00:00:04
-On the 4th of August, 2002,
10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared
whilst buying sweets
00:00:13
in the sleepy Cambridgeshire
town of Soham. -They were so appealing,
so beautiful,
00:00:20
so charming, so smiley. The world and his wife wanted to know what on earth
had happened to them.
00:00:27
-For 2 weeks, police and locals
desperately scoured the area. It was every parent's
worst nightmare.
00:00:35
-There was a sense of real fear
and dread in the village. People were starting to get more
and more desperate
00:00:42
as to what might have happened
to these two little girls. -Ian Huntley, a local
school caretaker,
00:00:49
gave an emotional interview
to the press, appealing for the safe return
of Holly and Jessica.
00:00:56
-Somebody would've seen
or heard something if somebody had tried
to get those girls into a car,
00:01:01
if it had just been
somebody passing through. -But in truth,
Huntley had brutally murdered
00:01:06
both girls
in the bathroom of his home. -Huntley was a bomb
waiting to explode. All he needed was
an opportunity,
00:01:14
and on that sunny
August afternoon in 2002, he found an opportunity. -Ian Huntley
had unquestionably become
00:01:24
one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ It is one of the most
talked about crimes
00:01:50
of the 21st century. The murders of schoolgirls
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman shocked the nation to its core.
00:01:58
For 2 weeks, newspapers
and rolling news channels brought a constant
flow of updates
00:02:04
in the search
for the missing pair. When their bodies
were finally found on the 17th of August, 2002,
the world mourned.
00:02:14
-Out of an evening mist, which had fallen on a remote
patch of Suffolk woodland,
00:02:19
the bodies of Holly and Jessica
were taken away. -The killer was 28-year-old
school caretaker Ian Huntley,
00:02:26
a man who moved to Soham in 2001
to escape a troubled past. Huntley was born in Grimsby
in Lincolnshire
00:02:36
on the 31st of January, 1974. He had a turbulent time
at school and was often
the target of bullying.
00:02:46
-So I think this created a bit of a sense of shame
in Ian Huntley, something that is often
at the root of a lot of men
00:02:54
like him in terms
of what they go on to do. So he started off as somebody
who was always the kid
00:03:00
that was a bit odd, the odd one out,
the one who's a bit of a loner. -In December 1994, Huntley
met 18-year-old Claire Evans.
00:03:10
They had a whirlwind romance
and were married within weeks. -His wife, Claire, quickly found
that he had a terrible temper.
00:03:18
She later claimed
that she feared for her life and that he would often
put his hands round her neck.
00:03:26
-Ian Huntley is somebody
who is not capable of having a normal relationship
with a woman,
00:03:32
so he moves very quickly
because he wants to maintain a sense of control
within his relationships.
00:03:39
So he will breeze
into women's lives, this knight in shining armor,
full of charm and compliments,
00:03:45
and will kind of try
and wind them in. -Huntley's marriage
didn't last long. His wife, Claire,
had started a relationship
00:03:54
with his younger brother, Wayne. Despite the marriage
being all but over, Huntley refused to grant her
a divorce until 1999
00:04:03
to prevent their relationship
from becoming official. -He'd always felt
incredibly threatened
00:04:08
by his younger brother. He took the attention away
from him when he came into that family.
00:04:14
And because of Ian Huntley's
narcissistic tendencies, he's always going to feel that he's being outdone
by his brother.
00:04:23
-While still married to Claire, Huntley fathered a daughter
with a 15-year-old girl in 1998.
00:04:29
-I think it would be fair
to say that Huntley demonstrated, throughout his adolescence
and early manhood,
00:04:36
that he had a unhealthy appetite
in younger and younger women. -Well, during his 20s,
Ian Huntley preyed
00:04:43
on a lot of young girls,
underage girls, and the police who investigated
the case thought
00:04:49
that there were possibly
up to 60 young girls that he'd had some kind of
interaction with on that level,
00:04:57
and he would kind of worm
his way into these girls' lives, and they're younger. They're more impressionable.
00:05:03
They're easier to lure in. -In 1998, 24-year-old Huntley
appeared at Grimsby Crown Court,
00:05:11
charged with both burglary and
the rape of an 18-year-old girl. Both cases were dropped
due to lack of evidence,
00:05:19
but he was gaining a bad
reputation across Lincolnshire. -He was an insignificant
little man who,
00:05:30
on the surface,
wouldn't say boo to a goose. Unfortunately,
he had no conscience
00:05:35
and would do whatever he wanted
when he wanted to do it. -In February 1999, Huntley met
22-year-old Maxine Carr,
00:05:44
and after dating for just
4 weeks, they moved in together. -She was naive, impressionable,
00:05:56
and he was an interesting
figure to her, I think. She found him perhaps -- I would hesitate
to call him charismatic --
00:06:06
but at least interesting
and did not discover the violent side
to his nature that his wife had.
00:06:17
-Maxine Carr was a very easy
target, in a way, for Ian Huntley because
at this point in his life,
00:06:23
he's managed to hone those
skills of hooking women in, being quite superficially
charming and manipulative
00:06:31
and saying the things
that they wanted to hear. So he's got quite
a well-rehearsed script
00:06:36
at this point in time, and he pulls that out
when he meets Maxine Carr. -In February 2000,
after a year together,
00:06:44
the couple move from Grimsby and set up home just
30 miles away in Scunthorpe. Their new neighbor, Morisa Gibb,
befriended the couple.
00:06:54
-Max and Ian
were a lovely couple. Maxine was any
25-, 26-year-old girl, bubbly, giggling, talking about
wanting to have children.
00:07:02
She wanted to work in a nursery
and get a job, and I think she was fantastic. -And it wasn't long
before Huntley's past
00:07:10
was catching up with him. -I finished work
at 8:00 at night, come home. The next minute, there was
a police van outside in the
back,
00:07:19
and I looked out the window
and thought, "Oh, Christ,
I hope everything is okay."
00:07:23
So then they left. Next day, I saw Maxine. I says, "Are you all right? Is the family okay, you know,
anything like that?"
00:07:29
"No, Ian has been accused
of rape in Grimsby." He said,
"But the dates they've got,
00:07:35
we were living next door here." I said, "Well, why didn't you
tell the police to come see me?
00:07:38
I'd verify that
you moved next door." But then she said he was always
getting allegations
00:07:44
when they lived in Grimsby
that he was raping this girl and done this
to this other girl.
00:07:49
That's why they moved to
Scunthorpe, to get a new life. -The couple rarely left
the house,
00:07:54
and Morisa recalls Huntley's
controlling behavior. -I went round to see Maxine
for a cup of coffee.
00:08:02
Ian was at work. And basically,
I had a cup of coffee. I put it on the table. The next minute, it was taken
off the table, bleached, cleaned
00:08:09
and put in the cupboard. I thought it was a bit OCD, but I thought it was
just Maxine,
00:08:15
and then she told me,
"No, Ian doesn't like to know that anybody has been
in the house,"
00:08:20
so she was a bit scared
of what was happening, and I was not allowed to tell
him that I'd been in the house.
00:08:26
-Huntley's controlling nature
would occasionally lead to violent outbursts. -My sitting room goes --
00:08:33
You can see straight
into their kitchen, and he was shouting at her,
calling all the names of sun.
00:08:38
"You do as you're told.
You do what I tell you to do." You see her crouching in the
corner where he was hitting her.
00:08:44
"You listen to me.
You do what I say. You don't listen to nobody else.
I'm your boss.
00:08:49
I'm in charge of you,
nobody else." -Despite the tumultuous
relationship, in 2001,
00:08:55
Huntley and Carr
decided to up and leave once more and headed south
to start a new life
00:09:01
in the small Cambridgeshire
town of Soham. 24-year-old Carr
had found herself a job
00:09:07
as a teaching assistant
at St. Andrew's Primary School while 27-year-old Huntley
was working as a caretaker
00:09:14
at nearby Soham Village College. The caretaker's job came
with a cottage for the pair
00:09:20
to live in,
Number 5 College Close. -I got a phone call
of Maxine saying, "We've moved in.
The house is lovely.
00:09:28
The countryside is lovely." I said, "I hope you're okay,
but if you ever need me,
00:09:32
just ring me,
and I'll get my brother, and we'll come and get you." -On Sunday,
the 4th of August, 2002,
00:09:42
two of Maxine Carr's pupils,
10-year-olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells,
were enjoying a barbecue
00:09:48
at Holly's family home
in Redhouse Gardens. The two girls decided to walk
to the shops to buy some sweets
00:09:56
without telling their parents
where they were going. It was a decision that would
cost them their lives.
00:10:02
At 8:30 p.m. that evening,
Holly's parents went upstairs in the family home
to check on the girls,
00:10:09
but they were nowhere
to be found. They immediately
raised the alarm. As dawn broke the following day,
00:10:16
police began to search
the local area with the help of hundreds
of local volunteers.
00:10:22
The media were beginning
to take note. -Within hours
of their disappearance, police from three forces
and hundreds of townsfolk
00:10:30
have joined the hunt
for Holly and Jessica. -It is a small village
in the middle
00:10:35
of the Cambridgeshire
countryside where it's one of those places
where everybody knows everybody,
00:10:42
so almost everybody in town
would know the two families. They probably know
the little girls, and therefore,
00:10:49
it was a community concern
that these girls were missing, and they didn't know
where they were.
00:10:55
-Later that same day,
police issued a public appeal. They were becoming increasingly
concerned for the girls.
00:11:03
-Their disappearance is
incredibly out of character. They haven't been
missing before.
00:11:08
They're very well-balanced,
very bright, young girls. As far as we can tell,
they've taken no change
00:11:12
of clothing and no money, so as we say,
it's quite out of character. -The police had
a very real belief
00:11:21
that the girls
could've just gone missing, that they could've wandered off and got themselves lost
in the countryside.
00:11:28
It was, after all,
just a few hundred yards where they were last seen
from open meadowlands
00:11:34
and then the fens of
Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, so it would've been
perhaps quite easy
00:11:40
for them to wander off, get lost, perhaps get
into trouble, fall in a fen. -Police tried to track
Jessica's mobile phone signal,
00:11:49
but they couldn't
pinpoint a location. -There was still hope
that they could be found alive,
00:11:55
and at worst-case scenario, was that perhaps they'd been
taken hostage by somebody
00:12:01
or just abducted by someone
with not good intent, so the police still
and, I think,
00:12:08
the families and the people
of Soham still had a real hope that they'd see the girls alive
again in those first few days.
00:12:15
-On the 5th of August,
Holly and Jessica's parents appeared at an emotional
press conference
00:12:21
to appeal for their safe return. -We love them so much.
We just want them home. Just anyone who's got children
must know
00:12:31
what we're going through. -The disappearance
of Holly and Jessica create a storm of interest,
a media circus.
00:12:42
They were so appealing,
so beautiful, so charming, so smiley. The world and his wife wanted
00:12:49
to know what on earth
had happened to them. -The police based
their headquarters
00:12:54
at Holly and Jessica's school. Around 500 locals and officers
from neighboring Suffolk
00:13:00
and Essex joined
Cambridgeshire police in the round-the-clock
search for the girls.
00:13:06
It quickly became one
of the biggest investigations the country had ever seen. -Not surprisingly,
00:13:14
an absolutely
extraordinary manhunt results. Police are drafted in. Areas are searched.
00:13:22
News crews arrive. Reporters arrive. Everyone who's ever seen them
is interviewed at great length.
00:13:28
-With no real clues as
to where the children are and what state they're in, searching these vast areas
of fenlands is difficult.
00:13:37
So these friends of Holly's
parents have chosen an area close to the 810 Cambridge Road
where the two girls
00:13:43
were reportedly last seen
yesterday morning. -It's the helplessness,
but as long as
00:13:50
there's something to look for,
we just never give up hope. -Well, it's been probably the
worst night so far, last night.
00:14:01
We've had and experienced
friends and family searching in ditches. -But the police had no luck.
00:14:10
The search for Holly and Jessica
continued for over a week, but it seemed as though
they just vanished off
00:14:16
the face of the earth. On the 15th of August, 11 days
after the girls went missing,
00:14:23
Sky News decided
to retrace their steps, which meant interviewing
the last person to see them,
00:14:29
local school caretaker
Ian Huntley, the boyfriend of Holly and
Jessica's classroom assistant,
00:14:36
Maxine Carr. -It's 6:15 p.m. The timeline
on that Sunday night, the 4th of August,
puts the girls here,
00:14:45
right in the fourth quarter
of the Village College, the local education center. We know they've been to
the sports center just across
00:14:52
the road a few minutes before
to buy some sweets and were carrying on
walking through
00:14:56
what would've been
very familiar territory. Their primary school,
St. Andrew's, is just across the back
of the Village College here.
00:15:03
How do we know
they were here at 6:15? Well, we have an eyewitness. Ian Huntley here
is a familiar figure.
00:15:09
Evening, Ian. You're the school caretaker. The girls, Jessica and Holly,
would know you,
00:15:15
and they saw you
on the front doorstep. What went on? -Well, the --
I don't know the girls.
00:15:20
And I stood on the front
doorstep grooming my dog down. She had run away and come back
a bit of a mess.
00:15:25
They just came across and asked
how Ms. Carr was, as she used to teach them
at St. Andrew's,
00:15:30
and I just said she weren't very
good as she hadn't got the job. And they just says, "Please
tell her that we're very sorry,"
00:15:35
and after,
walked in the direction of the library over there. -And you may, as it turned out,
have been the last person
00:15:41
to actually chat to them
before they vanished. -Yeah, that's what
it seems like.
00:15:45
-Huntley looked like
an unassuming, ordinary little bloke with a soft voice
that wouldn't hurt a fly.
00:15:52
-He was a slight,
withdrawn sort of character, but at the time,
he seemed reasonably credible.
00:15:59
It seemed like a credible story. That's where the girls
would've walked, so when I talked to him,
I had an open mind.
00:16:06
I certainly, at the time,
wasn't thinking, "This is the guy
that's done them harm."
00:16:10
-Maxine Carr was also keen
to appear on camera. -We interviewed her
in the middle of the village
00:16:17
and got her to tell us about
her relationship with the girls. -They were ever so funny,
brilliant and kind to everybody.
00:16:26
They wouldn't say a bad word
about anybody, and they loved their families
and everything,
00:16:29
which is why nobody believes
that they would ever run away. They was very close
to all their family.
00:16:36
This is something
I'll probably keep for the rest of my life,
I think. It's what Holly gave me
on the last day of term.
00:16:41
She was very upset, and that's
the kind of girl she was. She was just lovely,
really lovely.
00:16:47
-In the conversation,
we realized, a few minutes afterwards, she spoke about the girls
in the past tense.
00:16:55
When I was talking to her live,
it didn't really occur to me. But a couple of minutes
afterwards when we said,
00:17:02
"Thanks very much,"
and she walked off, and my producer said,
"Just play that tape again.
00:17:08
I'm sure she was talking about
the girls in the past tense." -They was very close
to all their family,
00:17:15
and that's the kind of girl
she was. -We thought, "That's strange," and that certainly got
our alarm bells ringing.
00:17:23
-Huntley's unusual interest
in the case and Maxine's TV interview raised suspicion
among investigators.
00:17:31
On Friday, the 16th of August, 12 days after the disappearance
of Holly and Jessica,
00:17:37
police brought the pair in
for questioning while forensic experts
began to search their home
00:17:43
and Soham Village College
where Huntley worked. -It's commonplace now,
and indeed,
00:17:48
it was commonplace
even in 2002 for the police to take an intense interest
in bystanders and onlookers
00:17:55
at crime scenes. It's true in arson. It's true in murder, and indeed,
it is fairly familiar
00:18:02
and, indeed, even was then
that they always look at who volunteers
to search for a body,
00:18:08
whether it's the body
of a child or an adult. Often, the perpetrator is among
the searchers,
00:18:14
not without exception, but often because they want
to admire their own handiwork.
00:18:22
-Could it be the person
responsible for Holly and Jessica's disappearance had been under the noses
of detectives from day one?
00:18:33
On the 16th of August, 2002,
12 days after the disappearance of 10-year-old schoolgirls
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman,
00:18:42
local caretaker Ian Huntley
and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, had been taken in
for questioning by police.
00:18:50
Interviews given by the pair
on Sky News had roused the suspicions
of detectives.
00:18:56
-We were starting to think,
"Wow. These two people
really could be involved in something to do
with these girls.
00:19:02
They're close enough to it. They've clearly aroused
police suspicion at this stage."
00:19:08
-But after just 7 hours,
they were released when Carr provided Huntley
with an alibi.
00:19:15
She claimed she was with him
in their home on the night
of the girls' disappearance.
00:19:21
-It wasn't until about
10:00 or 11:00 at night that we heard
that police released them,
00:19:26
which we found interesting, and I'd got a phone number
from Maxine Carr. I thought,
"Well, worth a gamble.
00:19:34
I'll just ring and see
if I get through to them." And extraordinarily enough,
I did.
00:19:38
I got straight through
to Maxine Carr, and I said, "I gather you've been
interviewed by the police.
00:19:45
What happened?
How are you?" She said, "Well, we're fine. I can't tell you
anything about it,
00:19:51
but it's all all right." Huntley then grabbed
the phone off her, and I guess wanted to end
the conversation quickly,
00:19:58
so he said, "Well, thanks
for ringing. Yeah, we're fine. Nothing to report. The police have let us go.
00:20:05
Nothing going on.
Thanks a lot. Thanks for ringing.
Bye." -Once Huntley and Carr
had been questioned,
00:20:11
further searches were
carried out at their home and at Huntley's place of work,
Soham Village College.
00:20:18
-It was quite clear
as we tracked back that something had happened
on the Friday night
00:20:24
during the interviews
with Huntley and Carr. It had triggered
further searches, and because
they suddenly saw Huntley
00:20:33
as perhaps the key figure here, they went back
over his territory, his home and his workplace,
00:20:42
and it was then that they began
to find evidence that he had abducted the girls.
00:20:47
-On the 17th of August, investigators got their biggest
breakthrough in the case yet.
00:20:54
In the bins at the school
where Huntley worked, they found the burnt remains
of two football shirts,
00:21:00
track-suit bottoms,
shoes and some underwear. Forensic expert Peter Lamb
identified the clothes
00:21:07
as those belonging
to Holly and Jessica. -One of the crucial items
in this particular case
00:21:14
was the tops that the
little girls were last seen in. These were unusual,
and this helped us
00:21:20
tremendously to build up
a picture of the types of fibers that it would be easy
for us to find.
00:21:28
-Whenever two human beings
interact, there is an exchange
of material, be that something as tiny as DNA
up to something less subtle,
00:21:41
like a fiber, up to saliva
or bodily fluids, blood. We leave a mark on each other,
00:21:48
and no matter how hard one tries
to destroy all of that evidence, there will usually
be something left to say
00:21:56
that the two people
have been interacting. There is this constant
interaction of material
00:22:03
that allows forensic scientists
to draw conclusions and ultimately to come up
with very strong evidence
00:22:10
that places one person in
one place with another person and builds the case. -Forensic scientist Peter Lamb
had the girls' clothes,
00:22:20
but now he had to link them
forensically to Ian Huntley, and it didn't take long.
00:22:27
-During the examination
of the items from the bin, I found five human head hairs.
00:22:36
These head hairs were compared
with Holly's hair and Jessica's hair. They didn't match
either of those two,
00:22:43
but they did match
Ian Huntley's hair. -This vital evidence
led to the arrest of both
00:22:49
Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr
on the very same day, the 17th of August, on suspicion
of abduction and murder.
00:22:58
When Carr had previously
been questioned by police, she had provided Huntley
with an alibi, but she'd lied.
00:23:05
She admitted that, on the night
Holly and Jessica were murdered, she was in Grimsby,
110 miles from Soham.
00:23:14
-In the last few hours,
a 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman
have been arrested.
00:23:22
The 28-year-old man
has been arrested for the murder and abduction of Holly Wells
and Jessica Chapman.
00:23:29
The 25-year-old woman has been arrested
for the murder of both girls. They've been taken to separate
police stations
00:23:37
in Cambridgeshire
where they will be interviewed. -Huntley and Carr's former
neighbor, Morisa Gibb,
00:23:43
was completely shocked. -When they got him
as a suspect, I didn't think
he would be that type
00:23:49
because he's always
wanted children. When my godchildren came round
or my niece or my nephew
00:23:54
used to play with him
in the back tent fort, everything,
and I didn't see him to be the type to do it
unto the two young girls.
00:24:01
It made me upset really because that could've been
my godchildren. That could've been my niece
or my nephew.
00:24:07
He could've done it then,
you know, killed them. But it did upset me,
and for Maxine
00:24:13
to stay by his side,
that scared me a little bit because I knew
she's always wanted children.
00:24:18
And I thought,
"I'm glad they haven't got any children themselves. So what would've happened
if they did have children?"
00:24:24
-And as the day went on came the news the whole world
had been dreading. Burnt human remains
had been found in a ditch
00:24:32
near an air base
at Mildenhall in Suffolk. The following day,
August the 18th, the police updated the press.
00:24:42
-It is with great sadness that I have to tell you
the following news. It may be some days yet before
we are able
00:24:51
to positively identify
the two bodies found at Common Drove near Lakenheath
in Suffolk yesterday lunchtime.
00:25:01
However, we are certain
as we possibly can be tonight that they are those of
Holly and Jessica.
00:25:11
-A team of experts,
including me, went to the ditch, and we found that it was
the bodies of two little girls,
00:25:21
and it was then that we began
to carefully excavate the area, looking for any clues
who might have put them there
00:25:31
and what had actually
happened to them. Within the ditch
whilst we were searching,
00:25:37
we found various items,
which led us to believe, even before we'd done
any DNA testing,
00:25:46
that these were the bodies
of Holly and Jessica. In particular, we found part
of the pocket
00:25:53
of the track-suit bottoms that one of them was wearing,
part of the little plastic logo
00:26:01
off the side
of the track-suit bottoms and also a piece of jewelry which belonged
to one of the two girls.
00:26:11
-This isolated spot is about
10 miles from the where
the two girls disappeared, and for the moment, the army of
press from around the world
00:26:18
covering the police inquiry
are being kept well away. -When you're live on air, the thing is
to keep broadcasting.
00:26:26
I mean, the news that bodies
have been found was dreadful, and it was all
the worst we'd feared,
00:26:35
but we knew that a lot of people
had been following this story on-air like everybody else.
00:26:40
You know, your hearts sink when
you realize the reality of it, but it's much later
when you finally come off air
00:26:47
that you kind of go, "That's just awful. I mean,
what a terrible, terrible waste
00:26:53
and what a terrible tragedy
for this family, for those little girls, for a village that was really,
really torn apart."
00:27:03
-It was now officially
a murder investigation. Forensic experts had to find
as much evidence as they could,
00:27:11
but the remains
were badly damaged. If the bodies couldn't provide
any clues, perhaps the deposition site may,
00:27:19
but finding any small traces
of evidence at the vast air base was like looking for a needle
in a haystack.
00:27:27
To help hone in on exactly where
the killer may have entered the ditch
with the bodies,
00:27:33
the police called
on botanical ecologist Professor Patricia Wiltshire. -It's a strange place.
00:27:40
There are a series of drove
roads in this part. It's near Lakenheath Air Base. You're on the Breckland
sands there.
00:27:48
That's the soil. When it gets wet, it gets very,
very muddy and horrible. So what the farmers do,
they get crushed up shells,
00:27:57
and they put them along a track,
so as we drove along the track, it was all crunchy with shells
and then stopped,
00:28:06
and beyond that was
the Breckland sand. What is very interesting is that
the girls were found in a ditch
00:28:14
just where the shells stopped. The police
were flummoxed really. So they said, "Where did
he enter the ditch?"
00:28:21
It was obvious to me because
a lot of the nettles had gone through
corrective growth.
00:28:28
They'd been flattened,
but they'd grown up and corrected themselves, and so I said to the police,
"Well, here it is."
00:28:37
And when they looked
at that pathway, they found Jessica's hair
on a twig, so they knew that's where
he had entered the ditch.
00:28:46
It's quite important because
then they can do their fingertip searching in appropriate places.
00:28:51
-Now investigators needed
to prove that Huntley was the person who had deposited
the girls' bodies in the ditch.
00:28:59
Again, the surrounding
environment at the deposition site
held the key. -When I looked at
the burnt clothing,
00:29:07
it had masses of evidence that matched the vegetation
in the ditch. There were alder trees
00:29:14
and all sorts of other things
growing over the ditch, and there were alder fruits
and pine grains,
00:29:19
all sorts of things embedded
in the clothing that were from that ditch,
and it showed
00:29:25
that the girls were clothed
when he put them in the ditch, so he must have taken
the clothes off
00:29:30
while they were in the ditch. -Further searches at Huntley's
home revealed that his house
00:29:35
and car had recently
been meticulously cleaned. Officers who interviewed Huntley
a day after the girls
00:29:42
went missing also reported
a strong smell of a lemon-y cleaning product
coming from the house.
00:29:50
-Not only did we examine
the carpets, upholstery and items within the house, but we were also given
the contents of vacuum cleaners
00:30:02
that Mr. Huntley had access to. By the use of these
vacuum cleaners, it's likely that
some of these fibers
00:30:09
would've been distributed
throughout the house, so not only had
they been removed
00:30:15
but also distributed as well, and so there wasn't just
one particular location in which we found the fibers
from the girls' clothing.
00:30:25
They were found downstairs, upstairs and in the bathroom
as well. -We had quite a lot of exhibits
from Huntley's belongings,
00:30:35
but his car, he'd carefully
changed the tires. He'd washed it. What he forgot was that
the chassis had picked up soil.
00:30:46
The chunks of soil had
the same profile as where he'd put the girls. -What investigators really
needed was DNA proof
00:30:55
that the girls had been
in Huntley's house, but there was none to be found. -It was unusual not to find
any DNA evidence whatsoever
00:31:05
if the girls had been
within Mr. Huntley's house. I now understand that it may be
that Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr
00:31:15
cleaned the house thoroughly
using solutions of bleach, and that type of cleaning
may account for the fact
00:31:23
that no DNA was ever found
within the property. -Prosecutors still felt
they had enough evidence
00:31:29
to convince the jury
that Ian Huntley had abducted and murdered Holly Wells
and Jessica Chapman.
00:31:36
On April the 16th, 2003, Huntley pleaded not guilty
at a hearing at the Old Bailey.
00:31:43
It meant the families would have
to suffer through a trial, which was set
for the 3rd of November.
00:31:48
The whole world wanted justice
for the two girls. Huntley was charged with
the murders
00:31:55
of Holly Wells
and Jessica Chapman and Carr with perverting
the course of justice
00:32:00
and assisting an offender. Both had pleaded not guilty. The world was watching. The lead prosecutor on the case,
Karim Khalil,
00:32:14
had received new information
from the defense team. -The initial defense position,
00:32:20
up until about a month
before the trial, was that he had nothing
whatsoever to do
00:32:25
with the death
of these two girls. About a month
before the hearing, his position changed,
00:32:31
and we were informed
by his counsel that, in fact, he would accept that the two
girls had gone to College Close
00:32:39
and that they had died
whilst in that property and that he had taken them
to the area
00:32:44
which became known
as the deposition site where the bodies
were eventually found.
00:32:49
What we were not informed about
was what Huntley would say about the actual death
of the two girls
00:32:54
and how that had come about. -The reason that I think
Ian Huntley is so terrifying
00:32:59
is because of this
chameleon-like quality that he's got. He's able to roll out
a performance
00:33:05
to whatever audience
he's in front of, so it's that ability to create
that veneer of normality,
00:33:12
that facade of normality, and I think,
behind closed doors, yeah, he really was a monster
in the making.
00:33:18
-On the 25th of November,
Huntley spoke in court. He proceeded to give
an extraordinary explanation
00:33:25
of how Holly and Jessica
had died. -Part of Huntley's story
was that the first child
00:33:32
had fallen into the bath,
having a nosebleed. She had died without really
any involvement on his part.
00:33:40
And the second child he had held
around the mouth with his hand because she was screaming,
and he was anxious that others
00:33:48
shouldn't be disturbed
and to settle her down, and that was going
to be his account.
00:33:52
A suggestion by Ian Huntley
that he didn't mean to kill those girls
I regard as preposterous.
00:33:59
Two fit and healthy
10-year-olds, it just seemed inconceivable that their death
could've been caused by anyone
00:34:07
other than the person
intent on causing their death. -The prosecution argued that,
minutes before seeing the girls,
00:34:14
Huntley had had a furious
telephone argument with Carr as he suspected her
of cheating on him.
00:34:20
He then saw the girls,
lured them to his house and killed them
in a jealous rage.
00:34:26
-We can only speculate about
why Huntley killed the two. It's too horrifying
to contemplate what might
00:34:33
or might not have happened,
and I feel that so strongly because of Holly
and Jessica's parents.
00:34:39
It cannot be anything
but torture to imagine what might have
happened to your daughter
00:34:44
at the hands of Huntley. -Sky News presenter
Jeremy Thompson, who had interviewed
Huntley and Carr on camera
00:34:51
before they were arrested,
testified during the trial. -I got a call from the police
saying,
00:34:57
"Yes, please, we would like you
to be a witness in the murder trial
of Ian Huntley."
00:35:02
And so I've been in
the Old Bailey plenty of times, sitting in the press benches,
but for the very first time,
00:35:07
I was in the witness box. It's intimidating,
being in the witness box, particularly at the Old Bailey
00:35:13
because it's got a venerable
and weighty atmosphere. But then I look down. There's Huntley looking up at me
00:35:22
as well with
a fairly blank face, a fairly deadpan face, but who knows
what he was thinking?
00:35:29
He was probably thinking,
"I wish I hadn't done that interview with you.
I might have given myself away."
00:35:34
Who knows?
-I think, for Ian Huntley, that interview
on live television news was the high point of his life.
00:35:42
He was absolutely loving
every minute of this. He's completely 100 percent
in control.
00:35:47
Nobody knows what's going on. He's the only one who knows
exactly what happened,
00:35:51
and that makes him
feel incredibly powerful. -On the 3rd of December, 2003,
Maxine Carr took the stand.
00:36:02
She admitted she had lied
about being with Huntley on the day of the murder
and was, in fact, in Grimsby.
00:36:09
She argued if she'd known of
Huntley's murderous actions, she would never have lied
to protect him.
00:36:16
-I think the media saw
Maxine Carr as a bit of a target because she was employed
as a teaching assistant.
00:36:23
She was supposed to be somebody
who cared for and nurtured and looked after children.
00:36:28
You've got to remember
Ian Huntley was the one
who carried out these murders. He was the one who made
these decisions,
00:36:35
and Maxine Carr,
looking back on it now, it's clear that she was
another one of his victims.
00:36:41
-Huntley's defense
was falling apart. Investigators had proved he
tried to cover up his actions,
00:36:48
and there was a vast amount
of forensic evidence linking him to the girls. -We had a large number
of transfers of fibers.
00:36:58
We had fibers transferred
from Mr. Huntley's clothing and his home
to the track-suit bottoms.
00:37:05
We had hairs from Mr. Huntley transferred to the items
of clothing of the girls,
00:37:11
and in total, we had 154 transfers
of one-way and two-way types. -It took the jury just 5 days
of deliberation
00:37:24
to reach a verdict. They refused to believe
Huntley's explanation of the accidental killings.
00:37:30
On December the 17th, 2003, Ian Huntley was found guilty
of the murders of Holly Wells
00:37:38
and Jessica Chapman
by a majority vote. Huntley was given two life
sentences by the judge,
00:37:45
Mr. Justice Moses, and was immediately sent
to Belmarsh Prison. Two years after the trial,
in September 2005,
00:37:54
it was recommended that Huntley
should serve 40 years as a minimum. -I think Ian Huntley
would like to think
00:38:01
that he was
a master manipulator, but I don't think he had the
correct level of social skills
00:38:07
to be able to get away
with a crime like this. I think he became a victim of
his own narcissism in the end.
00:38:14
He literally just couldn't
help himself in putting himself in front
of the television cameras,
00:38:19
so he was never going
to get away with this, and I think he very much enjoyed
his 15 minutes of fame.
00:38:25
-Maxine Carr was found guilty
of perverting the course of justice but not guilty
of assisting an offender.
00:38:32
The court accepted that Carr
had only lied to the police to protect Huntley because she believed
his claims of innocence.
00:38:41
She was sentenced to 3 1/2 years and immediately sent
to Holloway Prison. In May 2004, Carr was released
and given a new identity.
00:38:52
-Well, I think she's a victim
as well because I think
if she said anything, he would've probably
killed her as well,
00:38:56
and that's probably why
she kept quiet because she was scared
of her own life. Her sister spoke to me and said,
00:39:05
"Would you like to speak
to Maxine?" I said, "Yeah,"
because she is a friend, and I was there through thick
00:39:09
and thin with Ian Huntley,
and I did speak to her a couple times on the phone,
and we wrote.
00:39:14
I wrote to her when she was
in prison and that, and then it just all faded away.
00:39:20
-It's been over a decade
since the Soham murders, and one question
still remains unanswered.
00:39:26
Why did Ian Huntley carry out
these senseless killings? -There's only one person
who knows what happened,
00:39:33
and because he chose
to give the account he did and has given no other, we will never be certain
as to what precisely did occur.
00:39:42
One only hopes that, one day,
Huntley's conscience will allow him
to tell us what really happened.
00:39:47
-He kept himself together
pretty well through nearly 2 weeks of investigation,
of police interviews,
00:39:54
of media interviews like ours,
so he didn't fall apart. He didn't act crazy. He certainly seemed to know
what he was doing in covering up
00:40:04
a crime that, at the time,
only he knew about it, and I would question those
aren't the actions of a madman,
00:40:12
just someone who's very cold
and calculating. -Ian is so secretive. You will never find out
what he did to the girls
00:40:20
and why he did it because he's, like, somewhat within a ball,
and he won't come out that ball.
00:40:26
You'll never know
until the day he dies. You'll never know what he did
to them girls.
00:40:30
-Huntley was able to leave
his dark past in Grimsby behind just by moving away
from the area,
00:40:37
but as a direct response
to the Soham murders, the Police National Database
was launched in 2011,
00:40:45
which transformed
the way information is shared between forces across the U.K., and a new child-protection
scheme was set up
00:40:54
to help prevent such a tragedy
ever taking place again. -Well, I think the most
positive thing
00:41:00
to come out of the case
is simply that the government then tightened laws
on employment with children,
00:41:08
you know, to work in schools
or work in any areas where children are involved. Hopefully, they've closed up
the loopholes,
00:41:17
so an Ian Huntley,
with his past record, which hadn't come to light,
now that wouldn't happen again.
00:41:25
-Huntley's house, 5 College
Close, where Holly Wells
and Jessica Chapman spent their last moments,
was demolished in 2004,
00:41:34
but for some, the memories
of the Soham murders cannot be erased. -It still upsets me
because I'm a mother.
00:41:42
I'm a grandma and everything, and it's just the fact
it could've been my family.
00:41:47
Even though it's not
your children, it's still mother instinct. It's children. -Cases like this
are quite rare,
00:41:53
and the thing
that always sticks out is that children are involved. And this case, I think,
perhaps gained more notoriety
00:42:03
simply because
two innocent little girls, two pretty little girls who'd
gone out from a family barbecue
00:42:12
to buy some sweets
and never came back. Anybody who had kids
would've thought, "Ah, there but for
the grace of God go our family."
00:42:23
When it can happen in Soham,
it means it can happen anywhere, everywhere. -For 13 days in August 2002,
00:42:34
the British public went
through a range of emotions during the search for Holly
Wells and Jessica Chapman,
00:42:41
from shock to hope
and finally to sorrow, but over a decade on, it's important we remember the
victims and their loved ones,
00:42:54
not Ian Huntley, one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪