RedHanded - Bonus - Holly and Jessica: The Soham Murders

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

On 4 August 2002, 10 year old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman vanished from a family barbeque in Soham, Cambridgeshire. This sparked one of the biggest police hunts in UK history and when a series of grim discoveries were made, it changed the country forever. References   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome and also congratulations, everyone. Welcome to the first of your reward bonus episodes for you all being absolute top lads and making us finally the award-winning podcast that we've always wanted to be and secretly always knew that we were. Exactly. So here is your silver quality bonus episode voted for by you, might I add. These weren't cases selected by Hannah or I. These were cases that you guys picked.

So yeah, no complaining. Thank you very much. If that makes no sense to you, welcome to the second most popular podcast in the United Kingdom. And we're giving you this bonus content because you all voted for us just like you should in November. So we, as Saru just said, let you pick the cases that you wanted us to cover. And a whole bunch of you voted for this case, which is the Sower murders. But you already know that because I assume that you can all read. And also, maybe you didn't all know this, but you are quite a clever bunch. Because this case just so happens to have unfolded 18 years ago last week. So you're all so timely.

So timely. I'm like, did you guys know that? Or was it just a coincidence? Because I didn't figure that out until we knew the case had been chosen. And that's what we were doing. Yeah, me either. I had no idea. But the names Holly and Jessica ring a whole belfry of bells in every British person's mind. If you're not British, it's hard to describe just how much of an impact this case had. Everyone knows about it. Everyone knows who did it. And of course, everyone remembers that photograph. Iconic seems like the wrong word, but it is easily one of the most recognisable images of the 2000s. And if you don't already know the picture I'm talking about,

follow us the fuck on Instagram. What are you doing? So let's get into it. This case is called the Soham Murders because that is where it happened. Soham is in Cambridgeshire. It's a pretty teeny tiny town. It's around eight square miles and it has a population of just over 10,000. It's your typical middle England town. It's got churches, schools, pubs, corner shops, etc. Standard English safe. Nothing much happens there. Unless you are from around there, you probably had never heard of it. But in 2002, that would all change. To the point that local people can no longer sign where they are from on hotel guestbooks without being asked the question, isn't that where?

And we're about to find out exactly what they mean when they ask that question. It all started on the 4th of August 2002. Ten-year-old Jessica Chapman rang her friend Holly Wells and she arranged to go over to her house and at 11.45 she hopped off on her merry way. Jessica had just got back from Menorca and in true pre-teen fashion she had bought her friend a necklace with a H on it and she wanted to give it to her. Isn't that funny how like you just stop doing that as you get older? I know when I was a kid we used to go on holiday and I used to bring my friends back little trinkets. Now I'm just like, fucking leave me alone. I've got away for a week to get

away from you. Parents of children of that age, do your kids still do that? I would be interested to know because maybe it's something that died with us. I don't know. So Jessica had told her parents where she was going and she toddled off just 700 yards, that's 640 metres for our continental European friends, to her friend Holly's house. When she got there, another school friend named Natalie Parr was already there. The three girls played on the computer for a bit, then Natalie went home at lunchtime. Can you imagine being Natalie's parents? Oh my God.

With like everything that happens next, imagine it so easily could have been her as well. Mate, I had totally forgotten about that part of the story, that there was another girl there that day, at least at the start. And as soon as I read this, it came flooding back, remembering, thinking how Natalie Parr's parents must have spent the last 17 years feeling. It's shocking. If you guys aren't there yet with our feelings of levels of

shock, just you wait because you're going to find out why. So as we said, Natalie went home at about lunchtime and Holly and Jessica had a sandwich for lunch and then they went back to computer land at about quarter past three in the afternoon. Holly and Jessica then changed into their matching Man United shirts. They both had the number seven and Beckham's name on the back. It was 2002. It was the absolute peak of David Beckham's fame. He was definitely the most famous man in Britain, I'd say by quite a long way. He was captain of the England squad. And the day he got sent off in the World Cup against Argentina was essentially a day of national mourning. I remember it so clearly. I think my dad cried.

It was a lot. It was heavy. We'll find a clip, post it below. I don't know. So definitely we would probably argue that in the 2000s, David Beckham was most certainly bigger than Jesus. I don't even think that's an outrageous claim. I think that's just fact.

People were like, Jesus, get the fuck David Beckham. Golden balls. Let's have it. So a good measure of his fame is often to ask an American to name one other English footballer other than David Beckham. Eight out of 10 probably can't do this. And you know, he made that little stint over to the US. Didn't he go play for like the LA Galaxies or something? LA Galaxy, yeah. There we go, that's the one. So it was hardly surprising that Holly and Jessica, who lived absolutely nowhere near Manchester, still at the time were wearing Man United t-shirts with his name on the back.

And once the mates had donned their red football shirts, they took a photograph together. This photograph would go the 2002 equivalent of viral. And this photo happened to be taken in front of a clock at 5.04pm. People make a big deal out of that, but it would have been taken on, I assume, either a normal camera or a digital camera. They all have timestamps on them anyway. I don't think it's that much of a big deal that it was fortuitously in front of a clock, like they would have known the time anyway. At half past five, Holly and Jessica had their dinner. It was a barbecue.

Holly's parents had some friends around. And after they'd eaten, the girls went back upstairs at about 6.15. The grown-ups stayed downstairs doing grown-up things like talking, drinking, watching TV, and of course, the washing up. And then at about half eight, the Wells family guests decided it was time to go home. So Holly's parents headed up the stairs to tell Jessica that she should probably think about making a move. It was the summer holidays, but it was still a Sunday night. But when they got upstairs, they realized that Holly and Jessica were not in Holly's bedroom at

all. They were gone. Holly's parents frantically concluded that the girls must have slipped out the front door unnoticed, perhaps while the adults were still in the garden. This was very unusual. The girls had seemed perfectly happy and they were sensible, the both of them. So running away from home just didn't really seem to make sense. And also, if you're trying to slip away unnoticed, wearing matching bright red Man United t-shirts, probably not the way to go about it. I mean, they are 10, but it still seems unlikely, I think.

And also, like, even when people, you know, quote unquote, run away when they're 10, they tend to take stuff with them, not just slip out of the house with their best mate wearing matching tops. I don't know. Holly's grandma said at the time, all she could think was that someone must have taken them. There was no way they would have just gone off of their own accord. At 8.40, Nicola, that's Holly's mum, rang Jessica's parents to see if maybe the pair had gone back to Jessica's house. But they weren't there either. Several people tried to call Jessica's mobile phone, but alarmingly, it was turned off. And this was in 2002, where phone batteries lasted literally days, if not weeks. So at 9.55pm, the police were called and Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were reported

missing. The search for the pair would become one of the largest in British history. Everyone took to the streets searching for the girls. There were nationwide press appeals and endless posters. David Beckham, Golden Balls himself, also got involved. He made a personal plea on TV, telling Holly and Jessica that they were not in any kind of trouble and that they should just come home. And I think that's important. I think it's important to point out that in this early stage of the search,

they really thought that they'd run away. And I remember watching those news reports thinking, God, how awful that they've just run away and they must be so scared. So the search gave up very few leads, however, and the police had to go down the route of staging a reenactment in one of the last places that the girls were seen on the 4th of August. So they selected two young actors from a local drama group, dressed them up and even cut their hair to get them to look like Holly and Jessica.

And then they walked them through the streets of Soham, hoping to jog the local population's memory. It's quite morbid, isn't it? I know. And I know why they're doing it. It's so it's like as accurate as possible. But the haircutting, and I would just be like, oh, like if I was that actor's mom, I'd be like, oh, I hate it. But obviously, everybody wants to help as much as they possibly can. So I get it. But it is,

it's not nice. It's not nice. But the plan was, you know, doing this was that surely someone must have seen something. And it worked because slowly but surely, little snippets of information started to come in via a hotline that had been set up specifically to deal with the disappearance of Holly and Jessica. A taxi driver reported a car driving erratically as the driver was struggling with two children, although this was eventually determined to be insignificant. Then a jogger said that they had heard what they described as teenage screams coming from a wood about 10 miles from Soham at about 10 o'clock at night. The area was searched as a result of this tip and two mounds of freshly disturbed earth were discovered. Everyone was sure that these mounds would turn

out to be the shallow graves of Holly and Jessica. But they weren't. They were still missing without a trace. Witnesses claimed to have spotted the girls on the A10 towards Cambridge. Many local residents reported seeing the pair of pals in town. They were certainly easy to spot, after all, in their matching bright red kit. They said that the girls looked happy, walking arm in arm. According to reports, no one thought to intervene. They didn't look like they were in any kind of trouble.

There were no sightings of the girls any later in the evening. And police cite this as unusual, as the roads would have been busy with commuters. But it was a Sunday, the Sabbath. I think surely the roads would have been quieter than usual on a Sunday night. That's the quietest time. But in the grand scheme of things, that is a pretty minor detail. I'm just nitpicking. How uncharacteristic. After a while, the authorities managed to piece together a timeline of CCTV sightings and in-person witnessings of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. So here's a step by step of the last hours that they were seen alive. At 6.15, the pair are spotted on the high street. At 6.17, they show up crossing a car park of the local sports center, and they're also caught on CCTV inside the sports center buying sweets from a vending machine.

At 6.30, they were headed back into town towards the war memorial, and the last confirmed sighting of Holly and Jessica was at 7.10pm outside an Italian restaurant. During the public plea for sightings of the girls, a local man called Ian Nixon came forward. He told the police that he'd actually spoken to Holly and Jessica at about 5.45 on the 4th of August. And that put him as the last person to have seen them physically in person rather than on a camera and to have actually spoken to them. So obviously he became a person of interest. The police wanted him and so did the press. Initially, Ian Dixon was reluctant

to give it TV interviews, but eventually he gave one and he appeared on GMTV. He said that he had been outside his house washing his dog when Holly and Jessica had walked past. Ian knew them because he worked at a nearby school. So did his fiance, Maxine Carr. She was a teaching assistant and he was a caretaker. Maxine Carr taught both Holly and Jessica. So according to Ian, the girls had stopped to ask him how Miss Carr was getting on at about 5.45pm. Ian replied that she wasn't doing very well. She had been put on temporary placement at St Andrew's School, and she had not been asked to stay on as a permanent member of staff. Holly and Jessica said that they were sorry to hear that, and then, according to Ian, they simply walked off

Ian told the press that he was sure that the girls would not have run away He tearfully told the camera, quote It doesn't help the fact that I was one of the last people to speak to them if not the last person to speak to them I keep reliving that conversation and thinking perhaps something different could have been said Perhaps kept them here a little longer and maybe changed events. Ian and Maxine's neighbours, however, reported events that threw doubt on Ian's story.

They said that the couple were looking into the boot of Ian's Red Ford Fiesta and Maxine was audibly crying the day after Holly and Jessica had gone missing. According to these same neighbours, the couple had also hung washing out on the line, which wouldn't have been weird if it hadn't been absolutely pissing it down with rain. And there turned out to be a lot of other things about Ian Nixon that also aroused suspicion. The first one being that his name wasn't actually Ian Nixon at all. He had changed it when he had first moved to Soham so that he was more likely to get a job. For reasons that will become clear in a bit. So he wasn't Ian Nixon at all. His name was actually Ian Huntley.

In 2002, he was 28 years old, and his partner Maxine Carr was just 25. They had not been in Soham very long. They were both from much further up north. Ian was born in Grimsby. He'd never been liked by anyone. He was bullied at school because of a large forehead, and everyone called him Spadehead. He was prone to violent outbursts, and the overwhelming consensus from people he went to school with was that he was not a guy that you wanted to be around.

This personality flaw followed him into the working world. He wanted to join the RAF, but never managed it, so he left school after his GCSEs and went to work in a factory, where also nobody liked him. While working at this food factory, Huntley met an 18-year-old girl called Claire Evans, and in just a few short months, they got married. But the marriage was quite short-lived in some ways. As soon as Claire found out who Ian really was and how violent he could be, she noped the fuck out of there and got together with his younger brother, Wayne. Which, even though Ian Huntley is probably one of the worst men in Britain, that is a bit of a kick in the dick, isn't it? Oh dear. Poor Ian. Not really, but whatever. Out of spite for his aching dick that had just been kicked, Huntley refused to divorce Claire

for five years, meaning that she couldn't actually marry the man she wanted to be with. After this breakup, Huntley took up with a string of women and girls, each one younger than the last. One was 15 and another was as young as 13. He was well known for having a thing about girls in school uniform. He also got one of his teenage girlfriends pregnant. These girls all thought that he was their boyfriend rather than a predatory paedophile abuser, so any concerns raised by parents or social services were never followed through on. And we are going to see a lot of that. In 1995, Huntley broke into a neighbour's house and stole electricals, jewellery and cash. The case took three years to get to court and eventually nothing happened. Nothing went on his criminal record. In 1998, he was accused of raping a woman on a path in Grimsby, ominously known as Gas Alley. Jesus

Christ, Grimsby, get it together. Huntley claimed that it was actually consensual sex and not rape, so the case, again, never went to court and, again, his criminal record went unscathed. This charge led to a further allegation of sexual assault, this time against a 12-year-old girl. She said that Huntley had assaulted her in an orchard and put his hands around her neck and threatened to kill her if she told anyone what had happened. But again, nothing happened. What was going on in this time period with the police? Like, why is this man having multiple allegations of very similar things and nothing is happening? It's absolutely baffling. I think the problem is he's never convicted. And we'll get into this a bit later on. But it is a quite a difficult ethical question of like,

how far can you just go with that? There's no smoke without fire argument because innocent people do get accused of things all the time. And technically speaking, if they're not found guilty in a court of law, they are innocent of it. Well, they're not guilty of it even. So criminal record wise, it is very tricky. Definitely. I get that. It's just baffling to me. I think that he had so many allegations of things and there were never any convictions. Like how was he able to get away with it every single time with no conviction? It seems like so many times that it could have happened. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. We'll carry on. But I mean, how many people were believing women rape victims in the 90s?

Not very many. No, that's true. So in February 1999, in a club called Hollywood's. Never go to a club that's named after a place in America. Chicago Rock, Hollywood's, they're all terrible. Never go. In this horrible club, probably, we've never been, but I'm assuming so, Huntley met the then 22-year-old Maxine Carr.

And a month later, the two were living together. But that didn't stop Ian Huntley from being Ian Huntley. In July, yet another allegation of rape was made against him. And yet again, nothing happened. Oh, and he also spent all of his time beating the shit out of Maxine. Now, Maxine is no angel, although I do think that she gets a very tough rap in the end with this whole case and her involvement with it. While the couple were living together in Grimsby, she was definitely doing things like committing benefit fraud, you know, applying for benefits that she wasn't entitled to. Which, like, not great, but it's not raping someone, is it? No, and it's certainly not what goes on to happen.

But we'll save that for in about 20 minutes' time. So then out of nowhere, Maxine and Ian announced to their neighbours that they were in fact moving to the United States. But, of course, they didn't. They packed up their lives, their dog Sadie and their two pet rats, and moved to Soham, just 10 miles away from Ian Huntley's dad. Maxine got a job as a teaching assistant and Ian applied for a job as a school's caretaker under the name Ian Nixon, probably to stop any more rape allegations catching up with him.

And he managed to charm the school board into giving him the position. The role even came with a house and he spun them a story about wanting to settle down with Maxine and start a family. And so the two began their life in Soham, but he kept beating the shit out of Maxine. Just to clear something up really quickly, I believe, and I might have this wrong, I believe that Maxine was a teaching assistant in the primary school and then he was the caretaker of the connected secondary school. So it's still the same like channel of schools, I think, but technically they were working at different schools. It's not that important, but I just thought it was good to point it out. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to

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or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. So by the time they settled in Soham, there had been 10 complaints against Ian Huntley made to the Humberside police. Like we said, there were no actual convictions, but there had been numerous complaints that had been reported. All of this did come to light as a result of Ian Huntley's television interviews related to Holly and Jessica's disappearance because someone from his past recognized him and got in touch with the Soham police. So now the police had two reasons to suspect him. Firstly, obviously he was the last person to see the girls and now secondly, he had a history of being accused of sexual assault, violence, domestic abuse and rape.

In fact, a PC in Humberside had written on Ian Huntley's file, quote, it is quite clear that Ian Huntley is a serial sex attacker and is at liberty to continue his activities. This information, however, never made it to Cambridgeshire and didn't stop Ian Huntley from getting a job in a school. Maxine Carr was about to make a mistake too. She gave a TV interview where she showed the newsreader a card that Holly Wells had made for her on the last day of term. It read, See you in the future. Miss Carr, don't leave us. Don't go far. Maxine told the TV cameras that she would treasure this card forever and quote, no one believes they would ever run away. They were very close to their families. And then she

said about Holly specifically, that was the kind of girl she was. She was just really lovely. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to say, doesn't it? And it does until you realize that Maxine spoke about the girls in the past tense. Everyone else was convinced that they had just run away. There was, as yet, no evidence that Holly and Jessica were dead. The house Maxine and Ian shared was searched, and so was Huntley's red Ford Fiesta. Both were impeccably clean. Someone had made a concerted effort to scrub them down. But the house was not spotless.

Forensics found 49 fibres from the Beckham shirts and 77 fibres from other clothes that the girls had been wearing inside the house. They had even found them upstairs. That doesn't actually prove that Ian Huntley abducted the girls. It just proves that they were definitely in the house. And that in turn means that Ian Huntley was not telling the whole truth. But of course, we already knew that. When Maxine was questioned by police, she said that her and Huntley had eaten Yorkshire puddings, cauliflower, cabbage and roast potatoes for lunch that day.

But other than that, the day had been pretty uneventful. Maxine said that she was in the bath when Holly and Jessica stopped by and had she not been, she would have gone down to say hello. But that was a lie. Maxine's phone record showed that she'd actually been in Grimsby visiting her family on the 4th of August. She was nowhere near Soham or Ian Huntley or Holly or Jessica. And it is pretty obvious why she might feel the need to lie about that. But it does seem

like, of course, they're going to find out. Of course, that is such an obvious lie to tell. But I think she's so young. That's the thing. She is. And she's a victim of Huntley's too. Yes, yes. He carries out immense amounts of violence, constant domestic abuse against her. She is his victim. I think that is an important thing. And also, like you said, she's incredibly young. I think when you see pictures of her and you watch videos of her, I don't know why it is. I feel like she looks older than she is.

She's not very old at all. She's 25 when this is all happening. So she doesn't know what's going on, I don't really think. And also, there are obvious reasons and obvious ways in which the police find out that she's 25 when this is all happening so she doesn't know what's going on i don't really think and also there are obvious reasons and obvious ways in which the police find out that she's lying given the fact that she is in another city when this fucking happens but also there is a youtube it's not a youtube documentary there is a documentary on youtube that you can watch i think it's called like crocodile tears i will find it and i'll link it with the sources. But there is a clip in there where they are showing Maxine Carr being spoken to in her living room when she's holding the card and she's talking about what happened that day. And the person analysing it is saying, look how

much detail she's giving. And it's exactly what you said, where she's talking about the Yorkshire puddings and the cauliflower. She gives immense amounts of detail. And she also does something very interesting that they pick up on, which is tell the story in perfect, over-the-top chronological order. Because it's like a way in which people who are lying tell a story in order to keep track of it. And a good way, apparently, that police officers try to figure out if you're lying is to ask you to tell the story backwards, because people haven't practiced it that way. They don't know the chronology of it going the other way. But if you're telling the truth, apparently you would. So I just thought that was quite interesting.

So when Huntley was questioned, he stuck to his story that he had given in his TV interview. But he did draw further attention to himself when he asked the officer that was questioning him how long DNA lasted for. What's that got to do with you, innocent Ian Huntley? What does that matter? Yeah, why do you need to know that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's safe to say that is not really a very normal question for someone who is being questioned in connection to the disappearance of two 10-year-old girls to ask. This really is a slam dunk of an evidence collection, but we still have a way to go. That's the thing, like, I was like, how can I do this in a suspenseful way? I was like, it's impossible. Everyone knows who did it. And Like I was like, how can I do this in a suspenseful way? I was like, it's impossible. Everyone knows who did it. And it's so like, as it happens chronologically, you're just like, oh, it's very obvious where this is going.

Yes, precisely. So as a lot of you will know from the millions of cases we do that include serial style cell phone tower pings, when your phone is switched off, it sends a message to your network that it is about to go off the grid. On the 4th of August 2002, Jessica Chapman's phone was switched off at 6.46pm and it pinged the mobile tower, you guessed it, closest to Ian Huntley's house. Then the straw that broke

the camel's back was found. In a bin at the college at which Huntley worked, the charred remains of Holly and Jessica's clothes were found. Jessica's football shirt had been cut from the neckline all the way down to the hem and across the shoulders. Holly's had been cut down the front. There was also a patch of material missing from Jessica's tracksuit bottoms that had also been cut away. Holly's bra, which her mother had given her just the day before she vanished,

was cut in two. So was her underwear. And just in one tragic last twist, just in case you've forgotten how young these girls were, they were ten, Holly's underwear said princess across them. There was also a drop of blood found on Holly's trainers, but no DNA match was possible. But, forensically, it wasn't over. No semen was found on any of the cut-up burnt

clothes, but five hairs were found, which were, of course, a match to Ian Huntley. The clothes had clearly been placed in a bin bag and burnt with the help of some petrol. And this bin bag was discovered along with the clothes. This bin bag had two complete, big, fat handprints belonging to none other than Ian Huntley. So obviously this was all that the police needed. So on the 17th of August, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested two weeks after Holly and Jessica walked out of Holly's front door never to return. 18 years ago last week. The very same day, just hours after the arrests were made,

a couple on a country walk near Thetford Forest, 40 miles from Soham but only 10 miles from Ian Huntley's dad's house, came across what everyone had been dreading, the charred remains of Holly and Jessica. They were buried in shallow graves next to a dirt track near a US airbase called Lake and Heath. And this dirt track is interesting. And in one of the documentaries I watched, they get some sort of like country path dirt expert in and she gets so excited about like explaining why the dirt is different. So apparently, for some reason, what the farmers

in this part of the country do on these paths is they put crushed up shells into the dirt. So, like, it becomes a very specific type of dirt and also one that is very easy to recognize. And that exact dirt was found on the chassis of Ian Huntley's car. He'd not cleaned that bit well enough, even though he had changed the tires. The bodies of Holly and Jessica were so badly decomposed and partially skeletonized that no cause of death could be established at autopsy and no evidence of sexual assault could be detected. But that doesn't mean it wasn't there.

The coroner concluded that the most likely cause of death was asphyxiation, but it couldn't be proven. Jessica was cremated and Holly was buried because that's what their families wanted. A memorial service was held at the cathedral in nearby Ely. 2,000 people attended. The Reverend Tim Alban-Jones, who was the vicar for the St Andrews parish in Soham, told the congregation, The very worst thing that could happen as a result of what took place in Soham is that the 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.

It was decided by St Andrew's school that even if Huntley was released without charge, he would not be allowed to return to work. When Huntley was taken into custody, he refused to say anything. He just sat in a corner dribbling. So the authorities had no choice but to section him for psychiatric testing at Rampton Secure Hospital. But the doctors there very quickly decided that there was absolutely fuck all wrong with Huntley and that he was just trying to get away with an insanity plea. And no one was having that. So he had to talk. And this is the first version of the story. Well, technically the second, if you count the utter lies he told the press. So Huntley

claimed that Holly and Jessica went to his house that day because Holly had a nosebleed. So he took them upstairs and gave them a tissue. Then the girls left at 6.35pm. He had then cooked dinner and watched a film called The Landcastle. But of course, there was quite a lot of evidence against him now. And that story just didn't really explain everything all too well. So Ian Huntley changed his tune. Remember, this is not a fact. This is just his version of events that day. So this time Huntley said that Holly had a nosebleed and when they had gone up to the bathroom to get a tissue,

she had accidentally fallen in the bath and drowned. A 10-year-old. She's not a newborn. She's a fit and healthy 10-year-old girl. And quite tall for her age as well. Yeah. So pathologist Dr Nathaniel Carey called this explanation of how Holly had died to be wholly implausible.

And I would agree with him. But, you know, Huntley continues on with his story. He says Holly fell in the bath and she drowned. And in an attempt to stop Jessica from screaming, he said that he had accidentally smothered her to death. He maintained that quote, if she hadn't kept shouting, she'd have got out of the house alive. I was telling her to stop shouting so I could think. She just kept saying, you pushed her, you pushed her. It was only when I put my hand on her shoulder as she went for the

door that I realized I couldn't let her leave the house. He said that he then rang Maxine to tell her what he had done. And apparently it was Maxine who was the one who had told him not to go to the police because they would both lose their jobs. Yeah, fucking right. Like, he's just throwing her under the bus, man. Like, I don't believe that for a second. He's just like, it's everybody else's fault. The fact that I murdered these two 10-year-olds is everybody else's fault.

It's Holly's fault for having a fucking nosebleed and falling in the bath and dying. It's Jessica's fault for not stopping screaming, even though I told her she could leave and be alive if she stopped screaming, but she wouldn't stop. So I had to kill her. I ended up doing it. And then it was Maxine's fault that I didn't go to the police because that's what I really wanted to do. He's such a fucking piece of shit. So after this, he says that he listened to Maxine and he didn't call the police. And then he ended up burning the bodies and disposing of the clothes and attempting to cover his tracks by giving interviews to the press and pretending

to look for the missing girls, despite knowing all along that they were dead. We will never actually know what happened to Holly and Jessica on the 4th of August 2002. Huntley's never going to give us the full story. But here is what most people agree is most likely. The girls were lured into Ian's house. We'll never have proof of sexual intent. All we have is Ian's track record, his preference for young girls and his rape allegations. But unfortunately, that is all circumstantial. However, it is difficult to think of another reason why an adult man would lure two young girls into his house while his fiancée was away.

Why would you do that? We've said it before and we'll say it again. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. I know in a legal sense, maybe that's not enough. But for me, that's fucking enough. What other reason? Why? She had a nosebleed.

Fuck off. He's such a dig and I think maybe this is I don't know because I'm not a man but I can only imagine inviting someone's child into my house who I did not personally have a relationship with their parents if they were in serious trouble then I would you know try and help them out take them into my house if I had to but I think I would avoid it at all fucking costs and I would ring someone straight away or like I'd you know do something and I would never ever take them upstairs I would never be in the bathroom with them god no at least if he'd have come up with a better fucking lie like saying the girls would come up to me because they knew me because I was the caretaker at the

school and they said that they were worried that they were being followed by a strange man and could they just come inside for a bit because they were scared so I let them come inside and then after about half an hour they decided that it was okay and they were just going to go home so they went on their way and then they end up going missing. Lie better you're such a fucking idiot I can't with him he's so moronic. A lot of news outlets report that Huntley washed his bedsheets and that was what was hanging out on the line in the rain that day that his neighbours spotted. But that isn't actually the whole truth. He put his duvet in the washing machine. That's not normal. I've never heard of anyone doing that. That's not where duvets go.

Who washes their duvet? You have to like pay to get them properly cleaned, don't you? Precisely. I think what happens if you stick them in the washing machine is all of the stuff inside just clumps together and gets all fucked up. Yeah, exactly. I guess you only do that if you've used it as a fucking murder weapon, which is what I suspect that he's probably done. Or it points to the fact that something sexual happened. Yeah.

And he's washing away the evidence. But again, it's not proof. Maybe one of the girls really did have a nosebleed and maybe Holly really did fall in the bath. I don't believe for a second she accidentally drowned and I don't believe that Jessica was accidentally smothered to death. But either way, neither girl left the house alive. The police reckon that the girls died at around 6.46pm,

which is only like half an hour after they left their house. And that's, of course, when Jessica's phone was turned off. At trial, a jury took just 17 hours and 32 minutes to return guilty verdicts. Ian Huntley was given two life sentences for murder and Maxine Carr was convicted of perverting the course of justice. Huntley's sentence added up to 40 years, as there was no proven sexual element to his crime or any proof of abduction. The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman therefore did not meet the criteria for a whole of life tariff. The judge did clarify

that the 40 years given to Huntley was essentially the same as an 80-year sentence because most long-term defendants only end up serving half of their sentences. But this did little to satisfy Holly and Jessica's family or the police detectives who would work the case. And I'm not surprised. That's not really good enough. Oh, I guess we would have let him out after 40 anyway. What? No. It makes my stomach turn the idea that this didn't meet the criteria for a whole of life tariff because they couldn't prove sexual intent or abduction when circumstantially or logically it feels like, of course, those two things are there. But I understand it is different to being able to prove it in a court of law.

Holly and Jessica's parents did give the following statement. We understand that judges can sentence only on the facts of the case, but make no mistake, we hope that Ian Huntley spends the rest of his natural life in prison. As parents, we may or may not be around in 40 years' time, but our children will. They, like us, continue to feel the pain of their sister's murders each and every day. That should not be forgotten, even in the distance of years to come. That pain does not go away. The absolute earliest that Ian Huntley will be out looks to be 2048, and he will

be nearly 70 years old. Maxine Carr, on the other hand, is already out. She served 21 months for claiming to be with Ian Huntley on the 4th of August 2002 when she was actually 100 miles away in Grimsby. She was released in May 2004 and is one of only four people in the UK to have been awarded a lifelong new identity. So when someone gets given essentially witness protection

for their entire life, it's actually called a Mary Bell order. And I didn't know that. I didn't know that. So the only three other people who've been given lifelong new identities are Mary Bell herself and the killers of James Bulger. I just assumed there would be far more than that, but it's only four. Me too. I'm really surprised by that, especially when you also think that Mary Bell and the two killers of James Bulger were all children when they committed the crimes that they committed. This isn't me saying I think she should have been or I think she shouldn't have been. I'm just wondering why was the fourth ever only case of this given to Maxine Carr, a fully grown woman who was involved in this? It's weird.

I think the way she argued it or the way her team argued it was that her life was in danger, which I think it probably was. It is strange, though. And she only did 21 months. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was bizarre. And a lot of people do compare Maxine Carr to Myra Hindley. And she was savaged in the press.

But I actually think that is entirely unfair. She is nothing like Myra Hindley. She didn't murder the girl. She was nowhere near them. She covered for her extremely abusive partner. And I think like, you know, if we're talking about what we can and can't prove with regards to Ian Huntley's intent or actions with Holly and Jessica with regards to the sexual side of things or the abduction, there is absolutely no fucking evidence that,

I was going to call her Myra, that maxine carr was involved with any of this in fact she's got perverting the course of justice because she lies about being there when she fucking wasn't there like it seems bizarre to me how hard the press went after her in the aftermath of this because we don't know the timeline of how and where and when the bodies were disposed like huntley claims originally when the clothes are found in the bin, he claims that like, oh, someone's trying to frame me. So that's why they've put the clothes in a bin that I have access to. So, you know, we don't know how much Maxine had to do with the disposal of the bodies,

but there's absolutely no forensic evidence that links to her, which considering there was so much of Huntley's DNA and handprints absolutely everywhere, that seems pretty significant to me. And I would bet a reasonable amount of money that she had absolutely nothing to do with it. Yeah, I would agree. I think I guess why people went after her so hard is because of that press interview she does where she sat in her living room holding that card that Holly has given her and is saying all this stuff about how lovely those girls were, how sad she is when she knows at that point that they are dead and I know obviously she's a victim of Ian Huntley's as well

but I think that level of deception is what really turned people off and made them just completely turn against her and some people think that Maxine Carr actually only gave false witness and provided an alibi for Ian Huntley not because she was his victim or because she was involved, but because she actually thought that Ian Huntley was being framed like he claimed to be. He had previously convinced Maxine that he was being framed for all of the rape allegations that had happened up in Grimsby. Just how true this is, just how much Maxine had believed that he was being framed rather than just thinking he'd actually done it, is again something that we will never know. So Huntley kicked off his prison time in the monster mansion itself in Wakefield. Then he was moved to HMP Franklin in Durham where apparently he and Peter Sutcliffe are pretty good

mates now. If you don't know who Peter Sutcliffe is he's the fucking Yorkshire Ripper which is horrific. So recordings of Huntley on the inside have been leaked. And apparently this is what he said. I can't change anything. I can't remove that day from history, what I have done. I know those girls would be 26 this year with families of their own, jobs and lives. I thought about them when they were turning 21 and when they were turning 18. I accepted a long time ago my life was in jail.

I will never ever apply to leave prison. Never ever apply for parole. I will die in prison. I accept that. I don't believe I should be free. Not because I believe I am a danger, but because two young girls are dead and I do not deserve to be released. From that, it kind of sounds like he's given up finally on his accidental death story, but it's not that explicit.

Like, he's kind of doing a bit of self-flagellating where he's saying, oh, I'm not actually a danger, but those two girls are dead. Like, is he still saying, although I did it accidentally, is he finally really showing remorse for having killed them on purpose? I don't know. It's hard to tell. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a good point. It's like, it's a bit woe is me, isn't it? Huntley's been attacked in prison multiple times, once with a razor, and he's also done significant stints in solitary for attacking prison staff. He's also made at least two unsuccessful suicide attempts. And remember

the child that he fathered all those years ago? Well, she's out in the world and a grown-up now. We don't know her name, but we do know that he has been writing those years ago. Well, she's out in the world and a grown-up now. We don't know her name, but we do know that he has been writing to her. A local newspaper interviewed her and she said that she didn't actually know who her father was until her mum told her when she was in her late teens. And essentially, I don't think she has much interest

in having a relationship with him, but the letters he writes to her revolve around the same theme. Essentially, he tells her that he can't expect her to understand or forgive him for what he has done Essentially, he tells her that he can't expect her to understand or forgive him for what he has done and that there's no way he can feel worse than he already does. Cry me a river, honestly.

Yeah, fuck off. Ugh. So the part of this case that I think about the most is how in the world it was possible for someone with such a history of sexual assault allegations manage to get a job in a school. All he had to do was change his surname and he didn't even pluck Nixon out of thin air. It was his mother's maiden name. So arguably it's pretty easy to trace. David Blunkett,

who was the Home Secretary at the time, set up an investigation to try and ascertain just how this was allowed to happen. Huntley could have been stopped, but he slipped through the net. The investigation was called the Bitchard Inquiry, and it led to several resignations from the higher-ups in Humberside Police for systematic failure to share information. Ian Huntley was never convicted of these crimes, yes, but because there were so many allegations on record, this information should

have been shared. He was clearly not appropriate for a job that involved close proximity to children. The report recommended the following policies be put in place. The introduction of a national intelligence system where information collected, which points to someone posing a threat is shared and acted upon before the person is employed in a sensitive post, and more and better safeguarding training along with more consistent vetting practices and a registration scheme for everyone working with children and vulnerable adults. I think with the DBS system that we currently have, which is like a criminal record background check that you have to complete before you get any work even close to children. That's how we

deal with it in England and Wales anyway. I'm not sure about Scotland and Northern Ireland. But if you have even a sniff of an allegation against you, your DBS is immediately suspended. They used to be called CRB checks. And I think that I would be amazed if the SOA murders had nothing to do with the introduction of that system. They actually did because my mum works in schools

and she talks about this case all the time and how it completely transformed everything. Also, we used to do the safeguarding events. It was after this that they went absolutely through the roof because safeguarding training for all teachers became completely mandatory. They had to do it. So the one good thing that did come out of the Ian Huntley case was a total transformation to how safeguarding is looked upon, especially multi-agency working. So the joined up working of police, healthcare, social services and schools, anyone who's on the front line with children. And yes, while people can say, oh, it's unfair if someone's had just an allegation and maybe they were innocent, I would argue that to not put

children at risk, that is the most important thing. I would say that being overly cautious is better than giving the benefit of the doubt. As a direct result of the Sower murders, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act was passed in 2006, and a database is now kept of people who have been deemed not suitable to work with children. There is also a national police database now, which is designed so that information can be passed between jurisdictions, which is something we see all the time less so in England and Wales but certainly in the states like crossing state lines is basically all bets are off it's a step to try and actively combat the lack of communication between policing boroughs. Holly and Jessica's families have stayed out of the public eye for the most part but when the national police database was started they released

a statement saying quote we hope the database's use will mean other families don't suffer the same loss and heartbreak as we did. I've seen it reported that 95% of parents of murdered children split up, but Holly's parents have stayed together. Holly's dad, Kevin, told the press, Time doesn't heal. Someone got that wrong. It anesthetizes. Grief doesn't diminish, but you can manage the intensity and learn to live with it. Murder has the capacity to destroy more lives than the one taken. I recognized that from the start, so I tried to take control, to make plans, and to exert positive thought. Soham and the whole of the UK will never forget the story of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Right after their bodies were discovered, coachloads of people showed up to leave flowers at the church. Some came to pay their respects, and obviously some came just to gawp. One local man said, quote, the whole world was made aware of the tragic events in Soham, and it will take a long time, if ever, for those events to be forgotten. As for Huntley, the sooner he is forgotten, the better. Oh, God. There you have it, you lucky beans. You asked for it. You asked for it.

And you got it. It's a toughie. I would say alongside the Millie Dowler case that we covered in the Levi Belfield episode, Holly and Jessica and the Soham murders, they're probably the two most infamous cases in modern British history, I would say, in the UK, that just absolutely dominated the headlines and also had sort of long-lasting transformational effects. So with Millie Dowler's case, the tearing down of the news of the world and the way in which they

were going about doing things like hacking, and in this case, the way that it completely transformed the way in which we do safeguarding in this country. So yeah, I guess that's some silver lining, but it's far short of anything we could say to the Wells or Chapman country. So yeah, I guess that's some silver lining, but it's far short of anything we could say to the Wells or Chapman family. But yeah, 18 year anniversary this year. So yeah, well done you timely bunch for picking this case. And there you go. It's done now. Exactly. And we haven't got any patron names because this is a reward, not a punishment. Exactly. So we're not going to do that for this one. But we'll see you soon enough outside your window.

Precisely. We're there. Just look for us. And we'll also see you again later in this week when we've got another episode coming out on Wednesday slash Thursday. So we'll see you then. Bye. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding,

I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance,

but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy

and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up.

But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace,

from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.