Soham murders
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The Soham murders were the murders by Ian Huntley of two ten-year-old girls Holly Marie Wells (born October 4, 1991) and Jessica Aimee Chapman (born September 1, 1991) in Soham, a small town in Cambridgeshire, England, on August 4, 2002.
Huntley, who also used his mother's maiden name of Nixon, was the caretaker at the local secondary school, Soham Village College, at the time of the murders. He was then living with his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who was a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's school, St Andrew's Primary.
On the day of the murders, at around 6pm, 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 had got along well with them, although in fact she had gone to visit family back in Grimsby. Shortly after Wells and Chapman 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.
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[edit] The Trial
[edit] 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.
Huntley's defence conceded that he disposed of the girls' bodies and that they were in his house when they died. However, he claimed that Holly Wells accidentally fell in the bath and drowned and that Jessica Chapman was then so distressed that he had to restrain her to stop her screaming, but accidentally did this so forcefully that she too died. This led him to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, but the jury rejected his story and found him guilty of the murder of both girls.
Huntley was convicted on December 17, 2003 by two eleven-to-one majority jury verdicts, and on that day began serving two concurrent life sentences.
The search for the two girls and the subsequent trial generated intense media interest and speculation, ensuring that the names and faces of Huntley and Carr became well-known across the United Kingdom and worldwide.
[edit] Carr
Maxine Carr provided a false alibi to police for Huntley, and was convicted of perverting the course of justice. However, she was cleared on two counts of assisting an offender, reflecting the court's acceptance that she only lied to police to protect Huntley because she believed his claims of innocence. She had claimed to be with Huntley at the time of the murders, but she was in fact in Grimsby. She was released on probation on 14 May 2004 with a new secret identity for her protection.[1]
[edit] 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 18th 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.
[edit] 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.
He added that Maxine Carr had told him to burn the girls' bodies after he murdered them, a claim which contradicted the jury's opinion that she was not guilty of assisting an offender and had not known that Huntley had committed the murders.
[edit] The Bichard Inquiry
The inquiry was announced on December 18, 2003, and Sir Michael Bichard was appointed as the chair. 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.
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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.
[edit] 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.
