The Soham Murders Trial
Problems Abound
As news of the verdict swept across the country, previous allegations made against Huntley surfaced. Between 1995 and 1999 there were four accusations of underage sex involving girls between 13 and 15 years of age, three rape allegations and one of indecent assault against an 11-year-old girl. However, a lack of evidence and the refusal of some of the girls to press charges made it difficult for investigators to secure a conviction. Huntley had also been arrested and charged with burglary in 1996, but the charges were eventually dropped because, like with the other allegations, there was not enough evidence.
Interestingly, most of the complaints attributed to Huntley were never linked together because of miscommunication between the bureaus involved in handling the cases and procedural flaws. For example, a February 26, 2004 BBC news article suggested that some of the sex attack reports that were sent to the divisional intelligence bureau were accidentally deleted “during a ‘’weeding’ process of the records systems by civilian staff in July 2000. Such problems made it difficult for investigators to gain a full understanding of the potential danger Huntley posed to society. Had investigators had access to all of the reports and been able to link all of the allegations together, they would have likely discovered that he was a budding serial rapist with a fascination for vulnerable young girls. The information could have also led to closer scrutiny of Huntley and may have even prevented the deaths of Holly and Jessica.
Other problems included “check system” mistakes made by the Cambridgeshire police force, which resulted in Huntley getting a job at
There were also problems discovered concerning the investigation into Holly and Jessica’s murders. A 2004 Wikipedia.org article stated that from the onset of the investigation it took the police nearly two weeks before they were aware of Huntley’s previous sexual allegations. Moreover, the article claimed that his story was “not effectively checked out early during the investigation.”
Karen McVeigh reported in a June 23, 2004 Scotsman article that Sir Michael Bichard delivered his own damning report concerning the investigation into Huntley’s previous allegations. Bichard suggested in the article that the Humberside police force’s intelligence system, which dealt with some of the cases, was “fundamentally flawed” and its child-protection database “largely worthless.” According to McVeigh, many of the investigative problems were blamed on the chief constable of Humberside, David Westwood who allegedly “failed to identify Ian Huntley as a danger.”
