Ian Huntley is in a critical condition after being attacked with a spiked metal pole at HMP Frankland. Photo / Getty Images
Ian Huntley is in a critical condition after being attacked with a spiked metal pole at HMP Frankland. Photo / Getty Images
In the UK, an infamous double murderer is being treated for serious head injuries after he was attacked by another inmate in a prison workshop.
Ian Huntley, 52, was airlifted to hospital after he was ambushed at HMP Frankland, County Durham, this week.
He was allegedly attacked with aspiked metal pole after in the prison workshop.
It marks the third time Huntley has been attacked by fellow inmates in jail.
He is serving a life sentence for murdering two 10-year-old girls – Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – at his home in Soham, a Cambridgeshire market town, in 2002.
Police said a prisoner in his mid-40s had been “identified” in connection with the incident but had not been arrested.
In 2010, Huntley underwent emergency surgery after his throat was slashed with a homemade weapon. Damien Fowkes, 35, a fellow inmate, later pleaded guilty to attempted murder at Hull Crown Court.
In 2005, another inmate threw boiling water over the former school caretaker while he was on the healthcare wing of Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire.
It was previously reported that Huntley wore a red Manchester United shirt around prison, which caused friction with other inmates. His two victims were pictured wearing similar tops shortly before they were killed and it quickly became the image associated with his case.
Huntley was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 40 years in December 2003 after he was found guilty of the two murders, but was told by judges he had “little or no hope” of ever being released.
The two children had left their family barbecue to buy sweets.
During his trial, he told jurors that the two girls went into his house because Holly had a nosebleed. He insisted she drowned in the bath and that he killed Jessica to silence her screams.
The bathroom in Ian Huntley's house in Soham, England. Photo / Getty Images
He 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 the bodies to cover his tracks.
In a leaked recording in 2018, Huntley was heard discussing the killings of the two girls.
Huntley is serving a life sentence for the 2002 murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Photo / Getty Images
In it, he reportedly said: “I can’t change anything. I cannot remove that day from history; what I have done.
“I know those girls would be 26 this year with families of their own, jobs and lives. I thought about them when they were turning 21 and when they were turning 18.”
During the search for the girls, Huntley was filmed on television 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 girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who was a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, served 21 months for perverting the course of justice for giving Huntley a false alibi.
The case prompted an inquiry into how Huntley slipped through police vetting procedures despite a string of sex allegations made against him in his hometown, Grimsby, in the late 1990s.
The report from the inquiry revealed a “deeply shocking” catalogue of errors across all organisations that had contact with Huntley before he murdered Holly and Jessica.
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