On 4 August 2002, two 10-year-old girls, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amiee Chapman, were lured into the home of a local resident and school caretaker, Ian Huntley, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England. Both children were murdered – most likely by asphyxiation – and their bodies disposed of in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The bodies were discovered on 17 August 2002.
Huntley was convicted of the murder of both girls on 17 December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with the High Court later imposing a minimum term of 40 years. His girlfriend, Maxine Ann Carr – the girls' teaching assistant – had knowingly provided Huntley with a false alibi. She received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice. Huntley died in March 2026, after sustaining serious head injuries inflicted in an attack alleged to have been carried out by another inmate at HMP Frankland.
The search for Wells and Chapman in the thirteen days following their disappearance has been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.
Disappearance
At 11:45 am on Sunday, 4 August 2002, Jessica Chapman left her home on Brook Street, Soham, for a barbecue at the home of her best friend, Holly Wells, in nearby Redhouse Gardens. Prior to leaving her home, Chapman told her parents she was going to give her friend a necklace engraved with the letter "H" that she had purchased for her on a recent family holiday to Menorca.
The two girls, together with their friend Natalie Parr, spent about half an hour playing computer games and listening to music before Parr returned home. By 3:15 pm, both had changed into distinctive replica Manchester United football shirts: one belonging to Wells, and the other to her older brother, Oliver. At 5:04 pm, Wells's mother photographed the pair before they ate dinner with the other guests. They then returned upstairs, where they browsed the Internet and sent several emails between 5:11 pm and 5:32 pm.
At approximately 6:05 p.m., the girls left the Wells residence without informing anyone, intending to buy sweets from a vending machine at the Ross Peers Sports Centre. While walking back to 4 Redhouse Gardens, they passed the College Close home of Ian Huntley, the senior caretaker at the local secondary school. Huntley lured them inside by claiming that his girlfriend Maxine Carr – their teaching assistant at St Andrew's Primary School – was in the house, although she was in fact visiting her mother in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
The precise sequence of events after the girls entered 5 College Close remains unknown. Investigators believe that certain elements of Huntley's subsequent public statements to the media, and later claims made during his trial testimony – including assertions that he had been washing his dog when the girls passed at around 6:30 pm, and that one had suffered a mild nosebleed – may contain fragments of truth. The cause of death for both girls was later determined to be asphyxiation. Chapman's Nokia 6110 mobile phone was switched off at 6:46 pm.
At 8 pm, Nicola Wells went to her daughter's bedroom to invite the girls to say goodbye to her guests, only to discover that both were missing. She and her husband, Kevin, searched the house and surrounding streets. Minutes after their daughter's 8:30 pm curfew had passed, Nicola Wells telephoned the Chapman household, learning that Leslie and Sharon Chapman were themselves concerned that their youngest daughter had not returned home. Following frantic efforts by both families to locate the girls, Wells and Chapman were reported missing by their parents at 9:55 pm.
Search and discovery
Police immediately launched an intensive search for the missing children. More than 400 officers were assigned full-time to search for the girls. These officers conducted extensive house-to-house enquiries across Soham; their efforts to search local terrain were supported by hundreds of local volunteers and, later, by United States Air Force personnel stationed at nearby airbases.
To support their public appeals for information, Cambridgeshire Police released the photograph Nicola Wells had taken of the children less than two hours before their disappearance, depicting both girls wearing their Manchester United replica football shirts. A physical description of each girl was also released to the media, stating that both were white, about 4 ft 6 in (137 cm) tall, and slim. Chapman was described as tanned, with shoulder-length brown hair; Wells was described as fair, with blonde hair.
The parents of both girls said their daughters had been wary of talking to strangers, having been warned from early childhood not to trust people they did not know. This was supported by the headteacher of St Andrew's Primary School, who told reporters: "The possible danger from strangers is something we have impressed upon [the children] from an early age."
Investigators stated on 7 August they strongly believed the children had been abducted, and questioned every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and neighbouring Lincolnshire. More than 260 registered sex offenders across the UK – including 15 high-risk paedophiles – were also questioned; all were eliminated from the investigation. Police also examined the possibility that the girls had arranged to meet someone they had contacted via an Internet chat room, but this was soon ruled out.
The community held a candlelight vigil on 7 August. The following day, CCTV footage of the girls, recorded minutes before their disappearance, was released to the public. This footage depicted them arriving at the local sports centre at 6:28 pm A televised reconstruction of the children's last known movements was broadcast nationally on 10 August, and both sets of parents granted an interview with presenter Colin Baker on ITV's current affairs programme Tonight, which was broadcast on 12 August. Other family members and friends of both girls also appealed via the media for the safe return of the children. These appeals for information on the whereabouts of Wells and Chapman produced more than 2,000 phone calls and tips from the public, with all information obtained entered into the investigation's HOLMES 2 database.
Shortly after the children's disappearance, Staffordshire Police contacted the investigating officers to report their suspicions the girls could have been abducted by the same man responsible for an abduction in their jurisdiction the previous year, in which a six-year-old girl had survived an indecent assault by an abductor who was still at large. This offender drove a green Ford Mondeo with number plates which had earlier been stolen in Peterborough. The person responsible for this abduction and assault was also believed to have followed a 12-year-old girl in the same area, although, in this instance, his car had been fitted with number plates which had been stolen in Nottinghamshire. The same vehicle had recently been sighted in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. This information was later included in a televised appeal about the children's disappearance on the BBC's Crimewatch, but the lead did not result in any significant developments.
Sightings
Several members of the public reported having seen the children in the early days of the investigation. Mark Tuck informed investigators that, as he had driven past the girls on Sand Street in Soham town centre at approximately 6:30 pm on 4 August, his attention had been drawn to their Manchester United replica shirts, prompting him to remark to his wife, Lucy: "Look! There's two little Beckhams over there." A young woman named Karen Greenwood reported seeing the girls walking "arm in arm" along College Road approximately two minutes later. Another woman living in nearby Little Thetford claimed to have seen two girls whose appearance and clothing matched those of Wells and Chapman walking past her home the following morning. Police also received statements regarding a suspicious white van seen in Soham on the evening of the children's disappearance. Investigators located and seized this vehicle from a caravan park in Wentworth on 7 August, but the lead proved fruitless.
On 12 August, police launched an appeal to trace the driver of a four-door, dark green saloon car, possibly a Peugeot 405 or Vauxhall Vectra. A taxi driver stated he had seen the driver "thrashing his arms" as he struggled with two young girls inside the vehicle while travelling on the A142 south of Soham towards Newmarket around the time the girls were last seen. The vehicle was last observed turning into the Studlands Park housing estate.
The following evening, a jogger alerted police to two mounds of recently disturbed earth he had seen at Warren Hill, just outside Newmarket, which he speculated might have been the burial sites of the two girls. An overnight examination revealed them to be badger setts.
One person who claimed to have spoken with the girls immediately before their disappearance was 28-year-old Huntley, who informed investigators on 5 August he had had a brief conversation with both girls on his doorstep the previous afternoon. According to Huntley, Wells and Chapman – both "happy as Larry" – had briefly enquired as to whether his partner, Carr, had been successful in a recent application for a full-time teaching assistant position at their school. When he had replied Carr had not obtained the role, one of the girls had said, "Tell her we're sorry" before they both walked along College Street towards a bridge leading to Clay Street.
Police were suspicious of Huntley's account. A single police officer searched his house on 5 August. No incriminating evidence was found, but the officer noticed items of clothing on the washing line despite the fact it had been raining. In reference to the evident extensive cleaning of the house's interior, Huntley said: "Excuse the dining room. We had a flood." The officer was unconvinced by Huntley's explanation and suspicious of his agitated demeanour. Huntley remained a strong suspect.
On 6 August, Huntley drove from Soham to Grimsby to pick up Carr. Shortly before the two returned to College Close, a neighbour of Carr's mother, Marion Clift, saw the couple standing at the rear of their vehicle with the boot open. According to Clift, a "pale, shaking" Huntley stared into the boot for several moments, while Carr stood beside him, her head bowed, weeping. When Huntley became aware of Clift's presence, he abruptly closed the boot.
I don't know the girls. I was stood on the front doorstep grooming my dog down. She'd run away and come back a bit of a mess ... they just came across and asked how [Maxine] was ... I just said she weren't very good as she hadn't got the job and they just says please tell her that we're very sorry and off they walked, in the direction of the library over there.
Discoveries
At about 12:30 pm on 17 August, a 48-year-old gamekeeper, Keith Pryer, discovered the bodies of both girls lying side by side in a 5-foot (1.5 m) deep irrigation ditch close to a pheasant pen near the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, more than 10 miles (16 km) east of Soham. Pryer had noticed what he later described as an "unusual and unpleasant smell" in the area several days earlier; when returning with two friends on 17 August, he decided to investigate its cause. Walking through an overgrown verge about 600 yards (550 m) from a partially tarmacked road, Pryer and one of his companions, Adrian Lawrence, discovered the children's bodies. Lawrence turned to his girlfriend, Helen Sawyer, and shouted: "Don't come any closer, Helen! Get back in the van!" He immediately reported the discoveries to police.
The girls had been missing for thirteen days when their bodies were found, and their charred remains were in an advanced state of decomposition. No clear footprints were discovered at the crime scene.
Investigators quickly concluded who the two victims were likely to be, and that they had not died at the location where their bodies were discovered. Numerous hairs later determined to belong to Chapman were discovered on a tree branch close to the location of the bodies.
The following day, Cambridgeshire Deputy Chief Constable Keith Hodder issued a press statement confirming the discovery of the children's bodies. He added that both families had been informed and that, although positive formal identification would take several days, investigators were as "certain as [they] possibly could be" the bodies were those of Wells and Chapman.