The Soham Murders - Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman

On Sunday August 4th 2002, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were reported missing at 9.45pm by their parents after the girls hadn't come home from buying sweets. Earlier on in the day the girls had been at a barbecue at Holly's home in Red house Gardens, Soham, Cambridgeshire. At about 6.15pm the girls went out to go buy some sweets and on their way back walked past the house of Ian Huntley the caretaker at the local school but the girls never came home. After the girls were reported missing the police released a photograph taken only hours before the girls disappearance of the them wearing Manchester United replica football shirts and a physical description of each of them. 

In the early days of the search for the missing girls a women living in the village of Little Thelford claimed to have seen two girls who matched the appearance and clothing of that of Holly and Jessica walking past her home on the morning after they were reported missing. On August 7th police seized a white van from a caravan park in Wenthworth, around 10 miles from Soham.

On August 9th CCTV footage of the girls a few minutes before they disappeared what released to the public, showing the girls arriving at the local sports centre. On the same day police looked onto the possibility that the girls had arranged to meet up with someone from a chat room, this was later ruled out. On August 10th a reconstruction of the girls movements the day of their disappearance was produced using child actors in the hope it would encourage witnesses to come forward.

Police received information from a local taxi driver that he saw a driver of a Green car (either a Peugeot 405 or Vauxhal Vectra) struggling with two children and driving "erratically" South of Soham and onto the Studland Park housing estate in Newmarket the evening the girls disappeared. This sighting was made public on August 13th. A dog walker that evening alerted police to two mounds of earth at Warren Hill just outside Newmarket. The suggestion was that this might have been the resting place for the two missing girls. An overnight examination revealed that there was no trace of the girls and the mounds were in fact badger setts.

About the same time all this occurred police in Staffordshire were claiming the girls disappearance was linked to an abduction in the county the previous year when a girl aged six had survived an attack by an abductor who was still at large and whose green Ford Mondeo was identified as having number plates on which were reported stolen in Peterborough. The same man was believe to have also followed a girl aged 12 in the same area when his car was fitted with number plates stolen in Nottinghamshire. That same vehicle had since been seen in Glatton, Cambridgeshire.

During the two weeks after the girls disappearance, Ian Huntley appeared in several TV interviews speaking of the shock in the local community. One reporter suggested to him that he may have been the last person to see the girls before they disappeared, Ian Huntley replied "yeah, that's what it seems like". Ian Huntley said that the girls disappearance was "absolutely a mystery", during the second week of searching for the girls he told TV crews that "while there is no news there's still that glimmer of hope and that's basically what we're all hanging on to".

Maxine Carr, Ian Huntley's girlfriend and a teaching assistant at St. Andrews primary school which the girls attended was also interviewed by the press after she returned from her family home in Grimsby during the first week of the search for the missing girls. She showed a reported a card given to her by Holly on the last day of the school year. Maxine Carr told the reporter "she was just lovely, really lovely" and then urged the missing girls to "just come home".

The police noticed straight away that Maxine Carr was speaking about Holly in the past tense ( as if she was no longer alive), although the police were still treating the girls disappearance as a missing persons case and not a possible murder investigation.

On August 16th, twelve days after the girls were reported missing, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were first interviewed by the police and agreed to provide witness statements during the seven hours of questioning before being released.
The same night with Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr under police watch at separate locations outside Soham, police searched their home as well as the grounds of Soham village college and recovered items of "major importance". It was not made public at the time but the items recovered from the school grounds were clothing that matched those of the missing girls when they were last seen including their Manchester United shirts. Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested in the early hours of August 17th, on suspicion of murder. (This was the first time that the police had announced that they feared the girls had died.)

On the afternoon of August 17th two bodies belonging to girls were found in a ditch near the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, about 12 miles from Soham.
On August 21st the bodies were formally identified as those of the missing girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The girls had been missing for thirteen days when their bodies were found, with the police stating that both bodies were "severely decomposed and partially skeletonised". Within a week DNA tests confirmed that the bodies were definitely Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. It  was established that the girls had almost certainly not died at the location where their bodies had been found and had been murdered at another location then moved to the location where their bodies had been found.

On August 20th 2002, Ian Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and was detained under section 48 of the mental health act at Rampton secure hospital in Nottinghamshire, where his mental state was assessed to determine whether he suffered from an mental illness and whether he was fit to stand trial.
Christopher Clark a consultant psychiatrist, carried out the assessment and stated "Although Mr Huntley made clear attempts to appear insane, I have no doubt that the man currently, and at the time of the murders was both physically and mentally sound and therefore, if he is found guilty, carried out the murders totally aware of his actions".
A judge ruled on October 8th 2002, that he was therefore fit to stand trial. After this ruling Ian Huntley was moved to Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire where on June 9th 2003 he attempted suicide by taking an overdose of antidepressants which he had stashed in his cell. At the time there were fears that he would die as a result of the overdose but within 48 hours he was back in prison, as a result of this he was later transferred to Belmarsh prison in London. It was later revealed that the reason for the mental health assessment referral was because he had refused to answer police questions and dribbled throughout their attempts leaving them no option. People at his first court appearance described him as a "blank-eyed silent zombie" who twitched and shuffled in the dock.

Ian Huntley's trial opened on November 5th 2003 at the Old Bailey in London before Mr Justice Moses. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman's families were present for the duration of the trial. Ian Huntley admitted that the girls had died in his home but he claimed that he had accidentally knocked Holly into the full bath while helping her with a nosebleed causing her to drown. (He said that he had been outside cleaning his dog when the girls walked past so the reason the bath was full was to bathe his dog.) Jessica witnessed this and he claimed that he accidentally suffocated her while attempting to stifle her screams and by the time he realised exactly what he was doing it was too late to save either of the girls and based on this admitted manslaughter.(The police suspect that he killed the girls in a jealous rage as reportedly minutes before seeing the girls he had slammed the phone down on Maxine following an argument. Huntley reportedly suspected that Maxine had been cheating on him, his mother also said she suspects this to be the case. The police found no evidence that the crime was premeditated.) He admitted that he had returned to the site of the girls bodies several days after killing them to set the bodies alight, in what the police saw as an attempt to destroy any forensic evidence. Patricia Wiltshire was able to identify the approximate time the bodies were placed and provide evidence that proved Ian Huntley to be the killer based on analysis of the soil environment.
The jury rejected his claims that the girls died accidentally and on December 17th 2003 returned a majority verdict of guilty on both counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term to be decided at a later date by Lord Chief Justice.

Maxine Carr provided Ian Huntley with a false alibi claiming to be with him at the time of the murders when she was in fact in Grimsby. She was charged with perverting the cause of justice on August 21st 2002 and on January 16th 2003 she was also charged with two counts of assisting an offender.
The police investigation suggested that she knew that Ian Huntley had committed the murders but had provided him with an alibi in an attempt to stop him from being accused. She pleaded guilty to the first charge of perverting the cause of justice and not guilty to the second charge of two counts of assisting an offender.

Her failure to expose Huntley's lies in the early stages of the investigation (before either of them were arrested) meant that the police initially eliminated Huntley as a suspect; due to her false statement it took police nearly two weeks of arrest and charge him.

The court accepted that she had only lied to police to protect Huntley because she believed his claims of innocence and so found her not guilty of assisting an offender, deciding that she had been unaware that he had committed the murders. She was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. She was released on May 14th 2004, on probation after serving 21 months. (Including the 16 months she was on remand.) She was given a new secret identity to protect her from threats of attack from member of the public that had been made to her during her time in remand as well as during the trial.

In February 2005 she won an injunction granting her lifelong anonymity and in 2011 she gave birth to her first child with her husband, the anonymity order extends to include the child meaning that the child will never known of their mothers previous identity.

It was revealed after the trail that Ian Huntley had been investigated in the past for sexual offences and burglary but had been able to work in a school as none of the investigations resulted in a conviction.

In August 1995, When Ian Huntley was 21 years old, a joint investigation was launched by Grimsby police and social services when a 15 year old girl stated that she had been having a sexual relationship with him. The police didn't pursue the case in a accordance with the girls wishes.

In March 1996, Ian Huntley was charged in connection with a burglary that took place in Grimsby on November 15th 1995, when he and an accomplice allegedly stole electrical goods, jewellery and cash. The case reached court but was ordered to lie of file. (" A criminal charge is allowed to lie on file when the presiding judge agrees that there is enough evidence for a case to be made but that it is not in the public interest for a prosecution to proceed, usually because the defendant has admitted to other, often more serious charges. No admission to the charges is made by the defendant and no verdict is recorded against them. Charges that have lain on file may be reinstated at a later date but only with the permission of the trial judge or the court of appeal".) 
Also in March 1996, Ian Huntley was investigated again over allegations of having sexual relations with an underage girl but again was not charged. A month later he was investigated again over allegations of underage sex but this too did not result in a charge. The same thing happened a month later when he was investigated over allegations of having sex with a 13 year old girl.

In April 1998, he was arrested on suspicion of raping a women, he admitted having sex but claimed it was consensual and the police decided not to charge him. A month later he was charged and remanded in custody for rape after an 18 year old girl claimed he had raped her on her way home from a nightclub. The charge was dropped a week later when the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) reviewed CCTV images from the nightclub and determined that there was no chance of conviction.

In July 1998, he was investigated again by police over allegations that he indecently assaulted an 11 year old girl in September 1997 but he was never charged. (In April 2007 he confessed that he had in fact attacked the girl.)
He was again investigated in February 1999 over allegations of raping a 17 year old girl but again no charges were made.

The final allegation came in July 1999, when a woman was raped and Ian Huntley who by now police now suspected was a serial sex offender was interviewed. He provided a DNA sample and had an alibi provided by his girlfriend Maxine Carr. The woman said that Ian Huntley was not the man who raped her, this was the only case where he was not identified or named as the attacker.

The Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered an enquiry into these revelations.
The enquiry chaired by Sir Michael Bichard ordered the suspension of David Westwood chief of Humberside police. The enquiry criticised Humberside police for deleting information relating to previous allegations against Ian Huntley and criticised Cambridgeshire Constabulary for not following vetting guidelines.
An added complication in the vetting procedures was the fact that Ian Huntley had applied for the caretakers job under the name Ian Nixon, although he had stated on the form that he was once legally known as Ian Huntley. It is believed that Humberside Police either did not check under the name Ian Huntley on the police computer (if they had they would have discovered the burglary charge left on file) or did not check either name.

There was also a concern raised over the police investigation into the girls murders as it took police two weeks before the becoming aware of Huntley's previous sexual allegations (They were contacted by a woman who had known him before and was aware that he had once been charged with rape.) and although he had been identified as the last person to see either of the girls his story was not properly checked out in the early stages of the investigation.

Howard Gilbert, then headteacher of the school stated that if he had any knowledge of Huntley's burglary charge he would never of had employed his as one of the key responsibilities of his role as a caretaker was to ensure the security of the school grounds, a role unfit for a suspected burglar.

The Soham murders led to a tightening of procedures in the criminal records bureau system which checks the criminal background of people who work with children following criticism that the system had weaknesses and loopholes.

I remember this happening I was probably about 8 years old and it was the summer holidays and I was playing in the garden at my next door neighbours (this was the day after the girls had disappeared) and where we live there's a massive field behind us that anyone can walk through and my mum suddenly came outside and shouted at me because I wasn't supposed to be in the garden (I'd said that we were going to stay inside of her house) which I was confused about like why can't we be in the garden. I climbed over the fence to my house and went inside with my mum it was then that I found out that two girls had gone missing. Me and my neighbour theorise what had happened to the girls we thought that they had runaway or had been taken but we both thought that they would find the girls and that they'd be fine because we were 8 and 9 and I don't think either of us knew that there was such a thing a murder. Obviously we later found out that the girls had been murdered but not through our parents telling us, I think we overheard our parents talking about it. And up until I grew up that was all I knew, even doing this research I found out things I hadn't known before like how many times he had been investigated for sexual offences, looking at it now as a 23 year old I find it absolutely crazy that a man like that was ever allowed any where near children. The police had suspected him as a serial sex offender why had he not been monitored, checked up on and why had a man police thought to be a serial sex offender had his previous sex allegations deleted from file.

What are your thoughts on this case?
If you guys have any other information about this case please let me know.
If any information of this case is wrong then I apologise I researched it from various sources.

Holly Wells and Jessica chapman image from: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/nintchdbpict000000495690.jpg?strip=all&w=871&quality=100