Ten year old best friends Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman left a family barbeque to buy candy when they suddenly vanished during the summer of 2002. About six years earlier at age four, the girls met & became instant friends. From that moment on, they were connected at the hip & had a closeness of sisters rather than merely best friends.
It was August 4, 2002 & Jessica had recently gotten back from a family vacation to Menorca & she was excited to give Holly a necklace she’d gotten her with the letter “H” engraved on it. Jessica left her home on Brook Street at 11:45 am & told her parents she was heading over to the Wells home to give Holly the necklace. When she arrived, the girls played computer games & listened to music with their friend Natalie until Natalie returned home about thirty minutes later.
Holly’s family home was in the small town of Soham, England & they were having a barbeque that afternoon. During the barbeque, at about 3:15 pm, the girls changed into matching red Manchester United football shirts; one belonged to Holly & the other belonged to Holly’s older brother Oliver. A little after 5 pm Holly’s mom took a photo of the girls wearing their matching shirts together which went on to serve as a memorable image used after they went missing. After the girls ate dinner with the guests, they went upstairs to play at about 6:10 pm.
At about 6:15 pm, Holly & Jessica decided that they wanted candy & left the house to head to a local vending machine but never told anyone that they were going, likely assuming they would back before their absence was missed. At approximately 8 pm that evening, Holly’s mother went to Jessica’s bedroom so she could ask the girls to say goodbye to the other guests & it was at this point, she realized that they weren’t there. Holly’s family expected her home at her curfew of 8:30 pm & minutes after this time, Nicola Wells called the Chapman house to check on her daughter’s whereabouts & that’s when she learned that both girls were missing. Holly & Jessica’s parents reported them missing to the police at 9:55 pm that night.
Police in England jumped into action & an all-hands-on-deck search began for Holly & Jessica by midnight. More than 400 officers were assigned to search for the girls full-time while many volunteers assisted in the searches as well. Over the next two weeks, the search intensified & became one of the most widespread & publicized in British history.
The photo of the girls wearing their matching jerseys that had been taken only hours before they vanished was released by Cambridgeshire Police, their grinning faces were shown on local news media to bring attention to the case. Physical descriptions were also released to the media & the girls were described as white, about 4’6” tall with slim builds. Jessica had tan skin with shoulder-length brown hair while Holly was fair in complexion with blond hair. Both girls were said to be weary of talking to strangers, having been warned not to trust people that they did not know.
On August 8, CCTV footage of the girls which had been recorded only minutes before their disappearance, was released to the public. It depicted them arriving at the local sports center for their candy at 6:28 pm. Two days later, a televised reconstruction of the girls’ last known movements was broadcast nationally. The Chapman & Wells families also participated in interviews to appeal for the safe return of their daughters. More than 2,000 tips & phone calls from the public poured in
Because they were dressed in a distinctive, matching way, this led to several alleged sightings of the girls. One man in particular recalled seeing Holly & Jessica because when he did, he remarked to his wife, “Look! There’s two little Beckhams over there.”
Another man, 28-year-old Ian Huntley, came forward & told investigators that he had seen the girls shortly before they disappeared. He indicated that he had a brief conversation with both girls on his doorstep & told investigators that the two girls asked if his girlfriend, who was their assistant teacher, had gotten the permanent teaching position that she applied for. According to Ian, he told Holly & Jessica that unfortunately, she didn’t get the position & they asked him to tell her that they were sorry. After their brief conversation, he said that Holly & Jessica left & described them both as “happy as Larry” as they set off along College Street toward a bridge that led to Clay Street.
Police felt suspicious of Ian’s account & a single officer conducted a search of his home on August 5, one day after they vanished, in order to eliminate him as a suspect. No incriminating evidence was found, but the officer did find it strange that clothing was hanging on the line despite the fact that it had been raining. The officer also noted the extensive cleaning of the home’s interior & Huntley remarked, “Excuse the dining room. We had a flood.” The officer found his demeanor to be suspicious as he seemed agitated during their conversation so Ian remained a strong suspect.
The next day, August 6, Huntley drove from Soham to Grimsby to pick up his girlfriend, Maxine Carr at her family’s home. A neighbor of Maxine’s mother noticed the couple standing by the rear of the car with the trunk open. The neighbor said that Ian was looking really thin & pale & shaking as he gazed into the trunk for several moments as Maxine stood next to him, her head bowed, weeping. When the woman opened her gate, it made noise & they both quickly turned around & Ian slammed the trunk shut. She asked if everything was okay & Ian abruptly answered, “yes” & went inside.
Ian had involved himself in the search for the girls & told both the police & the media that he had seen Holly & Jessica walking in the direction of the local library. In one case, PA Media reporter Brian Farmer interviewed both Ian & Maxine at their home & went to police with his concerns. He said Ian spoke to the girls while he was washing his dog outside his home & when the girls stopped to speak with him, they made no comment about his dog. Farmer found this a very odd detail & couldn’t believe that two little girls wouldn’t make some comment about the dog. Farmer also found it very strange when he asked Maxine a question about stranger danger & Ian jumped in to answer, despite the fact that he barely knew the girls. Maxine was asked how the girls might react to a stranger & Ian said that Holly would likely get in the car & quietly go but Jessica wouldn’t. He elaborated that she would put up a real fight & a real struggle. The reporter recalled how Ian was both agitated & emotional during the interview & wondered how he could possibly know how they would react.
By the second week of Holly & Jessica’s disappearances, Ian became an unofficial spokesperson for the community of Soham. He indicated that he wanted to convey to the media the frustration & despair that the community was feeling. In one interview, he told the reporter that he was holding onto a “glimmer of hope” that the girls were still alive. He also continued to contact the police to check on the status of the investigation.
Maxine Carr was also interviewed by the media during the second week of the investigation where she corroborated Ian’s claims that he had spoken with the girls on their doorstep before they set out. She added that she had been taking a bath at the time & said, “I only wish we had asked them where they were going.. If only we knew then what we know now. Then we could have stopped them or done something about it.”
While discussing their personalities, Maxine described Holly as the “more feminine” of the two & elaborated that Jessica was “more of a tomboy.” She said on one occasion, she joked with Jessica that she rarely wore a skirt unlike her friends & Jessica remarked that if she was able to be a bridesmaid at Maxine’s wedding, she would willingly wear a dress. Maxine showed the reporter a thank-you card that Holly had given her on the last day of school & said, “She was just lovely, really lovely.” She went on to make a direct appeal to the children, “Just get on the phone & just come home. Or if somebody’s got them, just let them go.” It wasn’t lost on some listening that Maxine had referred to Holly in the past tense when saying, she was lovely.
During the second week of the search, Ian was showing signs of weight loss & indicating that he was dealing with insomnia. He participated in searching for Holly & Jessica & frequently touched base with police as to the status of the investigation. He also asked odd questions such as how long DNA evidence could survive before deteriorating. One of the officers also noticed three vertical scratches on Ian’s left jaw that measured about 1.2 inches which he claimed was from his dog.
He & Maxine were first questioned on August 16, 2002, 12 days after the girls went missing. Investigators spoke with the pair for more than seven hours that day. To one officer, Ian said, “You think I’ve done it? I was the last person to see them!” He began to weep at that point & officers were aware that his erratic behavior & distress led him to be prescribed antidepressants on August 13. Maxine & Ian each provided witness statements & were placed in a safe house in the village of Histon.
By this point, police had received information from several Grimsby residents who recognized Ian from his televised interviews that he had been accused of rape several years earlier as well as having inappropriate interactions with young girls. Additionally, witnesses came forward to notify police that Maxine had been out socializing in the Grimsby town center, more than 100 miles away, on the night that the girls disappeared rather than at home, taking a bath when the girls dropped by as she indicated. There were photos taken of Maxine on the night in question where was pictured hugging & kissing a 17-year-old rugby player, eight years her junior.
On the evening they were questioned, a thorough search was conducted of 5 College Close where Ian & Maxine lived as well as the grounds of Soham Village College where Ian worked. In the meantime, both Ian & Maxine remained under police watch in separate locations outside Soham. As the rooms of their home were searched, it was noted that they had been meticulously cleaned with what was described as a “lemony” cleaning fluid. Regardless, the search did find many items of “major importance” to the investigation which were not made public at the time.
The items recovered from the school grounds included the clothing that Holly & Jessica had been wearing when they disappeared; their Manchester shirts were found charred & cut in a garbage can in a hangar at Ian’s place of work. Fibers from the clothing were a match to the samples taken from Ian’s body & clothing as well as from his home. His fingerprints were also recovered from the garbage can.
Ian’s Ford Fiesta was also forensically examined on August 16 & revealed that the car had recently been extensively cleaned. However, traces of a mixture of brick dust, chalk & concrete were found. A cover to a rear seat was missing & the lining of the trunk had been recently removed & replaced with a poorly fitting section of household carpet.
On August 17, thirteen days after Holly & Jessica disappeared, both Ian Huntley & his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, were arrested on suspicion of murder. During initial questioning, Ian acted evasive, confused, emotionally detached & even appeared to drool during police attempts at questioning him in an effort to feign mental illness. Police had no choice but to transfer him to a mental hospital to undergo an extensive psychiatric evaluation.
Maxine, on the other hand, ended up being an open book & quickly confessed to detectives that she had lied about her whereabouts on August 4 when Holly & Jessica went missing. She said that Ian had told her that the missing girls came into their house before they vanished. He said that they came inside because Holly had a nosebleed & he tried to help her. While he tried to control the bleeding, Jessica sat on their bed & then they both left the house. She explained that because Ian was worried that he could be implicated in their disappearances, she decided to help him by concocting a story about being home at the time. She indicated that she lied because she had been “pushed into a corner.”
At approximately 12:30 pm on August 17, thirteen days after Holly & Jessica went missing, their remains were found by a man named Keith Pryer. The girls were lying side-by-side in a 5-foot deep irrigation ditch about ten miles from where they went missing in Soham. Pryer had noticed an unpleasant smell in the area several days earlier & then returned to the area with two friends & decided to investigate further. The killer had tried to burn both bodies in an apparent effort to destroy evidence & no clear footprints were found at the crime scene.
Despite the extensive decomposition, investigators were able to quickly deduce that the remains belonged to Holly & Jessica. It was determined that they had not been killed where their bodies had been discovered. On August 21, DNA testing confirmed that the remains were that of the girls.
Investigators called in a forensic botanist, Patricia Wiltshire, to assist in the case. She was able to find stinging nettles that were growing new shoots at the spot where Holly & Jessica’s bodies were found. Based on this information, she was able to determine without a shred of doubt that the nettles had been stepped on exactly 13 days prior, the day that the girls went missing.
Pollen was also found in a soil sample which led police to believe that Ian Huntley was responsible for their murders. Fiber evidence & the soil found inside Huntley’s car were an exact match to the soil & fiber evidence in the location where the girls’ bodies had been dumped.
When Maxine learned that the girls’ bodies had been found & Ian’s fingerprints were on the bin where their clothing had been found, she began to cry & shouted, “No! He can’t have been! It can’t have been! It can’t have been! He hasn’t done it!”
By August 20, Ian was charged with two counts of murder while he was being detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire & all preliminary hearings were postponed pending the conclusion of his mental health assessments. On this same day, Maxine was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. She continued to check on Ian’s wellbeing throughout this time & wrote him several letters to profess her continued love for him. It wasn’t until December 2002 that she severed contact with him. On January 17, 2003 she was also charged with two counts of assisting an offender.
Funeral services for Holly & Jessica were held on consecutive days in September 2002. On June 16, 2003, Ian Huntley pleaded not guilty to formal charges of the murders of Holly & Jessica. Maxine Carr also pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice & assisting an offender.
Ian had been born in 1974 to a working class family in Grimsby, England & was the first son of Kevin & Linda Huntley. He suffered from asthma & was often the target of bullies during his time at school. Issues with his classmates continued to escalate until he was thirteen when he was forced to change schools. In 1990, despite the fact that he carried reasonable grades, he dropped out of school.
In the years after Ian left school, he seemed to develop an interest in young girls & was seen out with a 13-year-old girl when he was 18. In December 1994, when he was 20, he met 18-year-old Claire Evans & the two began a whirlwind romance & were married within weeks. As quickly as their relationship began, it ended & within days of the wedding, Evans left Huntley & promptly moved in with Ian’s younger brother, Wayne. Ian was enraged & refused to grant Evans a divorce until 1999 in order to prevent her from marrying his brother.
After his marriage collapsed, Ian moved around from place to place & often changed jobs & relationships. In 1998, he fathered a child from a 15-year-old girl when he would have been about 26. Incidentally, his daughter, Samantha Bryan, revealed that at age 14, she accidentally discovered the identity of her father while working on a school project in 2016. Between 1995-2001, Ian had sexual contact with 11 underage girls ranging in age between 11-17-years-old.
On January 7, 1998, Huntley appeared in court after he was charged with robbing a neighbor’s house. That May he was charged with raping an 18-year-old girl in Grimsby. Due to a lack of evidence, neither case went to court, but the rape allegation did tarnish his reputation considerably.
25-year-old Ian met Maxine Carr in February of 1999 at a nightclub when she was 22-years-old & they moved in together four weeks later. Their relationship was very tumultuous & they often argued. Despite this, they relocated to the town of Littleport in 2001 so Ian could work as the manager of a team of caretakers at a local center. Maxine’s father left the family when she was 2-years-old & she grew to hate him so much that she changed her last name from Capp to Carr.
Soon, Ian’s initially charming personality turned controlling & violent. He used to bring Maxine flowers & soon began hitting her in the face & grabbing her around the throat when he was angry, according to Maxine’s sister Hayley.
In September 2001, Ian applied for the position where he was working at the time of Holly & Jessica’s murders while Maxine was a teaching assistant at St. Andrews Primary School. Ian had been working as the caretaker at the Soham Village College since September 2001 despite the fact that he had a history of sexual contact with minors. It was later revealed that the school’s principal admitted that he never checked Ian’s references.
On the evening Holly & Jessica set out from the barbeque for candy, Maxine Carr, who the girls knew from school, was away visiting relatives. As Holly & Jessica walked past Ian’s home in the village that Sunday evening in August on their way back home, he lied & said that Maxine was inside.
The exact details of what happened once they entered the home is not known, but investigators believe that portions of what he told the media during interviews before his arrest as well as later, in his trial testimony, are likely true. He indicated that he was grooming his dog when the girls walked past his house around 6:30 pm & that Holly had a nosebleed. He said that they asked him about Maxine & then walked along, happy, cheerful & chatty.
Ian’s alibi was also discredited when Maxine first claimed that they were both home together & then later told police that she’d actually been at her family’s home in North Lincolnshire on the day that the girls went missing. In press photos, police noticed that Ian’s car had new tires & when the old ones were found, forensic evidence was discovered that linked the car to the area where the girl’s bodies were found. The pollen found on both his tires & his shoes was an exact match to what was on the path he would have taken to the ditch where he disposed of their bodies.
Despite the fact that he tried to dispose of their clothing by burning it in a garbage bin back at the school, pollen grains & spores were still present. The markers of grains & spores on his shoes & tires proved that he had gone back to the location of their bodies to check on things twice.
Another reporter looks back at the fact that Maxine Carr displayed a poster of the missing girls in her front window & feels ill knowing that Ian had already murdered the girls by that point. The couple clearly placed themselves in the spotlight to present as helpful members of the community & instead, it was this fact that led police to become suspicious.
Police & prosecutors weren’t able to establish a motive as to why Ian murdered the girls, but the case was solid enough without it. It was said that minutes before encountering Holly & Jessica, Ian had an argument with Maxine over the phone as he had allegedly suspected Maxine of having affairs throughout their relationship.
Some believe he killed the girls in a fit of jealous rage. A short time after the girls entered his home, Ian murdered both of them & used his car to transport their bodies about twenty miles away where he dumped them into a ditch & set their bodies on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence. Coroner David Morris indicated that the remains were partially skeletonized so a definitive cause of death could not be determined, but the most likely cause was asphyxiation. Both bodies had been placed at the location they were found within 24 hours of their deaths. Due to the extent of decomposition, it was unable to be determined if they had been sexually assaulted.
Ian remained hospitalized for two months & in October, it was concluded that although psychopathic, he did not suffer from any major psychotic illness & was deemed mentally competent to stand trial.
The trials began on November 5, 2003 & the prosecution detailed the extensive evidence that linked Ian to the girls though he entered a plea of not guilty. The prosecutor described the last day of Holly & Jessica’s lives & how they had come across Ian by “pure chance” where he then lured them into his home at approximately 6:37 pm. They had been murdered shortly thereafter & he powered Jessica’s phone off at 6:46 pm. Mobile phone records as well as witness accounts placed Maxine in Grimsby on the evening in question which proved that her statements to police had been false. The location of where Holly & Jessica’s bodies had been found was a familiar location to Ian due to his plane-spotting hobby.
However, three weeks into the trial, his story suddenly changed. He admitted that the girls had died in his home, but claimed that both deaths were accidental. He claimed that he accidentally knocked Holly into the bath while he was helping her control her nosebleed. He said that the bath happened to be filled with water since he bathed his dog earlier & the unintentional act caused Holly to drown as he “panicked & froze.” He said that Jessica began to scream as a result of what happened to her friend & screamed, “You pushed her!” When he attempted to quiet her, he accidentally suffocated her & because he was preoccupied with Jessica, Holly drowned. On cross-examination, the prosecution described his latest version of events as “rubbish.”
He indicated that he was in such a state of panic that his first coherent memory was sitting on a vomit-stained landing near Jessica’s body & by that time, it was too late to save either girl. When asked why he hadn’t contacted emergency services & why he had attempted to destroy evidence, he said that the public & police would not have believed that their deaths were accidental. He admitted responsibility for both of their deaths but continued to maintain that it was only an accident. He also insisted that he had not feigned insanity upon his arrest & instead, it was the trauma of Holly & Jessica’s deaths that temporarily erased his memory & the presence of the police had caused his memory to seize.
Maxine’s testimony began three days later on December 3 & she claimed that she had no control over the events of the day of the murder & had she known what he’d done, she would have never lied to protect Ian. She explained that the only reason why she referred to the girls in the past tense while speaking to the media was because she had worked as their teacher in the past. When she came home on August 6, two days after the girls had gone missing, she did notice that their bedding & parts of their house had been cleaned but indicated that her first suspicions were that Ian had a woman in the house while she was gone. She testified that she noticed a crack in the enamel of the bathtub that hadn’t been there when she left four days earlier. When asked why she assisted Ian in extensively cleaning their home in the days after Holly & Jessica were murdered, she claimed that she had always been obsessive about tidiness.
Maxine testified that she encouraged Ian to tell police that both girls had come inside their home after Holly had a nosebleed, but he refused since inviting the children into the home would have been a violation of the rules imposed by St Andrew’s Primary School. She stressed that she was only trying to protect his reputation & innocence & had she believed he had murdered Holly & Jessica, she would have been horrified.
After her testimony, the prosecution claimed that both Ian & Maxine were convincing liars. Ian’s motive was said to be sexual despite the fact that the physical evidence of assault was impossible to prove. Their bodies showed no signs of compressive neck injuries, knife wounds, injury, drugging or poisoning & their causes of death was likely asphyxiation. Ian’s attorneys urged the jury to deliver a verdict of manslaughter in relation to both deaths.
The jury deliberated for five days & rejected Ian’s claims that the girls’ deaths had been accidental. On December 17, 2003, Ian was found guilty of two counts of murder & sentenced to life in prison. However, there was a delay in the setting of his sentence as the 2003 Criminal Justice Act took effect one day after his conviction.
During a hearing on September 29, 2005, a judge ruled that the murders didn’t meet the criteria for a full life sentence & instead, Ian was given a 40-year sentence. Because he had been attacked by another inmate at Belmarsh Prison & scalded with hot water, Ian was not present at his sentencing hearing.
Maxine pleaded guilty to the charge of perverting the course of justice & not guilty to assisting an offender. She was found not guilty of assisting an offender & found guilty of perverting the course of justice & was sentenced to 3.5 years. In May 2004, she was released as she had already served 16 months before the trial & ended up serving a total of 21 months. On her release, she was given a new identity & on February 24, 2005, her new identity was ordered to be protected by the High Court for her safety.
On July 23, 2004, Carr’s mother, Shirley Capp, was sentenced to six months in prison for intimidating a witness during the trial. Capp’s neighbor, Marion Westerman, told police that she had seen a crying Carr & Ian looking in the trunk of a car outside Capp’s house shortly after Holly & Jessica went missing. Capp’s threats to Marion nearly resulted in her retracting her statements rather than testifying.
Since being imprisoned, Ian has reportedly confessed to his father that the information he provided during the trial was untrue & that Jessica’s death was not accidental. He indicated that he killed her when she tried to call for help on her mobile phone.
Ian was rushed to the hospital on September 5, 2006 after he was found unconscious in his prison cell & transferred to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield for treatment for a suspected drug overdose & was returned to the prison the next day & was being monitored for suicide & self-harm. He had been a suicide risk in 2003 after he took 29 anti-depressant pills that he had hidden away in a box of teabags. While hospitalized, his cell was searched & a cassette tape was recovered & contained what Ian had believed would be a posthumous confession. In it, he claims to have confessed to murdering both girls to Maxine prior to their arrests & his plan to confess to authorities. He alleged that Maxine slapped his face & instructed him to “pull himself together” since she didn’t want to lose her teaching position. He further alleged that it was Maxine who encouraged him to burn the girls’ bodies in an attempt to erase evidence.
In 2007, Ian confessed to the 1997 sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl. One year later in 2008, he was relocated to Frankland Prison. During his time in prison, he has been repeatedly attacked by other inmates. He will be eligible for parole in 2042 when he is 68-years-old.
In April 2004, the three-bedroom home where Ian & Maxine lived was demolished & is now a vacant patch of grass. After Ian’s sentencing, Leslie Chapman, Jessica’s mom said, “I think he was a time bomb waiting to go off & both our girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope the next time I see him, it will be like we saw our daughters & it will be in a coffin.”
References:
- Biography: Ian Huntley
- Forensic Tales: The Soham Murders
- Wikipedia: Soham murders
- GrimsbyLive: The Ian Huntley files – the story of the Grimsby man who murdered Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman
- Manchester Evening News: Soham murders: What happened to Holly & Jessica & where is Ian Huntley now?
- BBC: Soham murders: Ian Huntley’s press interviews alerted police
- GrimsbyLive: The Maxine Carr files – the true story of Ian Huntley’s girlfriend & her role in the Soham killings
