Soham murders
The Soham murders occurred in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England, on 4 August 2002
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.
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