Soham murders: Why did Ian Huntley kill Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman?

It's 15 years since Ian Huntley murdered Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in a crime that shocked the nation. After killing the two girls in August 2002, Huntley repeatedly lied to the media - alongside his fiancee Maxine Carr - before being arrested two weeks after the ten year-olds were reported missing.

While Huntley was sentenced to 40 years behind bars for the murders in 2002 and is not eligible for parole until 2042, Carr was released in 2004.

What happened to Holly and Jessica?

After slipping out unnoticed of the Wells home after a Sunday barbecue on 4 August 2002, Holly and Jessica went wandering around the streets of Soham, the small Cambridgeshire town where they lived.

Both the missing girls were dressed in identical red Manchester United football shirts with the name Beckham and the number seven on them. A photo of the two, taken shortly before they disappeared, quickly became the image associated with the case.

Richard Latham, the prosecuting lawyer, said during Ian Huntley's trial: "No doubt they felt secure in an area with which they were entirely familiar. They lived there, they went to school there, they would have thought they were surrounded by faces they knew."

About 15 minutes later, however, the girls "simply vanished". At 8.30pm, Holly's parents went to check on girls and realised they were missing.

During his trial Huntley told jurors the two girls went into his house because Holly had a nosebleed, insisting she drowned in the bath and that he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams. Detectives believe that the children may have been dead by 6.46pm - the time when Jessica's mobile phone was switched off.

Though he initially claimed the pair had left his house alive, he eventually confessed to dumping their bodies in a remote ditch, cutting off their clothes and torching their corpses in a bid to cover his tracks. 

Within hours of the girls' deaths, he was pretending to help in the search for them. He and his fiancee, Maxine Carr, continued this activity for almost two weeks.

However their lies began to ignite suspicion and the couple were arrested in the early hours of 17 August, mere hours before the girls' bodies were discovered.

Found by walkers, they were buried beside a dirt track in an area called Thetford Forest Park, close to the perimeter of the Lakenheath United States air base near Mildenhall, Suffolk. 

Public mourning

The nation's attention was immediately caught by the case, with vigils, prayer services and remembrance services held in the girls' honour.

More than 2,000 mourners gathered at Ely Cathedral on 30 August to remember and celebrate the girls' lives.

During the service the Reverend Tim Alban Jones, the vicar of St Andrews in Soham, called for the country to tread carefully around the subject of child safety, saying: "The very worst thing that could happen as a result of what took place in Soham is that a whole generation of children should grow up without being able to trust anyone.

"We must not raise our children to live in an atmosphere of constant fear and suspicion, where everyone is mistrusted."

Who is Ian Huntley?

Huntley, originally from Grimsby, was the last person to speak to the girls. The week before his arrest, he had described them as "happy as Larry" on the day they vanished, saying they had walked past his home and had asked after Carr as he was washing his dog at his front door.

During several interviews he sobbed as he spoke of his regret that he had not asked them where they were going.

A former caretaker at Soham Village College, he had applied for the job and been vetted under the name Ian Nixon. A controlling and violent man, Huntley was able to get the job as a school caretaker despite various accusations on his criminal record.

Jurors knew Huntley had once been charged with raping a teenager and that this was later dropped. However they were not told that he had also been accused of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old and having sex with a string of other schoolgirls.

Who is Maxine Carr?

Carr was Huntley's fiancee at the time of the crime and consistently lied to police to protect her lover of three years. Like Huntley, she had changed her surname from Capp when she moved with him from Grimsby.

The teaching assistant, who had worked with Huntley's victims, also spoke to the media many times of her distress over the missing girls. At one point, she showed a homemade card that Holly had given her at the end of term, inscribed with the words: "C U in the future, Miss Carr. Don't leave us. Don't go far." She wept and said she would "treasure the card for ever".

In court she claimed she was unaware of her fiance's crime, denying a charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender.

The then-27-year-old was found guilty of the first charge and was sentenced to three-and-a-half-years, but was cleared of two charges of assisting an offender.

How were they caught?

Made-up sightings, tip-offs and phoney media interviews were all used by Huntley to hide his evil crimes under a mountain of fake concern and false interest.

Ironically, as the pair's lies began to unwind it was Huntley and Carr's careful attempts to cover his tracks which led to their arrest.

Huntley persistently told the tale of how the girls had wandered past his house, held a brief conversation with him, then walked off never to be seen again.

After journalists persuaded him to talk about his ''sighting'' of the pair, he wept and wailed about how guilty he felt at not finding out where the youngsters were going.

Carr also lied to police and the media and gave Huntley a crucial alibi, saying she had been in the bath in their house - when she had actually been in Grimsby.

But as the inquiry moved into its second week, their lies began to fall apart. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb said some of the things Huntley said to police in the days after the girls disappeared ''set alarm bells ringing''.

Two journalists also thought him strange and dishonest and told police of their suspicions. Huntley was then seen on television by people who knew him and a member of the public alerted them to his past. The web of deceit had been broken and Huntley and Carr were questioned by police and arrested a day later.

During the inquiry he told police he had seen the girls because he could not be sure no one else had spotted them talking to him outside his house. In the event, no one had.

But by coming forward he unwittingly took the first step of a long and winding road to prison.

What happened at the trial?

Huntley claimed that Holly drowned when he accidentally knocked her into his bath and he smothered Jessica to stop her screaming.

Dr Nathaniel Cary, a Home Office pathologist, said he had studied this scenario and rejected it as "wholly implausible". It was "unlikely at the least" that Holly could have drowned in Huntley's bath as a result of a fall, he said.

On Huntley's account of how Jessica lost consciousness, he said: "The only way she could have been smothered to death would have been through forced restraint against vigorous struggling."

Huntley's efforts to erase all evidence of the hideous crimes - including burning their corpses - meant detectives were never able to prove what exactly happened to the girls.

Prosecutors claimed he had a sexual motive for the killing – a belief supported by his sordid past and the fact he laundered his bedclothes after the girls' deaths.

The jurors took just 17 hours and 32 minutes to return guilty verdicts of 11-1. Predictably, Huntley, then 30, showed no emotion when he was handed two life sentences for the double murder.

Trial judge Mr Justice Moses told him he had shown ''persistent cruelty'' and ''merciless cynicism'' towards the girls and their families.

Could Huntley have been stopped?

Huntley's decision to seek a job as a caretaker in Soham - after years of grooming and seducing teenage girls on Humberside - can be seen as evidence of an intention to attack a child.

Authorities involved admitted afterwards that the system of checks failed, allowing Huntley, who had come to the attention of Humberside Police on ten occasions, to secure his job.

In fact police searching for Holly and Jessica only found out about the rape charge when members of the public rang them.

A police constable who investigated Huntley for rape in July 1999 was so alarmed at his history of suspected sexual offences that he alerted intelligence staff. "It is quite clear that Huntley is a serial sex attacker and is at liberty to continue his activities," wrote PC Mick Harding.

Where are Huntley and Carr now?

Huntley, now 43, is currently in Frankland prison where, it was reported last year, he has become friendly with serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, also known as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Carr, now 40, was released from prison on 14 May 2004, half way through her three-and-a-half year prison sentence. She was later given a new identity and granted life-long anonymity, with the judge saying the order was necessary to protect Carr's "life and limb" and her psychological health.

What has happened with Huntley in prison?

Huntley has been attacked several times in prison, first at Wakefield Prison and also at Frankland Prison, where he was transferred to in 2008.

In 2005, he was scalded with boiling water by fellow inmate Mark Hobson; in 2010 he had his throat slashed.

Damien Fowkes, a former drug addict who was jailed for life in 2002 for a knifepoint robbery, allegedly attacked Huntley with a razor blade attached to a toothbrush a day before a planned search of their prison for weapons.

Huntley needed emergency hospital treatment after being slashed across the throat.

He has tried to kill himself several times. While he was awaiting trial, he was found suffering a fit on the floor of his cell after saving up 29 anti-depressant pills in a box of teabags. In 2006 he was found unconscious in his cell and is believed to have taken an overdose; however, he survived both attempts.