Murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman

On the afternoon of 4 August 2002, 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman spent the day together in Soham, Cambridgeshire, before leaving the Wells family home at around 6:05pm to walk to a nearby sports centre. En route, they passed the home of Ian Huntley, senior caretaker at the local secondary school, who lured them inside by falsely claiming his girlfriend Maxine Carr — the girls' teaching assistant — was present. Both girls were killed inside Huntley's home; a coroner later concluded the most likely cause of death for each was asphyxiation. Their bodies were disposed of in an irrigation ditch near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, more than 10 miles from Soham.

The girls were reported missing at 9:55pm that evening, triggering one of the largest search operations in British criminal history, involving more than 400 full-time officers, hundreds of volunteers, and US Air Force personnel from nearby bases. Police pursued numerous leads, including questioning over 260 registered sex offenders nationally, investigating a suspicious white van, and appealing for a driver seen struggling with two girls in a car — none of which led to the perpetrator. Huntley himself gave several television interviews during the search, describing a brief doorstep conversation with the girls on the afternoon of their disappearance, and became an informal community spokesman. Investigators grew suspicious of inconsistencies in his account and evidence of extensive cleaning at his home.

On 16 August, twelve days after the disappearance, Huntley and Carr were questioned for around seven hours each. That evening, searches of Huntley's home and of Soham Village College recovered the girls' charred Manchester United shirts from a bin, along with fibre and forensic evidence linking Huntley to the crime. The pair were arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder at 4:30am on 17 August. Later that day, the girls' bodies were discovered by gamekeeper Keith Pryer near RAF Lakenheath. DNA testing confirmed their identities on 21 August. An inquest on 23 August found the most probable cause of death for both girls was asphyxiation, and that the bodies had been moved to the discovery site within 24 hours of death.

Huntley was charged with two counts of murder on 20 August 2002 while detained for psychiatric observation at Rampton Secure Hospital; Carr was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice the same day, and later with assisting an offender. Huntley was found mentally fit to stand trial in October 2002. At trial at the Old Bailey, which opened on 5 November 2003, Huntley testified that both deaths were accidental, while the prosecution argued the killings were deliberate and likely had a sexual motive. On 17 December 2003, a jury convicted Huntley of both murders; he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a High Court minimum term of 40 years set in September 2005. Carr pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was acquitted of assisting an offender; she received a three-and-a-half-year sentence. Huntley died in March 2026 following injuries sustained in an attack alleged to have been carried out by another inmate at HMP Frankland.