Secret cremation for fiend Ian Huntley: Soham killer will get £3,000 taxpayer-funded service after his mother turned off life support and admitted ‘it’s better if he doesn’t pull through’
At the end, nobody was inclined to claim Ian Huntley.
He died at 8.45am on Saturday, 24 years after he horrified the nation by murdering ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
Prison sources this weekend suggested to The Mail on Sunday that the issue of 52-year-old Huntley’s next of kin had caused a family ‘disagreement’.
Someone had to consent to switching off his life-support system after he was left in a vegetative state following an attack with a metal pole at HMP Frankland, County Durham, on February 26.
Strictly speaking, the decision was meant to fall to his daughter, Samantha Bryan, though she had never met her father.
To her, he was simply a monster for whom ‘there was a special place in Hell’.
And so it was left to his mother, Lynda Richards. She had travelled to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary from her home in Lincolnshire a few days after the attack.
Whether she shed tears at the end is not known but she had earlier observed that ‘it’s better if he doesn’t pull through’.
At the end, nobody was inclined to claim Ian Huntley (pictured). Prison sources this weekend suggested to The Mail on Sunday that the issue of the 52-year-old’s next of kin had caused a family ‘disagreement’
He died at 8.45am on Saturday, 24 years after he horrified the nation by murdering ten-year-olds Holly Wells (right) and Jessica Chapman (left) in Soham, Cambridgeshire
The former school caretaker had previously survived at least two assaults in jail.
In 2005, an inmate threw boiling water over him in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire.
In 2010, he underwent emergency surgery after his throat was cut with a homemade weapon. He needed 21 stitches.
After the latest attack, Ms Bryan said she was glad to hear he was close to death.
‘I have always been judged for being his daughter – it has been a very difficult thing to deal with over the years.’
Huntley is now expected to be cremated at an undisclosed location in a £3,000 service funded by the state.
The man alleged to have attacked him is fellow inmate Anthony Russell, a triple murderer and rapist, who had grabbed the pole from a recycling crate.
Huntley was found in a pool of blood after being bludgeoned at a prison workshop.
It was previously reported that Huntley wore a red Manchester United football shirt around prison, which infuriated other inmates.
In an image which became imprinted on the nation’s consciousness, his two victims wore Manchester United jerseys in a photograph taken shortly before they were killed.
Huntley was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 40 years in December 2003. Judges told him that he had ‘little or no hope’ of ever being released.
He died never having revealed the full truth about the girls’ deaths, only a sanitised version.
In court, Huntley said both girls died accidentally, claiming Holly drowned in his bath and that he inadvertently suffocated Jessica while trying to stifle her screams.
But in 2018 he confessed to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising the alarm. To her family’s distress, he always claimed Holly’s death was an accident.
Someone had to consent to switching off his life-support system after he was left in a vegetative state following an attack in prison. Strictly speaking, it was up to his daughter, Samantha Bryan (pictured) – but to her, he was simply a monster for whom ‘there was a special place in Hell’
The man alleged to have attacked him with a metal pole at HMP Frankland, County Durham, on February 26 is fellow inmate Anthony Russell (pictured), a triple murderer and rapist
Huntley initially claimed the pair had left his house alive, but eventually confessed to dumping their bodies in a remote ditch, cutting off their clothes and burning their bodies to cover his tracks.
During the 13-day search for the girls, Huntley was filmed saying he was likely to be the last person to have seen them on the day they disappeared and expressed sympathy to the families.
The murders of Holly and Jessica led to an overhaul of child protection and the system of vetting for those who wished to work or volunteer with under-18s.
Huntley had been a caretaker at Soham Village College, a state secondary school.
He had applied for the job and been vetted under a different name, Ian Nixon.
He had faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations, including being charged with raping a teenager in a case that was later dropped.
In response to the failure to share information between police forces, a national database was created, to prevent intelligence from being held in isolation.
The Ministry of Justice said on Saturday: ‘The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation’s history, and our thoughts are with their families.’
