Brian Farmer, the first journalist to interview Ian Huntley after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, has explained what led him to alert police. Farmer, then working for the Press Association, interviewed Huntley and his partner Maxine Carr on 8 August 2002, days after the 10-year-olds vanished from Soham, Cambridgeshire.
Farmer told BBC News that he found it suspicious that neither Huntley nor Carr mentioned Huntley's dog during the interview. Huntley had claimed he was washing his Alsatian, Sadie, when the girls approached him. Farmer said: 'There were no: “How cute is that dog” or oohs and aahs. Nothing like that. I simply didn’t believe what he was saying.'
Farmer's concern deepened when Huntley answered a question about how the girls might react to a stranger. Huntley said Holly would 'go quietly' but Jessica would 'put up a fight'. Farmer recalled: 'I couldn’t understand how he could know that. He was the caretaker at a secondary school they didn’t go to.'
After filing his story, Farmer contacted his brother, a retired senior detective, who advised him to report his concerns to Cambridgeshire Police. Farmer later gave evidence at Huntley and Carr's trial. Huntley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 40 years; Carr was jailed for 21 months for perverting the course of justice.
Huntley died after an attack at HMP Frankland. Farmer reflected on the lasting impact on the victims' families, saying: 'It simply can never go away for them.'
