Double child killer Ian Huntley told his pen pal he ‘had a lot to deal with lately’ in a final letter eight days before he was bludgeoned to death with a metal pole by a fellow inmate.
The Soham murderer became one of Britain’s most infamous criminals after murdering ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002.
The 52-year-old was killed after he was hit with a 3ft pole from a recycling centre in a behind bars ambush on his prison wing and left with catastrophic skull injuries.
However just over a week before his attack, Huntley had written a self-pitying letter to a female pen pal, hinting he was going through tough times at the prison in County Durham.
Huntley twice attempted to kill himself in prison, in 2003 before his trial, and in 2006 in Wakefield Prison.
He had also been the target of attacks from other prisoners and had his throat slashed twice.
In a letter seen by The Sun, the paranoid criminal indicated that he could be targeted again.
He wrote: ‘Sorry for not writing sooner but I’ve had a lot to deal with lately. I hate writing letters at the best of times.’
Huntley, 52, was serving life for murdering ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly and Jessica in his home in Soham, a Cambridgeshire market town made infamous by his vile crimes in 2002
Holly Wells (left) and Jessica Chapman (right) were both murdered by Huntley in Soham, Cambridgeshire in 2002
Huntley went on to thank his pen pal for sending him a birthday card on January 31, before telling her that he did not want to proceed with having her cleared to visit him in prison.
He told the woman that he did not want her ‘placed in harm’s way’ due to her affiliation with him.
The message ended up being his final one as he was ‘ripped apart like a rat’ in the attack on February 26.
Huntley died on Saturday at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary after his life support machine was turned off on Friday.
The killer was so widely hated that even his own daughter has called for his ashes to be ‘flushed down the toilet’.
The former school caretaker was attacked at around 9.30am 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.
Huntley was reportedly left lying in a pool of his own blood after the brutal attack.
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.
It was also reported that the attacker shouted: ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it. I’ve killed him. I’ve killed him.’
Prison sources this weekend suggested to The Mail on Sunday that the issue of Huntley’s next of kin had caused a family ‘disagreement’.
The decision to turn off his life support was supposed to fall to his daughter, Samantha Bryan.
Ms Bryan, however, had never met her father, and so it was left to his mother, Lynda Richards.
It is suspected that Anthony Russell (pictured), a 43-year-old triple murderer, was the one who led the assault
She had travelled 175 miles to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary from her home in Lincolnshire a few days after the attack.
Huntley’s mother, Lynda Richards, 71, said her son looked ‘unrecognisable’.
She confessed, ‘part of me hopes he dies’ as he had been attacked so many times while serving his sentence.
Huntley was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 40 years in December 2003. Judges told him that he had ‘little or no hope’ of ever being released.
This was the third and final time Huntley was attacked in jail.
In 2005, fellow murderer Mark Hobson also threw boiling water over him in Wakefield Prison.
Last year it was reported that Huntley wore a red Manchester United football shirt around prison in an apparent vile taunt about his victims, which infuriated other inmates.
Another inmate slashed Huntley’s throat in 2010, leaving him needing 21 stitches, and in 2005, a convicted murderer threw boiling water over him.
In an image which became imprinted on the nation’s consciousness, his two victims wore Manchester United jerseys in a photograph taken shortly before they were killed.
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.
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?’
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.’
In the end, he died without ever revealing the full truth about the girls’ deaths, only a sanitised version.
In court, he said both girls died accidentally, claiming Holly drowned in his bath and that he inadvertently suffocated Jessica while trying to stifle her screams.
But in 2018 he confessed to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising the alarm. To her family’s distress, he always claimed Holly’s death was an accident.
Huntley initially claimed the pair had left his house alive, but eventually confessed to dumping their bodies in a remote ditch, cutting off their clothes and burning their bodies to cover his tracks.
During the 13-day search for the girls, Huntley was filmed saying he was likely to be the last person to have seen them on the day they disappeared and expressed sympathy to the families.
Huntley’s daughter, Samantha Bryan, 27, has called for his ashes to be ‘flushed down the toilet’
Huntley had apparently come to terms with the fact that he would die in prison, as revealed by leaked tape recordings of conversations he had behind bars.
In 2018, a recording of a phone call was leaked to The Sun, in which Huntley confessed to the murders and made a grovelling apology.
He told a friend: ‘And I am sorry for what I have done, sorry for the pain I have caused to the families and friends of Holly and Jessica, for the pain I have caused my family and friends, and for the pain I have caused the community of Soham.
‘I am genuinely, genuinely sorry and it breaks my heart when it is reported I have no remorse; that I relish something. I do not.’
He said that he thought about the girls when they would have turned 18 and 21.
Huntley continued: ‘I know no matter what I say that people are not going to think any better of me. I know that, I don’t expect it to, but I would much rather people have the truth about how I feel.
‘I have nothing to gain by saying these things. I know I am never getting out. I have accepted that from day one.’
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.
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.’