‘Flush his ashes down the bathroom’: Ian Huntley’s daughter says Soham little one killer does not deserve a funeral as she admits aid over his dying
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Ian Huntley‘s daughter has spoken of her relief over her father’s death saying ‘his ashes should be flushed down the toilet’ and believes the ‘devil is waiting’ for him.
The Soham murderer died after being bludgeoned to death with a ‘spiked metal pole’ in a prison workshop.
His daughter, Samantha Bryan, says the double child killer does not deserve a funeral or a grave.
Huntley died yesterday after being targeted in a behind-bars ambush on his prison wing, which saw him hit with the metal weapon and ‘ripped apart like a rat’, according to a woman who visited the prison previously. He was left with catastrophic skull injuries.
He had been serving life in prison for murdering ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in his home in Cambridgeshire in 2002.
Speaking to The Sun on Sunday, Samantha Bryan said: ‘He shouldn’t have the dignity of a funeral and grave. I will not be going. A funeral is pointless for a man like him.
‘Funerals are supposed to be about celebrating someone’s life and there’s nothing about him to celebrate. It takes up people’s valuable time and he’s not worth it.
‘There’s no point having a funeral as he’ll burn in hell. There is no place for him in heaven. The devil is waiting.’
Ian Huntley’s daughter, Samantha Bryan says the double child killer does not deserve a funeral or a grav
Huntley died yesterday after being targeted in a behind-bars ambush on his prison wing, which saw him hit with the metal weapon and ‘ripped apart like a rat’, according to a woman who visited the prison previously
Holly Wells (left) and Jessica Chapman (right) were both murdered by Huntley in Soham, Cambridgeshire in 2002
She added that she doesn’t want the ‘possibility of freaks or weirdos’ going to a resting place or memorial to show Huntley ‘some kind of twisted respect’, saying that she just wants ‘people to forget him’.
Her mother Katie Bryan, 45, agreed that ‘monster’ Huntley should have no resting place as ‘Christian burial is for good people and he’s the devil.’
Samantha is Huntley’s only child after Katie was seduced by Huntley when she was just aged 15.
Huntley raped and abused Katie before she left him, and also pushed her down the stairs when she was pregnant.
Samantha only realised that Huntley was her father aged 14 when she saw a pixilated photo of herself on the internet.
She went on to write to him in prison, asking to meet in a bid to get some answers, but Huntley rejected her requests.
Katie admitted that she is happy that Samantha will never meet her father, as she ‘feared he’d come looking for us one day’.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed that Huntley died at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary this morning, at around 8.45am it is understood.
Security around him had been downgraded on Tuesday when doctors realised Huntley would not come out of his coma and survive.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘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.’
After Huntley’s trial and conviction in 2003, Jessica’s father Leslie Chapman said: ‘I hope the next time I see him, it will be like we saw our daughters – and it will be in a coffin.’
Huntley, 52, was serving life for murdering 10-year-old schoolgirls Holly and Jessica in his home in Soham, a Cambridgeshire market town made infamous by his vile crimes in 2002
It is suspected that Anthony Russell (pictured), a 43-year-old triple murderer, was the one who led the assault
It was Samantha’s mother who informed her that Huntley’s life support had been switched off.
Upon hearing the news, Samantha said she did not cry, but was ‘relieved’ and ‘over the moon’ – despite the initial shock of learning that her biological father had died.
She said that, although she ultimately wanted Huntley gone, part of her wished he had remained alive to further suffer for his crimes; and that she now must come to terms with never getting any answers from her father.
She said: ‘I do wish I had met him before he died for the reason just to see what he would say, if he was sat in front of me . . . if he had the chance.
‘But now he’s gone I’m not going to hold on to that and wallow in the fact I’ve never met him. I have to accept I’m not going to get the answers I was seeking.’
Former school caretaker Huntley was attacked at around 9.30am on February 26 during a waste management workshop at HMP Frankland.
Triple murderer, Anthony Russell, 43, is suspected of having launched the assault on Huntley, multiple prison sources believe.
A spokesman for Durham Constabulary said: ‘A man who was attacked at HMP Frankland in Durham last week has died in hospital this morning.’
‘A police investigation into the circumstances of the incident is ongoing.
‘A file is being prepared for the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration for charges.’
Medics reportedly turned off the ventilator that was keeping him alive after consultations with his mother, who is understood to be the only relative to have visited him in hospital.
A source said: ‘This is the end of Huntley. He is effectively dead and, at the best, is drawing his last breaths. No one who has dealt with him is shedding a tear.’
HMP Frankland on February 26, after Ian Huntley was attacked inside by another inmate
Holly Wells (right) and Jessica Chapman (left), both 10, were killed by Huntley in 2002 in a double murder which horrified the nation
I’m Sam Greenhill, Chief Reporter, and nearly 25 years ago I had an encounter with killer Ian Huntley that still sends shivers down my spine.
Huntley is one Britain’s most notorious child murderers. But when I was invited into his home for tea and biscuits days before he was arrested for the Soham Murders, this was the last thing on my mind. I’ve written about it in The Crime Desk newsletter – sign up to read it for free.
A source previously told the Daily Mail that the fight had broken out between Huntley and a fellow inmate on his wing, who then ‘got a metal bar from the waste metal crates and smashed Huntley three times in the head with it’.
Huntley was feared to have died at the scene due to the extent of his injuries as well as worries that he was ‘not breathing’, but he was placed in a medically induced coma by paramedics and taken to hospital.
Prisoners were said to have been cheering on Russell following the attack, as he was led away in handcuffs, shouting: ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it. I’ve killed him. I’ve killed him.’
Huntley’s mother, Lynda Richards, 71, travelled 175 miles from her Lincolnshire home to his bedside and said he looked ‘unrecognisable’.
She confessed, ‘part of me hopes he dies’ as he had been attacked so many times while serving his sentence.
In 2022, Huntley’s suspected killer Russell was charged with the murder of Julie Williams and her son David Williams as well as the rape and murder of pregnant Nicole McGregor.
West Midlands Police believed he strangled Mr Williams with a lanyard under the ‘mistaken belief that he was in a relationship with his girlfriend’, before going on to inflict 113 separate injuries on his mother, Julie.
He later went on to assault and murder Ms McGregor, who was five months pregnant, just hours after she had shown him a picture of her baby scan. He then pretended to help her partner look for her.
One woman, who visited an inmate living alongside Huntley, told the Daily Mail it looked like the double child killer had been ‘ripped apart like a rat’, and that he had been left ‘in a bad, bad way’.
‘I shouldn’t say it, but it’s what he deserves,’ she added.
Anthony Russell was charged with the rape and murder of Nicole McGregor (pictured) near Leamington Spa, who was five months pregnant at the time
Anthony Russell was charged with the murder of David Williams (pictured left) and his mother Julie Williams (right)
This was the third and final time Huntley was attacked in jail. In 2010, his throat was slashed with a homemade weapon by armed robber Damien Fowkes, creating a wound that was 7in (18cm) long and required 21 stitches.
In 2005, fellow murderer Mark Hobson also threw boiling water over him in Wakefield Prison.
Last year, he was said to have been strutting around the jail wearing a No 10 Manchester United-style shirt in an apparent vile taunt about his victims. The top was later confiscated by security guards.
A photo of Holly and Jessica wearing the football shirts, taken on the same day Huntley lured them into his home, became synonymous with the search to find them at the time.
The schoolgirls, who were best friends, had gone out to buy sweets on the afternoon of August 4, 2002, when school caretaker Huntley lured them into his home and murdered them, before dumping their bodies in a ditch some 12 miles away.
He would later return and attempt to set fire to them.
They were not discovered until more than a week after they went missing, by which time some 400 police officers had joined with local residents to search for the missing youngsters.
Their disappearance after a family barbecue sent shockwaves through the close-knit community and became one of the most sickening child murders the country has ever seen.
Suspicions about Huntley were raised after he appeared to tell one journalist in morbid detail how the girls might react to being taken by a stranger.
Huntley (left) was convicted of the murders after pleading not guilty. His girlfriend at the time Maxine Carr (right) gave him a false alibi but turned on him in the witness box
Reporter Brian Farmer, who worked for the Press Association in East Anglia at the time, interviewed Huntley and was so concerned afterwards that he went to the police.
Mr Farmer, who initially hoped to speak to Carr, was surprised when Huntley began to tell him how he imagined the girls would react to a stranger approaching them in detail – despite not knowing them or working in their school.
The reporter later recalled: ‘The main thing that struck me when he answered the question was, well, how can he possibly know how they would react?’
Huntley was also reluctant to be photographed – which implied that he did not want to be recognised.
Indeed, in subsequent TV interviews, someone from the Grimsby area where he grew up recognised Huntley and told police about him facing a number of accusations of rape in the late 1990s.
He was convicted in 2003 of both murders, having pleaded not guilty. Huntley was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 40 years.
His then-fiancée Maxine Carr, who was a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, would also be jailed for three-and-a-half years after giving her partner a false alibi in a bid to help him evade justice.
She famously turned on her partner at court and Huntley was convicted, having tried to claim he had killed both girls accidentally.
He lied that Holly had drowned in his bath and that he had accidentally suffocated Jessica while attempting to stop her from screaming.
Justice Moses told Huntley at the trial: ‘Ian Kevin Huntley, on August 4, 2002, you enticed two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, into your house.
‘They were happy, intelligent and loyal. They were much-loved by their families and all who knew them.
‘You murdered them both. You are the one person who knows how you murdered them, you are the one person who knows why.’
The case prompted an inquiry into how Huntley slipped through police vetting procedures despite a string of sex allegations made against him in his hometown of Grimsby.
The report from the inquiry revealed a ‘deeply shocking’ catalogue of errors across all organisations that had contact with Huntley before he murdered Holly and Jessica.
It made 31 recommendations to improve intelligence sharing, police information systems and employment vetting nationwide.
In 2018, Huntley appeared to confess to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising the alarm. He continued to insist that Holly’s death was an accident.
After Carr had served her prison sentence, she was released in 2004 with a brand new identity.
HMP Frankland, dubbed ‘Monster Mansion‘, holds some of Britain’s worst criminals including murderers, rapists and terrorists who are known for turning on each other.
The Category A prison is home to the likes of Wayne Couzens, Levi Bellfield and Michael Adebolajo, one of two terrorists who killed British Army soldier Lee Rigby.
A prison source said Wing A of HMP Frankland is made up of inmates at risk of attack from other prisoners, such as sex offenders or jailed police officers.
And in a bid to protect them, they are moved around the prison as a group and are kept segregated from other inmates.
