Following the death of Ian Huntley, the Mirror speaks with former reporter Nathan Yates, whose perception of humanity was shattered irreparably after learning of the seemingly ordinary caretaker’s evil deeds

A former Mirror reporter has opened up about the shock of learning Ian Huntley’s true nature(Image: Shutterstock)

Late summer 2002, Soham. An entire community is out in force to find missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in a case that would shatter trust in a way few crimes have before or since.

One young couple in particular stand out in their diligence to bring the 10-year-olds safely home, regularly conversing with reporters as to what they think might have happened to Holly and Jessica. The statements of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr appear odd in retrospect, perhaps most chillingly in Huntley’s suggestion that “Holly would probably get in the car and quietly go” if approached by a predator, but “Jessica wouldn’t”.

Brian Farmer, a PA news reporter who interviewed Huntley and Carr, later reflected: “He knew how they’d react because that’s how they reacted when he killed them.”

Amongst the journalists gathering in the pretty Cambridgeshire village was the Mirror’s own Nathan Yates. The events that ensued would have a profound impact on the young writer, forever changing how he viewed human nature. And while he’s since grappled to find answers, even penning a book on the topic, he still to this day avoids any news reports about Huntley.

The entire community came out in force to find Holly and Jessica, including Ian Huntley(Image: PA)

I catch up with Nathan in the days before Huntley succumbed to his injuries following a brutal attack. At the time of his death, Huntley was a 52-year-old lag, hated by inmates at County Durham’s notorious HMP Frankland. It’s difficult to believe he was once a member of this quiet community, masking his darker impulses behind an ordinary, even forgettable mask.

At the time of the girls’ disappearances, Huntley was a 28-year-old caretaker living with his girlfriend, Carr, then 25, who’d known the children through her work as a teaching assistant. The couple were living on a pleasant street, right next door to the secondary school where Huntley worked and initially appeared, nothing more or nothing less, than concerned citizens, keen to make sure Holly and Jessica weren’t forgotten.

Nathan was around the same age as Huntley and wasn’t immediately struck by the presence of evil. He told the Mirror: “I got a call from the desk saying to go up to Soham because these two girls have gone missing. I happened to be in that direction, so when I got there, there was nobody else there, except for this bloke with his dog, who was looking for the two girls, and that was Huntley.Huntley seemed like a ‘nice enough bloke’ to the young reporter(Image: Shutterstock)

“He was going through the fields, looking for these two girls with his dog, and he seemed really worried about them, and I had a little chat with him. I suppose he was about my age. So I just thought, nice enough bloke, he was doing the right thing and trying to help. And he carried on like that, really, through the whole search. He put on this amazing charade of being very concerned and trying to help in every way he could”.

As Nathan chatted to Huntley, he had no idea that he was speaking with a double child killer, who would soon become one of the most infamous names in criminal history.

The press conferences to update reporters on the hunt for Holly and Jessica, such a rarity in the sleepy village, were held at Soham Village College, Huntley’s workplace. And it was the seemingly considerate caretaker who would “tip off” members of the press as to when such conferences would be held. His face, which would soon feature on front pages across the globe, quickly became known to them.The caretaker’s former home has long been bulldozed, to the relief of locals(Image: PA)

But as the story began to snowball, plastered across papers all around the world, more senior reporters were sent to cover it: Lorraine Fisher, Aidan McGowan, and the late Harry Arnold, who’d had some 45 years of experience under his belt. For these more seasoned reporters, Huntley’s story of being one of the last people to see the girls alive began to stand out as strange. By this point, Huntley was not an “unfamiliar” presence to reporters following the case, but the context in which he was viewed was beginning to shift.

As explained by Nathan, Huntley’s name had been released to the press as an individual who might be able to offer “a bit of information”. He recalled: “We went around to see him and he told us, well, several of us on different occasions around that day, that he must have been one of the last people to see them.” Later that same day, Harry Arnold, a veteran reporter of the Mirror, arrived and enquired what was going on with the story. Nathan informed him about what Huntley had said about being the last person to see the girls, believing this would make a good hook for an article. It was then that Harry’s hackles immediately went up.

Nathan remembered: “He said straight away, ‘Well, it must have been him then’. Because having covered hundreds of these horrible events, he’d sort of developed a nose for it. And also, you could see the quote out of the context of this bloke, who was quite plausible, you know, just the raw sort of quotation. So he immediately developed the theory that Huntley had done it. Him and some other guys talked to the cops about it and told them about it, but I think the police were already aware, to be honest. That’s why they sort of released the name, I think, was to try and get us to rattle him up a bit, you know?”

View 8 Images

The Mirror revisited Soham earlier this month(Image: Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)

Officers had indeed become suspicious of Huntley’s account, and a true picture of what really happened that day soon began to emerge. Tragically, a gamekeeper discovered the burnt bodies of Holly and Jessica in an irrigation ditch close to an RAF base on August 17, 13 days after the close-knit pair walked away from the family gathering, never to be seen again.

Once the bodies were found, the mood in Soham shifted palpably. Nathan said: “The people in the village were really keen to find these girls, and then when it came out that they’d been found dead, the whole atmosphere just changed.” As explained by Nathan, as a natural sceptic, he neither agreed nor disagreed with Harry’s theory, but regarded it as a possibility, reasoning that his experienced colleague was “usually right about these things”. There was, however, a niggling feeling that all was not right when Nathan interviewed Huntley and Carr at their spotless home, which had clearly been scrubbed from top to bottom.

Today, Huntley’s former home, at 5 College Close, has been wiped from the face of the earth altogether. The property, where it’s believed both children were killed via asphyxiation. was bulldozed in 2004 to avoid it becoming a macabre landmark for the morbidly curious.

View 8 Images

In Nathan’s eyes, Carr seemed ‘just as genuine as he did’(Image: Getty Images)

Now, not even a brick remains, with these having long been crumbled and removed to secret locations. The last thing the people of Soham are dark tourists pocketing gruesome mementoes. All that stands now on the site is a well-tended patch of healthy green grass, discreetly concealed by trees. But it was on this spot that Nathan paid a visit to Huntley and Carr, and was struck by just how scrupulously keen the house was.

He said: “I had talked to Huntley’s girlfriend at great length, and some things started to fall into place. I mean, the whole house really stank of disinfectant. Lemon scented, disinfectant that was really strong. Everything was spotless, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, she puts me to shame with the keeping the house tidy’. And then I started to think, well, maybe, they’re trying to cover something up by scrubbing?”

As Nathan recalls, “there wasn’t a speck of dust”, with everything “shiny and scrubbed”. He continued: “I think that was the only hint that there was something wrong. I just put that down to them being very particular about the house.” Looking back with hindsight, Nathan feels “completely gullible” for making such ordinary assumptions. On reflection, he’s also developed his own theories on what exactly Carr did and didn’t know.

View 8 Images

Carr provided Huntley with an alibi for the night of the murders, despite being 100 miles away at the time(Image: Press Association)

Carr, who had provided Huntley with an alibi for the night of the murders, had in fact been out partying in Grimsby, 100 miles away, where she was photographed with another man. She later faced charges of aiding and abetting an offender on two counts but was ultimately acquitted, instead sentenced to three-and-a-half years for perverting the course of justice. Upon Carr’s release, after serving just half of her sentence, she was given a new identity.

Nathan reflected: “Whether she knew or not, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it? But I developed the idea afterwards, thinking about it, that she did. It’s very hard to ever confirm that.” At the time, however, Carr had seemed “just as genuine as he did” in Nathan’s eyes, and he’d believed her to be “very upset about these two children she knew” as she showed him “little paintings” that the girls had made years before.

He remembered: “From her manner, I wouldn’t have detected anything. But when it all fell into place, it was an enormous shock, really, even though Harry had already solved the crime. To actually have it confirmed, it was an enormous shock to me. And I’ve never really seen people quite the same since.”

View 8 Images

Killer Huntley enticed Holly and Jessica into his home, claiming that teaching assistant Carr was inside(Image: Shutterstock)

It would transpire that Huntley had enticed the children into his home, claiming that Carr was inside. He then murdered them and concealed their bodies in the ditch, before unsuccessfully attempting to dispose of their distinctive Manchester United shirts at the school. On August 20, Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and, in December 2003, was given two life sentences, with a minimum term of 40 years behind bars.

Nathan went on to write an award-winning book, Beyond Evil: Inside The Twisted Mind Of Ian Huntley, partly in a bid to try and make sense of a case that had shaken the way in which he understood crime reporting. But in the end, finding some sort of closure to such horror proved far from easy.

As it has with so many who’ve tried to grapple with this case, the story of the Soham killer has left its mark on Nathan, who nowadays avoids reading reports on Huntley. At the time of his interview with the Mirror, Nathan was not aware that the monster had succumbed to his injuries following a brutal prison attack. Like many of those who searched for the girls all those years ago, remaining in the past for too long is too painful to bear.