and Maxine had lived on. There was no more footage, no witnesses, and simply no trace of them passed that point. Following the route that had been already mapped out on CCTV, and with the help of a forensic engineer looking at where Jessica’s phone had pinged off the towers, the team narrowed a lot down. The forensic engineer determined that Jessica’s phone had been manually switched off sometime after 6:37 p.m., and the phone tower it had last hit was just by Soham Village College and close to Ian and Maxine’s house. It was fast becoming obvious to the investigating team that Ian Huntley at the very least knew more than he was saying, and at the most and worst, he was somehow involved.
His face was a regular fixture in the news, and the pressure of the press was getting to him. As the police continued to monitor him, they noticed he was starting to lose weight and had deep bags under his eyes. At one point, he broke down to the officers going door-to-door in his area, crying and saying, “Am I a suspect? You think I did it, don’t you?” Maxine Carr was also talking to the media and joining in in the searches for her young students, and just as Ian was now facing scrutiny, so was she. Again, Jeremy Thompson got the scoop. “You knew the girls, but what were they like?” “Lovely, walking, laughing. They was happy, as there was nothing wrong with them. They weren’t upset or anything like that. They the funny, brilliant, the kind to everybody. Um, they won’t say a bad word about anybody. They love the families and everything, which is why nobody believes that they would ever run away. Um, they was very close to all their family.”
“This is something I probably keep for the rest of my life. I think, um, it’s what Holly gave me on the last day of term. She was very, very upset because I didn’t get my job, and um, she just gave me this with a poem on the inside saying, um, ‘To a special teaching assistant, really,’ and we’ll, we’ll miss her a lot and we’ll see her in the future, and that’s the kind of girl she was. She was just lovely, love.” “That’s really very sweet, isn’t it?” “Yeah.” “Maxine, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. That’s very kind.” As soon as the interview was over, Jeremy’s producers turned to him and said, “That was odd, wasn’t it? Didn’t she refer to them in the past tense?” They rolled the tape back, and sure enough, she had, which Jeremy Thompson said was a little chilling. “And that’s the kind of girl she was. She was just lovely, really lovely.”
Although eyebrows with reporters and police were raised, it still wasn’t enough to confirm anything. One officer recalled that as they were conducting their door-to-door inquiries, Ian leisurely slumped over the side of the door of the police car very casually, without a care in the world. He asked just one question, “How long DNA stayed around for?” and a detective noted three fairly big scratches on his face, but he quick he told them it had come from playing with his dog. Ian Huntley’s inability to stay out of the media and the investigation then, the people from back in his hometown of Grimsby soon saw his face and recognized him. Peter Craig, a reporter for the Grimsby Telegraph, started receiving calls from the locals, and they had some dark stories about Ian’s past that they thought were relevant and wanted to share.
It turned out that Ian had a long list of offenses, both confirmed and alleged, which included nine allegations of rape, indecent assault of underage girls, and harming animals. By his own admission, he had had many sexual encounters with teenage girls, and girls as young as 11 had reported that he had sexually assaulted them. As none of the cases had gone to trial, this was not reflected in a criminal record, but the Grimsby Telegraph knew they couldn’t simply sit on this information. Ian Huntley was someone who needed to be looked at. The more that came out about his past, the darker the situation was looking. In 1994, he had met a woman called Clare, and within weeks, after a whirlwind romance, the pair married. She spoke of his aggressive nature and terrible temper, saying she was in fear for her life the whole time.
She wanted a divorce, but Ian Huntley refused, and it took five long years for it to finally go through. In 1998, he groomed a 15-year-old called Emma, and she moved into his mother’s house with him shortly after. When Social Services caught wind that this was happening, they started an investigation, but he told her to lie and it didn’t go any further. When Ian found out that Emma was pregnant, he threatened to kill her. Emma finally escaped the relationship after suffering a miscarriage and went on to speak about how guilty she felt for lying to everyone. He soon met a lady named Katie, and she too was subjected to a tirade of abuse. She also fell pregnant, but she managed to flee the abusive relationship to raise her daughter, Samantha.
Whilst all of this was going on, Ian was still married to Clare, but finally, in 1999, they divorced and Clare found love with Ian’s younger brother, Wayne. Everyone in the Grimsby area was talking about it. They all knew of Ian Huntley’s perversions and were shocked that nothing was happening about it. After he met Maxine, the pair moved 2 and 1/2 hours away to Soham in the hopes he could avoid his past and start over with no one ever finding out. Their relationship had started off well, and she told people she was “Head over heels.” Ian was romantic and caring, buying her gifts and flowers, but her sister recognized it as “love bombing,” which is when someone is showered with excessive attention and gifts with the aim of making them feel dependent.
The relationship quickly soured. Ian soon became violent and controlling, just as he had done with his past partners, and the neighbors had often heard him being physically and verbally abusive to Maxine. With everything they were uncovering, as well as everything they already suspected, police asked Ian and Maxine to come in for a voluntary interview which lasted about 7 hours. Maxine said that she had been at home with Ian on the night in question and went into a lot of inane detail about the day. “A normal thing that he would do is when I want you prep times. What they said, um, did they, did they actually ask for me? Which directions are they coming? Did they say where going? Did the same thing about barbecue. I mean I’ve made him feel like over-suspecting his own.”
Right in Ian’s interview, he was the exact opposite, staying silent for huge periods of time. At one point, he was asked what Holly was wearing and what she looked like, and he didn’t speak for almost a minute. “I remember looking at the the man on night tops thinking in good taste, I would say, blond hair, um, short, very slow, I can’t about any of this.” “Ian, was there any occasion that you actually came to contact, physical contact with the girls?” “Physical contact.” But it turned out that Maxine had been out in Grimsby on August 4th and not at home with Ian. This not only proved her whole story was a lie, but it also meant that Ian now didn’t have an alibi at all. But the pair was soon released as, although the police had a lot of circumstantial evidence, it just wasn’t enough to hold or arrest them.
Although the school that Ian had worked at had already been searched once, Chris Stevenson ordered another one as he was convinced that if there was any evidence, it would be there. During the first search, Ian had actually led the officers around, but it was becoming clear that he had most likely led them away from certain areas. After an extensive search, finally the team found something concrete. Inside a yellow bin was a black bag, and after the bag was removed, the charred and cut-up remains of two red football shirts were found at the bottom. There was no doubt who the shirts had belonged to and what this finding meant. When Chris Stevenson got the call, he cried, describing it as a “watershed moment,” and the impact this had on him would last a lifetime.
He knew they had enough to arrest them both on suspicion of abduction and, despite there being no bodies, murder as well. “In the last few hours, a 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman have been arrested. The 28-year-old man has been arrested for the murder and abduction of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The 25-year-old woman has been arrested for the murder of both girls. They’ve been taken to separate police stations in Cambridgeshire where they will be interviewed.” As soon as he was arrested, Ian called his mother’s house. His brother Wayne said his mom, Linda, answered the phone. All he would say was that he was on the outskirts of Cambridge and that the police had put him there. Linda felt it in her guts and bluntly asked him, “Did you do it?” Ian took a long pause and then said, “I love you, Mom.” In that moment, they all knew that he was responsible for whatever had happened to Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Ian and Maxine were put in separate safe houses while more searches were carried out. Every room in their house on College Close had been meticulously cleaned and there appeared to be no trace of anything there. Ian’s car was also forensically examined. Detectives noticed that the car had four brand new tires, the lining in the back had been replaced, and small traces of a mixture of brick dust and concrete were found on the underside of the car. Police tracked down the place that had fitted the new tires, and the employee said that Ian had asked that all four be changed despite there being nothing wrong with them. He had also paid him £10 to put a false number plate on their books when it came to logging the job, and this all happened just one day after Holly and Jessica had gone missing.
Maxine Carr suddenly and dramatically changed her story, admitting that she had lied to protect Ian. She said it was because she knew about his past and didn’t want him to be falsely accused of anything. “I wasn’t in on the 4th of August. I came back to Soham on a Tuesday. I was actually in Grimsby.” And for someone so keen to talk to the media, Ian Huntley was now behaving very differently. In his interviews, he spent the whole time rocking back and forth, saying he didn’t understand the questions and didn’t want to be there. “C Close, so anything you do say may be given in evidence, and do you understand that you are under caution?” “Sorry, can, can I just ask you, do you wish to be interviewed on tape now about these?”
Police were left with no choice but to send him for a mental health check. Outside of the interview rooms, the searches continued. Although most people understood the girls wouldn’t be coming home alive, many still refuse to believe it. “With no real clues as to where the children are and what state they are in, searching these vast areas of fenlands is difficult. So these friends of Holly’s parents have chosen an area close to the A10 Cambridge Road where the two girls were reportedly last seen.” “It’s the helplessness, but as long as there’s something to look for, we just never give up hope.”
Almost 2 weeks since the girls had last been seen, the search for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman came to a crashing halt, snatching away the little bit of hope that people had been clinging onto. To discover if they are indeed those of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, a member of the public found two small, decomposing bodies lying side by side in some thick woodland. The discovery of two bodies by a member of the public at lunchtime today. They were near an RAF base at Lakenheath, about 12 miles away from where the girls had lived. Although testing needed to be done to confirm the identities, it was clear that it was Holly and Jessica. This is CNN. Fear and mourning grips Southern England, where authorities say two bodies found in a rural area are almost certainly those of two missing 10-year-old girls.
Two suspects are being held on suspicion of killing 10-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The suspects haven’t been charged yet. Police spoke with the media just a short while ago about the case. “It is almost exactly two weeks since Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared from this town, sparking a massive inquiry to find them. It is with great sadness that I have to tell you the following news. It may be some days yet before we are able to positively identify the two bodies found at Command Drove near Lakenheath in Suffolk yesterday lunchtime. However, we are certain as we possibly can be tonight that they are those of Holly and Jessica. Holly and Jessica’s families have been told this terrible news.”
Hundreds of Soham’s people came to the church, desperate to make sense of the appalling events which have left this town in turmoil. “Just 7 days ago, the congregation here prayed that the two 10-year-olds were safe somewhere. We cannot even begin to imagine how harrowing this nightmare must be for them.” This community is still in an agony of self-doubt about how anything so dreadful could have happened in their midst, and there are many questions still unanswered. The sense of sadness was felt throughout the nation, and Jeremy Thompson, who had conducted the now infamous interviews, said that it was a very dark day to be a reporter. Someone else said, “You could feel the quietness and sense of foreboding.”
DNA testing soon confirmed that it was the two 10-year-olds. Due to the decomposition and the fact that an attempt had been made to burn their bodies, an exact cause and time of death could not be determined, but it was thought that it was likely asphyxiation. Pathological evidence indicated that at least one of the girls had been subjected to a sexual assault either before or after her death, but it simply couldn’t be determined with absolute certainty. An officer looking after the site where they were found said he pushed for the girls’ parents not to go and see them in that way. Having seen them himself, he knew it would cause immense pain because of the state they were in.
A somber feeling gripped the nation in the days after they were found. In honor of the sporty girls, all football matches in the UK held a minute’s silence in their memory. A moment of silence was held just before kickoff at the Premiership game between Chelsea and Manchester United. David Beckham scored one goal during this match, which he later dedicated to the girls who had looked up to him so much. England cricket captain Nasser Hussain and Coach Duncan Fletcher sent cards to the families expressing their deepest sympathies, and the Australian Prime Minister John Howard even sent a gift too. Everyone was paying tribute in whatever way they could, and one group of boys who were unable to afford flowers left their football for them, which was covered in messages they had written themselves.
No forensic evidence could be retrieved from Holly and Jessica’s bodies, but experts were still waiting for samples to come in from the clothing found in the bin, and they were hoping that this would be the link they needed. Finally, the tests were back. Fibers on the red shirts matched fibers on Ian Huntley’s clothes and boots, and the bin liner that had been placed on top of the clothes also had his DNA on it. And the testing done on the area where the girls were found gave further links too. Experts confirmed that the brick dust, chalk, and small bits of concrete found on the outside of Ian’s car was a match to the road that led to where they were found.
The police finally had enough. Just after 4:00 a.m., Ian Huntley was charged with two counts of murder, and Maxine Carr was also charged with perverting the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender. As Ian Huntley was driven away, the public’s outrage was clear to see. Jeremy Thompson said he had become such a figure of public hatred, and the disgust people felt for him was immeasurable. Officers then informed Maxine that Ian had been charged with two counts of murder. “His fingerprints have been found at the bag was in. You wanted facts, and you wanted to know about the friend.”
A service is to be held at Ely Cathedral later this afternoon to honor Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The murdered girls’ parents will join police and residents of their hometown of Soham to the service, which is by invitation only. The cathedral’s dean describes it as “a celebration of Holly and Jessica’s lives.” One of the great fears had been up until this stage that the two schools at the center of this tragedy, both St. Andrew’s school which Holly and Jessica both attended and also the local secondary school, the Soham Village College, because they’ve been closed off as police crime scenes up until now, might not have been able to open in time. Now, we heard this morning from the headmaster that not only will they be opening at an appropriate moment, but also he’s hoping that it will prove something of a new beginning for these traumatized children.
The first few days of term will be different as children and staff gather for the first time since these terrible events unfolded. Children and staff will be affected in different ways, and we should be sensitive to the needs of individuals, and where counseling is needed, it will be provided. As anger poured out onto the streets, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were finally laid to rest. A poem for Holly entitled “Soham’s Rose”: “Your right to grow, to mature, and to play, so cruelly denied in a sinister way. Attentive and caring, a parents’ delight, but so young at heart, needing comfort at night. The garden is quiet, the house is too, but pausing for a moment, we can still sense you. Your trusting nature and desire to please, all allow us, your family, to remain walking tall. Our memories now shared with the nation’s hearts, small crumbs of comfort, now it is time to part. We will never forget you. Heaven’s gain, as it knows, is simply you, Holly, our beautiful Soham Rose.”
The best friends were buried right next to each other so they could stay just as close as they always were. Ian was still being held in a secure hospital, and all hearings were put on hold. Police were convinced that Ian was feigning his mental health issues but waited patiently on the judge to make a decision about whether or not he was fit to stand trial. Maxine often wrote to him in hospital telling him that she still loved him, but by December 2002, she stopped communicating with him completely, to the relief of the police and the prosecution.
After 50 days of evaluations by experts, the judge ruled that Ian Huntley was fit to stand trial. He was moved from hospital into prison. Both he and Maxine entered pleas of not guilty, and the trials got underway in November 2003 at the Old Bailey courthouse in London. To this day, it remains unclear how or why Ian Huntley lured the girls into his house, but it is thought that he abused the trust and love they had for Maxine as their teaching assistant, and he probably promised the girls that they could see her inside. The girls may have also known him personally, or well enough to feel comfortable with him, as he was their teaching assistant’s partner and worked just a short walk away from their school.
Minutes before Holly and Jessica walked past his house that day, he had had a heated argument with Maxine in which he accused her of cheating before slamming the phone down, and it was thought he may have killed the girls in a rage-filled, spur-of-the-moment attack. Others believed it was premeditated and sexually motivated, but with only one person’s word, the full truth will likely never be known. It is thought that after he got them inside, he locked the doors. What happened after this has never been confirmed, but he ultimately smothered one of them in the bathroom before chasing the other around and doing the same thing to her.
But in court, Ian Huntley now had a new story to tell. He testified in his own defense and said that he had killed the girls by accident, asking for people to consider manslaughter instead. He said that Holly and Jessica had come inside seeking help for a nosebleed that Holly had. He took them up to the bathroom where the bath was filled with water from when he had been cleaning his dog. Ian said he had slipped and accidentally knocked Holly into the bath, resulting in her drowning. He went on to say that when Jessica started screaming, he accidentally suffocated her as he was trying to stifle her cries. Ian claimed that he had not feigned insanity, saying that the trauma of accidentally killing them had genuinely caused parts of his memory to disappear, and surprisingly, the prosecution said this story was “nothing short of completely ridiculous,” and he was someone that simply wanted to control the narrative until the very end.
Maxine Carr also testified in her own defense. She said that at first she had thought that Ian had been having an affair, as the bedding had all been washed when she arrived home. She was asked why she had proceeded to help him clean the house so thoroughly, but she simply said that she was “obsessive about keeping things tidy.” She was adamant she was only lying to police about her location because she feared that Ian would be targeted for something he didn’t do. She also said that when Ian told her about the nosebleed, she had tried to convince him to tell the officers, saying that they would understand. Maxine said if she had known the full truth, she would never have done what she did.
It was recognized that Maxine had faced various issues in her life. Some argued that these troubles meant that she was also a vulnerable target for Ian, whereas others are convinced she played an equally damning role and shouldn’t be seen as a victim. Tony Rogers, the assistant chief constable at the time, said he believes that “she is as evil and calculated as Ian himself and deserves no sympathy.” Needless to say, as the trial drew to a close, the prosecution described both Maxine and Ian as “accomplished liars.” They said, “We invite you to reject the accounts of both deaths being accidental as desperate lies, the only way out for him. We suggest that this whole business in the house was motivated by something sexual, but whatever he initiated plainly went wrong. Therefore, in this ruthless man’s mind, both girls had to die in his own selfish self-interest.”
They went on to say that Maxine was making the best out of the situation she was in, and that this involved protecting Ian Huntley at all costs. The defense kept it short, simply asking the jury to consider returning a verdict of manslaughter instead of murder, but this was not to be, as in December 2003, Ian Huntley was found guilty of both counts of murder and was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment with a minimum of 40 years to be served in custody. He avoided a mandatory life sentence, as the passing of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 had come into effect just one day after his conviction. Maxine Carr was also jailed and got 3 and 1/2 years for perverting the course of justice, but she was released under a new identity less than 6 months later.
At his sentencing, the Wellses and the Chapmans addressed the media, and Les 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.” After the trial was over, questions surrounding how Ian Huntley was ever able to gain a job as a caretaker in a school were asked, and this prompted the Bichard Report, a public inquiry into Child Protection headed by Sir Michael Bichard, to be put together. Ian Huntley had lied about everything, including his last name, and what he told the school was not checked or cross-referenced before he was hired. It also came to light that Maxine Carr had falsified her grades to get into the primary school as a teaching assistant, and this was not picked up either. The Bichard Report made a list of recommendations which would hopefully prevent anything like this happening again. A brand-new police database was set up which allows for different police forces to share information about offenders.
Ian Huntley continues to face attacks in prison, including having boiling water poured on him and his throats being slit. He has also taken several overdoses since his sentence started. “The Soham killer is set to sue the prison services after being attacked with a razor blade by one of his fellow inmates. Huntley needed hospital attention after his throat was slashed by an inmate at Frankland prison in County Durham. He says that prison officers failed in their duty of care.” It’s not the first time that Huntley’s been attacked. Another inmate threw boiling water over him at Wakefield prison in 2005. He is not eligible for parole until 2042, by which time he would be 68 years old, but whether he is ever granted parole at all is another question.
Many agreed that Ian Huntley was his own undoing. By the time he had killed Holly and Jessica, he was already a callous, dangerous, and narcissistic criminal, and his desperate need to stay in the media and the investigation, gaining attention and minor fame, says everything about his character. In 2004, Ian’s parents said he had finally admitted that killing Jessica wasn’t an accident, but they were still trying to get him to tell the full truth about both girls. His dad said, “We sat him down, and we’re about 80% there. We found out what happened to Jessica. We’ve spent months trying to persuade him to tell the truth.” They said they would continue to persist so that the Wellses and the Chapmans could gain some sense of closure.
That same year, the now-infamous house, 5 College Close, was demolished, and it is now just a patch of grass. Kevin, Holly’s father, became a founding patron of the charity Grief Encounter and then ran the London Marathon to raise money for them. Kevin said that the strain of going through what they did almost led to the end of his and Nicola’s marriage, and it took a couple of years to find each other again, but today they are as strong as ever. “We still think of Holly every day. We have pictures of her in and around the house, but it’s not a shrine. We don’t live in the past,” he said. The Wells family moved out of their house in 2006 to escape some of the pain associated with it, but continued to rent it out, believing that one day they would move back, which in 2012 they did.
It is understood that the Chapman family are also still in Soham, but since the trial came to an end, they have rarely spoken publicly or been in the media. The hunt for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was one of the largest searches in Britain’s history. It involved more than 400 officers across 21 forces with more than 14,000 calls being made to police in the 2 weeks that they were searching. To have it come to such a terrible end left a community and nation deeply affected. What started as any of the summer’s weekend for two 10-year-old best friends, simply heading out to buy sweets in an area they knew around people and neighbors they trusted, ended in the worst and most frightening tragedy imaginable. And today, 20 years on, the feelings about what happened that August afternoon are still strong as we remember the lives of Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amy Chapman.
