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More than 40,000 people have signed a petition demanding that no public money be spent on the funeral of double child killer Ian Huntley.
Huntley, who appalled the nation with the murders of ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, was bludgeoned to death in the workshop at HMP Frankland.
The Soham killer had been on life support at the Royal Victoria Infirmary hospital in Newcastle and died on Saturday, aged 52, after suffering severe brain trauma in the attack.
Anthony Russell, 43, was charged after the assault at HMP Frankland in Durham and will appear via videolink at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court today.
Huntley was reportedly attacked with a metal bar in a workshop at the maximum security jail on February 26.
The petition calling on the government to block taxpayer money being used to fund Ian Huntley’s funeral or any prison memorial service has surpassed 40,000 signatures in less than 48 hours, as the Justice Secretary faces mounting pressure to act.
In England and Wales, the Prison Service generally provides a contribution of £3,000 in public money towards the ‘reasonable’ funeral expenses of a prisoner who dies in custody.
The petition also calls for a review of whether death-in-custody provisions should automatically apply to those convicted of the most serious crimes against children.
Ian Huntley could receive a state-funded funeral after he died following an attack in prison
Holly Wells (left) and her best friend Jessica Chapman (right) were both murdered by Huntley at ten years old
Huntley’s daughter, Samantha Bryan, 27, said she would not attend a funeral for her father if one was organised
Carly Batley, 47, from Deal in Kent, who launched the petition the day after Huntley died in hospital, said: ‘There were so many missed opportunities with Huntley.
‘He should never ever have been allowed anywhere near children.
‘The system failed Holly and Jessica and their families, and they deserve better now.’
Huntley’s own daughter has called for his ashes to be ‘flushed down the toilet’ – yet the prison faces having to grant him the customary death rites, as dictated by government policy.
Justice Minister Sarah Sackman denied that the state would be paying £3,000 towards the cost of Huntley’s funeral.
Speaking to LBC, she said: ‘It’s a basic funeral.
‘And this man, Ian Huntley, doesn’t deserve anything more than the absolute bare minimum.
‘We’re not spending £3,000.’
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.
She had travelled to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary from her home in Lincolnshire a few days after the attack.
Ms Bryan, 27, told The Sun on Sunday she does not believe that her father deserves a funeral.
She 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.
‘I don’t want there to ever be any possibility of freaks or weirdos going to a resting place or memorial, to show him some kind of twisted respect.’
Huntley killed Holly and Jessica after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on August 4 2002. He dumped their bodies in a ditch 10 miles away.
They were not found for 13 days, sparking a search involving hundreds of police officers.
At the time, Huntley lived with Maxine Carr who was a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica’s primary school.
He denied murdering the two 10-year-olds but was convicted after a trial at the Old Bailey in 2003.
Carr gave Huntley a false alibi and was jailed for 21 months for perverting the course of justice. She is now living under a new identity.
The former school caretaker’s life sentence recommended he serve at least 40 years for the Soham murders.
Anthony Russell, 43, was charged after the assault at HMP Frankland in Durham and will appear via videolink at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court today
HMP Frankland, where Huntley was incarcerated and attacked, should host a memorial service for Huntley, according to protocol
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.
It was previously reported that Huntley wore a red Manchester United football shirt around prison, 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.
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 groveling 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.’