Ian Huntley is my dad and I’m begging him to meet me and reveal the truth about the murders of Holly & Jessica
THE daughter of Soham murderer Ian Huntley has begged to meet him for the first time – 20 years after he was jailed for killing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Samantha Bryan, 25, has written, asking for a face-to-face prison meeting, with the powerful request: “If my existence means anything to you, I’m pleading with you to finally reveal the whole truth about the murders of Holly and Jessica. It’s time that everyone was given some peace.”
School caretaker Huntley has continually failed to give the grieving families the closure they need
In court, he claimed both ten-year-olds died accidentally, lying that Holly drowned in his bath and that he inadvertently suffocated Jessica while trying to stifle her screams.
Yet in tapes recorded behind bars in 2018, the beast confessed to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her raising the alarm.
He still insisted Holly’s death was an accident.
Samantha hopes Huntley will now finally reveal exactly what happened to the girls after he lured them into his house at around 6.30pm on August 4, 2002 — the day they were murdered — so she can tell their heartbroken parents who have lived in anguish for years.
She lives in fear that Huntley, 49, will take his secrets to the grave after suffering a string of health problems, prison attacks and suicide attempts behind bars, as he reaches the halfway point of his minimum 40-year sentence.
In an exclusive interview, Samantha said: “I have written to my biological father Ian Huntley and asked to meet him for the first time.
“I’m begging him to find the courage to finally tell the truth. I have asked to meet face to face so he can tell me in his own words.”
Samantha only discovered by accident when she was 14 that the child killer was her father.
Aged 23, he had groomed her mother Katie, then 15, and made her pregnant. They split before the baby was born and she later got married.
Ever since Samantha found out, she says: “I have been haunted by the death of Holly and Jessica.
“I’ve had counselling and it has affected everything from my jobs to relationships. I have suffered constant nightmares.
“People still stop me in the street and say, ‘Your father is a monster’ or ‘I know who your dad is’, so by meeting him I have nothing to lose.
“He has become a bogeyman, like the Yorkshire Ripper or Fred West.
“But you have to confront your demons.”
Huntley lied at his trial and has never revealed what actually happened, so there has been no closure on the terrible tragedy that shocked the nation.
Samantha, who lives in Cleethorpes, Lincs, and is training to be an administrator, said: “I want to know for myself if he feels any remorse.
‘Faceless demon’
“I want him to tell the truth, so I can pass that on to the families of Holly and Jessica because they are very much on my mind — more than many people could ever realise.
“I feel the deepest sadness caused by knowing that their families have never been given the truth.
“I hope that he will find it within his heart to open up. I want to know what he’d say when I sit in front of him, to be given that chance.
“Nothing can ever change what has happened. There is absolutely no forgiveness at all. But because he has suffered health problems and I’ve read about attacks in prison, I fear he may take his secrets to the grave, like the Yorkshire Ripper or Myra Hindley.”
Huntley was convicted of the two murders after pleading not guilty.
His then fiancée Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica’s school in the Cambridgeshire town, had given him a false alibi.
She was sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ jail for perverting the course of justice and issued with a new identity on release.
Huntley is held in HMP Frankland in Durham, and will not be considered for release until he is 68.
In 2010 armed robber Damien Fowkes slashed Huntley’s throat in Frankland, putting him in hospital, and in 2005 murderer Mark Hobson threw boiling water over him in Wakefield Prison.
Samantha said: “I worry often that something will happen to him and no one will ever have closure.”
Huntley seduced her mother Katie while she was a schoolgirl in Grimsby.
He also raped her, forced her to eat cat food, chopped off her hair and threw her down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant.
‘I have asked to meet him face-to-face. People stop me in the street and say: Your dad is a monster . . . so by meeting him I’ve nothing to lose’.
Samantha Bryan
As a newborn, Samantha needed emergency open-heart surgery.
Her family have always believed it was down to her mother’s ordeal at Huntley’s hands.
She said: “Sometimes, when I look at my scar, I think of what my mother went through.
“She told me I saved her, because being pregnant with me gave her the strength to break free.
“He did terrible, unspeakable things to her. I want him to say sorry for that. To know there is some remorse would mean something.”
Samantha, who is single, says the notoriety of being Huntley’s daughter has taken a terrible toll on her mental health.
She said: “For years I’ve been haunted by the fear that a faceless demon would clamber through my bedroom window at night or that he’d come and find me, or try to kill me when I was all alone.
“But the monster who walks through my dreams wasn’t a figment of an overactive imagination. He was my real-life nightmare. When everything is quiet in the dead of night, the thought of him creeps into my mind, triggering the fearful prospect that one day he’ll find me.
“My most recent nightmare was on Friday night. His face is usually quite blurry, but this time it was vivid, and he was shouting.
“He was trying to break into my nanna’s house. I woke up and felt really sick. I thought, ‘I hope to God he never gets out’.”
Now Samantha believes meeting Huntley will help her face her demons, as well as maybe offering the bereaved families some closure.
She said: “I don’t feel like I have fully processed what has happened and I hope that by sitting in front of him it might enable me to let go of the nightmares and move forward with my life.”
Samantha is keen to stress that she does not consider her suffering similar to that of Holly and Jessica’s parents.
She said: “I don’t compare my pain in any way to their unimaginable agony but people have used my father’s crimes against me a lot through the years.
“I’ve even had people confront me in the street asking if my mum is Maxine Carr. The main comment I used to get was, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’, which has always cut very deep with me because I am the absolute opposite.”
Samantha is adamant that her father should die in jail.
She added: “He has now reached halfway through his sentence but Holly and Jessica were robbed of their future and so were their families.
“I don’t think he should ever be freed. But he should do the right thing to bring some peace to those who have the agony every day of wondering what happened.”
To this day, Samantha’s family keep a brown cardboard box of newspaper clippings covering Huntley’s arrest and trial.
She will never forget the shock of discovering the true identity of her biological father.
‘The box of nightmares’
Age 14, during a school class, she googled local crimes and froze when she saw an image of herself in an online article.
Samantha said: “I clicked on it and recognised the dress I was wearing and remembered that day. The story said I was Ian Huntley’s daughter. I ran out of class, home to my mother and she confirmed it was the truth. But she told me she would never let him harm me and he would never get out.”
When Samantha reached adulthood, Katie decided she needed to know the full story.
Samantha said: “Two weeks after my 18th birthday my mum called me to her bedroom, motioning for me to sit next to her on her bed.
“She handed me the box which was taped shut and said, ‘Sammy, this is what I call the box of nightmares.
“I’ve kept all of this as I knew that one day you would need to know everything. The only way I’ve been able to deal with it is to try as hard as I could to shut all memories of him away.’ Inside were news clippings, reporting every horrific detail of Huntley’s crimes and also what he did to my mum.
“I read them all. I cried until I couldn’t cry any more.
“Then I put the lid back on the box, taped it shut and put it back under her bed.
“Nowadays I try not to read stuff about him, or I turn over if it’s on the telly. I fear that one day he will be considered for parole.
“One day I may become a mother myself, and I want to be able to tell my daughter that while there is a monster in the family, he did meet me and did tell the truth and express deep remorse.
“Perhaps expecting that to happen is a futile dream — but it’s one that I’m willing to try.”
Lured into house by monster
By Sarah Arnold
THE DISAPPEARANCE and murders of ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were crimes that shocked the nation.
The two best friends went missing in Soham, Cambs, on August 4, 2002, after they went off to buy sweets during a family barbecue.
The pair were lured into school caretaker Huntley’s home after he claimed his partner Maxine Carr, who worked at the girls’ school, was in the property.
He then murdered them in cold blood.
Images of the missing girls’ faces were soon plastered over every national and local newspaper, and during a desperate nationwide appeal to find them, Huntley gave TV interviews and took part in search parties.
Former classroom assistant Carr gave Huntley a false alibi which she stuck to for two weeks – until it emerged she had been at a nightclub with another man at the time.
Holly and Jessica’s remains were discovered in a ditch at an air base 14 miles away at Mildenhall, Suffolk, on August 17, 2002.
Huntley was convicted in 2003 of the girls’ murders and is serving two life terms at high security HMP Frankland in Durham.
He will not be considered for release until 2042.
Carr was jailed for perverting the course of justice and released in 2004 with a new identity.
In March 2020 it was reported that she had gone into hiding after her new identity was exposed.