Child killer Ian Huntley ‘blind and on life support' after prison attack by West Midlands man

Ian Huntley, the former school caretaker, who murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, has been kept on life support in hospital after being hit repeatedly over the head by an inmate armed with a metal bar.

Anthony Russell, a triple killer and rapist, from Coventry, is suspected of carrying out the attack in a prison workshop. He is reported to have said: “I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him.”

Police said a prisoner in his 40s had been identified in connection with the ambush but not arrested.

The Sun newspaper said that Huntley, 52, suffered severe brain trauma in the attack. The paper now reports that the attack has left Huntley blind and it quoted a source saying: “Huntley never recovered from the battering and never stood much of a chance of doing so.”  

Paramedics reportedly found the killer barely breathing and covered in blood when they arrived to treat him. The source said the attack had split Huntley’s head in two, leaving him unrecognisable.

 After the attack, Huntley’s only daughter Samantha Bryan, 27, told The Sun on Sunday of her father: “There’s a special place in hell waiting for him.”

Huntley murdered Holly and Jessica after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on August 4 2002. He dumped their bodies in a ditch.

Russell was sentenced to a whole-life tariff in 2021 for the murders of Julie Williams, 58, and her son David Williams, 32, at separate flats in Coventry, and pregnant 31-year-old Nicole McGregor, who was found in woodland near Leamington Spa three days later. Russell also raped Ms McGregor.

The Frankland attack was the latest attempt on Huntley’s life and he was thought to have been kept under close observation to prevent such attacks.

Huntley’s life sentence recommended he serve at least 40 years for the Soham murders.