Ian Huntley, convicted of murdering 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, has died after being attacked in prison. The case, which involved a massive manhunt and intense national media coverage, was one of Britain's most notorious crimes. His death is under police investigation.
Main Topics Covered:
1. The death of convicted murderer Ian Huntley following a prison attack.
2. The 2002 murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and the subsequent investigation.
3. The profound national impact and grief caused by the case.
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Ian Huntley, Whose Murder of Schoolgirls Appalled Britain, Dies After Prison Attack
The 2002 deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and the manhunt that led to a local school caretaker, shook the U.K.
Ian Huntley, a British man convicted of killing two young girls in one of Britain’s most notorious murder cases, died on Saturday, the authorities said, more than a week after being attacked in the prison where he was held.
Mr. Huntley, 52, was serving life sentences for the 2002 murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both of whom were 10 years old.
The two girls, from the small town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, disappeared on a Sunday in August 2002 after leaving a family barbecue.
Intense news coverage of the search for Holly and Jessica transfixed the country. An image of the girls in red Manchester United soccer shirts became ubiquitous in television and newspaper reports.
As journalists descended on Soham, Mr. Huntley gave interviews in which he claimed that he had briefly spoken to the girls the day they disappeared, and saw them walk away.
After two weeks, their bodies were found in a ditch several miles from the town, prompting an outpouring of grief.
A New York Times report described crowds gathering to pay tribute at a local church, hundreds of toys arriving from British children, and a 14,000 messages of condolences accumulating on a webpage set up by the police.
The authorities charged Mr. Huntley, who worked as a caretaker in the town’s high school, with their murders.
Mr. Huntley’s girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr, provided a false alibi for him, for which she was convicted of conspiring with him to pervert the course of justice.
Mr. Huntley was serving two life sentences for the murders, with a minimum of 40 years in prison. He had been in HMP Frankland, a high-security prison for inmates serving long sentences in County Durham, in northeast England.
The police said on Saturday that Mr. Huntley died after being attacked in prison. He had been hospitalized, the Durham Constabulary said, after being seriously injured in a prison workshop on Feb. 26.
(Inmates in the prison, according to a government website, have access to workshops that teach industrial cleaning, painting, recycling, upholstery and food preparation.)
Mr. Huntley suffered “significant head trauma” when another prisoner bludgeoned him with a makeshift weapon, according to unnamed sources cited by the BBC. Mr. Huntley had been attacked previously, including a throat injury in 2010 that required 21 stitches.
Britain’s Ministry of Justice, which oversees prisons, also confirmed that Mr. Huntley died on Saturday in a hospital. They did not share details about his death but said that the police were investigating.
“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,” a spokeswoman for the ministry said in a statement.
“They were our darkest days,” said Kevin Wells, the father of Holly Wells, in a 2015 interview, describing the time of her murder. The family has since focused on charity work helping bereaved families. He added, “We think of Holly every day.”
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
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