Ian Huntley, the former school caretaker who murdered two 10-year-old girls in one of Britain's most horrific crimes, is dead. He died on March 7 after being taken off life support the previous day, following a prison attack that left him with severe brain trauma.
Huntley was 52 years old. He had been serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years.
People reported that the attack occurred on Feb. 26 at maximum security prison HMP Frankland in Durham, England. Durham Constabulary confirmed that Huntley was "taken to hospital with serious injuries following an incident in the workshop."
He was reportedly found lying in a pool of blood, according to sources who spoke to BBC. It was believed that he was attacked with a metal bar, per The Guardian.
Another convicted killer, 43-year-old Anthony Russell, is suspected of carrying out the attack, per BBC. Durham Constabulary said a "file is being prepared for the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration for charges."
Huntley was found guilty in 2003 of luring Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman back to his home and killing them. The two 10-year-old girls had disappeared in 2002 after leaving a family barbecue in order to buy sweets. Their bodies were found about 10 miles away from where they had vanished.
The case shattered a nation. It remains, more than two decades later, one of those crimes that people remember exactly where they were when they heard about it. The Ministry of Justice acknowledged as much in a statement issued to BBC and Sky News:
"The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation's history, and our thoughts are with their families."
Whatever anyone thinks about what happened to Huntley inside HMP Frankland, those two girls are the only ones who deserve sympathy in this story. They were children. They left a barbecue to buy sweets and never came home.
This was not the first time Huntley was targeted behind bars. In 2005, he was attacked by an inmate who threw boiling water over him at HMP Wakefield, per BBC. In 2010, he was slashed across the throat and needed 21 stitches afterward, also per BBC.
Three serious attacks across two decades in custody. That fact raises a question that British authorities will have to answer, even if many in the public have little appetite for asking it: What is actually happening inside these maximum security facilities?
This is not about mourning Ian Huntley. It is about the basic operational competence of a prison system. A state that sentences a man to life imprisonment takes on the obligation of maintaining order within its walls.
Not for the prisoner's sake alone, but because a prison that cannot protect even its most despised inmates is a prison that cannot protect anyone inside it, including guards and staff.
There is a temptation, whenever a child killer meets violence in prison, to shrug. The impulse is understandable. Huntley committed an act of evil against two innocent children, and no amount of time behind bars could balance that ledger.
But conservatives, of all people, should be clear-eyed about this: justice administered by inmates with metal bars is not justice. It is chaos wearing a mask that looks enough like justice to make people comfortable with it.
The rule of law means something precisely because it applies even when we wish it didn't. Huntley was sentenced to die in prison. The court saw to that. The system worked as designed. What happened in that workshop on Feb. 26 was something else entirely.
Durham Constabulary confirmed that the police investigation into the circumstances of the incident is ongoing. If charges follow, the legal process will take its course. That is how it should work.
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman would have been in their early thirties now. They might have had careers, families, lives full of the ordinary joys that make up most of what matters in this world. Instead, they became the names attached to a monster's crime, forever frozen at ten years old.
Ian Huntley's death changes nothing for them. It closes no wounds for their families that hadn't already scarred over long ago. The only thing worth remembering today is who the real victims were, and always will be.
Two little girls who just wanted to buy sweets.
