The Disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
On August 4, 2002, best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both ten, posed for a picture sporting their new red Manchester United football shirts before sitting down to dinner with family and friends. It was a festive occasion and the Wells family was having a barbecue. Shortly after dinner, Holly and Jessica stepped out of the house and went to a nearby sports center to buy some candy. They were never seen alive again.
Later that evening, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were reported missing and a police search began at around midnight. The girls’ parents were frantic, not knowing what could have become of them. Jessica had a mobile phone with her when the girls left, yet the family and investigators were unable to contact her.
The search, involving the police and hundreds of volunteers lasted well into the next day and the following weeks. Pictures of the girls were circulated throughout the community in the hopes that someone had seen them. Jessica and Holly’s parents held a news conference pleading for any information concerning the whereabouts of their children. Even the British Manchester United soccer star, David Beckham, whose name adorned the girls’ shirts, made a televised appeal for their safe return. As time passed, the hopes of finding the girls alive dwindled.
Several witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls after they left their home came forth during the investigation. Ian Huntley, 29, a caretaker of Soham Village College, who had assisted in the search, told investigators that he had seen the girls walking by his house that he shared with his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, 29, the girls’ primary school teacher assistant at around the time they left the barbecue. He was believed to have been one of the last persons to see Jessica and Holly after they had left their home.
After he admitted to seeing the girls, investigators searched Huntley’s home and the college where he worked, hoping to eliminate him as a suspect. During the searches they found no evidence linking him to the crime but some investigators were still suspicious of his behavior. Throughout the investigation, Huntley seemed too emotionally involved in the case. Moreover, he was asking too many questions and gave the impression that he knew more than what he was admitting. One week later, investigators decided to search the college premises again. This time they made a significant find.
In a storage building at Soham Village College, an officer found a garbage bin with the half burned remains of Jessica and Holly’s Manchester United jerseys along with their shoes. It was one of the first big breaks in the investigation. Following the find, police arrested Huntley and his girlfriend Maxine Carr on suspicion of murder. Their suspicions would be confirmed later that same day.
On August 17, 2002, 13 days after the girls disappeared, a game warden walking through the woods made a heart wrenching discovery. He found the girls’ partially burned bodies in a six-foot-deep ditch close to the RAF Lakenheath airbase in Suffolk. Autopsy reports on the girls listed their probable cause of death as asphyxiation. The girl’s parents’ worst nightmare became a reality.
When the news broke of the girl’s murders, the nation mourned leaving many in a state of shock and disbelief. The question that was on most people’s minds was how anyone could harm two innocent girls like Jessica and Holly. Such barbarism was simply beyond comprehension.
The evidence against Huntley was escalating daily. The location of the bodies further tied him to the case because he was known to have previously gone plane spotting in the area. Moreover, the area was in close proximity to his father’s house.
During a more intensive search of his house and car, forensics specialists found fibers that were eventually matched to the girls’ clothes. According to a November 24, 2003 BBC News article, there was also evidence of Huntley’s hairs found on Holly and Jessica’s soccer jerseys, as well as fibers from his clothes and carpets from his house and car. Furthermore, investigators were able to trace the last signal from Jessica’s mobile phone, which she had with her at the time of her disappearance, to a small area directly near Huntley’s home, the BBC reported in a November 6, 2003 article.
Three days later, Huntley was formally charged with the murder of the girls. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, was also arrested for assisting an offender, as well as conspiring to obstruct the course of justice. Carr provided Huntley with an alibi, suggesting to police, that at the time the girls were abducted she was alone at the house with Huntley. However, investigators learned that she was actually in another town visiting her mother at the time of the girls’ abduction and murders.
Despite the emerging facts and evidence, Huntley and Carr maintained their innocence claiming they had nothing to do with the girls’ deaths. None-the-less, they were jailed until the upcoming trial scheduled to take place in November 2003. If they were found guilty, the maximum sentence they could receive was life in prison.
On November 3, 2003, the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr began at London’s Old Bailey Courthouse. During the first few days, a jury of five men and seven women were selected to overhear the cases. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Moses, presided over the trial that engrossed the country and captured worldwide attention.
The prosecution’s case, led by Richard Latham QC, began its opening arguments two days into the trial. Latham suggested that he would present the court with overwhelming evidence that Huntley brutally murdered the girls and tried to cover it up. He also claimed that there was evidence that Carr misled the police to protect Huntley, although it was likely that she was not directly involved in the murders. During his statement, Latham went on to retrace the girls’ last moments and Huntley’s movements around the time of their deaths. Near the end of the first day the prosecutor had already laid down the foundation of his case. It was hoped that the evidence would speak for itself.
Just as Latham promised, over the subsequent weeks he presented the jury with significant evidence and testimony that pointed to Huntley as the primary culprit in the murders. The jury learned that at the time Jessica’s phone switched off, the last signal sent indicated that she was in the “immediate area” of Huntley’s house, the BBC reported in their November article. Moreover, they were presented with phone records that proved that Carr was a hundred miles away in Grimsby visiting her mother at the time of the girls’ disappearance, whereas Huntley was traced to the location in and around Soham. Thus, there was little if any chance that Carr was present when the girls were abducted and murdered.
Other significant evidence introduced by the prosecution included fingerprints on the bin liner that were matched with Huntley. Furthermore, according to the 2003 BBC News article, “The Soham Trial: Key Evidence,” witnesses testified that they had seen Huntley sanitizing his red Ford Fiesta car, “thoroughly washing and vacuuming it the day after the girls disappeared.” He also, “ripped out the lining of the boot and replaced it with domestic carpet and he got rid of a throw (rug) that had been covering the back seat,” the article further suggested.
The same day he cleaned his car, Huntley also replaced all four tires, even though the tread was not worn down. A November 6, 2003 BBC News article suggested that Huntley offered the mechanic who performed the work 10 to record a false registration number. Along with the fiber and hair evidence, there were also traces of chalk, concrete, soil and other materials found in and beneath Huntley’s car, which were forensically linked to the area where the girls’ bodies were found, the BBC stated in their article “The Soham Trial: Key Evidence.”
defense attorney
Three weeks into the trial Huntley made a momentous admission. After vigorously denying he had any knowledge of the girls’ whereabouts or how they died, he finally confessed that he was responsible for the girls’ deaths, although he suggested they were accidental. His admission was a significant boost for the prosecution’s case, even though they believed his story to be riddled with inconsistencies.
Stephen Coward QC offered a statement from Huntley who was not in court because he was supposedly ill, claiming that the girls stopped by his house to talk to Ms. Carr and during that time Holly had a nosebleed. The BBC reported in a November 25, 2003 article that Huntley led the girls to his bathroom where he purportedly tended to Holly’s nosebleed in the bathtub. The article further suggested that while reaching over to wet pieces of toilette paper, Huntley accidentally knocked Holly backwards and into the bathtub, which was half full of water.
Huntley claimed that Jessica began screaming and in an effort to quiet her he put his hand over her mouth and in the process “accidentally” suffocated her. He said that he then looked at Holly in the bathtub and realized that she was also dead. Huntley further admitted to putting the girls in his car and driving them to Lakenheath, cutting off their clothes, which he later took back to Soham and burning the bodies with petrol.
That same week, Carr also made a confession. According to a November 27, 2003 BBC News article, Carr told police that, “it was her idea to claim she was in the house she shared with Mr. Huntley on the day Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared.” Carr said that in an effort to protect her boyfriend, who she believed was innocent of murder, she used a “crib card” with alibi details to assist her in lying more effectively to police. Carr alleged that she lied because she wanted to prevent a 1998 “false” rape allegation against Huntley from being unearthed again. The rape allegation was dropped shortly after it was reported because police were able to establish that Huntley was in a different location from the young woman at the time the supposed assault took place.
Nevertheless, even though Huntley confessed to killing the girls, he continued to claim that Jessica and Holly’s deaths were accidental. However, he did admit to one charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, the BBC News reported in their December 2003 article. Huntley’s admission of guilt ushered in the end of the prosecution’s case and the beginning of the defenses opening arguments. The defense team would have its work cut out trying to prove that the deaths were accidental, as Huntley purported. It was clear, if not to the jury then to everyone else that the likelihood of Huntley unintentionally killing the girls was doubtful. The reality of what occurred that day was in all probability much grimmer.
On December 1, 2003 the defense team began arguing its case. The first witness they brought to the stand was Huntley who gave his latest version of what happened on the day he killed the girls. After describing how he “accidentally” killed them, he told of how he tried to conceal the truth from his family, Carr and the police because of his shame and fear of not being believed. Despite his purported fears and shame, he still had the audacity to seek out and console Holly’s father shortly after the girls’ disappearance and appear in countless television interviews.
During Latham’s cross-examination of the defendant, he accused Huntley of lying and changing his story to fit the facts, the BBC News reported in a December 2, 2003 article. According to the article, Latham “called the nosebleed story ‘rubbish’” and said that he was tempted the moment the girls arrived at his doorstep. Latham further suggested that Huntley deliberately intended to murder the girls, which would account for why he made no attempt to resuscitate them after their deaths. Yet, according to a December 2, 2003 BBC News article, Huntley said that he failed to react because he was “frozen by panic” and was visibly angered by Latham’s accusations that he deliberately drowned Holly and suffocated Jessica.
After three days on the stand, Huntley stepped down and Carr’s testimony began. A December 3, 2003 BBC News article reported that Carr’s lawyer, Michael Hubbard QC told the court that his client had “no control” over the events that unfolded on that fateful day. He further suggested that the only reason why Carr was facing charges was for lying to protect Huntley. Carr testified that she didn’t think Huntley could ever commit murder and said that had she known at the time he was responsible for Holly and Jessica’s deaths she would have “been out of that house like a shot straight to the police or straight to the nearest person I could talk to, to tell them,” BBC News reported.
Following Carr’s testimony, the defense and prosecution teams presented their closing statements. According to a December 10, 2003 BBC News article, Latham claimed that Huntley and Carr were “convincing liars” and that the girls “had to die” in order to satisfy Huntley’s “own selfish self-interest.” It was further suggested in the article that, “it was not possible for Holly to have drowned in six to eight inches of bath water with two other people (Jessica and Huntley) within arm’s reach” or for Jessica to have died from his placing one had over her mouth to quiet her. Latham suggested that Huntley’s motive for murdering the girls was sexual in nature, although there was no evidence of sexual assault due to the advanced state of decomposition of the girls’ bodies.
While he was summing up his case, Coward asked the jury to “resist pressure” and outside influences when making their final decision about Huntley, BBC News reported on December 10, 2003. According to the article Coward said that the prosecution treated the deaths as “sinister from the start.” Yet, he submitted that the only evidence available suggested that their deaths were “entirely innocent from the start,” the article reported.
When Carr’s lawyer, Hubbard, addressed the jury, he claimed that his client admitted to telling lies to protect Huntley but was in no way responsible for the murders. He further suggested that she initially did not believe that he committed the crimes but had she known she wouldn’t have protected him. Moreover, he claimed that it was Huntley that devised the alibi, not his client but that she went along with it because she feared he would be implicated in the murders.
Following the closing arguments, the judge asked the jury to take care when considering a verdict and to judge the case on evidence alone, BBC News reported on December 11, 2003. On December 12th the jury retired to deliberate. It took them approximately five days to come to their conclusion.
On December 17th they returned their verdict. Carr was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, yet she was cleared of two counts of assisting an offender. She received a three-and-a-half year prison sentence.
After rejecting Huntley’s story, the jury found him guilty of the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. He was sentenced to two life terms in prison. During sentencing the judge said, “you murdered them both. You are the one person who knows how you murdered them, you are the one person who knows why,” the BBC News reported. It was hoped that he would one day reveal more about his motivation for committing the atrocious acts.
As news of the verdict swept across the country, previous allegations made against Huntley surfaced. Between 1995 and 1999 there were four accusations of underage sex involving girls between 13 and 15 years of age, three rape allegations and one of indecent assault against an 11-year-old girl. However, a lack of evidence and the refusal of some of the girls to press charges made it difficult for investigators to secure a conviction. Huntley had also been arrested and charged with burglary in 1996, but the charges were eventually dropped because, like with the other allegations, there was not enough evidence.
On the day of Huntley’s conviction, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that he would launch an inquiry into why the earlier accusations against Huntley were not brought to the forefront, as well as “the vetting system” that failed to stop Huntley from getting a job as a school caretaker, the BBC reported. There was also a great deal of concern about how the police dealt with the investigation into Holly and Jessica’s murders. The inquiry, which opened on January 13, 2004 and lasted approximately five weeks, found that there were indeed critical errors made by police and other organizations involved in the intelligence system.
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Interestingly, most of the complaints attributed to Huntley were never linked together because of miscommunication between the bureaus involved in handling the cases and procedural flaws. For example, a February 26, 2004 BBC news article suggested that some of the sex attack reports that were sent to the divisional intelligence bureau were accidentally deleted “during a ”weeding’ process of the records systems by civilian staff in July 2000. Such problems made it difficult for investigators to gain a full understanding of the potential danger Huntley posed to society. Had investigators had access to all of the reports and been able to link all of the allegations together, they would have likely discovered that he was a budding serial rapist with a fascination for vulnerable young girls. The information could have also led to closer scrutiny of Huntley and may have even prevented the deaths of Holly and Jessica.
Other problems included “check system” mistakes made by the Cambridgeshire police force, which resulted in Huntley getting a job at Soham College. A December 17, 2003 BBC News article stated that during police background checks into Huntley on a national police database, his name and date of birth were entered incorrectly, thus revealing no record of a criminal history. His employers claimed that had they known about his past, Huntley would have never been hired at the school.
There were also problems discovered concerning the investigation into Holly and Jessica’s murders. A 2004 Wikipedia.org article stated that from the onset of the investigation it took the police nearly two weeks before they were aware of Huntley’s previous sexual allegations. Moreover, the article claimed that his story was “not effectively checked out early during the investigation.”
Karen McVeigh reported in a June 23, 2004 Scotsman article that Sir Michael Bichard delivered his own damning report concerning the investigation into Huntley’s previous allegations. Bichard suggested in the article that the Humberside police force’s intelligence system, which dealt with some of the cases, was “fundamentally flawed” and its child-protection database “largely worthless.” According to McVeigh, many of the investigative problems were blamed on the chief constable of Humberside, David Westwood who allegedly “failed to identify Ian Huntley as a danger.”
chief constable
Based on Bichard’s report and the inquiry, Blunkett decided to suspend Westwood, despite the disapproval of the police authority and Holly’s parents who believed it was unfair for him to be the sole target of blame. After 12 weeks of heated controversy over Westwood’s handling of Huntley’s previous allegations, his suspension was lifted. Westwood, who “believed he was uniquely placed to carry forward the necessary reforms to his force,” struck a deal with Blunkett that he would retire from his post in March 2005, BBC News reported on September 14, 2004. The Humberside police force intelligence system, as well as others around the UK, are currently undergoing major changes to prevent other criminals like Huntley from slipping through the net and further endangering the lives of innocents like Holly and Jessica.
In the midst of the controversy surrounding the inquiry into the Soham murders, Huntley allegedly made an unexpected confession from his jail cell in Belmarsh prison. According to Nathan Yates’ July 19, 2004 article in The Mirror, Huntley’s parents claimed that their son admitted to them that he deliberately killed Jessica Chapman. The article quoted Huntley’s father, Kevin, saying, “He told us how he did it. He needs to tell us more about what happened to Holly.” The couple is hoping that their son will come clean about how the girls died so that Jessica and Holly’s family’s can finally know the truth.
Russell Jackson reported in a July 19, 2004 Scotsman article that there is a possibility that the confession was recorded on the prison’s surveillance equipment. Jackson quoted a spokesman for the Cambridge police saying that they were, “keen to examine any fresh information” regarding the case. It is unclear whether Huntley’s admission of guilt would lead to perjury charges, since his confession directly contradicts his trial testimony.
In September 2003, Huntley faced even more problems when one of his earliest victims threatened to pursue legal action against him for sexually assaulting her seven years earlier when she was 11-years-old. Hailey Edwards, now 18, claimed that Huntley repeatedly attacked her when she was with him in the woods close to her home in Humberston, Matt Nixson of The Mail reported on September 5, 2004. Edwards, who feared for her life at the time, waited more than half a year before filing a report with the police. An investigation was launched, yet there was not enough evidence to proceed with the case.
Edwards suffered psychologically since the attack and wants to make certain Huntley is brought to justice. According to Nixson’s article, Edwards was quoted saying, “I will do everything I can to make sure he gets to court to explain what he did to me. I think if it comes to that I will be able to get closure and try to move on.” The police have since questioned Huntley about the attack and a decision will be made by the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether to charge him, Phil Nettleton reported in a September 5, 2004 The People article. The chances of Huntley ever being released from prison will significantly diminish if he is charged and found guilty of the assault. At least, that is what many people hope.
BBC News (November 6, 2003). “Soham trial: ‘Crucial’ phone evidence.”
BBC News (November 6, 2003). “Huntley’s hair ‘found in girls’ clothes’.”
BBC News (November 24, 2003). “Huntley admits cutting up clothes.”
BBC News (2003). “The Soham trial: Key evidence (the car).”
BBC News (November 25, 2003). “Girls ‘died in Huntley’s bathroom.’”
BBC News (November 27, 2003). “Carr said fake alibi was her idea.”
BBC News (December 1, 2003). “Huntley admits ‘I’m responsible.’”
BBC News (December 2, 2003). “Huntley ‘invented defense to fit.’”
BBC News (December 2, 2003). “Huntley’s anger at drowning claim.”
BBC News (December 3, 2003). “Carr: I’d have been out like a shot.”
BBC News (December 10, 2003). “Soham pair ‘convincing liars.’”
BBC News (December 10, 2003). “Soham jury told ‘resist pressure.’”
BBC News (December 11, 2003). “Maxine ‘had an axe to grind’-judge.”
BBC News (December 17, 2003). “Huntley found guilty of Soham murders.”
BBC News (December 17, 2003). “How Huntley slipped through the net.”
BBC News (December 17, 2003). “Previous allegations against Huntley.”
BBC News (December 17, 2003). “Blunkett launches Huntley inquiry.”
BBC News (March 11, 2004). “Police admit vetting weakness.”
BBC News (September 13, 2004). “Chief constable returns to duties.”
Jackson, Russell (July 19, 2004). “Huntley tells his parents that Jessica killing was deliberate.” The Scotsman.
McVeigh, Karen (June 23, 2004). “Police chief blamed for failures over Soham killer.” The Scotsman.
McVeigh, Karen (June 28, 2004). “Soham father defends embattled police chief.” The Scotsman.
Nettleton, Phil (September 5, 2004). “Cop quiz Huntley over sex attack on girl of 11: New probe for Holly and Jessica beast.” The People.
Nixson, Matt (September 5, 2004). “Huntley faces new police quiz over sex attack on 11-year old.” The Mail on Sunday.
Wikipedia.org (2004). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Huntley Soham murders.
Yates, Nathan (July 19, 2004). “Huntley’s jail confession over Jessica murder.” The Mirror.