Jessica Chapman

The Soham murders were a double child murder committed in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England on 4 August 2002.

The victims were two 10-year-old girls, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amiee Chapman, who were lured into the home of a local resident and school caretaker, Ian Kevin Huntley, who subsequently murdered the children—likely via asphyxiation—before disposing of their bodies in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.

The girls' bodies were discovered on 17 August 2002.

At 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, 4 August 2002, Jessica Chapman left her home in Brook Street, Soham, for a barbecue at the home of her best friend, Holly Wells, in nearby Redhouse Gardens.

She told her parents she was going to give her friend a necklace engraved with the letter "H" that she had purchased for her on a recent family holiday to Menorca.

The two girls and their friend Natalie Parr played computer games and listened to music for about half an hour before Parr returned home.

By 3:15 p.m., both girls had changed into distinctive replica Manchester United football shirts, one of which belonged to Wells, and the other to her older brother, Oliver.

At 5:04 p.m., Wells' mother took a photograph of the two before the children ate dinner with the other guests.

They returned to playing upstairs in the house at about 6:10 p.m. Around 6:15 p.m., the two girls left the Wells residence without informing anyone to purchase sweets from a vending machine at the local sports centre.

While returning to 4 Redhouse Gardens, Wells and Chapman walked past the College Close home of Ian Huntley, the senior caretaker at the local secondary school.

Huntley evidently lured the girls into his house, saying his girlfriend, Maxine Carr—the girls' teaching assistant at St Andrew's Primary School—was in the house; she was in fact visiting her mother in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

The precise events after the girls entered 5 College Close are unknown, but investigators believe to be true sections of Huntley's claims in interviews to the media prior to his arrest, and in his later trial testimony—such as that he had been cleaning his dog at the time the girls passed by his house around 6:30 p.m., and that one girl had had a nosebleed.

The cause of death of both girls was later ruled to be asphyxiation.

Chapman's Nokia 6110 mobile phone was switched off at 6:46 p.m.

At 8:00 p.m., Nicola Wells entered her daughter's bedroom to invite the girls to say goodbye to her guests, only to discover both children missing.

Alarmed, she and her husband, Kevin, searched the house and nearby streets.

Minutes after their daughter's 8:30 p.m. curfew had expired, Nicola Wells phoned the Chapmans to ask if the girls were there, only to learn Leslie and Sharon Chapman were worried that their youngest daughter had not returned home.

Following frantic efforts by the families to locate their daughters, Wells and Chapman were reported missing by their parents at 9:55 p.m.

Police immediately launched an intensive search for the missing children.

Over 400 officers were assigned full-time to search for the girls.

These officers conducted extensive house-to-house enquiries across Soham; their efforts to search local terrain were supported by hundreds of local volunteers and, later, some United States Air Force personnel stationed at nearby airbases.

To help their public appeals for information, Cambridgeshire Police released the photograph Nicola Wells had taken of the children less than two hours before their disappearance depicting both girls wearing their Manchester United replica football shirts.

A physical description of each girl was also released to the media, describing them as being white, about 4 ft tall, and slim.

Chapman was described as being tanned, with shoulder-length, brown hair; Wells was described as being fair, with blonde hair.

The parents of both girls stated that their daughters had been wary of talking with strangers, having been warned not to trust people they did not know from early childhood.

This was supported by the headteacher of St Andrew's Primary School, who told reporters: "The possible danger from strangers is something we have impressed upon [the children] from an early age."

Suspecting the children had been kidnapped, investigators questioned every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and neighbouring Lincolnshire.

Over 260 registered sex offenders across the UK – including 15 high-risk paedophiles – were also questioned; all were eliminated from the investigation.

Police also investigated the possibility that the girls had arranged to meet someone they had contacted via an internet chat room, but this was soon ruled out.

On 8 August, CCTV footage of the girls, recorded minutes before their disappearance, was released to the public.

This footage depicted them arriving at the local sports centre at 6:28 p.m. A televised reconstruction of the children's last known movements was broadcast nationally on 10 August, and both sets of parents granted an interview with presenter Colin Baker on ITV's current affairs programme Tonight, which was broadcast on 12 August.

Other family members and friends of both girls also appealed via the media for the safe return of the children.

These appeals for information on the whereabouts of Wells and Chapman produced over 2,000 phone calls and tips from the public, with all information obtained entered into the investigation's HOLMES 2 database.

The community held a candlelight vigil on 7 August.

Shortly after the children's disappearance, Staffordshire Police contacted the investigating officers to report their suspicions the girls could have been abducted by the same man responsible for an abduction in their jurisdiction the previous year, in which a six-year-old girl had survived an indecent assault by an abductor who was still at large and whose green Ford Mondeo had number plates which had earlier been stolen in Peterborough.

The person responsible for this abduction and assault was also believed to have followed a 12-year-old girl in the same area, although in this instance, his car had been fitted with number plates which had been stolen in Nottinghamshire.

Huntley was convicted of the murder of both girls on 17 December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with the High Court later imposing a minimum term of 40 years.

His girlfriend, Maxine Ann Carr—the girls' teaching assistant—had knowingly provided Huntley with a false alibi.

She received a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice.

The search for Holly and Jessica in the thirteen days of their disappearance has been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.