Brutal Prison Ambush Leaves Soham Killer Ian Huntley Fighting for Life as Attacker Boasts of Delivering ‘Justice’

Chaos exploded inside a high-security recycling workshop at HMP Frankland just after 9am on Thursday morning. A 43-year-old triple murderer named Anthony Russell seized a heavy metal pole fitted with a vicious spike and unleashed a frenzied assault on 52-year-old Ian Huntley, the man Britain has never forgiven for the cold-blooded murders of two ten-year-old girls in Soham.

Huntley slumped to the concrete floor after at least six savage blows to the head. Blood poured from wounds so deep that prison medics later described his skull as split almost in two. He lay unresponsive in a widening crimson pool while officers and medical staff battled for more than an hour to staunch the bleeding. Sirens wailed across the 850-inmate Category A facility in County Durham as an air ambulance touched down outside, though Huntley was eventually rushed to hospital by road ambulance, placed in an induced coma with head injuries described as life-threatening.

As handcuffs snapped around Russell’s wrists, the attacker showed no remorse. Witnesses said he looked “calm and pleased with himself,” repeatedly shouting the same chilling boast: “I’ve done it, I’ve done it. I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him.” Inmates lining the corridors erupted in cheers, applause, and whistles as he was marched away to the segregation unit. One female visitor leaving the jail later told reporters she had no sympathy for the victim. “He’s in a bad, bad way. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s what he deserves.”

The weapon was no random object. It was a sturdy metal strut normally used to reinforce large recycling crates. Russell had wrenched it free during what sources described as a deliberately staged argument with Huntley. The spike at one end drove deep into flesh and bone with every swing, turning a workshop tool into a lethal spear. A prison insider painted a harrowing picture: “It was total chaos, a pretty horrific scene. He whacked him six times. There is not much coming back from that. Huntley was bashed to bits, not breathing, completely unresponsive. Medics were saying he was dead.”

This was no spur-of-the-moment clash. Russell, already serving a whole-life tariff for three brutal murders and the rape of a pregnant woman, had nothing left to lose. Sources revealed the pair had clashed weeks earlier when their cells were close together. Huntley, long accused of arrogance and bullying weaker inmates, was said to have tried turning others against Russell. The triple killer bore the grudge in silence until the perfect moment arrived in the workshop — one of the few places where Huntley’s usual heavy escort of three or four officers could not watch every angle.

Huntley’s journey to this bloodied workshop floor began more than two decades earlier in the quiet Cambridgeshire town of Soham. On 4 August 2002, best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both just ten years old, left a family barbecue wearing matching red Manchester United football shirts. They walked only a few hundred yards to buy sweets from a vending machine at the local sports centre. On their way home they passed the house shared by Huntley, then the senior caretaker at Soham Village College, and his girlfriend Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at the girls’ primary school.

Huntley lured the children inside by claiming Carr was there. She was not — she was 140 miles away visiting her mother in Grimsby. What happened next remains one of Britain’s most haunting crimes. The girls were murdered, almost certainly by asphyxiation, in the dining room of 5 College Close. Huntley wrapped their bodies in bin liners, drove them to a remote irrigation ditch near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, and dumped them in shallow water. For thirteen agonising days the nation watched as police, volunteers, and the girls’ families searched every field and river. Huntley himself appeared on television, feigning concern, even joining the search parties.

When the bodies were finally discovered on 17 August, the mask slipped. Huntley and Carr were arrested. Carr had provided her boyfriend with a false alibi, claiming they were together all evening. The six-week trial at the Old Bailey in late 2003 exposed every lie. Huntley changed his story repeatedly before finally admitting the girls had died in his house but claiming their deaths were accidental. The jury saw through the lies. On 17 December 2003 he was convicted of both murders by a 10-2 majority verdict and sentenced to two life terms. The judge later set a minimum tariff of 40 years, meaning Huntley cannot even apply for parole until 2042 when he will be 68 years old.

Carr received three and a half years for perverting the course of justice. She served 21 months and has lived under a new identity ever since. Huntley, meanwhile, began a prison existence marked by hatred, repeated attacks, and his own apparent inability to show remorse.

From the moment he arrived behind bars, Huntley became a marked man. In 2005, while at Wakefield, another inmate scalded him with boiling water. In 2010, Damien Fowkes slashed his throat from ear to ear, requiring 21 stitches and leaving a scar that runs across his jugular. Fowkes received another life sentence with a 20-year minimum for that attack. Huntley tried to claim £100,000 compensation but was refused by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw. In 2018 he claimed another prisoner tried to slit his throat with a razor blade taped to a toothbrush; Huntley said he overpowered the man and raised the alarm. He has attempted suicide at least three times — once before trial in 2003, leaving him in a coma, again in 2006 at Wakefield, and once more in 2012.

Yet despite the danger, Huntley’s behaviour inside has only fuelled the loathing. Last summer The Sun revealed he strutted around the exercise yard in a red Manchester United-style top — the exact replica of the shirts Holly and Jessica wore on the day they died. Inmates chanted “Huntley, Huntley, where’s your shirt?” in football terraces style. Prison authorities eventually confiscated the top after the story broke, along with other unauthorised items including pictures of Maxine Carr. Last month officers raided his cell again, seizing an Xbox console, DVDs, and magazines. Huntley was stripped of enhanced privileges and reportedly “devastated,” stamping his feet and shouting at staff.

Those enhanced privileges had long been a source of resentment. As an “enhanced” prisoner he enjoyed extra gym time, more canteen money, television, and workshop access. Sources say he revelled in the status, keeping cuttings linked to his own crimes and behaving like a man who believed the rules did not fully apply to him. He even formed an unlikely friendship with former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the war criminal convicted of atrocities during Sierra Leone’s blood-diamond conflict. Taylor, now 78, was one of the few inmates Huntley spoke to regularly, describing him as a “father figure.”

Russell, by contrast, had no such protection and no hope of release. In October 2020 the Coventry man embarked on a week-long killing spree that shocked even hardened detectives. He murdered 58-year-old Julie Williams, her 32-year-old son David Williams, and 31-year-old Nicole McGregor, who was five months pregnant. He raped Nicole before killing her. Russell admitted the murders but was also convicted of rape. Crown prosecutor Sati Ruck described the attacks as “deliberate, cold-hearted and designed to achieve his own ends.” The judge handed down a whole-life order. Russell told fellow prisoners he had already killed three people — “this was nothing.”

HMP Frankland itself is no ordinary jail. The maximum-security fortress houses some of Britain’s most dangerous men: Levi Bellfield, the Milly Dowler killer; Wayne Couzens, the former police officer who murdered Sarah Everard; Mark Dixie, who killed Sally Anne Bowman; and several convicted terrorists. Violence simmers constantly. Just last October, paedophile former Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins was stabbed to death in Wakefield prison; two inmates now face murder charges. After Thursday’s attack, Frankland went into full lockdown. Inmates were banged up in their cells while forensic teams combed the workshop for evidence.

A second prison source said the assault had been “targeted.” “Everyone was shocked but not that surprised afterwards. Somebody was bound to get to him at some point. The officers that were on duty will face some pretty harsh questions. They knew Huntley was a target so should have been sticking to him like glue. But prisons are understaffed and many officers are not very experienced.”

The staffing crisis is real. Successive reports have highlighted chronic shortages, inexperienced recruits, and rising levels of violence across the estate. Inmates have been ringing families saying they no longer feel safe. One told relatives the atmosphere after the Watkins murder and now the Huntley attack feels like “violence is out of control.”

Public reaction outside the walls has been equally raw. Social media exploded with comments ranging from horror at the brutality inside British jails to grim satisfaction that Huntley had finally faced consequences. One visitor’s blunt verdict — “it’s what he deserves” — echoed the feelings of many who still remember the haunting images of Holly and Jessica’s smiling faces on missing posters across the country in that long, hot summer of 2002.

Yet the attack also raises uncomfortable questions about the state’s duty to protect even the most reviled prisoners. Vigilante justice, no matter how emotionally satisfying to some, undermines the rule of law. Prison officers are already under immense pressure. Allowing a known target like Huntley into a workshop environment with reduced supervision was, in the words of one insider, “asking for trouble.”

Huntley remains in a serious but stable condition in hospital. Doctors are monitoring brain swelling and internal bleeding. No one expects him back at Frankland any time soon — if ever. Russell sits in segregation, reportedly telling anyone who will listen that he has “nothing to lose.” He has not yet been formally arrested or charged, as the investigation continues inside the prison walls.

For the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the news will have stirred up fresh pain. They have spent more than 23 years trying to rebuild lives shattered by one man’s evil. Whatever happens to Huntley now, the girls’ memory remains untarnished — two bright, laughing ten-year-olds who simply wanted to buy sweets on a sunny August afternoon.

The wider prison system, however, stands accused once again of failing to keep order. How a skinny, unremarkable triple killer could arm himself with a spiked pole and nearly murder one of Britain’s most notorious inmates in broad daylight inside a Category A jail is a question that will haunt governors, ministers, and the public for months to come.

As forensic teams bagged evidence and prison staff reviewed CCTV, one thing was already clear: the attack on Ian Huntley was not random. It was the almost inevitable collision between a man who believes he has nothing left to lose and a system struggling to contain the hatred he continues to inspire. Whether Huntley survives or not, the message from inside Frankland is unmistakable — some crimes are never forgotten, and some debts, in the eyes of certain prisoners, will always demand payment in blood.