An inquest into the death of Soham murderer Ian Huntley has heard that he was struck over the head multiple times with a metal bar in prison. Huntley, 52, was an inmate at HMP Frankland in Durham when he was allegedly attacked in a workshop on 26 February. He was placed on life support and died on 7 March.
Senior coroner Jeremy Chipperfield formally opened and adjourned the inquest in Crook, County Durham, on Tuesday. The coroner's officer Bradley King stated that a postmortem by Dr Jennifer Bolton gave the provisional cause of death as 'blunt head injury'. King said Huntley was struck multiple times by another prisoner with a metal bar, causing significant head injuries. He later died at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
Huntley abducted and murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2002. The girls disappeared after a family barbecue, sparking a massive police search. Their bodies were found two weeks later in a ditch near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. Huntley, a school caretaker, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum term of 40 years.
After Huntley's death, the Ministry of Justice described his crime as 'one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation's history'. Anthony Russell, 43, has been charged with murdering Huntley and is due to appear at Newcastle Crown Court on 24 April for a pre-trial hearing.
