As we made our way through Great Ormond Street Hospital, it took a while to find the place we were looking for.
It always did.
No matter which hospital I visited, the mortuary always seemed hidden away.
And for good reason.
It’s the last department anyone wants to think about.
Especially here.
As many times as I’d walked similar corridors, this felt different.
It was different.
When I entered the room, the sights and smells were the same as every other mortuary I’d entered before.
But not like this.
Then I saw him.
Three years old. Not much bigger than a baby.
If I close my eyes now, I can still see his body lying on that metal table.
None of my training had prepared me for this.
Yet here I was.
Ten-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman lived just a few streets apart in Soham, a small Cambridgeshire market town surrounded by open countryside.
On Sunday 4 August 2002, Jessica went to Holly’s house and spent the afternoon there. Holly’s family were having a barbecue and had guests over.
The girls played on the computer in Holly’s bedroom before coming downstairs to eat with the rest of the family.
Just after 5pm, Holly’s mum, Nicola, took a photograph of them wearing matching Manchester United shirts.
After eating, the girls went back upstairs and continued playing on the computer.
Later that evening, Nicola called upstairs for them to come down and say goodbye to the guests who were leaving.
There was no reply.
She called again.
Still nothing.
Nicola went upstairs expecting to find them in Holly’s bedroom.
The room was empty.
The girls had left the house, but nobody knew when they had gone or where they had gone.
Jessica’s parents were contacted, but the girls weren’t there either.
Family and friends began looking for them, searching around the house before checking places they thought the girls might have gone.
As the evening wore on, their concern grew and, at around 10pm, the police were called.
Local uniformed officers attended and began a missing person enquiry.
They needed to establish when and where the girls had last been seen, obtain their descriptions, identify places they might have gone and understand whether their disappearance was out of character.
It was.
Officers began searching Soham and the surrounding countryside.
A police helicopter was deployed, along with a dog handler, traffic officers and four-wheel-drive police vehicles.
Local residents also came out to help.
But despite their efforts, Holly and Jessica were not found that night.
The following day, the search expanded beyond a local enquiry. Officers began arriving from surrounding forces to help.
Public appeals increased, bringing in a significant amount of information. This included several potential sightings of the girls, each of which needed to be followed up urgently.
One local resident reported seeing Holly and Jessica between 6.30pm and 6.40pm on Sunday evening. He said the girls had stopped outside his house to ask whether his partner, a teaching assistant from their primary school was at home. After telling them she was away, he watched them walk away towards St Andrew’s Church.
As news of the case spread, more members of the public came to Soham to help with the searches until there were hundreds of people there offering their support.
As part of the investigation, Family Liaison Officers (FLOs) were assigned to the Wells and Chapman families.
After a couple of days, the enquiry developed into a major investigation, with resources reflecting the growing concern for the girls’ welfare.
An incident room was established to provide a central point for information coming in from the public.
A dedicated intelligence cell was set up to assess the growing amount of information and build a picture of the girls’ lives, people of potential interest and any links between them.
The investigation now included house-to-house enquiries, examination of CCTV, vehicle checks, tracing witnesses and assessing every potential sighting of the girls.
Specialist advisers coordinated searches of homes, gardens, business premises, waterways and open ground using police dogs, divers, aerial support and specially trained search officers.
The photograph Nicola Wells had taken just before the girls disappeared became the image used in national appeals, showing exactly what they looked like and the clothing they had been wearing.
Among the information coming into the police was a report from a taxi driver who said he had seen the driver of a dark green saloon car travelling erratically along the A142 from Soham towards Newmarket. He described the driver repeatedly turning towards the back seats and appearing to struggle with two children inside the car. The sighting became a major line of enquiry.
Investigators were working to several theories of what may have happened to the girls.
One was that harm had come to them. Detectives began identifying and checking known sex offenders in the area, as well as anyone who might pose a risk to children.
Another line of enquiry centred on the girls having used Holly’s computer before leaving the house. Had they met someone via the internet?
They also considered that the girls might be being held against their will. Detectives made a direct appeal, urging whoever was responsible to release them.
The parents of both Holly and Jessica also appeared on national television, appealing for the safe return of their daughters.
Among the many reports received by police were numerous potential sightings. One led detectives to the local sports centre, where CCTV confirmed Holly and Jessica had been there at around 6.17pm on the evening they disappeared. It gave investigators a fixed point from which they could begin plotting the girls’ movements using CCTV and witness accounts.
About a week after the girls disappeared, investigators filmed a reconstruction using two girls of similar age and appearance, dressed in similar clothing, to walk the route Holly and Jessica were known to have taken. They hoped it would prompt the memories of anyone who had been in the area that evening.
By now, the appeals were generating thousands of calls.
There was a huge response to appeals relating to the dark green car and the two girls reportedly seen inside. One report appeared particularly significant.
A jogger near Newmarket, the town the car had been seen heading towards, told police he had heard screaming on the night the girls went missing and had since noticed two areas of disturbed ground.
The area was cordoned off and a systematic search began, including excavation of the soil.
However, it was established that the disturbed ground was unconnected to the girls and had most likely been caused by animals.
The sighting by the taxi driver was also ruled out when phone analysis showed he had been travelling earlier than the girls had been seen on CCTV at the sports centre.
Examination of Holly’s computer also enabled detectives to rule out the possibility that the girls had arranged to meet someone via the internet.
Whilst detectives continued working through thousands of reports, eliminating one line of enquiry after another, two names began appearing with increasing frequency.
Ian Huntley.
Maxine Carr.
Earlier on I spoke about a local resident who said he had spoken with Holly and Jessica. That was Ian Huntley.
The teaching assistant the girls were said to have been asking after was Maxine Carr.
As the last known person to have spoken with Holly and Jessica, Huntley became central to the investigation.
Included in the information about Huntley was a report that he had previously been investigated in Grimsby in connection with allegations involving underage girls. Detectives then began liaising with Humberside Police to establish the circumstances surrounding those enquiries.
Huntley had also become a familiar face in the media, giving several television and newspaper interviews about the girls’ disappearance. It was those appearances that prompted people to contact police with information about his background.
The fact Huntley was the last known person to have spoken with the girls, together with information about his background and his repeated media appearances, made him a person of increasing interest to the investigation. However, there was not enough evidence at this stage to treat him as a suspect.
As with all the potential theories police were investigating, detectives would also have been looking to establish whether he could be eliminated from the enquiry. However, unlike the green car and the internet theory, there was nothing that could exclude him as being linked to the girls’ disappearance. To the contrary, as more information came into the enquiry, his name kept cropping up.
Careful consideration was given to how detectives should proceed. The decision was made to invite Huntley and Carr to attend separate police stations to provide formal witness statements. They also consented to searches of their home and Huntley’s car.
During those searches, detectives discovered the burnt remains of Holly and Jessica’s Manchester United shirts, along with other items of clothing, concealed in a wheelie bin at Soham Village College, where Huntley worked as caretaker.
That discovery completely changed the direction of the investigation.
During the early hours of 17th August, Huntley and Carr were arrested.
The discovery of the girls’ clothing dramatically increased detectives’ fears that Holly and Jessica had come to serious harm. Their priority now was to locate them.
They focused on the home of Huntley and Carr, places they had access to and built a picture of their movements over the previous two weeks, particularly in the period after the girls disappeared.
They examined call data, financial transactions and movements of Huntley’s car.
Within around eight hours of the arrests the breakthrough discovery was made. However, it wasn’t made by the police.
Roughly seventeen miles east of Soham, close to RAF Lakenheath, a gamekeeper discovered the bodies of two girls in an irrigation ditch.
These were quickly identified as Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Attention now turned to establishing how and when the girls died, while examining the scene and the bodies for forensic opportunities.
Urgent forensic post-mortems were carried out.
The post-mortem I attended at Great Ormond Street wasn’t for Holly and Jessica.
It was for a three-year-old boy whose injuries were described by the paediatric pathologist as the worst he had seen in his career.
He described them as the equivalent of being hit by a car travelling at thirty miles per hour.
Those injuries had been inflicted by his uncle, who had been looking after him for the night.
Why?
Because his nephew had wet the bed.
As I say those words years later, I still get a churn in my stomach.
At the time, as I stood looking his broken body, those emotions were even stronger. A mixture of sadness, anger and an absolute determination that this little boy and his mother would get the justice they deserved.
When I returned to the office and briefed the team, I could see those same emotions reflected back at me. From the Family Liaison Officers who would now be spending time with his mother, those who would be speaking with witnesses, and those who would be interviewing the man responsible.
The most important thing was this. No matter how we were feeling, it couldn’t affect the job we had to do.
If we allowed our emotions to take over, mistakes were more likely to happen. And when you investigate murders, you can’t afford those mistakes. Not when the best defence barristers in the country will later dissect every decision you made, looking for lapses in standards or breaches of procedure.
So how do you stop emotion getting in the way?
For me, I don’t think there’s any magic answer. You acknowledge those feelings exist, then you push them down. You compartmentalise. Then you focus entirely on the job in front of you.
People often ask whether detectives receive counselling. The answer is yes, it’s available if officers want or need it. In truth, though, I only knew a couple of detectives who took up the offer. Most of us just got on with the job and didn’t spend much time talking about what we’d seen. Looking back, I’m not sure that was always healthy.
I only realised recently that the things you bury are still there.
On the first episode of my TV series, Secrets of a Murder Detective, we featured the murders of Sian Blake and her two sons Zachary and Amon, which our team investigated. They had gone missing and later found murdered.
As part of the episode, a colleague and I talked through the investigation, step by step. When I started to recount receiving the phone call from the scene telling us all three had been found dead, I suddenly became emotional and had to stop.
That response shocked me, as I never reacted like that in my career. On reflection, I believe it’s because at the time of doing the job I was focused on the outcome. I didn’t give myself time to fully feel the impact of that news. I was in work mode. But when talking on camera, I was completely open to that emotion.
I thought I’d dealt with those emotions, but I’d really just buried them. It made me realise talking about those experiences is probably healthier than burying them.
I can’t speak for every detective. We all deal with these things differently. But I do know this. Those emotions never stopped me doing the job. If anything, they gave me even greater determination to get justice for the victims.
Having spoken to colleagues over the years, I know many of them felt the same.
I have no doubt many of the detectives investigating Holly and Jessica’s disappearance were going through exactly those same emotions.
For two weeks they worked every waking hour, trying every avenue, using every investigative technique and putting everything they had into bringing those girls home safely.
But as the days passed, those hopes would have started to fade.
I’ve been there. Missing children. Hoping they’re alive, while gradually coming to the realisation that the longer they remain missing, the less likely that becomes.
Then came the call.
Two bodies had been found.
Even before the formal identifications were made, I suspect many of the detectives already knew in their hearts the bodies were Holly and Jessica. The official confirmation would simply have confirmed what they had already begun to accept.
What would have made it even harder was the thought of their parents. Many of the detectives would have been parents themselves. I know that whenever I dealt with cases involving children, I couldn’t help thinking about my own. Again, those feelings had to be pushed aside so the investigation could continue.
One aspect that often gets overlooked is how that news would have been broken to the families.
It would almost certainly have been the Family Liaison Officers.
First and foremost, they are investigators whose role is to gather information that can assist the enquiry. But they are also there for the family, keeping them informed, explaining each stage of the investigation and helping them through processes no parent ever imagines facing.
Of all the detectives involved in a murder enquiry, theirs is undoubtedly one of the hardest roles. They build a relationship with the family. They share their hopes. Then, in cases like this, they are the ones who have to take that hope away.
I think you can probably imagine just how difficult that is.
But apart from the obvious emotional impact child murders have on an investigation team, what else makes them different?
In many respects, they don’t.
Detectives are still looking for the same things. Witnesses. CCTV. Forensic opportunities. Anything that helps establish what happened and who was responsible.
One area that is different, though, is the post-mortem examination.
In adult murders, these are carried out by Home Office approved forensic pathologists. In the case of children, they’re carried out by specialist paediatric forensic pathologists.
The reason is simple. Children aren’t just smaller adults. Their bodies are still developing, and injuries have to be interpreted differently. Understanding how a child’s body grows, develops and responds to injury requires specialist knowledge. That expertise can make a huge difference, not only in establishing how a child died, but also in identifying injuries that might easily be misunderstood by someone without that experience.
Another difference is the wider impact of the investigation.
The murder of a child sends shockwaves through a community in a way few other crimes do. As part of our enquiries, we would often visit the child’s school and speak to pupils, sometimes in a classroom, sometimes in an assembly. We were looking for information, but we also had a responsibility to provide reassurance.
If children do come forward as witnesses, they have to be treated with great care. The way information is obtained from them is very different to an adult witness. Detectives use specially trained officers, working at a much slower pace and always mindful of the lasting impact the process can have on them.
The pressure on the investigation is different too.
If a child is missing, it has to be assumed from the outset they are vulnerable. Every hour counts and, the longer they remain missing, the greater the risk of harm. That urgency is felt by everyone involved in the investigation. It drives decisions, resources and the pace of the enquiry from the very beginning.
People often think detectives investigate child murders differently. In truth, once it’s established that they’re dealing with a murder, the investigative principles are much the same.
It’s the emotional impact, the vulnerability of the victim and a handful of specialist areas that make them different.
Huntley was charged with the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Following a trial at the Old Bailey, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of forty years.
Maxine Carr was convicted of perverting the course of justice after providing Huntley with a false alibi and was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment.
The investigation also exposed serious failures in the way police forces shared information about people who posed a risk to children.
The Bichard inquiry led to significant changes to police intelligence sharing and vetting procedures.
When I look back at my career as a murder detective, one of the things I’m most proud of is the dedication I saw in my colleagues and the sacrifices they made in the pursuit of justice.
That was never more evident than in child murders, which were undoubtedly the hardest investigations of my career.
You learn to compartmentalise. You have to. Otherwise, you couldn’t do the job.
The thing is, those emotions never really leave you.
The investigation may end. The trial may end. But some cases stay with you for the rest of your life.
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Could you put your emotions to one side and still do the job?
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