Jessica Chapman

**Jessica Aimee Chapman** (September 1, 1991 - August 4, 2002) was a 10-year-old British girl from Soham, England. She was murdered alongside her best friend, Holly Wells.

## Backstory

Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were two 10-year old classmates who had been friends since they were only four years old. Even at four years old, the two girls instantly became best friends, practically joined at the hip, and looked more like sisters than merely best friends.

Ian Huntley was a caretaker at a local secondary school.

## Events

On Sunday, 4 August 2002, Jessica Chapman left her home to attend a barbecue at the home of her best friend, Holly Wells. The two girls played computer games and listened to music in Holly's bedroom. At 5:04 p.m., a photograph of the two friends wearing matching Manchester United shirts was taken by Wells' mother before the children ate dinner with the other house guests. They then returned to playing in Wells' bedroom at approximately 6:10 p.m.

At approximately 6:15 p.m., the two girls left the Wells residence, without informing any of the house guests, to purchase sweets from a vending machine at the local sports centre. While returning, Wells and Chapman walked past the home of Ian Huntley, the senior caretaker at the local secondary school. Huntley evidently lured the girls into his house, stating that his girlfriend, Maxine Carr—the girls' teaching assistant at St Andrew's Primary School—was also present in the house; Carr was in fact visiting her mother in Grimsby, Lincolnshire on this date.

The precise chain of events to occur after the girls entered Ian's house is unknown, although investigators believe sections of Huntley's later claims in initial interviews granted to the media prior to his arrest and his later trial testimony—such as that he had been cleaning his dog at the time the girls passed by his house at approximately 6:30 p.m. and that one girl had been suffering from a mild nosebleed—may have actually been true. In any event, the cause of death of both girls was later ruled to be asphyxiation. Chapman's Nokia mobile phone was switched off at 6:46 p.m.

At 8:00 p.m., Nicola Wells entered her daughter's bedroom to invite the girls to say goodbye to her house guests, only to discover both children were missing from their home. Alarmed, she and her husband, Kevin, searched their house and nearby streets. Minutes after their daughter's 8:30 PM curfew had expired, Nicola Wells phoned the Chapman residence to determine if the girls were at this location, only to learn Leslie and Sharon Chapman were becoming concerned why their youngest daughter had not returned home.

Following subsequent frantic efforts by the families of both girls to locate their daughters, Wells and Chapman were reported missing by their parents at 9.55 p.m. Police immediately launched an intensive search to locate the missing children. Suspecting the children had been kidnapped, investigators questioned every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and neighbouring Lincolnshire. Over 260 registered sex offenders across the UK - including 15 high-risk paedophiles - were also questioned, although all were eliminated from the enquiry. On 8 August, CCTV footage of the girls, recorded minutes before their disappearance, was released to the public. This footage depicted the children arriving at the local sports centre at 6:28 p.m.

At approximately 12:30 p.m. on 17 August, a 48-year-old gamekeeper named Keith Pryer discovered the bodies of both girls lying side by side in a five feet deep irrigation ditch close to a pheasant pen near the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk; a location more than 10 miles east of Soham. Both girls had been missing for thirteen days when their bodies were found, and both corpses were in an advanced state of decomposition. In an apparent effort to destroy forensic evidence, the murderer or murderers had attempted to burn both bodies. In addition, no clear footprints were discovered at the crime scene. Despite the efforts of the perpetrator(s) to destroy evidence and hinder identification, investigators rapidly deduced who the two victims most likely were, and that both had not died at the location of their discovery.

## Investigation

In the weeks following the disappearances, Ian Huntley granted several television interviews to media outlets speaking of the general shock in the local community and his apparent dismay at being the last individual to see the children alive. By the second week of the children's disappearance, Huntley had become an unofficial spokesman for the community of Soham. he claimed to be holding on to a "glimmer of hope" the children would be found safe and well, claiming that he had last seen the girls walking in the direction of a local library.

Having actively participated in the search for the children, Huntley regularly asked police officers questions such as how their investigation was progressing and just how long DNA evidence could survive before deteriorating. One of these officers observed three vertical scratches upon Huntley's left jaw, each measuring approximately three centimetres, which he claimed had been recently inflicted by his dog.

On 16 August, twelve days after the children's disappearance, Huntley and Carr were first questioned by police. By this date, police had received information from several Grimsby residents who had recognised Huntley in the television interviews he had granted to the media; these individuals recalled that he had been accused of rape several years earlier. Other individuals recalled that, contrary to her own televised claims, Maxine had in fact been socialising in Grimsby town centre on the night that the girls had disappeared, and not at home in Soham as she had indicated in the interview she had granted to the media.

The same evening, police conducted a thorough search of both Ian's home and the grounds of Soham Village College where he worked. Although each room of Huntley's home had evidently been recently and meticulously cleaned with what was later described as being a "lemony" cleaning fluid, these searches located numerous items declared as being of "major importance" to the ongoing investigation. The items recovered from the school grounds included items of clothing the girls had been wearing when last seen, including their charred and cut Manchester United shirts, which were recovered from a bin within a hangar at Huntley's place of work. Fibres recovered upon these items of clothing proved to be a precise match to samples retrieved from Huntley's body and clothing, as well as from his house. Furthermore, his fingerprints were recovered from the bin.

Huntley's car was also subjected to a detailed forensic examination on 16 August. The forensic examination of this vehicle revealed the car had also been recently, extensively cleaned, although traces of a distinctive mixture of brick dust, chalk and concrete of precisely the same type used to pave the road leading to where the girls' bodies would be discovered were found around the wheel arches and upon and around the pedals. Furthermore, a cover from the rear seat was missing, and the lining of the boot had been recently removed and replaced with an ill-fitting section of household carpet.

Both Ian and Maxine were arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder at 4:30 a.m. on 17 August. During initial questioning, Ian refused to answer questions and appeared evasive, confused, and emotionally detached; occasionally drooling throughout police attempts to question him in an effort to feign symptoms of mental illness. This tactic left police with no option but to initially refer Ian to a mental hospital to undergo an extensive psychological evaluation.

By contrast, Maxine quickly confessed to detectives she had lied about her whereabouts and her partner's actions on 4 August as, shortly before she had returned to Soham from Grimsby three days later, Huntley had claimed to her in a phone call to have seen the two girls shortly before their disappearance, admitting: "The thing is, Maxine, they came in our house!" According to Maxine, Ian then informed her the children had entered their home in order that Wells could stanch her nosebleed. After being informed of the discovery of the children's bodies and the ample evidence attesting to Huntley's guilt, including his fingerprints being recovered from the bin in which the children's clothes had been found, Carr burst into tears, shouting: "No! He can't have been! It can't have been! He hasn't done it!" Despite these revelations, Carr initially remained emotionally attached to Huntley and professed her belief in his innocence to both the police and her family.

By 20 August, investigators had established sufficient physical evidence from Huntley's home, vehicle and Soham Village College to charge him with two counts of murder. He was formally charged with these offences while detained for observation at Rampton Secure Hospital, and all preliminary hearings against him were postponed until the conclusions of his mental health assessment.

## Aftermath

The trial of Huntley for the murders of Wells and Chapman opened at the Old Bailey on 5 November 2003. Huntley was charged with two counts of murder, to which he entered a plea of not guilty. Carr was charged with two counts of assisting an offender and one count of perverting the course of justice.

Ian Huntly was convicted of 2 counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison, in which he is required to serve a minimum of 40 years. He will be eligible for parole in the year 2042 when he will be 68 years old.

Maxine Carr was sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison for perverting the course of justice in the case.