Casefile True Crime - Case 08: Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman

Episode Date: February 27, 2016

On the 4th of August 2002, best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared from the small town of Sohom in England. One of England’s biggest ever manhunts followed. The media became critical of the lack of progress police were making on the case….but they did have a suspect. For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-08-holly-wells-and-jessica-chapman

Have you ever tried BBQ on BBQ? Picture this. Freshly prepared crispy seasoned chicken that's tossed in a smoky barbecue glaze and topped with a creamy barbecue sauce. Can't picture it? Well you can try it now at Tim's. Get our new BBQ crispy chicken loaded bowls and wraps for a limited time. On the 4th of August 2002, best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared from the small town of Soham in England. One of England's biggest ever manhunts followed. After two weeks the media was critical of police and they perceived lack of progress on the case. But the police did have a suspect. The police found out that Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were both in the small town of Soham in the county of Cambridge, England. The population of Soham was around 8,500 people. It is a small town in the small town of Soham, England. The population of Soham was around 8,500 people. It is a small town in the small town of Soham, England. The population of Soham was around 8,500 people. It is a small, charming, beautiful town. Jessica and Holly met when they were just four years old. They struck up in instant bond. They were always playing together and were described as being more like sisters.

Jessica was the youngest of three girls. She was well behaved and a lively child, a healthy outdoors type, a bit of a tomboy. She liked to play sports. She had a bubbly personality and was very friendly and chatty. Holly was more of a feminine type. She enjoyed dressing up, dancing and playing with makeup. Although she did like sport as well, she wasn't as into it as Jessica. She was also bright, bubbly and very intelligent, always smiling and happy. Both girls were 10 years old and were considered sensible and mature for their age. Both were only allowed to visit homes of friends who their parents knew. Jessica had a mobile phone and would keep in regular contact with her mother whenever she was away from the house. On Sunday the 4th of August 2002, Jessica was at Holly's house, where Holly's parents were hosting a barbecue for some close friends. About 5pm the girls decided to dress up in identical clothing. So they both put on red Manchester United jerseys and matching black shorts. Holly's mother Nicola saw them dressed up the same and took a photo of them in their matching outfit. Both girls were committed Manchester United fans, mainly due to the fact their favourite player David Beckham was in the side.

About 5.30pm the girls decided they were bored of the barbecue and went for a walk. They left Holly's house and walked towards the centre of town. They stopped in at a shop to buy some lollies. Then walked down towards the vacant Soham Village College, which is a high school, kids aged 12 and up. Police were able to reconstruct this particular part of the girls walk from CCTV cameras and witnesses. They were both still dressed in their identical Manchester United outfits, so people remembered seeing them. When they got to Soham Village College, they made their way to the caretakers house, where their favourite teacher Maxine Carr lived, with her fiance, Ian Huntley. The girls weren't students at the college, they were still in primary school at St Andrews, which was next to the college. And St Andrews is where Maxine Carr, aged 25, worked.

She was a teacher's assistant, not an actual teacher, but the girls loved her. She was popular with all the students. Maxine's fiance, Ian Huntley, aged 28, was the caretaker at Soham College, so that's why they lived together in the caretakers house. The girls got there around 6.30pm. Ian Huntley was out the front washing his dog. The girls chatted to Ian and he says that they asked if Maxine or Miss Carr, as they referred to her, was around. Ian told them she was up taking a bath as she wasn't feeling well. The girls asked him if Maxine got the permanent teaching position at St Andrews that she had applied for, and they were disappointed to learn that she hadn't, and she wouldn't be returning to St Andrews after the summer break. The girls told Ian to say hello to Miss Carr for them, and then he says he saw them skip off happily down the road. At 8pm, the girls still hadn't arrived home.

Nicola tried to call them so they could come home and say goodbye to the guests of the barbecue as it was finishing up, but she didn't get an answer. Nicola started to become concerned. She searched every room of the house, then ran outside and looked up and down the street, then ran back inside and searched every room of the house again. There was no sign of them. By 8.45pm, Nicola and Holly's father Kevin thought something was seriously wrong. Holly and Jessica knew they had to be home by 8.30, no matter what. Nicola called Jessica's mother, Sharon, and got the bad news. The girls weren't there either. Sharon became immediately alarmed. She called Jessica's phone, but the phone was switched off. She tried again and again many more times, but the phone remained off. Sharon became panicked. She frantically started to call friends and family members, but no one had seen the girls.

Both her and Jessica's father, Leslie, immediately went out searching for them. They checked everywhere they could think of in town, but there was no sign of them anywhere. After about an hour, they made their way to the Wells's house to see if the girls gave any possible clues as to where they were going, but they gave none. The disappearance was completely out of character for the two well-behaved girls. They'd never done anything like this before. At 10pm, the police were called. They got there pretty quickly and started to arrange search teams to try and find the girls. Police checked in with all their other friends, not only to see if they were there, but also to see if their friends could think of somewhere they would go that their parents wouldn't be aware of, but they got no information to help. News quickly spread around the small town, and a lot of the other town members came out to help in the search. They made their way to the grounds of the Soham Village College to see if they were maybe hiding in the school grounds there somewhere. The caretaker, Ian Huntley, immediately offered his help to assist with the search and unlock the college.

When he learnt what was going on, he realised the missing girls were Holly and Jessica, who he had spoken to only hours before. He immediately told the police they'd walked by his house. At this point in time, he was the last known person to see the girls alive. The search went all throughout the night and went all over town, but there was no trace of Jessica or Holly. The next day, the 5th of August, the huge police operation started to get into full swing. It was called Operation Fincham, which is a random operation named generated by a computer and has nothing to do with the actual case. There were great fears for the girls, given it was completely out of their character to simply wander off. There weren't too many people around town who felt the girls had gone missing of their own volition. The area of Soham was relatively flat terrain, however there were a lot of ditches, streams and rivers that had to be searched.

Police divers were called in, but there was a lot of water to be covered, and underwater searching was slow work at the best of times. Soham also had extensive parkland areas, and given it was summer, a lot of the areas were overgrown and contained long grass, so the search wasn't straightforward. Over 500 townspeople volunteered to help search. They were tasked by police and used sticks to poke into the various ditches, hidey holes and long grassed areas to make sure they didn't miss anything. Some searched as long as 16 hours a day. Many held onto the firm belief that Jessica and Holly would be found alive. In the meantime, someone became a ghost town. Parents were too frightened to allow their kids out of the house. Police hoped Jessica and Holly were just on an adventure gone wrong, and they were okay, maybe too scared to come home. They even organised a message from the girls hero David Beckham, encouraging them to return home, and that they weren't in any trouble, and appealing for anyone with information to come forward. By Wednesday, police had searched the entire area of Soham and the surrounding areas. They had received 2,500 phone calls, made 400 door-to-door interviews, and had stopped 700 cars in their effort to find the girls.

Over 700 police officers were involved. The search included the use of a helicopter with thermal imaging equipment, and the use of a plane from the nearby air force base. But they had found nothing. Four days into the search, police held a press conference and gave what little info they knew. It was here that they mentioned the girls were last seen by Soham College caretaker Ann Huntley, as the girls had walked past his house. Naturally, the media were pretty keen to hear what he had to say. Well, I don't know the girls. I was still on the front doorstep, grooming my dog down, she'd run away and come back a bit of a mess. They just came across and asked how miss Carr was, and she used to teach them at St Andrews. I just said she worked very good, and she hadn't got the job. And they're just as pleased to tell her that we're very sorry, and off they walked in the direction of the library over there. By now, police and the media had based themselves in the grounds of Soham College, and held daily meetings and press conferences there. Ann Huntley and Maxine Carr had both been a big help. As the caretaker of the college, Ann helped set up the chairs for press conferences, and was on hand in case anything was needed.

He also helped coordinate further searches throughout the school grounds. And once the media learnt the reason Jessica and Holly had gone by the college was to see Maxine Carr, they were eager to talk to her as well. This is something I probably keep for the rest of my life, I think. It's what Holly gave me on the last day of term. She was very upset, because I didn't get my job. And that's the kind of girl she was. She was just lovely. Really lovely. On Saturday the 10th of August, police organised a reconstruction of Holly and Jessica's final walk. Two young actresses were dressed up in Manchester United jerseys and black shorts, and retraced the girl's steps in the hopes that might spark something in somebody's memory. The next day, some sections of the media started to criticise the police and their lack of progress on the case, despite their mammoth effort. Unfortunately, as with a lot of cases of this magnitude, a lot of the calls received from the public were false leads and dead ends, including a lot of false sightings of the girls.

This actually led the police making a public appeal for young children not to wear red Manchester United shirts in public, fearing it would create many more false sightings. A profile was made up of the abductor, but it was pretty broad. He was thought to be a local man, probably with previous sex offences, aged between 25 and 40. There were around 700 men with prior sex offences living within a reasonable distance of so on. Both the police and Holly and Jessica's parents made direct appeals to the abductor through the media to return the girls home. This included an appeal by police urging the abductor to get in touch by midnight, and that instructions had been left on Jessica's phone via a way of text message. This was an attempt to try and get the abductor to turn on Jessica's phone, which was still off, so they could get a signal on it and try and trace the location. But it didn't work. The phone remained off. Despite the perceived lack of progress from the eyes of the media, the police had a suspect, and they'd been working hard on him behind the scenes.

The police say that the answer is here in Soham. Do you agree with that line of inquiry, as they say? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for two girls to go missing, basically from our front doorstep, somebody would have seen or heard something if somebody had tried to get those girls into a car, if it had just been somebody passing through. Yeah, it's very strange. By now, Ian Huntley had been identified as a suspect, and police had poured over every word both he and Maxine Carr had added to the media. And there was a lot to pour through. Both were very willing to speak to the media throughout the investigation. The media regularly attended their house looking for interviews. Being the last person to see the girls and being the reason the girls were there was a big deal. The police turned up at their house regularly presenting for what they made look like friendly chats, but each time they would go over his story again and again in the hope he would slip up. And it wasn't missed by anybody just how sparkling clean the inside of their house was.

But all they had was suspicion. Neither had a criminal record. There was no physical evidence. As the days went on, analysts were able to narrow it down to a much more precise location where Jessica's phone was switched off, and they were able to determine it was switched off somewhere very close to Ian and Maxine's residence. This led police to scrutinise them more closely. And they dug up that in 1998, only a few years prior, Ian had been charged with the rape of an 18 year old girl. But the charge had later been dropped. That's why it wasn't showing up on a criminal record. Also calls had started to come in. Maxine had given a version that she was home the night the girls disappeared, having a bath upstairs that she wasn't feeling well, so she didn't see them. But there were several witnesses from the Grimsby area that said otherwise. They contacted police to say Maxine was in Grimsby visiting her mother the night the girls disappeared. She was spotted by many people out on the town. She was drunk. There was no way she was having a bath at home when the girls came round to visit.

On the 15th of August, police organised a town meeting designed to rattle Huntley. The meeting was held at the college hall, so Huntley helped set it up. Police made it clear that the key to the case lay within the Salem community. They asked the question, was anyone doing anything differently? They encouraged people to look suspiciously at their neighbours and to ask themselves, how well did they really know certain people? The next day the police made their move. They knocked on Huntley's door and asked both he and Maxine if they would like to go down to the station to answer some questions. They both went willingly, not under arrest at this stage. They were taken to two separate police stations to be interviewed, but no cracks emerged. They stuck solid to their stories. Police told Maxine they had witnesses placing her in Grimsby on the evening of the 4th, but she didn't crack.

At 9.30pm they were reunited in a nearby holiday inn room. Police arranged them to meet there. They still weren't under arrest. Police had bugged the room in the hopes they would slip up. In the meantime other police searched Ayan and Maxine's home. They also searched the college again and found a shed within the grounds that hadn't yet been searched, as Ayan told police he didn't have a key for it. The shed contained the burnt clothing of Jessica and Holly. The clothing wasn't totally destroyed, so you could make out the Manchester United jerseys. Police found the key to the shed in Ayan's house. He had lied about not having one. The clothes were found in a plastic bag. Ayan's fingerprints were found on the bag. It was all but over. Both Maxine and Ayan were arrested soon after, in the early hours of the 17th.

Police were pretty certain Jessica and Holly were dead, and later that day their worst fears were confirmed. When the girls' bodies were found in a ditch next to the Air Force Base at Lake and Heath, about 17 miles away from Seoul. The girls' bodies were disfigured, blackened and burnt. Maxine and Ayan were subjected to extensive questioning, and police had to apply for warrants to hold them without charge. Although they had a lot of circumstantial evidence, they still wanted to crack their stories. They were eventually able to wear Maxine down a little and get her to admit she wasn't at home the night the girls disappeared, and she was in Grimsby visiting her mother. This destroyed Ayan's alibi. Car says she lied to protect Ayan when she found out he was the last known person to see the girls alive.

She knew he would be a suspect, especially when police found out he had been charged with rape a few years earlier. She said she gave the alibi not because he was guilty, but to avoid him being suspected unfairly. As far as she was concerned, Ayan was not responsible for the girls' deaths. But her actions suggested otherwise. If you remember back to that earlier media clip, she referred to the girls in the past tense, as she did in several other media interviews. When at that stage, no one knew if the girls were still alive or not. She also helped Ayan scrub the house clean, repeatedly, when she returned from Grimsby. So who were Ayan Huntley and Maxine Carr?

Ayan was bullied at school, described as a class loner. He couldn't make friends, so not even the teachers really liked him. He made one suicide attempt in high school. He left school at 16 and went from one low paying job to another. He moved around a lot to different addresses, and whenever he arrived at a new address, he always lied and talked himself up. He was always making himself out to be better than he actually was. And once people started to catch onto his lies, he would move on to the next address. Ex-girlfriends reported that he was a control freak and liked to dominate and abuse them. After his arrest, many women came forward to detail their horrific experiences with him.

There were several claims of rape, many claims of underage sex, and claims of sexual harassment. There were even claims that he kept girls locked in his flat when they refused to have sex with him. Many were too frightened to report him as he threatened them, but some did. And he was investigated for rape on four occasions and investigated for sleeping with underage girls on three occasions. None of the allegations stuck. There was never enough evidence to charge him, so he never got a criminal record out of it. But there was a clear pattern being established of a serial sex offender. The system bailed by not catching onto it.

Ian got married just before he turned 21 and subjected his first wife, Claire, to horrendous domestic abuse. He would erupt into fits of rages for no apparent reason and beat her up, leaving her battered and bruised. Claire didn't hang around and left a few weeks later, and she ended up marrying Ian's brother, Wayne. Needless to say, Ian wasn't impressed. It actually caused him to have a breakdown and suffer depression. Claire said he wasn't upset about losing her, but he was upset about losing control of her. That's the type of person he was. Huntley soon went back to his old ways of seducing young schoolgirls. And he did eventually get charged with rape.

He allegedly followed a drunk 18-year-old girl out of a nightclub one night after she had refused his advances. He raped her and he was arrested and charged a few days later. But after a week of being held in custody, police elected to drop the charges. They believed there was insufficient evidence, leaving the victim furious and leaving Ian still without a criminal record. There was a patent near, horrible violence against women that he kept getting away with, and no wonder his behaviour continued to escalate. Ian met Maxine Carr in a pub in 1998. Ian started chatting her up and there was an instant attraction. The relationship progressed quickly and they were soon living together.

And it wasn't long before the mental and physical abuse started. But unlike previous partners, Maxine adored the ground Ian walked on and saw his violent controlling behaviour as a sign of his affection and devotion towards her. In textbook domestic violence fashion, Ian would assault Maxine and then profess his love, say he was sorry and he would never do it again, only for the vicious cycle to start again. And it didn't take long before he started cheating on Maxine. With a 15 year old schoolgirl. Maxine found out and attempted suicide. She didn't succeed, but Ian became more attracted to her, thinking she was willing to die for him. Little did he know Maxine was also cheating on him.

They decided their relationship needed a fresh start. They got engaged and moved between several other towns before settling in so on. Ian secured a job as the caretaker at the village college in September 2001. The school was home to around 1300 students. Ian and Maxine moved into the caretakers house. A police check was conducted, but as he had never been convicted of anything, no criminal history came up. In February 2002, Maxine landed a job as a teaching assistant at St Andrews Primary School. She was an instant success with the kids. They loved her, but she didn't get on as well with the teachers.

Despite his violent history, Ian fit in well with his new job. Other staff didn't have any doubts about his suitability at all. He developed a good relationship with many of the students, mainly the females. He tended to pick on the male students. All in all, Ian and Maxine settled into the town quite well. They didn't make any close friends as they hadn't known their whole lives, but they got on chatting terms with their neighbours, parents of children and local shopkeepers. The attack on Jessica and Holly wasn't planned.

Ian was a pedophile and it's thought he couldn't resist the opportunity that presented itself when the girls turned up to his house. Maxine was away for the weekend in Grimsby and he had just had a heated argument with her on the phone. He was worried she was cheating on him. And that's when Holly and Jessica showed up. The only person who will ever know the exact story is Ian, but it's thought that when he saw the girls he would have put on his charms and lured them inside on the pretense that Maxine was home and she would be happy to see them. It's thought they were killed soon after the door shut behind them. Although the crime wasn't planned, once Huntley realised the seriousness of what he had done, he became very well planned and organised.

He wasn't sorry, but he was terrified of being caught. He thoroughly cleaned the house top to bottom, being sure to move out furniture so nothing was missed. When thinking of where to dispose of the bodies, he knew he couldn't put them anywhere in Salem. He also knew he couldn't travel any great distance. He knew about the airbase in Lake and Heath only 17 miles away as he went plain spotting there and that's where he decided would be a good spot. Plus his grandmother lived in that direction, so if he was spotted out that way there was a reason for him to be there. He put the girls in his car and covered their bodies and made his way to Lake and Heath. When he got there he'd take plastic bags to his feet careful not to leave footprints.

He cut off their clothing as he knew the clothing would be a means to easily identify the bodies and he didn't want that to happen. He put the bodies in a ditch and then left with their clothing. When he arrived home he put the clothes into a plastic bag and made his way to the shed on the college grounds. He put the clothes in a bin and then set them on fire, but the shed soon filled up with thick smoke so he put it out. The clothes were burnt but they were still largely intact. He didn't light them again scared somebody would see the smoke. He locked the shed up leaving the clothes inside deciding to deal with them later. But he never got a chance due to the constant heavy police presence on the college grounds.

It became the makeshift base for the police and media. He threw out Jessica's mobile phone. It was never found. After scrubbing himself clean he was able to make his way outside and pretend he had no idea what was going on and he started to help with the search. He knew admitting that he had spoken with the girls would cast suspicion on him but he couldn't take the risk of lying that he hadn't seen them. It was a public place. Somebody could easily have spotted him chatting to them if he got caught lying it would have been all over. The next day he got to work cleaning the car. He got the tyres changed and removed the carpet from the car boot. He called Maxine and begged her to come home early from her trip saying he needed her to lie for him as the girls had come by the house and he would be the prime suspect if she didn't give him an alibi. He then started asking questions of police officers about DNA evidence and how long it lasted which put him straight under suspicion.

He became paranoid when he learnt the DNA evidence could last a very long time so he went back to Lake and Heath and set Holly and Jessica on fire. He then embraced his role as searcher. He played a keen part in the search and was often seen as being the unofficial leader of a lot of the search parties that were organised and Maxine was only too happy to help. Lying for Ian and giving him his alibi. The families, the community, the entire country, even parts of the world were stricken with grief as the news Holly and Jessica had been found dead. That grief soon turned to anger. Police had to keep the location of Ian and Maxine's secret as vigilante attacks were a legitimate fear. At Maxine's first court appearance her prison fan was pelted with objects. There was a large crowd yelling abuse and threats and they were banging on the side of the van as it went past. And whilst Maxine was at her first court appearance Ian was in a mental health ward pretending to be crazy. His every move was watched and recorded for 50 days in the hospital. Extensive notes were kept and doctors concluded his mental illness was all a shame.

Ian was putting on an act and should be treated like every other suspect. They recommended he be sent back to normal custody. He was taken to prison and was met by a huge amount of abuse and threats from the other inmates. He was placed in a specially made isolated cell where he was kept under close watch. But he still managed a near successful suicide attempt. He had to have an urgent stomach pump but he survived. Maxine was also segregated from other prisoners. She tried to starve us off and at one point she had to be force fed through a tube to stay alive. By the time the trial came around more forensic evidence had come to light. Police had found fibres from the Manchester United jerseys in Huntley's home. They found evidence in his car. Plus they had his prints on the bag the girls jerseys were found in. Maxine and Ian were tried together in the same courtroom. Faced with their overwhelming physical evidence Ian was forced to come up with a story.

He admitted the girls were in his house. He said Holly's nose started to bleed so they walked upstairs to the bath which was full of water as he had been washing the dog. Holly sat on the side of the tub and he accidentally bumped into her causing her to fall and hit her head. Jessica started screaming you pushed her so we rushed over to try and quiet her down by grabbing her around the mouth. Accidentally killing her in the process. He then turned around to find Holly had drowned by accident. Huntley took the stand to give this ridiculous account and the many gaping holes in his story were easily exposed. Ian also testified Maxine didn't know that he was responsible for the girls death and when Maxine testified the next day she said Ian's testimony was the first time he said he was responsible for their death. Until that point she believed he was innocent. But many remain unconvinced.

Her explanation for doing several extremely detailed house cleans was that she was a clean freak. And I'm not sure what the reason was that she gave her repeatedly referring to the girls in the past tense. She said Ian begged her to lie for him and provide an alibi as police would think it was him even though he didn't do it. She said she knew it wasn't right morally but she thought it was right for Ian as she didn't want him to be accused of something he hadn't done. There was evidence Ian had been frantically trying to clean the house when Maxine arrived home from Grimsby but she said she believed this was done to try and cover up the fact that he had been cheating on her. She made herself out to be a victim of Ian as well. An unwilling pawn. Who can forget the very dramatic scenes in courtroom number one as Maxine Carr giving her evidence from the witness box broke down as she was questioned and said pointing at Ian Huntley across the courtroom. I will not be blamed for what that thing in that box has done to me all those children.

Ian Huntley was found guilty of murder. He was given a life sentence for age count and was given a minimum term of 40 years. Meaning he would be eligible for a lease in 2042 at 68 years of age. Interestingly the jury wasn't unanimous. It was an 11 to 1 count. Maxine Carr was found guilty of providing a false alibi but not guilty of helping conceal the murder. The jury was satisfied she didn't know Ian had killed Jessica and Holly. Maxine was sentenced to three and a half years jail but she only served one year and nine months. When released from prison Maxine was given a new identity. Her appearance was changed with the help of experts and she was placed in a secret location to live.

Her lawyer successfully got a high court injunction banning the press from revealing her new identity or the location she lived. It basically forbade journalists from even trying to find out this information let alone publish it. She was even given police guards to protect against revenge attacks. And of course all this was done at the expense of the taxpayer. Thanks for watching.