Will Sarah Everard’s killer be subsequent? As inmate accused of murdering Ian Huntley is lionised… fears woke hiring practices have made everybody much less protected

The acrid stench of brutality has always filled HMP Frankland’s sterile whitewashed corridors.

Inside the prison’s high concrete walls, violence is perhaps the only common language shared by its 850 inmates – among them some of Britain’s most notorious killers.

Prisoners often attack staff and each other with weapons including razorblades embedded in toothbrushes, broken DVD shards and pieces of cracked toilet seat – their resourcefulness matched only by their savagery.

It was at Frankland last year that Hashem Abedi, one of the men responsible for the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, doused three prison officers with boiling oil before stabbing them with knives fashioned from a baking tray.

The year before, quadruple murderer Damien Bendall cracked open the skull of another inmate with a claw hammer in the prison’s workshop.

But perhaps never before in the category A prison’s 43-year history has the sense of looming violence felt so suffocatingly close.

The fallout from the fatal attack last month on Soham killer Ian Huntley, bludgeoned into a vegetative state by an inmate with an iron bar, continues to reverberate around the prison.

And, with the inmates’ number one target now dead – his murder proof that staff cannot prevent fatal violence within the jail’s walls – other prisoners are beginning to wonder who will be next.

‘When something like this happens in the prison you can almost feel the air inside change. It spreads like a virus and everything is heightened,’ a former prison officer with intimate knowledge of Frankland said.

Following the attack on Huntley, 52, in the prison workshop, staff acted quickly to implement a rapid lockdown and cancel most activities to stop the ‘virus’ spreading. ‘There will be for several weeks a hugely limited regime,’ a source said.

‘The fact that this attack took place in a workshop means that workshops and other activities will be cancelled, the gym will be closed and most inmates confined to their cells for round the clock lock-up.

‘This is seen as a necessary step but the reality is it can make things much worse. The safest prison is one that functions properly with education, an open gym, activities and routine.

‘You keep these prisoners locked up and they turn psychotic. Do this for too long and you’ve got a mob of wild animals on your hands. The place is already a tinderbox full of killers and maniacs. So we don’t want to send them even more crazed if we can help it.’

The fatal attack on Huntley, who died in hospital last Saturday after his life support was switched off, will have sent the prison population into a frenzy, a source said.

‘One thing staff will do to avoid any more immediate violence is to sweep the cells for weapons,’ they said. ‘But before they do this, they offer the prisoners an amnesty to make life easier for everyone.

‘Normally if a weapon is found in a cell then of course there will be a punishment but under these circumstances, prisoners get a note under the door saying they can hand one in with no repercussions.

‘It essentially says we don’t care about your toothbrush with a razor blade in it, your shank, if you hand it in now. Some prisons even have a weapons bin to stick stuff in and everyone does take it seriously. It’s in their interests to do this because those cells will be gone through with a fine tooth comb so if you’re hiding something they’ll probably find it.’

Prison bosses will want to make an example, to deter other inmates from carrying out further murderous plots.

This is a difficult task given that eliminating a despised inmate like Huntley can generate huge respect from other prisoners – elevating the attacker to celebrity status, according to another source.

Anthony Russell, 43, who was serving a whole-life term for three murders and a rape, has been charged with murdering the double child killer.

‘He will be loving it now, he’s the boy in that prison,’ the source said. ‘He will be walking around now, head held high.

‘The perverse thing is that whatever he might have done, killed and raped people, he will see himself as above Huntley both morally and in the prison food chain.

‘To a normal person he might be just as despicable as Huntley, his crimes just as awful, but this is the perverse way these people think.

‘He’s a hero in his own head now and on the corridors, for wiping out a sick evil bastard.

‘And he’s become the rebel leader. Others will be thinking “how can I put myself on the map too?” And that’s why in the days and weeks after an attack like this, things get extra dangerous.’

While Huntley, jailed for the 2002 murders of ten year olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, had a notoriety that drew attention, he was of course not the only high profile prisoner at Frankland.

And now he has been eliminated, some of Frankland’s other infamous murderers, rapists and degenerates are said to be cowering in their cells out of fear they could be next. Some, like Levi Bellfield, who raped and murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, have chosen to convert to Islam, in the hope that Muslim gangs within the jail will protect them from would-be attackers.

Of all those behind bars at Frankland, perhaps none now has a bigger target on his back than former firearms officer Wayne Couzens, who abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard in 2021.

‘He was already getting abuse and threats every day.

‘You look at someone like him, murderer, rapist but worst of all a copper, and you know it’s only a matter of time before he gets seriously hurt. He could be slashed, beaten up or have boiling water thrown into his face – all of those things happen in Frankland,’ a prison officer source said.

‘Our job is to keep him safe. He’s probably the most protected prisoner in Frankland at the moment.’

Other inmates said to be at risk are Urfan Sharif, 43, who beat his ten-year-old daughter Sara to death, and David Fuller, 71, who was jailed for life in 2021 after sexually assaulting more than 100 female corpses in NHS hospital morgues.

‘These people are hated both inside and outside of prison, but the difference inside is that you can earn kudos from other inmates by getting one over on them,’ a prison source said.

‘You have to remember that prison life is incredibly boring. It’s also hierarchical and a lot of these people have nothing to lose.’

A separate source said prisoners with a higher profile for despicable offences require far more care and management than others.

‘Despite their horrific crimes, we have a professional duty of care to make sure they do not come to any harm,’ they added.

‘You have to forget about their crimes and try and see them as vulnerable individuals who are dependent on you. It’s not an easy job.’

A former prison officer said staff would be fearful of copycat attacks.

‘Does one killing lead to another? Almost certainly unless you gain control,’ they said.

‘You could even say Huntley’s killing was a copycat of the murder of Ian Watkins. And that was a copycat of the one that came before it.’

Paedophile former Lostprophets singer Watkins, 48, jailed for sex attacks on children including a baby, was stabbed to death in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire, last October.

So how do you punish a prisoner who has already lost all hope of freedom? Speaking about what happens in a situation like this, a prison source said: ‘There is no way he [Russell] will stay at Frankland, they will want to move him out of there as soon as possible. It’s likely, when it’s feasible, that they’ll move him as far away as possible to make things inconvenient for him, away from friends and family.’

There are other, more certain, consequences that will come following the fatal attack on February 26.

There will be an inquiry from the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman into how it could have been possible for a prisoner to have murdered someone like Huntley in the first place.

It was no surprise he would be a target for other inmates, having been slashed in the neck in 2010 then attacked with a razor blade seven years later.

Ombudsman Adrian Usher will be tasked with producing a list of ‘key events’ leading up to the killing, as well as an action plan on how the prison can improve. Prison sources said the attack was clearly an enormous failure – but it was unlikely that senior prison figures would face severe consequences.

One former prison officer with intimate knowledge of Frankland said: ‘I cannot understand how this could have possibly happened.

‘Because of the type of inmates there, Frankland always had strong staffing levels and officer to prisoner ratios.

‘There will have been prison officers in there, and it’s a relatively small room.

‘You are dealing with people who could kill you with a pencil as easily as having a cup of tea.

So why could the killer access an iron bar, and how could they get close enough and have enough time to deliver lethal blows like that?

‘Any good prison officer would have been between them, they would have been on them in split seconds.’

The former officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said it was possible that the guards present at the time simply were ill-equipped to deal with such a savage assault.

‘I hate to say it but there has been an ill-thought out diversity drive that has made prisons less safe,’ he observed. ‘There used to be ex-squaddies on the corridors, hard men who wouldn’t flinch at the sight of violence.

‘I was trained by a former paratrooper who had been in the thick of a warzone.

‘But suddenly they didn’t want recruits like that any more, it was a deliberate social policy to hire more women who were doing criminology degrees and people like that.

‘But if it’s kicking off with a load of demonic killers, I want meatheads around me who can handle themselves.’

There were seven murders in prisons in 2025 – one more than the previous 12 months.

And in the five years prior, there were between one and three each year.

The number of assaults across all prisons increased 18 per cent in the 12 months to June 2024, and the rate of serious assaults increased 16 per cent over the same period.

‘I don’t know who was there when Huntley was attacked, but would it have happened ten or 15 years ago before hiring policies changed?’ the source said.

‘They seem to have realised they made a mistake, because a lot of my old colleagues who have left the service have recently received letters begging them to go back. None of them will.

‘It’s like working in hell.’