Ian Huntley biography

Following her testimony, the prosecution presented their closing statements, claiming that both Carr and Huntley were convincing liars, and also that Huntley's motive for murdering the girls was sexual, although physical evidence of assault was impossible to prove.

After five days of deliberation, the jury rejected Huntley's claims that the girls had died accidentally and, on December 17, 2003, returned a majority verdict of guilty on both charges. Huntley was sentenced to life imprisonment,

but there was a delay on the setting of his sentence, as the 2003 Criminal Justice Act came into force one day after his conviction.

At a hearing on September 29, 2005, a judge ruled that the Soham killings did not meet the criteria for a "whole-life" sentence, which was now reserved for sexual, sadistic or abduction cases only under the new act, and imposed a 40 year prison sentence, which offers Huntley very little hope for release. On September 14, 2005, Huntley had been attacked by another inmate at Belmarsh Prison, and scalded with boiling water, which prevented him from attending this sentencing hearing.

Carr was cleared of assisting an offender, but found guilty of perverting the course of justice, and jailed for three and a half years, but she was freed under police protection in May 2004, as she had already spent 16 months on remand, pending the trial.

Carr was given a new identity on her release and, on February 24, 2005, was granted an indefinite order protecting her new identity by the High Court, on the basis that her life would be in danger were her new identity to be revealed.

A number of invesigations, launched by then Home Secretary David Blunkett, investigated the failures of both the police, and other social and vetting agencies, in stopping Huntley sooner, and system wide communication and intelligence-sharing errors were identified, which led to the suspension and early retirement of the chief of Humberside Police.

Since being jailed, Huntley has reportedly admitted to his father that he lied when giving evidence at his trial, alleging that he killed Jessica Chapman to prevent her from calling for help on her mobile phone, rather than suffocating her accidentally, as he claimed in court.

On July 23, 2004 Carr's mother, Shirley Capp, was sentenced to six months in jail for intimidating a witness during the trial. Capp's neighbor, Marion Westerman, had told police that she had seen a crying Carr, and Huntley, looking in the boot of a car outside Carr's mother's house, shortly after 10-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had gone missing. Carr's mother's threats to Westerman had nearly resulted in her retracting her statement at the time, and not testifying in court.

On September 5, 2006, Ian Huntley was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious in his prison cell. He was taken to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield to receive treatment for a suspected drug overdose and was returned to prison the next day.

Following this incident the Home Office released a statement to the media.