During nearly a quarter of a century behind bars, Ian Huntley has been beaten, burned, stabbed and slashed. The attacks have seen him punched in the face, kicked in the head, doused in boiling water and sliced with razor blades – on one occasion his throat was slit, missing his jugular vein by millimetres.
The 52-year-old has also attempted to commit suicide numerous times, once requiring life-saving treatment after swallowing antidepressant tablets he had hoarded and hidden in teabags in his cell.
So the news that he is fighting for his life in hospital having once again been beaten to a bloody pulp comes as little surprise.
As he himself observed of his incarceration: ‘There is no safe place in prison.’
Because, while over the years his fellow prisoners come and go, one thing never changes – the target on the Soham killer’s back.
Jailed for life for the 2002 murder of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, prison sources last night told the Daily Mail how news of the latest attack on him was greeted with cheers and clapping by fellow inmates.
One of Britain’s most at-risk prisoners, for the best part of 20 years Huntley has been held at HMP Frankland, a Category A prison in County Durham.
‘There is no shortage of people in Frankland who would be prepared to do him harm and deal with the consequences,’ an insider at the prison said.
Ian Huntley is fighting for his life in hospital having once again been beaten behind bars. During nearly a quarter of a century behind bars, he has been hit, burned, stabbed and slashed.
Huntley’s latest attacker is understood to be Anthony Russell, who was reportedly seen smirking after the attack and shouted: ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it.’
‘They won’t care if they get another five or ten years slapped on their sentence. A lot of people in Frankland are never coming out because they are just too dangerous. So if they injure or kill him they simply don’t care.’
Huntley’s latest attacker is understood to be Anthony Russell, a triple murderer who raped one of his victims, who was pregnant, before strangling her. Jailing him for life for the 2020 attack, the judge described the 43-year-old as ‘exceptionally dangerous and manipulative’.
Insiders claim there had been a ‘queue’ of inmates who wanted to kill Huntley, including Darren Osborne, the Finsbury Park Mosque attacker. They said Huntley ‘was trying to bully’ Russell and ‘turn others against him’ – but Russell got to him first.
Both he and Huntley were held on A-Wing, along with about 100 other inmates. It caters for so-called vulnerable prisoners who are there for their own safety – sex offenders, child killers and ex-police officers. Wayne Couzens, the Met policeman who raped and murdered Sarah Everard, is among those held at Frankland.
Those on A-wing are ‘enhanced prisoners’ – meaning that in return for good behaviour and compliance with rules they have earned extra ‘privileges’ such as more visits, in-cell TV and higher canteen spending allowances.
On the wing, Huntley would have been under the supervision of prison officers whenever out of his cell. When he went elsewhere in the prison, he would have been accompanied by multiple guards who should have remained by his side at all times.
Even Huntley’s mother, Lynda Richards, said: ‘Part of me hopes he passes away this time.’ She travelled 175 miles from her home in Lincolnshire to be with her son yesterday, according to The Sun.
The cost of detaining an average prisoner at Frankland is £85,000 annually – but Huntley’s extra requirements would have cost taxpayers well in to six figures each year.
Huntley was set upon in one of the prison workshops, where inmates can make use of their time inside to learn a trade.
There is a woodworking shop where beds, desks and tables are constructed. Another teaches bricklaying skills. A third produces sand-bags for the Ministry of Defence and a fourth, where Huntley works, focuses on recycling items used in the prison.
Inmates, who regarded Huntley as being ‘full of himself’ and resented the ‘privileges’ he was allowed, had been amused that he had been given a job that basically involved sorting through the jail’s rubbish. But, as was highlighted this week, the workshops also offer other opportunities for those so inclined.
Shortly after 9am on Thursday morning, Huntley was attacked with a 3ft metal pole taken from one of the recycling crates. He was beaten around the head between three and six times, leaving him unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood.
Russell was reportedly seen smirking after the attack and shouted: ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it. I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him.’
Not that inmates at Frankland necessarily need access to the workshops to arm themselves.
It was only last year that Hashem Abedi, one of the men responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing, was accused of dowsing three prison officers with boiling oil before allegedly stabbing them with knives fashioned from a baking tray.
When Huntley went beyond his wing in the prison, he would have been accompanied by multiple guards
Huntley was jailed for the brutal 2002 murder of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
On another occasion an inmate’s head was badly burned after having boiling water mixed with melted butter thrown at him. The fat in the butter makes the liquid adhere to the victim’s skin, deepening the burns – a practice known as ‘swilling’.
Other assaults on prisoners and guards have utilised weapons made from broken DVDs or ceramic shards from a smashed toilet pan.
As Huntley has experienced time and time again, the attacks are as unpredictable as those who carry them out.
In 2010, he was nearly killed by Damien Fowkes, an armed robber who displayed ‘strong psychopathic traits’ and later admitted to harbouring a particular hatred for child killers.
Having fashioned a weapon from a razor blade embedded between the handles of two, melted, plastic knives he tracked down Huntley, who was then working as a cleaner on the healthcare wing.
Fowkes slashed his victim with the blade, causing a ‘severe gaping cut to the left side of his neck’.
The wound was 7in long and required 21 stitches.
Having carried out the attack, Fowkes asked a prison officer: ‘Is he dead? I hope so.’
Told that he had not killed him, Fowkes replied: ‘I wish I had.’
In a more recent incident in 2017, Huntley was attacked by a fellow prisoner with a razor blade fixed to a toothbrush handle. He managed to disarm his assailant, who hoped to be transferred out of the prison after the attack, without suffering injury.
In a taped recording leaked soon after, Huntley claimed that ‘by and large I get on with most of the people on this wing’.
He said: ‘You are always going to get people who won’t talk to you because of why you are in prison. But we have all committed horrendous crimes and we all have victims and I think none of us are in a position to judge anyone else. Most are sensible to realise that.’
He went on to say that ‘staff do the absolute best they can with limited resources’, but added: ‘Don’t get me wrong, every prison you go in is very, very dangerous, there is no safe place in prison.’
Insiders at the jail say that the question of how the attacker managed to reach Huntley will be urgently investigated.
‘Our job’s to keep him safe – he’s probably the most protected prisoner in Frankland,’ the prison source told the Mail.
‘So if anything happens to him, it’s on us, it’s our failure. We can’t be with him all the time but with someone like him there should always be a prison officer close by. We also have intelligence assessments and briefings to try to stay ahead of the game.’
Huntley himself was only too aware of the dangers he faced. And, for that reason, while renowned as a ‘moaner’, he is said to have largely tried not to get on the wrong side of staff – on whose protection he relies. He would be polite and, on occasion, sit and do crosswords with them.
The source said: ‘Huntley has accepted his fate – at least that is how it seems. He knows he is not going to be freed. He is not a difficult prisoner in comparison to some of the people in Frankland. He moans – but they all do, really minor things can get some people quite upset like getting the wrong flavoured crisps or an Amazon parcel coming late.
In prison Huntley was aware of the dangers he faced so is said to have largely tried not to get on the wrong side of staff
Jail staff confiscated framed photos of Huntley and his ex Maxine Carr, who gave him a bogus alibi after the murders
‘Part of you is thinking, ‘You’re in here for an horrific crime, and you’re complaining because you’ve got cheese and onion instead of salt and vinegar?’.’
But in recent months, Huntley has had a number of run-ins with prison staff.
Earlier this year he had his Xbox games console seized after a search of his cell found ‘unauthorised items’ thought to include DVDs, USB sticks and magazines.Following the search, Huntley admitted breaching rules over discipline and hoarding contraband. As a result he had certain privileges removed and was moved to a landing full of pension-aged prisoners on A-Wing.
Last summer it was reported that a red Manchester United top he had taken to wearing was also confiscated by staff. Friends Holly and Jessica were wearing the strip in the last-known picture of them taken on the day Huntley lured them to his home and killed them.
Jail staff also took framed photos of Huntley and his ex Maxine Carr, who gave him a bogus alibi after the murders, and made him move cell.
Some reports suggest that Huntley and Russell had previously argued on the wing, in the weeks leading up to the attack.
A source told The Sun: ‘He [Russell] and Huntley were in cells near each other on A-wing until recently and they argued and shouted at each other a lot.
‘Russell was moved and there were claims that Huntley was trying to bully him and turn others against him.
‘So he obviously bore a grudge against Huntley and he decided he would get him when he could in the workshop. But there are loads of people on A-wing who would have done the same thing.
‘One of them is Darren Osborne, who had openly been telling people that he would kill Huntley if given the chance.’
Despite officers fearing that Huntley had died at the scene due to the extent of his injuries and concerns he was ‘not breathing’, paramedics managed to put him in a medically induced coma and transport him to hospital.
He is said to remain there in a critical condition.
‘Despite the amount of supervision and isolation these high-profile prisoners live under, there is unfortunately very little that can be done to keep them completely safe,’ says Marcus Johnstone, a lawyer specialising in defending those accused of sexual offences.
‘Other than confining them indefinitely to their cell, there will always be some opportunity for another inmate or gang to get access to them. When we add into the mix the fact that most prisoners suffer mental health problems, and over many years in prison these problems become severe, such an attack becomes inevitable.
‘HMP Frankland is a high security prison. It holds high-profile child murderers, gang leaders, drug dealers and serious sex offenders.
‘We also have an ever-increasing foreign population who want to control the prison. It’s an increasingly volatile environment. Over the years, I have visited HMP Frankland on several occasions, as well as many other high security prisons across the country.
‘Consistently, almost every sex offender inmate I have met lives in fear for their lives – and a great many violent offenders I have spoken to would jump at the opportunity to attack a man like Huntley. This enhances their ‘reputation’ in the prison estate.’
He added that the situation is not helped by what he described as ‘the decline in quality’ of the national prison staff population.
‘As a result, many of these prisoners spend their whole time inside looking over their shoulder, just waiting for the moment they will be attacked,’ he said.
Yesterday, one woman visiting an inmate housed alongside Huntley in A-wing told the Mail that it looked like he had been ‘ripped apart like a rat’.
She added: ‘He’s in a bad, bad way. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s what he deserves.’
Another source said the double killer’s condition was ‘touch and go’. But, as the litany of scars he now bears shows, it’s not the first close brush with death he’s had since being locked up.
And should he somehow survive, one thing is for certain – it won’t be the last.