Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman
Ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered by school caretaker Ian Huntley in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The case led to major reforms in criminal record checks for people working with children.
On August 4, 2002, ten-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared from a family barbecue in Soham, Cambridgeshire. They were last seen walking past the home of Ian Huntley, the caretaker at their school.
Huntley, 28, publicly appealed for information and gave media interviews while secretly knowing the girls were dead. His girlfriend Maxine Carr provided him with a false alibi.
Huntley had lured the girls into his house and murdered them. Their bodies were found two weeks later in a ditch near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
Huntley was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to a minimum of 40 years. The Bichard Inquiry that followed revealed that Huntley had previous allegations of sexual offenses that were never properly recorded, leading to the creation of the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check system.
Curated starting points for verifying and researching this case. Direct references are checked; search links are provided as further-reading aids. ColdCaseIndex is an index of public information — see a case correction? Email info@coldcaseindex.com.
Have Information About This Case?
Cold cases are solved when someone comes forward. Even a detail that seems minor can matter. If you have any information about this case, contact law enforcement through one of these channels:
- FBI Tips (tips.fbi.gov) — submit a tip online to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
- FBI Tip Line: 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324)
- The local police department or sheriff's office in United Kingdom, or the state bureau of investigation
Tips can usually be submitted anonymously. To report an error on this page, email info@coldcaseindex.com.