Retired Det Chief Supt Russell Wate, 65, played a major role in the 2002 probe into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman but refuses to celebrate evil Ian Huntley’s death in prison
A former detective who joined the hunt for Soham killer Ian Huntley today said he would not “celebrate” his death in prison – and begged the public not to fuel the monster’s “notoriety”.
Retired Det Chief Supt Russell Wate, 65, refused to use evil Huntley’s name in a post online and urged people to remember his victims, 10-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Mr Wates – who became head of Cambridgeshire CID and collected the Queen’s Police Medal in 2008 – wrote on social media: “The only people to focus on here are the victims and their families not the perpetrator.”
Mr Wate, who is now a crime author, said: “I for one am not celebrating the death of the perpetrator of the murders of Holly and Jessica. For me justice was served with his sentence and life would have meant life (not taken early). I am definitely not congratulating the alleged perpetrator of his death. So, let’s remember Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and their families, and therefore let us lead productive and purposeful lives because that was cruelly taken away from them.”
Mr Wate added: “Let’s not add to the notoriety of the perpetrators if we don’t have to and the victims and their families are all that any focus should be on.”
Anthony Russell, 43, will appear in court today after Huntley, 52, died from injuries suffered in a jail workshop attack just after 9am on February 26. Double child-killer Huntley was assaulted at HMP Frankland, Co Durham. Russell was charged yesterday after Huntley died on Saturday at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.
Huntley was placed in an induced coma after the attack until medics switched off his life support at midday on Friday. He died the next day. Doctors consulted his mother Lynda Richards, 71, before taking him off a ventilator. Huntley, whose 2002 murders of Jessica and Holly shocked the nation, was serving on the same jail wing as Russell.
Russell will appear via video link from prison this afternoon. A spokesman for Durham Constabulary said: “A man has been charged with murder following an incident at HMP Frankland in Durham. Emergency services were called to reports of an assault in the workshop on the morning of Thursday, February 26.
“Ian Huntley, 52, was taken to hospital with serious injuries but died on the morning of Saturday, March 7. Anthony Russell, 43, of HMP Frankland, has been charged with murder and will appear via video link at Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court on Wednesday, March 11.”
Christopher Atkinson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings.” Huntley denied murdering Holly and Jessica and put their families through a harrowing Old Bailey trial. He was jailed with a minimum 40-year tariff in December 2003.
Earlier this week the Mirror revealed how a mum who was groomed by Huntley at a fairground when she was 11 was left devastated at his death because she wanted him to suffer in prison. The woman said: “I’ve had mixed emotions to be honest. When I heard he had been attacked I was pleased.
“But he didn’t deserve to die. He should be suffering for years and years and years. He’s made a lot of people suffer and he doesn’t deserve a funeral of the limelight.” Now a mum aged 43, Huntley’s forgotten victim met the killer school caretaker in 1993 when he was 21, less than a decade before he murdered 10-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
She said her “life had been shaped” by Huntley’s abuse and claimed the twisted killer, jailed for 40 years for the heinous murders which shocked Britain, once locked her in a room and demanded sex. She escaped but when social services interviewed her, she claimed she was simply friends with manipulative Huntley.
Now she says she is still haunted by the abuse she suffered and is wracked with guilt after lying to social services about the predator.
She said: “I’ve had to turn my phone off and come off social media – it’s been too much. I have children of my own and one of them is the age I was when I was abused by him. I look at how innocent she is and I can’t get over how someone would do something so awful.”
She also told how she feels lucky to have escaped Huntley’s clutches. She said: “He killed Holly and Jessica but it could have been me. There were other girls as well and we were so lucky. But we do have to live with that because those two little girls weren’t so lucky. Their parents lost everything.”
Holly and Jessica went missing on August 4, 2002 after setting off to buy sweets at a leisure centre in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Their bodies were discovered in a ditch close to RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, on August 17 that year. Huntley and his girlfriend Maxine Carr stood trial in 2003 at the Old Bailey.
He was jailed for life for the murders. Carr was jailed for perverting justice and freed in 2004. An inquest into Huntley’s death is due to be opened and adjourned in the coming days.
