Daily Star journalist proved that Ian Huntley’s albi was a lie as we discovered he was 111 miles from where he said he was
The Daily Star helped snare Ian Huntley – after we proved his lover’s alibi was a lie. The school caretaker’s then-fiancee Maxine Carr told police she was with him at their home in Soham, Cambs, the night Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were killed.
But we discovered Carr was actually 111 miles away at the time – cheating on Huntley with TWO other men at an 18th birthday party in Grimsby, NE Lincs. Our journalists tracked down party guests who handed us time and date-stamped photographs showing Carr kissing two other men that night.
We handed them to detectives and Huntley and Carr were arrested. Huntley, 52, was convicted of the double murders and jailed for life.
The Soham child murderer was allegedly ambushed with a metal pole with a spike on it has emerged. Huntley was reportedly left lying in a pool of blood after allegedly being attacked by another prisoner with an ‘iron bar’ and is now battling for his life in hospital.
The 52-year-old was rushed to hospital following the attack this morning (February 26), which reportedly triggered scenes of ‘absolute chaos’ around 9am at HMP Frankland, County Durham.
Huntley is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of murdering two 10 year old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who disappeared from a family barbecue in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2002.
Carr, who was the girls’ teaching assistant and would now be 49, was jailed for 21 months for perverting the course of justice by giving him a false alibi for the horrific crimes. Such was the public revulsion for her role she had to be released from jail under a new identity.
It has cost taxpayers £2.5m keeping her new life secret for the past 23 years. The Daily Star’s role in bringing the pair to justice features in Channel 5 documentary Soham: The Murder of Holly and Jessica.
The case prompted an inquiry into how Huntley slipped through police vetting procedures despite a string of sex allegations made against him in Grimsby – his home town – in the late 1990s. The report from the inquiry revealed a ‘deeply shocking’ catalogue of errors across all organisations that had contact with Huntley before he killed.
It made 31 recommendations to improve intelligence sharing, police information systems and employment vetting nationwide. In a leaked 2018 recording Huntley was heard discussing the killings.
He said: “I can’t change anything. I cannot 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.”