WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT. As Soham killer Ian Huntley fights for his life following a bloody attack by a fellow inmate, the Mirror takes a look at other criminals who have faced violent assaults behind bars
Soham killer Ian Huntley remains in a serious condition after being bludgeoned behind bars, in what marks the latest violent attack on a notorious prisoner.
The notorious murderer, who was caged for the 2002 murders of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, was assaulted by a fellow lag behind the bars of County Durham’s HMP Frankland, with the assailant bludgeoning the child killer over the head with a spiked metal bar.
52-year-old Huntley was rushed to hospital in a critical condition, and was given just a five per cent chance of survival after his head was reportedly split in two. The double child killer was left in a pool of his own blood in a prison workshop, and while police have not officially confirmed the identity of his attacker, it’s suspected triple killer Anthony Russell is responsible.
Since beginning his life sentence, Huntley has been attacked three times, and reportedly became paranoid that his food was being poisoned as he “knew that he was a target”, that he resorted to living off fast food and confectionary, a source previously told us.
Huntley is of course far from the only infamous lag to have been targeted over the years, with previous incidents resulting in blinding, and even death. Here, the Mirror takes a look.
READ MORE: Ian Huntley’s chilling six-word prophesy before near-fatal jail attack
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Ian Watkins
Disgraced Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins took measures to protect himself behind bars of HMP Wakefield, aka ‘Monster Mansion’, but ultimately met a horrific end. In 2013, the paedophile pleaded guilty at Cardiff Crown Court to 13 child sex offences, including two attempts to rape a baby. He was given a 29-year prison sentence, with sentencing judge Justice John Royce stating that his crimes “plunged into new depths of depravity”.
The former musician was found severely injured in his cell on the morning of Saturday, October 11, 2025, following a brutal knife attack, and was pronounced dead at the scene. He was 48 years old. Later that same month, a forensic post-mortem gave a provisional cause of death for Watkins of an incision wound to the neck, while it was also revealed that other prisoners had been charged with his murder.
The attack at Wakefield came just two weeks after a report determined violence at the facility had “increased markedly”. This report from the chief inspector of prisons read: “Many prisoners told us they felt unsafe, particularly older men convicted of sexual offences who increasingly shared the prison with a growing cohort of younger prisoners.”
While Watkins had the money to buy protection on the inside, it’s understood that Watkins was abused by fellow inmates and nearly died from his injuries in 2023 when he was set upon by three other men. The sex offender was rescued by a specially trained squad of riot officers who chucked stun grenades into the cell to free him. A source told us: “He was screaming and was obviously terrified and in fear of his life”
At the time of Watkins’s death, a source warned that those who killed Watkins shouldn’t be viewed as vigilante heroes, telling the Mirror: “There was no prior beef between them, there was no prior knowledge between them. It looks like it was because he was who he was, or would not pay any cash up. It looks like it happened just after unlock, they have walked into his cell, and he ends up dead. He got attacked in 2023, and that was because he refused to pay (protection). He has always paid for protection, but every so often people just reminded him that he needed to pay it so they gave him a good hiding. The guys that have done this are no heroes. It is not like they are some kind of shining knight.”
Rose West
Over the course of 20 years, Fred and Rose West brutally slayed at least ten vulnerable young women and girls, whom they subjected to depraved acts of torture and sadism. The vile couple’s crimes finally came to light after they were arrested on February 25, 1994, on suspicion of the murder of their daughter Heather, who’d vanished back in 1987. The very next day, the missing teenager’s skeletal remains were recovered from the garden of their now notorious address, 25 Cromwell Street.
Sickeningly, this devastating discovery was only the tip of the iceberg, with the seemingly ordinary family home having been made into a grisly makeshift cemetery for the Wests’ many victims. With Fred found dead by suicide on New Year’s Day, 1995, Rose was left to stand trial in October of that year, where she attempted to protest her innocence. From the dock, the Gloucestershire woman attempted to portray Fred as the sole killer, but grim witness testimonies painted a very different picture, with many even viewing her as the dominant force behind the sick crimes.
At 72, Rose is living out the remainder of her life behind the bars of New Hall Prison, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and there has previously been bad blood between her and other highly dangerous criminals. Upon first walking into HMP Bronzefield in Surrey in 2014, triple murderer Joanne Dennehy allegedly wasted no time in marking herself out as “top dog” by declaring she would kill the prison’s most notorious inmate, West. The prison authorities swiftly moved West to solitary confinement, and she was later transferred to another prison.
This isn’t the only time serious threats have been made against West, who is said to be unpopular among her fellow prisoners. In 2008, inmates allegedly plotted to batter her to death with a sock filled with pool balls, while at HMP Durham, an inmate tried to set fire to her cell in a targeted arson attack. West’s former legal representative, Leo Goatley, told The Sun: “Rose was on a female wing with lots of other women serving long sentences, women who just wanted to get on and have some peace and quiet, even though they’d been convicted of some serious offences. About two years after her conviction, in the late nineties, they had women serving shorter sentences coming into the wing. Someone tried to set light to her cell, and that was a total disruption for her.”
Jon Venables
Jon Venables, as he was once called, was just 10 years old when, on February 12, 1993, he and his accomplice, Robert Thompson, also 10, snatched two-year-old James Bulger at the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, Merseyside and tortured him to death. It was a case that haunted the nation, and one that his fellow inmates are unlikely to have forgotten.
Venables, who wept throughout his trial, was given eight years at Red Bank Community Home in Merseyside, where staff urged him to tell fellow inmates that he had been convicted for stealing cars, instead of revealing that he was a murderer. During these years, the youngster reportedly lived in a state of panic over the prospect of being recognised. On June 22, 2001, the then 18-year-old was released, along with Thompson, with both teenagers given completely new identities, to shield them from the wrath of an outraged public.
While it was initially hoped that Venables would change his ways, he continued to exhibit concerning behaviour on the outside and in the early months of 2010, the then 27-year-old was recalled back to prison after vile child abuse images were found on his computer.
Venables was released in 2013, but it wasn’t long before he was in trouble with the law again. Following another arrest in 2017, in February 2018, Venables confessed to possessing videos containing sexual abuse as well as a “paedophile manual”. He remains behind bars, and while he has previously made unsuccessful bids for parole, James’s mother, Denise, has argued that he shouldn’t be released. Speaking recently with the Mirror, Denise, 57, said: “My worry is that if he’s released, he’ll lose that protection, he’ll be looking over his shoulder the whole time, he’ll have a target on his back. He’s not going to like it in the real world. What is he going to do to get back inside?”
Meanwhile, those who have encountered the killer behind bars have spoken about their chilling encounters with Venables, with one lag previously claiming he battered the notorious prisoner after being sickened by his boasting. Speaking with The Mirror in 2018, ex-Lag James Heap claimed Venables bragged that killing toddler James was “easy… just like going to the shop”.
Venables was 11, and James was 14 when they clashed at Red Bank in 1994. James recalled: “I asked him what he was in for, and he told me burglary. But a few days later, I found out who he was and what he was really in for. I was shocked. He was playing on a games console when I said to him: ‘Why the hell did you do that to that kid?’
“He just laughed. I said ‘What’s so funny?’ But he just kept laughing. I punched him in the mouth. To laugh about that is just sick. He talked about how he took the kid and how he was too good or too clever for anyone to see him. I remember he said: ‘I done it easy’.
“He said it like it was a normal thing to do, like going to buy a newspaper. Like it was easy to him and nothing to him. It was like it didn’t matter – like he was proud. There wasn’t any remorse on his face, not one bit. No shame, nothing. It was mental. You’d have to hear him and see the face on him when he was saying it to be able to believe it.”
James, who was on remand for burglary at that time, also recounted another incident where other Red Bank youths vented their fury on Venables. According to James: “He was in the video room, and a lad went in, grabbed him from behind and pulled him down. He had hold of him by his neck on the floor and wouldn’t let go. Venables went purple, he couldn’t breathe, and his eyes were popping out.
“I was thinking ‘f****** hell, he’s really doing it’. Another 20 seconds and I think he’d have gone. Suddenly, one of the staff came walking up the corridor, saw what was going on and pressed the riot bell. Loads of staff came and started dragging the lad off by his neck. He wouldn’t let go, but in the end, they got him off.”
Peter Sutcliffe
Peter Sutcliffe, best known by the chilling moniker The Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others in a reign of terror that lasted from 1975 to 1980. The sadistic murderer, who died in the winter of 2020, was sentenced to 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. A full 30 years of his sentence were served at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
During his years locked away from the world, Sutcliffe was attacked by other inmates on several occasions. In 1983, while still at Parkhurst Prison, he was attacked by Glaswegian hard-man James Costello, with 30 stitches required to treat his facial cuts. Costello later discussed the attack in a 1996 interview in the Daily Record: “We were both in the Parkhurst Psychiatric Wing. I was doing 22 years for carrying a gun and resisting arrest. Peter Sutcliffe was always swaggering about with his minder, a nutter called Wakefield. So I got my chib (made out of a coffee tin lid) and done him when his minder was slopping out. I remember Sutcliffe roaring like a wounded animal.”
After his move to Broadmoor, following a paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis, the attacks didn’t stop. Indeed, in 1996, Sutcliffe was set upon by armed robber Paul Wilson, who, fuelled by an intense hatred for sex offenders, tried to strangle him with the cord from a pair of headphones. Then one year later, in March 1997, Sutcliffe faced the most gruesome of his prison attacks, which caused him to lose sight in his left eye. The attacker in question was convicted murderer Ian Kay, who was serving life in Broadmoor for the murder of Woolworth’s store manager, John Penfold, per The Independent.
The scene in question was a grisly one, with Kay setting upon Sutcliffe with a roller-ball pen, stabbing him in the eye. Fellow inmate Ovie Peddy gave his eyewitness account in graphic detail during a conversation with podcaster James English. Ovie remembered: “It was like a scene out of The Silence of the Lambs. I was talking to the guy who done it, just before. It was a big dinner night: it was steak or cauliflower steaks, there’s chips and peppercorns. But he [Kay] was walking up and down, all angry – so I say ‘Sit down, man’, but he goes ‘I don’t want this food, I want liver.’ I said ‘If you want liver, you have to order that from the kitchen. It’ll probably be tomorrow now’.
“So he looked at me, and goes ‘No, that’s what I did, I cut someone, and I ate their liver’ so I said ‘Bro, if you want to talk like that, leave me alone because I’m having my food. Later on, we’ll talk about all your mad killings and all that’.” It was at this point, according to Ovie, that Kay snapped. Painting a grotesque picture of what happened next, he continued: “He’s come up behind Sutcliffe, held him there, took his eye out with a fork. The nurse is standing there, and the pus from the eyeball is going into her face. So she’s run off the ward all the staff ran off the ward and left all the patients there. I didn’t give a f***, man. I just ate my dinner. Peter’s just crying. The cord of the eye was still connected to him. It was just savage.”
In 2007, Sutcliffe faced yet another attack, this time by murderer and paranoid schizophrenic Patrick Sureda, who was imprisoned for the 2000 strangulation of his mother. Sureda lunged at Sutcliffe with a metal cutlery knife., reportedly screaming: “You f****** raping, murdering bastard.” and “I’ll blind your f****** other one,” in reference to the ripper having already been blinded in one eye. It took four nurses to restrain Sureda, but on this occasion, Sutcliffe didn’t require hospital treatment.
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