SOHAM: Since when did 2 + 2 = 5?

WildCat

2 years ago

IAN KEVIN HUNTLEY MURDERPEDIA

The Soham murders were a high profile murder case in August 2002 of two ten year old girls Holly Marie Wells (born October 4, 1991-c.August 4, 2002) and Jessica Aimee Chapman (born September 1, 1991-c.August 4, 2002) in Soham. were murdered by Ian Huntley (born 31 January 1974).

Beginnings

In February 1999, the 25-year-old Huntley met 22-year-old Maxine Carr at Hollywood’s nightclub in Grimsby. They shared a flat together in Barton-upon-Humber. Carr found a job packing fish at the local fish processing factory while Huntley worked as a barman. He also travelled to Cambridgeshire on his days off to help his father who worked as a school caretaker in the village of Littleport near Ely. He enjoyed the work so much that in September 2001 he applied for the position of caretaker at Soham Village College, a secondary school in a small town between Cambridge and Ely, after the previous caretaker was sacked for having an inappropriate relationship with a pupil.

Huntley was accepted for the post of caretaker at Soham Village College and he began work on 26 November 2001.

Early life

Huntley was born in Grimsby on 31 January 1974, the first son of Kevin and Linda Huntley. By the time he started secondary school in September 1985, he was a target of bullying, which only increased with his founding and active promotion of the Grimsby and Immingham chapter of the Bros fan club.

At the age of 13 the problem had escalated to such an extent that he was transferred to a different school. He left school in the summer of 1990 with 5 A-C grades in his GCSEs but decided to go into employment rather than study for A-levels.

Throughout the 1990s Huntley worked at various unskilled low-salary jobs. He was also investigated by the police on at least ten occasions for rape, underage sex, indecent assault and burglary. One rape and one burglary resulted in criminal charges but in both cases the charges were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service because it was decided that there was not enough evidence. In October 1993, he was convicted of riding an unlicenced and uninsured motorcycle and received a £250 fine.

His parents Kevin and Linda separated in the early 1990’s and Linda later had a lesbian relationship, but the couple are now living together again. Huntley has a brother called Wayne, who was born on 16 August 1975. He is married to Claire Evans (born 1976). Ian himself also married Claire, three days before his 21st birthday in 1995, but they separated not long after, although they had to wait four years before obtaining a divorce as Huntley refused to grant one until January 1999. Wayne married his brother’s ex-wife in July 2000.

The Disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman

On August 4, 2002, best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both 10, 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.

A Heart Wrenching Discovery

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.

The murders

On 4 August 2002, at around 6 p.m., two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, walked past Huntley’s rented house in College Close. Huntley asked them to come into the house. He said that Carr was in the house as well, since she was a learning support assistant at St Andrew’s Primary, the girls’ school, and had got along well with them, although in fact she had gone to visit family back in Grimsby. Shortly after Holly and Jessica entered 5 College Close, Huntley murdered them.

His reasons for committing the murders may never be known, but minutes before seeing the girls Huntley had slammed the telephone down on Carr after a furious argument, as he was suspicious that she was cheating on him. The police believe that Huntley killed the girls in a jealous rage. There may have also been a sexual motive. It seems likely that either of, or possibly both of these motives drove Huntley to kill the girls. The police found no evidence of preplanning, and later said that they would have expected to find it if it was there.

Police investigation

However the girls died, Huntley disposed of their bodies in a ditch 20 miles away and set them alight in a bid to destroy the forensic evidence. The search for the girls was one of the most highly publicised missing person searches in British history. They were found 13 days later, on 17 August 2002, twelve hours after their clothing was discovered in the grounds of Soham Village College and Huntley had been arrested. He was later charged with two counts of murder and sectioned under the Mental Health Act at Rampton Hospital before a judge decided that he was fit to stand trial.

Mental Assessment

Ian Huntley’s mental state was then assessed as to whether he suffered from a mental illness or not, and if he was fit to stand trial. This assessment took place at Rampton High Secure Hospital and was carried out by consultant psychiatrist, Dr Christopher Clark. Dr Clark stated in court that

“Although Mr Huntley made clear attempts to appear insane, I have no doubt that the man currently, and at the time of the murder, was both physically and mentally sound and therefore, if he is found guilty, carried out the murder totally aware of his actions.”

This left Huntley facing life imprisonment if a jury could be convinced of his guilt.

The Murder Trial

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.”

EVIDENCE PHOTOS (I clearly feel the need to point this out.. BUT WTF? I thought the clothes were burnt? these pics show they were HARDLY BURNT! Infact ALL are intact if somewhat black)

A Call for Justice

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 12^th the jury retired to deliberate. It took them approximately five days to come to their conclusion.

On December 17^th 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.

Piecing Together the Facts

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.

Huntley’s trial

Huntley was faced with two murder charges, while Carr was charged with perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender. Huntley admitted that the girls had died in his house, but claimed that he had accidentally knocked Holly into the bath while helping her control a nosebleed and had accidentally suffocated Jessica when she started to scream. But the jury rejected his claims that the girls had died accidentally and on 17 December 2003 returned a majority verdict of guilty on both charges.

Huntley was sentenced to life imprisonment, with his minimum term to be decided by the Lord Chief Justice at a later date. Carr was cleared of assisting an offender but found guilty of perverting the course of justice and jailed for three-and-a-half years, but she was freed under police protection after just 5 months because she had already spent 16 months on remand. She was provided with a new identity and lives under police protection.

After Huntley was convicted, it was revealed that he had been investigated in the past for sexual offences and burglary but had still been allowed to work in a school. Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered an inquiry into these failings, chaired by Sir Michael Bichard, and later ordered the suspension of David Westwood, Chief of Humberside Police.

The outcome of the inquiry criticised Humberside Police for deleting information relating to previous allegations against Huntley, as well as criticising Cambridgeshire Police for not following vetting guidelines. An added complication into the vetting procedures was the fact that Huntley had applied for the caretaker’s job under the name of Ian Nixon. It is believed that Humberside Police did not check under the name Huntley on the police computer – if they had then they would have discovered a burglary charge left on file – or they might not have checked at all.

Since being jailed, Huntley has reportedly admitted that he lied when giving evidence at his trial. He changed his story about the death of Jessica, having previously admitted to suffocating her in a panic. An audio tape recording of Huntley speaking to a relative at Wakefield Prison revealed that he allegedly killed her when she tried to call for help on her mobile phone.

On 29 September 2005, High Court Judge Mr Justice Moses, who presided over Huntley’s original trial, ruled that he should spend 40 years in prison before he can be considered for parole. He was not issued with a whole life tariff because the judge said there was no evidence of abduction of the two girls. The beginning of his sentence was backdated to October 2002, when he was first remanded in custody — not August 2002, as he was initially held in a mental hospital before a judge decided he was fit to stand trial.

It is not yet clear whether Huntley will appeal for his tariff to be reduced. Under its terms, he will not be able to apply for parole until October 2042, when he will be 68 years old. Even then, he will only be released from prison if he can convince the parole board that he is no longer a danger to the public.

The families of Huntley’s victims later revealed that they had been hoping for a whole life tariff to be set, but Huntley’s sentence was approximately three times heavier than the minimum terms imposed on most convicted murderers.

Sentence

Huntley was the last of more than 500 life sentence prisoners waiting to have minimum terms set by the Lord Chief Justice after the Home Secretary’s tariff-setting procedures were declared illegal. Anyone who committed a murder after 18 December 2003 would have their minimum term set by the trial judge. On September 29, 2005 it was announced that Huntley must remain in prison for at least 40 years – a minimum term which will not allow him to be released until at least 2042, by which time he will be 68 years old.

Carr

Maxine Carr provided a false alibi to police for Huntley, and was convicted of perverting the course of justice, Carr was found not guilty of assisting an offender, reflecting the court’s acceptance that Carr only lied to police to protect Huntley because she believed his claims of innocence. Carr had claimed to be with Huntley at the time of the murders, but was in Grimsby. Carr was released on probation on 14 May 2004 with a new secret identity for her protection.

Problems Abound

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 5 weeks, found that there were indeed critical errors made by police and other organizations involved in the intelligence system.

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.”

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.

Prison

On 14 September 2005 Huntley was scalded with boiling water when another inmate attacked him. A prison service spokesman said that due to the nature of high-security prisoners, “it’s impossible to prevent incidents of this nature occasionally happening”, but Huntley alleged that the prison authorities failed in their duty of care towards him, and launched a claim for £15,000 compensation.

Huntley was reportedly awarded £2,500 in legal aid to pursue this claim, a move strongly criticised by the Soham MP, Jim Paice, who insisted on tight restrictions on the use of public money for compensation, and said “The people I represent have no sympathy for him at all”. Huntley’s injuries meant that he did not attend the hearing at which his minimum term was decided.

The Wells and Chapman families received £11,000 in compensation for the murder of their daughters.

On 5 September 2006, Huntley was found unconscious in his prison cell, thought to have taken an overdose. He had previously taken an overdose of anti-depressants at Woodhill Prison in June 2003, while awaiting his trial. He was under police guard in hospital until 7 September, when he was returned to Wakefield Prison, prompting much reaction from many present at the scene as well as making the front pages of many of the UK papers the next morning. Following this attempted suicide his cell was cleared and a tape was found which was marked with Queen on one side and Meat Loaf on the other. This tape is thought to contain confessions from Ian Huntley on what he did and how he did it. It is believed that Huntley made the tape in return for anti-depressants from a fellow prisoner, who hoped to obtain and later sell the confession to the media upon his release.

On 28 March 2007, The Sun began publishing transcripts of Huntley’s taped confession.

On 23 January 2008, Ian Huntley was moved to Frankland (HM Prison) in County Durham.

On 21 March 2010, Huntley was taken to hospital, with media reports claiming that his throat had been slashed by another inmate. His injuries were not said to be life-threatening. The prisoner who wounded Huntley was later named as fellow life sentence prisoner and convicted armed robber Damien Fowkes. Huntley has since applied for a £20,000 compensation payout for his injuries.

Huntleys Admission of Murder

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.

After the Trial

Following the announcement of Huntley’s conviction, it emerged that various authorities were aware of allegations, from a number of sources, that he had committed one act of indecent assault, four acts of underage sex and three rapes. The only one of these allegations that resulted in a charge was a rape, and the charge was dropped before it came to court. Huntley had also been charged with burglary, but he was not convicted.

On the day of Huntley’s conviction for the girls’ murder, the Home Secretary David Blunkett announced an inquiry into the vetting system which allowed Huntley to get a caretaker’s job at a school despite four separate complaints about him reaching the social services and the allegations above.

One of the pertinent issues surfaced almost immediately when Humberside police (where all the alleged offences had taken place) stated that they believed that it was unlawful under the Data Protection Act to hold data regarding allegations which did not lead to a conviction; this was contradicted by other police forces who thought this too strict an interpretation of the Act.

There was also considerable concern about the police investigation into these murders. It took nearly two weeks before the police became aware of previous sexual allegations against Ian Huntley, and despite him being the last person to see either of the two children, his story was not effectively checked out early during the investigation.

Huntley had not been convicted of any of the underage sex, indecent assault or rape allegations, but his burglary charge had remained on file. Mr Howard Gilbert, the then head teacher of Soham Village College, later said that he would not have employed Huntley as a caretaker if he had been aware of the burglary charge, as one of Huntley’s key responsibilities in his role was to ensure security in the school grounds.

On November 25, 2004, The Sun newspaper published details of a tape-recording they obtained of Ian Huntley admitting that he had lied in court. He was quoted as saying “I said that Jessica died in the bathroom. She didn’t. She died in the living room. Everything happened as I said it did, apart from that.” He said that he killed Jessica after she tried to flee once she had realised her friend had been killed elsewhere in the house.

Huntley also claimed that he couldn’t live with the guilt of what he had done, and that he planned on committing suicide.

Huntley added that Carr had told him to burn the girls’ bodies after he murdered them, a claim which contradicted the jury’s opinion that Carr was not guilty of assisting an offender and had not known that Huntley had committed the murders.

The Bichard Inquiry

The inquiry was announced on December 18, 2003, and Sir Michael Bichard was appointed as the chairman. The stated purpose was:

“Urgently to enquire into child protection procedures in Humberside Police and Cambridgeshire Constabulary in the light of the recent trial and conviction of Ian Huntley for the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

In Particular to assess the effectiveness of the relevant intelligence-based record keeping, the vetting practises in those forces since 1995 and information sharing with other agencies, and to report to the Home Secretary on matters of local and national relevance and make recommendations as appropriate.”

The inquiry opened on Tuesday, January 13, 2004. The findings of the Bichard Inquiry were published in June 2004. Humberside and Cambridgeshire police forces were heavily criticised for their failings in maintaining intelligence records on Huntley.

The inquiry also recommends a registration scheme for people working with children and vulnerable adults, like the elderly. It also suggested a national system should be set up for police forces to share intelligence information. The report said there should also be a clear code of practice on record-keeping by all police forces.

The Police Reform Act 2002

Sir Michael Bichard’s report severely criticised the Chief Constable of Humberside Police, David Westwood, for ordering the destruction of criminal records of child abusers. Though supported by Humberside Police Authority, he was suspended by then Home Secretary David Blunkett, using powers granted under the Police Reform Act 2002 to order suspension as “necessary for the maintenance of public confidence in the force in question”. The suspension was later lifted, with Westwood agreeing to retire a year early, in March 2005.

The Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police, Tom Lloyd had also been criticised, as his force had failed to contact Humberside Police during the vetting procedure. Lloyd was criticised by the police inspectorate for being slow to cut a holiday short after the investigation had become the largest in the force’s history.

The inspectorate also criticised a ‘lack of grip’ on the investigation, which included nationally televised appeals by both footballer David Beckham and Detective Superintendent David Beck, who announced that he had left a message for abductors on Jessica’s mobile phone before the case was taken from him.

Another complication was that two of the Cambridgeshire police officers involved with the families of the murdered girls had become Operation Ore suspects a month before the murders. Antony Goodridge, one of the exhibits officers, later pleaded guilty to child pornography offences and was given a six-month sentence.

Detective Constable Brian Stevens, who had read a poem at the girls’ memorial service, was cleared of charges of indecent assault and child pornography offences after the poor presentation of prosecution evidence by computer expert Brian Underhill caused the trial to be stopped. Stevens was later convicted of a charge of perverting the course of justice after it was proved that he had given a false alibi to clear himself of the charges, and was imprisoned for eight months. The Stevens case may have affected other Operation Ore inquiries.

Tom Lloyd announced his resignation in June 2005 following accusations that he had become extremely drunk at the Association of Chief Police Officers’ annual conference and had pestered a senior female official

Ian Huntley: The Soham Murderer

In the early evening of 4th August 2002, two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were on their way to buy sweets when they walked past Huntley’s rented house in College Close.

Biography

Ian Kevin Huntley was born into a working class home in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, on 31st January 1974, the first son of Kevin and Linda Huntley. An asthma sufferer, he had a turbulent time at school, often being the target of school bullying, and this problem escalated until, aged 13, he was forced to change schools. He left school in 1990 and declined to continue his studies to A-level, despite reasonable GCSE grades, choosing instead to go directly into employment.

In the years after he left school, Huntley already seemed to have developed an interest in young girls, and he was seen out with 13-year-old girls when he was eighteen. In December 1994, Huntley met 18-year-old Claire Evans, embarked on a whirlwind romance, and married her within weeks. The marriage was short-lived, however, and she left Huntley within days, choosing to move in with Huntley’s younger brother Wayne, instead. An enraged Huntley refused to grant his wife a divorce until 1999, preventing his brother’s marriage to Evans.

Following the collapse of his marriage, Huntley became more nomadic, moving from one rented flat to the next, and changing jobs frequently. He had a succession of relationships, one of which was with a 15-year-old girl, with whom he fathered a daughter in 1998. A subsequent enquiry revealed that, between 1995 and 2001, Huntley had sexual contacts with eleven underage girls, ranging between 11 and 17 years old.

On 7th January 1998 he appeared at Grimsby Crown Court charged with having burgled a neighbour’s house, and in May 1998, he was charged with the rape of an 18-year-old girl in Grimsby. Neither case proceeded to court due to lack of evidence, but the rape allegation tainted him substantially.

In February 1999 he met 22-year-old Maxine Carr at a nightclub, and they moved in together after 4 weeks. The relationship endured despite some turbulent rows, and they moved to Littleport, near Soham, in 2001, where Huntley took a job at the Soham Village Centre as the manager of a team of caretakers.

In September 2001 he applied for the post of caretaker at Soham Village College, and in November 2001, despite his history of sexual contact with minors, he was awarded the position. Carr was employed as a teaching assistant at the local primary school.

The Crimes

In the early evening of 4th August 2002, two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were on their way to buy sweets when they walked past Huntley’s rented house in College Close. Huntley saw them and asked them in, claiming that Carr, who was known to the girls through her work at their school, was also at home. Carr, in fact, was away visiting relatives at the time, and within a short time of Holly & Jessica having entered the house, Huntley had murdered both of them.

Huntley used his car to transport their bodies some 20 miles away, where he dumped them in a ditch and set them alight, in a bid to destroy the forensic evidence.

Later that evening, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were reported missing and a police search began at around midnight. Over the next two weeks the search escalated to become one of the most widespread and publicised in British history.

Several witnesses came forward, including Huntley, who claimed to have seen the girls shortly before they disappeared, and his home was searched routinely in order to eliminate him as a suspect. Huntley also granted television interviews to the press, and his unusual interest, together with his emotional involvement, made investigators suspicious, leading to a wider search which revealed the half-burned remains of Holly & Jessica’s shirts, in a storage building at Soham College where Huntley was employed.

Following the find, police arrested Huntley, and girlfriend Carr, on suspicion of murder. Later the same day, 17th August 2002, 13 days after the girls had disappeared, a game warden discovered the girls’ bodies near RAF Lakenheath, an airbase in Suffolk, near to Huntley’s father’s home.

Subsequent autopsy reports on the girls listed their probable cause of death as asphyxiation, but their bodies were too badly decomposed to establish whether they had suffered any sexual assault.

Despite Huntley’s attempts to destroy forensic evidence, extensive hair and fibre residue remained which linked Huntley to the girls. Huntley was formally charged with the girl’s murders, and sectioned under the Mental Health Act at Rampton Hospital, pending a hearing to establish if he was fit for trial. Carr was arrested for assisting an offender, as well as conspiring to obstruct the course of justice, as she had initially provided Huntley with a false alibi for the time of their disappearance.

The Trial

The trials of Huntely and Carr opened, to worldwide media interest, at the Old Bailey, on 5th November 2003. Huntley was faced with two murder charges, while Carr was charged with perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender.

The prosecution entered exhaustive evidence linking Huntley to the girls and, three weeks into the trial, despite previously having denied any knowledge of their murders, Huntley suddenly changed his story, admitting that the girls had died in his house, but he claimed that both deaths were accidental. The defence called Huntley as their first witness, and he described how he had accidentally knocked Holly Wells into the bath, whilst helping her control a nosebleed, and had accidentally suffocated Chapman when she started to scream, and he had tried to silence her. On cross-examination the prosecution described his latest version as “rubbish”.

Carr’s testimony began three days later, when it was claimed that she had no control over the events on the day of the murder, and that, had she known of Huntley’s murderous intent, she would never have lied to protect him.

Following her testimony, the prosecution presented their closing statements, claiming that both Carr and Huntley were convincing liars, and also that Huntley’s motive for murdering the girls was sexual, although physical evidence of assault was impossible to prove.

After five days of deliberation, the jury rejected Huntley’s claims that the girls had died accidentally and, on 17th December 2003, returned a majority verdict of guilty on both charges. Huntley was sentenced to life imprisonment, but there was a delay on the setting of his tariff, as the 2003 Criminal Justice Act came into force one day after his conviction. This new Act passed the decision on how long a prisoner given a life sentence would serve, from the Home Secretary to judges.

At a hearing on 29th September 2005, a judge ruled that the Soham killings did not meet the criteria for a “whole-life” tariff, which was now reserved for sexual, sadistic or abduction cases only under the new Act, and imposed a 40 year prison sentence, which offers Huntley very little hope for release. On 14th September 2005, Huntley had been attacked by another inmate at Belmarsh Prison, and scalded with boiling water, which prevented him from attending this sentencing hearing.

Carr was cleared of assisting an offender, but found guilty of perverting the course of justice, and jailed for three-and-a-half years, but she was freed under police protection in May 2004, as she had already spent 16 months on remand, pending the trial.

Carr was given a new identity on her release and, on 24th February 2005, was granted an indefinite order protecting her new identity by the High Court, on the basis that her life would be in danger were her new identity to be revealed.

The Aftermath

A number of enquiries, launched by then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, investigated the failures of both the police, and other social and vetting agencies, in stopping Huntley sooner, and system wide communication and intelligence-sharing errors were identified, which led to the suspension, and early retirement, of the chief of Humberside Police.

Since being jailed, Huntley has reportedly admitted to his father that he lied when giving evidence at his trial, alleging that he killed Jessica Chapman to prevent her from calling for help on her mobile phone, rather than suffocating her accidentally, as he claimed in court.

On 23rd July 2004 Carr’s mother, Shirley Capp, was sentenced to six months in jail for intimidating a witness during the trial. Capp’s neighbour, Marion Westerman, had told police that she had seen a crying Carr, and Huntley, looking in the boot of a car outside Carr’s mother’s house, shortly after 10-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had gone missing. Carr’s mother’s threats to Westerman had nearly resulted in her retracting her statement at the time, and not testifying in court.

On 5th September 2006, Ian Huntley was rushed to hospital after being found unconscious in his prison cell. He was taken to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield to receive treatment for a suspected drug overdose and was returned to prison the next day.

Following this incident the Home Office released a statement to the media.

Huntley continues to be managed according to Prison Service policy on the prevention of suicide and self-harm. In particular he will be subject to Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) procedures through which his risk will be continually assessed. The Prison Service works to minimise the risk of any prisoner taking their own life, but it cannot eliminate that risk entirely.”

Huntley had been considered a suicide risk after he took 29 anti-depressant pills, which he had hidden away in a box of teabags, in June 2003.

HUNTLEY & CARR INNOCENT?

THE CASE OF THE SOHAM BADGERS – Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr

Is Ian Huntley Innocent ? Saturday, March 3, 2012

This was the view asserted by researcher Joe Vialls, in great detail. Unfortunately since making his argument public, Joe has died, and the joevialls.co.uk
website is no longer maintained, meaning that this research has been lost to the public.

Hazel Mackinlay wrote a brief summary of his findings two years ago:

“Ian Huntley will go down in history as a notorious child killer and he himself has been brainwashed into believing this monstrous lie, but the fictitious case presented against him does not stand up to scrutiny.

Prior to the double murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, Huntley had no previous convictions, other than a fine for riding an unlicensed motorcycle.

He was not a pedophile and the police found no evidence of preplanning, as they would have expected, nor was there any proof indicating he had abducted the ten year olds.

Huntley denied any involvement and felt certain he was going to be “fitted up” for the crime, as he was the last person to see them alive.

Huntley said he had been cleaning his car when the girls stopped to enquire about his girlfriend Maxine Carr, their former, popular teaching assistant.

He did not recognize them but said Maxine was fine and then the girls skipped away as “happy as Larry.”

Nevertheless, he was arrested two weeks later when the victims’ clothes were found, partially burned, in a bin at the village school where he was the caretaker.

The half of the building in which these items were discovered was not locked and accessible to anyone.

Huntley was subsequently detained under Section 48 of the 1983 Mental Health Act, at Rampton High Security Hospital and remained in jail until his trial.

He was assessed by consultant psychiatrist, Dr Christopher Clark, who deduced that Huntley was, “both physically and mentally sound” and fit to stand trial, but he lost his memory during his stay at Rampton.

It was claimed this was due to the trauma of the murders; all he could remember was the girls walking away, but this was said to be his “coping mechanism.”

He did not recall how they died until after taking an overdose of pills at Woodhill Prison in June 2003.

Huntley’s conviction relied wholly on this “confession” and forensic evidence which was circumstantial, or could have been planted. It is alleged he has attempted suicide three times by consuming pills.

During his trial, Huntley told an incredulous story about how the girls died accidentally in his bathroom after he invited them in to attend to a nosebleed.

It is unlikely that Huntley let them into his house since Mrs. Bryden, his boss at Soham College, described him as “a very level-headed person” who was conscientious in informing a senior member of staff if any girls became attracted to him.

The most revealing statement made regarding Huntley’s ridiculous testimony was by prosecutor Richard Latham QC when he said, “This is just false memory syndrome, all this stuff, isn’t it?” UCI psychologists have admitted they use Propranolol to induce false memories.

Huntley had been passive throughout his trial until Latham insinuated the killing was sexually motivated.

That is when Huntley became agitated and raised his voice, because the idea was so contrary to his true suppressed nature.

The prosecutor implied his angry reaction suggested he had a temper, but Maxine Carr told police she knew him inside out and he was not a violent man, he was very emotional.

Carr said, “He wouldn’t hurt anybody. He just wouldn’t do it.” They were both of the opinion that child molesters should be castrated. Carr was convicted for lying to protect him and vilified by the media who compared her to Myra Hindley, a hated serial child killer.

The prosecution took jurors to the area where the bodies were discovered in a ditch by a game keeper at the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath, where Huntley often went plane spotting, which would explain the soil samples and spores detected on the pedals of his Ford Fiesta.

But they were shown two tracks leading through overgrown nettles, indicating there had been more than one person at the site.

However, this was explained by claiming Huntley had returned two days later to burn the bodies after cutting off the clothes which he left at his place of work to incriminate himself. It would have been more sensible to ignite the clothes whilst still on the corpses.

None of the thousands of servicemen at this military air force base, who have a reputation for murder and sex offences abroad, were interviewed or investigated.

The judge, Mr Justice Moses told Huntley, “You murdered them both. You are the one person who knows how you murdered them; you are the one person who knows why.”

Even Huntley’s defence lawyer agreed, aptly named Stephen Coward QC, he instructed the jury to find him guilty, “on thin evidence” of the manslaughter of Holly and Jessica, saying, “Mr Huntley was not innocent, nor unworthy of punishment.” Coward agreed with a list of twenty-one admissions submitted to the court.

Huntley received a life sentence, but after a recent attempt on his life by another inmate, he has been moved from his suicide-watch cell to another part of Wakefield Prison, supposedly for his own safety, but he is now in a better position to ‘kill himself.’

Jessica Chapman’s father said of Huntley; “The next time I’d like to see him, was how we last saw our daughters and that was in a coffin.” The bereaved families may get their wish, because as long as Ian Huntley remains alive, there is a danger that his real memories of that day in Soham on August 4th 2002 may return, and then he will realise that he is an innocent man, not a merciless, calculated double murderer.”

When British police arrested Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr during the early hours of Saturday 17 August, on suspicion of the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, they did so in the certain knowledge that absolutely no hard evidence existed incriminating either suspect. The reason for the rapid arrests was very simple: Just hours earlier, two small bodies had been found near the perimeter fence at USAF Lakenheath, and the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street was terrified of a massive political scandal involving American servicemen based in, or transiting through, the United Kingdom.
Shortly after the arrests, British and American media organizations demonized Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr so successfully that public attention was diverted away from Lakenheath completely, and focused instead on the young couple from Soham who had earlier willingly spoken to television crews about their concerns for the well being of the two missing 10-year-old girls. Both knew the girls reasonably well. Ian Huntley was the caretaker at their school, and Maxine Carr was a former teaching auxiliary in their class.
Millions of viewers around the world watched Ian and Maxine being interviewed by the media, and most were impressed by the openness of their statements and their genuine willingness to help if possible. Experts in non-verbal communication also noticed that Ian and Maxine’s involuntary body and eye movements perfectly matched what they were saying verbally to the journalists.
In other words, both appeared to be telling the truth both verbally and non-verbally, an almost impossible feat for even a trained liar to fabricate. It is critical to note here also that both came across on television as perfectly normal, sane individuals, a reality later to be inexplicably challenged by police and psychiatrists in Cambridgeshire.
If Huntley and Carr had been involved at all with the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, would they have then been stupid enough to run the gauntlet of about 10,000 American servicemen en-route, and dump the two small bodies in a location clearly visible from Lakenheath Control Tower, taxi track, and main runway? A serviceman with detailed knowledge of activities and procedures inside the base might get away with it unseen, but certainly not two civilians from Soham in Cambridgeshire. So the perimeter would be an ideal dumping ground for American servicemen eager to return to “safe” territory at USAF Lakenheath, before either entering their barracks on the base, or catching a shuttle bus to USAF Mildenhall.
In an attempt to demonize Ian Huntley still further, police “leaked” the damning information that he had been arrested for rape a number of years earlier. Well, yes, almost. While still a teenager Huntley had consensual sex with his girlfriend, who was only 15-years-old at the time, an offence in the United Kingdom known as statutory rape. He was never charged with an offence however, and his former girlfriend [now age 21 years] recently confirmed it was a mutual crush [love affair], with enthusiastic sexual consent on both sides.
So for a while at least, police and media have managed to deflect attention away from the two massive nearby USAF bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall, and the political minefield lurking just below the surface if the British public ever find out about the very large numbers of children abused, raped, and sometimes murdered by American servicemen on overseas duty. So let us properly consider the “American Connection”, before returning later in this report to the unbelievable ongoing psychological abuse of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr.
Though earlier in the investigation police declared they would be interviewing “700 known sex offenders” of British nationality, there was no mention of interviewing the 10,000+ US servicemen based in close proximity to Soham Village, or determining which other American servicemen has transited through the two bases, and on which flights, since Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman first disappeared.
The simple fact that Holly and Jessica’s bodies were found within yards of the USAF Lakenheath perimeter fence, which in turn provides access to the American barracks within, should have had British police knocking on Lakenheath’s front door immediately. Unfortunately, any such action might have accidentally undermined Prime Minister Tony Blair’s personal slavish dedication to George W Bush’s “War on Terror.”
Though most members of the American military are unquestionably nice people, the small number who are not, are invariably psychotic savages. It is a matter of public record that many American servicemen have habitually carried out sickening attacks against civilians while on overseas duty, happy in the knowledge that the serious assault or murder of women or girls in Japan, Kosovo or England, carries a lesser penalty than at home.
One such case is that of Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, who on 24 August 2000 pleaded guilty to sodomizing and killing an 11-year-old Kosovar girl in January the same year. A member of his platoon testified that Staff Sergeant Ronghi disdainfully claimed, “It’s easy to get away with this shit in a third-world country.”
The “shit” Ronghi referred to is described here by the US Army Pathologist for Europe. “Her right jaw was fractured, practically bisected,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen, “We found evidence of sperm and semen in her vagina, mouth and rectum,” she testified to a hushed hearing. “There was trauma to the neck muscles, the trachea and the carotid artery,” Colonel Ingwersen said, adding she had found evidence of “blunt trauma” as the child was apparently beaten, choked and forced to kneel, face to the ground, as she was sodomized.
But in a perverse way Ronghi was proved right about the overall American perception of the “lesser worth” of women and children, in what he and others continually refer to as the third world. At his trial the Staff Sergeant was sentenced to life imprisonment, despite the fact that an identical offence against an American woman in the USA, would have resulted in his execution.
It would be impossible to list here all such vile attacks against “locals” by American servicemen overseas because there have been far too many. However, in order to educate the British police [who mercifully are rarely exposed to similar atrocities in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk] it seems prudent to mention a handful, thereby proving that Staff Sergeant Ronghi is far from being an isolated case.
In 1955, an American soldier was sentenced to death for the murder of a six-year-old Okinawan girl, a sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. During 1966 a US soldier confessed to strangling a young waitress. Then in 1972, US soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment for strangling local women. Later In 1975, a US soldier was sent to prison for raping two junior high school students. Local Okinawan police arrested two US soldiers during 1985 in the act of raping a woman.
During a spate of crimes in 1995, a US soldier was arrested for the hammering death of a young woman., two children were killed by a drunken soldier, and three US soldiers brutally raped a young schoolgirl. In January 2000 a US seaman was sentenced for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Japanese girl. Remember this is only a small part of the overall list, nor does it include the many more alleged perpetrators who Japanese and other authorities claim were “spirited out of the country and back to the USA” before they could be apprehended and charged.
The last point to consider before returning to the plight of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr, is the strange fate of four wives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the former home base of Staff Sergeant Ronghi. All four wives were allegedly killed by their Sergeant husbands when they returned from active duty in Afghanistan, during the same week that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing. US Army authorities are currently trying to establish whether or not an anti-malarial drug all were taking contributed to the murders. The drug is acknowledged to have extra-pyramidal psychotic side-effects, and is prescribed to all US Servicemen in Afghanistan.
There are no direct flights out of Afghanistan to the USA, meaning that all American servicemen including those seriously affected by the drug, and also affected by PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are obliged to change aircraft either in Germany or in England – normally at USAF Mildenhall. As a matter of urgency the British public should shame their local police into establishing accurately how many of these servicemen transited through USAF Mildenhall and USAF Lakenheath during the week that Holly and Jessica vanished.
Initially on Saturday 17 August, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested “on suspicion” of being involved in the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Each was taken to a different police station in Cambridgeshire for interrogation, which is standard police procedure. However, this is also the point at which standard police procedure vanished completely. Obviously Ian and Maxine were determined to protest their innocence, and refused to provide police with a convenient “confession”, no matter how tired they were, and no matter how much extreme pressure was applied by the big burly threatening policemen. There was also a marked absence of defence lawyers making statements on behalf of the suspects.
In an extraordinary move, police then applied to a “Closed Court” for an extension of Huntley and Carr’s detention, though the reasons were not made public. There was actually no need for police to provide us with a reason, because it was blatantly obvious they still had absolutely nothing to connect the two suspects with the two murders. If at that stage police had any hard evidence linking Ian Huntley or Maxine Carr to the murders, or had managed to coerce a confession out of either, they would have been charged immediately.
Then on Tuesday 20 August, just twenty-four hours before the legally extended detention was due to expire at 6.19 am on Wednesday, a complete team of psychiatrists appeared as if by magic, and deemed that Ian Huntley was unfit to appear in court. He was then “sectioned” under the Mental Health Act 1983 and remanded to Rampton high-security psychiatric hospital, at Retford in North Nottinghamshire, without being charged with any offence.
Now think about this carefully people, think about it! When we all saw Ian Huntley on international television he was entirely coherent and unquestionably sane. But apparently, after a mere three days in police custody, he became insane. How? Did the police deprive him of sleep and induce a [predictable and natural] nervous breakdown, or are the all-too-convenient government psychiatrists a pack of liars? You choose…
One thing is certain. We have all just watched the gross violation of Ian Huntley’s legal and human rights on international television, and we have done absolutely nothing about it. Ask yourself: Is it even legal to section a man in England under the Mental Health Act before he is charged? When asked this precise question, Dr Harris of Rampton Psychiatric Hospital was evasive, replying, “It is not unheard of, but it is very unusual.”
Once inside the terrifying Rampton building, a Victorian hulk originally founded as an asylum in 1912 under the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1860, police charged Ian Huntley with murder. He is now at the mercy of a five-man psychiatric team who will assess his “symptoms” night and day over the next month, and shove him full of God-knows-what medication. This is the Gulag Archipelago all over again, and Joe Stalin would have loved it.
If, after a full month at the hands of the medical nutters in Rampton, Ian Huntley should choose to “confess” to everything including the murder of the Princess of Wales, try not to believe him. Stalin’s enemies used to confess all the time in the Gulag, but only after being pumped full of Reserpine by the shrinks.
The next problem for police was Maxine Carr. Clearly no-one would believe that two people had suddenly gone completely insane in police custody at the same time, so senior officers in Cambridgeshire [and at the Home Office] had to think of something a little more creative. They knew Huntley and Carr were both were innocent of course, but somehow Maxine had to be brought under control. In other words Maxine Carr had to be so badly frightened that she would be positively eager to “cooperate” with police when the drugged, perhaps electro-shocked and certainly docile Ian Huntley was finally paraded in front of the courts.
So police formally charged Maxine Carr with “attempting to pervert the course of justice”, i.e. lying to police whether she had or not, and quietly arranged to have her incarcerated in the most brutal and terrifying of Britain’s women’s’ prisons, at Holloway in London. “Attempting to pervert” is not a violent crime requiring a high security establishment of course, and there were certainly prisons closer to Soham, but only Holloway would have the desired devastating effect on Maxine, hopefully bringing her under immediate control.
Although the Victorian Holloway was replaced in a phased rebuilding programme between 1975 and 1985, it has managed to retain its brutal reputation. In 1995 Sir David Ramsbotham, then inspector of prisons, walked out in disgust at the conditions he found inside. He noted that 75% of women at the jail were suffering from some form of identifiable mental disorder, while one in 10 was suicidal. Almost half were drug addicts in need of immediate detoxification, while more than half had serious alcohol problems and nearly 95% were on sleeping pills.
Naturally enough, on its own this would be quite enough to send a quiet country girl like Maxine insane in weeks, but the British authorities wanted to make absolutely sure. So before she left for London, police arranged a court hearing for her in the local town of Peterborough, and made sure the media and “rent a mob” people knew about its exact timing well in advance.
As the police van approached the court, the commotion started for the innocent woman not yet convicted of any offence at all. Unseen hands banged on the metal van, and several females led an ugly chorus, jeering and shouting at a woman they could not see – a thick grey blanket had been placed over Maxine Carr’s head – for a double murder with which she has not even been charged. “Evil bitch”, screamed one. “Sick cow,” spat another. In the melee, a woman and her two daughters unfurled a home-made banner. “Rot in hell forever”, it said. Orwellian media “Rent a Mob” frightening innocent Maxine Carr outside Peterborough Court
Trial by television media had well and truly started, and the trembling Maxine Carr had not yet even reached that special part of hell called Holloway. But a week or two in there with the deranged and the druggies should have her “cooperating” with anything and everything the Cambridgeshire Police Service wants.
But is that really the point here?

The Chief Constable and all of his officers at Cambridgeshire Constabulary should be mortally ashamed of their blatant abuse of police powers, abuse of the judicial process, and abuse of the Mental Health Act. In turn it goes almost without saying that we the public should not believe a word of any subsequent “confession” that Maxine Carr is coerced into making, during or after her terrifying ordeal at Holloway.
Nor should we necessarily believe that the little Cambridgeshire Constabulary [1,307 proud officers and still recruiting] had the overall power to pull off these impressive stunts without some very heavy political assistance. Think about it carefully. The original players in a tight little Cambridgeshire county investigation have been scattered to the four winds. Ian Huntley is 100 miles away to the north in Rampton, Nottinghamshire, and Maxine Carr is 100 miles away to the south in Holloway, London. The bodies of the girls were actually found in Suffolk, directly involving a third force, the Suffolk Constabulary. And oh, yes, police investigators from the Norfolk Constabulary did quite a lot of the leg work on this case.
So the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica Case, is no longer really the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica case at all, is it? The only people who will know exactly what is going on in London, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in the future, will be the small group of powerful manipulators who set the scene. This is the same small group who had sufficient power to arrange special closed courts, send a truckload of wobbly shrinks to Cambridgeshire, subvert the Mental Health Act, and personally arrange the twin hells of Rampton and Holloway for suspects Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr. Believe me, only senior bureaucrats at the Home Office in London have sufficient raw power to arrange all of this.
There is a final point to consider about the case itself. A newspaper report states “The bodies of murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were discovered in a ‘severely decomposed and partially skeletonised’ state, and the pair were almost certainly not killed where they were discovered, a coroner’s inquest was told yesterday. Their remains were found last Saturday in woodlands outside a United States air base at Lakenheath, Suffolk.” Even now, the cause or place of death cannot be established, and the Coroner has released the bodies to the parents for burial.
The reason for the importance of this statement will be obvious to residents in the Lakenheath area, whose local newspapers have saturated them for weeks with the information that Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr once lived years ago in a house owned by relatives less than a half-mile away from where the bodies were found. So this information allowing police to “point the finger” at the pair has long been in the public domain, and would be of enormous value to anyone wishing to deflect attention away from the real killers. Adding real substance to this claim is the fact that the path beside which the bodies were located is well used by walkers, but the bodies were not “found” until the very morning of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr’s arrests.
Now ask yourself what you would do if you were Ian Huntley and had really been involved in the murder of the two little girls. Would you deliberately move their bodies close to a residence that you had lived in some years before, thereby tacitly pointing the finger of guilt at yourself, or would you move the bodies well away from any such residence? You choose, though even a deranged person in Holloway should be able to select the correct answer to this elementary question.
Taking the opposite view, what would you do if you were a deranged American serviceman who managed to smuggle the two little girls inside USAF Lakenheath, and then murdered them at some remote location inside the very large airfield boundary, with its multitude of convenient empty buildings? Would you leave the bodies where they lay until the smell of putrefaction attracted the attention of the Military Police at the base, or would you toss the pathetic remains over the perimeter fence one dark night, as close as possible to the former Huntley residence you learned about in the local Suffolk newspaper, and then tip off police? Once again, you choose.
No matter what you choose and no matter what you think, it will probably make no difference to the final outcome. The atmosphere surrounding this case is so heavily laden with political fog that you could cut it with a knife. At the national level you cannot afford to rock the boat because of Tony Blair’s “special relationship” with the White House, and all this entails for his personal prestige and the “War on Terror”. That said, Tony Blair’s wife Cherie is apparently a leading human rights lawyer, who might decide to take independent personal action where this gross abuse of human rights in her own back yard is concerned.
At the county level you cannot rock the boat because, as the Chamber of Commerce will eagerly explain, those thousands of nice American servicemen at USAF Lakenheath and USAF Mildenhall spend millions of pounds each year with local businesses in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. You remember the people at the Chamber of Commerce don’t you? Masons, Rotarians, Buffs and the rest, guzzling free Budweiser Beer at the Lakenheath Officer’s Club, while looking down their noses at the Base Commander. source

Sources & Further Reading