'Interviewing Ian Huntley troubled me, so I called police'

Double murderer Ian Huntley remains in a serious condition in hospital after being attacked with a makeshift weapon by another inmate. In 2002, four days after schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had vanished, reporter Brian Farmer knocked at Huntley's door and went inside. The interaction that followed troubled Farmer so much, that he contacted police.

I was the first reporter to interview Huntley and his partner, Maxine Carr, after Holly and Jessica disappeared in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on Sunday, 4 August 2002.

Four days later, police gave a list of sightings, outlining how the pair had left Holly's house at about 17:00 BST.

Detectives said, about 30 minutes after setting off, the girls had spoken to the caretaker of Soham Village College - the local secondary school - outside his home.

Huntley told me how he had been washing his Alsatian dog, Sadie, when the youngsters strolled by.

I thought some of the things he said could not possibly be true.

I was the eastern counties reporter for the Press Association (now PA Media) at the time, and I had driven from my home in Shepreth, also in Cambridgeshire, after getting a call from police in the early hours of Monday about the disappearance.

After detectives released the list of sightings, I knocked at the caretaker's door, because he appeared to be the last man to have seen the girls.

A pale, ginger-haired woman opened the door. Seconds later, a dark-haired man appeared behind her.

Huntley and Carr were initially reluctant to talk but, after a bit of persuasion, invited me in.

I learned that Carr, then 25, had worked as a teaching assistant in Holly and Jessica's class at Soham junior school and knew them well.

Her contract had ended at the close of the summer term and she showed me a leaving card the girls had signed.

Huntley, then 28, told how he and Carr had been for a walk with Sadie on the day the girls disappeared.

They and the dog had got muddy.

When they returned, he recalled that Carr went for a bath, while he washed Sadie outside the house.

Huntley painted a picture of a hosepipe, a bucket of water and soapsuds - and that of a man and his dog larking about.

He said it was at this point that Holly and Jessica walked by.

I asked Huntley whether the girls stopped and said anything.

They had asked where "Miss Carr" was - he claimed - and how she was.

I asked him to tell me every word they had said.

He repeated the same story - they had merely asked after Carr.

I was troubled, not by what Holly and Jessica had apparently said, but what they hadn't said.

They hadn't mentioned the dog.

No "oohs", no "aahs", no "so cutes", no giggles.

Two 10-year-old girls, enjoying a summer's day, who see a big hairy dog covered in soap. But they don't mention it?

I didn't think it was credible.

Something else Huntley did troubled me greatly.

I asked Carr if the girls were taught about stranger-danger at school, and how they might have reacted, for example, if they had been approached by a man in a car.

To my astonishment, Huntley leapt in.

He said he thought Holly would probably get in the car and be quiet, but Jessica wouldn't.

Jessica would put up a real fight and a real struggle.

A parent might have a good idea how a child would react. A teacher, or class assistant, might be able to speculate.

But Huntley was a caretaker at a school Holly and Jessica didn't attend.

How could he know?

Huntley was agitated and emotional all the time I was at the home in College Close.

Carr was happy to be photographed, holding the card Holly and Jessica had written.

But Huntley refused to be pictured, would not be cajoled and got quite angry.

He said something I've never forgotten: "Even my mother doesn't have a photograph of me."

Could it be that someone might recognise him - and know something about him?

I thought we needed a picture - because he might be arrested - and arranged for a photographer to snatch a shot of him when he left the house.

Reporters are not police informants, we don't as a rule pass on information.

But what Huntley said disturbed me.

He appeared to be the last man to have seen the girls; and I thought some of the things he had said could not possibly be true.

Why would he lie?

Shortly after leaving the property in College Close, I made a call.

The rest is history: It transpired that pretty much everything Huntley and Carr told me that morning was a lie.

Farmer's reporting and his interview with Huntley was portrayed in the three-part Channel 5 drama, Maxine, in 2022.

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