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Welcome to Psycho Killer Shocking true crime Stories. I'm Simon Ford.
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And I'm Jack Morrel. Today's case is one of the
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most harrowing in British criminal history. The brutal murders of
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two ten year old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman,
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by a man who chillingly was working as a school
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caretaker at the time.
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His name Ian Huntley, a man who on paper appeared ordinary, unremarkable,
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but beneath that thin veneer of normality lay something monstrous.
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In Part one, we are taking you inside the mind
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of Ian Huntley, his early years, his disturbing history with
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young girls, the warning signs missed by institutions, and the
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terrifying calm before the storm.
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Taking their walk towards the unknown. These are the last
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identified steps of Holly and Jessica, recreated by two young
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girls from a drama company in Cambridge. They were wearing
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identical clothing and jewelry to the missing ten year olds.
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The Manchester United Church, August two thousand and two. A
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quiet summer in Soham, a tight knit market town in Cambridgeshire,
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the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and nothing
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much ever happens That's exactly why the murders of Holly
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Wells and Jessica Chapman sent shock waves across the country,
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because this wasn't some faceless urban sprawl. This was a
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community that felt safe, familiar, protected.
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And right in the heart of that community was Ian Huntley,
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the school caretaker, trusted, visible, helpful, the kind of man
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who'd waivert parents on the school run. He worked at
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Soham Village College, just around the corner from where Holly
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and Jessica went to school. Jeremy Thompson from ITV News
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interviewed in Huntley during the search for Holly and Jessica.
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How do we know they were here at six fifteen?
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While we have an eyewitness, Ian Huntley, here's a familiar
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figure evening in. You're the school caretaker.
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The girls, Jessica.
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And Hollywood know you, and they saw her on the
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front doorstep.
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What went on?
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I don't know the girls. I still on the fun doorstep,
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glooming my dog down. She'd run away and come back
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a bit of a mess. They just came across and
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asked how Miss Carr was, as she had to teach
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them the Saint Andrew's I just said, you were very
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good as shared and got the job, and they're just
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as Please tell her that we're very sorry, and off
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the walks in the direction of the library over there.
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And Huntley's partner, Maxine Carr, was even closer to the girls.
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Carr was a classroom assistant at Saint Andrew's Primary School,
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the very school attended by both girls. In fact, mac
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Scene was Holly's teaching assistant. She knew both girls by name,
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had helped them with their reading, and she liked to
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be seen as part of their lives.
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What they couldn't have known was that Maxine Carr wasn't
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actually at home. She was one hundred miles away visiting
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her mother in Grimsby. That friendly smile that was Ian
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Huntley lying through his teeth.
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They were seen a number of times in nearby sand Street,
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heading towards the local sports center, where they were caught
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on CCTV cameras, and at a quarter of the seven
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the pair was spotted in the.
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Ear That CCTV footage, the last known image of Holly
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and Jessica alive were Haunt a nation, two best friends
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walking side by side on a quiet summer evening in
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a town that never expected danger.
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All the while, Ian Huntley was right there, acting helpful,
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pretending to care, giving statements to the media, even participating
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in the search effort while knowing exactly what he'd done.
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What made his crime so uniquely chilling was the element
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of betrayal. Huntley wasn't some outsider. He was inside the gates,
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inside the school, trusted, and Maxine Carr, whether knowingly or not,
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helped cover his tracks.
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We'll get deeper into
Load full transcript
cars roll in part two of
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this story, but for now, just know this. She gave
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him an alibi. She told please she was with him
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on the night of the murders. She claimed they were
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at home together, and whether she believed him or was manipulated.
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We'll unpack all of that next time.
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Coming up, we dive into Ian Huntley's disturbing past, the
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allegations that were ignored, the psychological markers that went unnoticed,
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and why by the time he arrived in Sohen this
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predator was already fully formed.
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It's not just about what he did, it's about who
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he was and whether our systems ever had a chance
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of stopping him.
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It was a warm summer's day in Soham August two
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thousand and two, a Sunday like any other.
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Let's walk ourselves through the timeline of what happened to
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Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman on the day they died.
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Twelve pm, Holly and Jessica are at the Wellesley's family home,
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enjoying a barbecue with their parents. It's the school holidays.
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The girls are relaxed, laughing, full of energy.
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Three point fifteen pm they go upstairs and change into
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their matching Manchester United football shirts, David Beckham's number seven.
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A photo is taken of the two girls smiling side
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by side. That image would later become the face of
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a national tragedy.
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The girls ask if they can walk to the local
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shop to buy sweets. It's a short distance, they know
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the way. Their parents say yes.
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Five fifteen pm CCTV captures Holly and Jessica walking past
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the sports center. They're headed towards College close. It's a
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route they've taken before, but this time they don't come back.
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Shortly after five fifteen pm, Ian Huntley is outside his house.
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He sees the girls. He smiles. He tells them Maxine
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is inside. They trust him. They go inside.
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Between five thirty and six pm, we don't know exactly
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what happened next, but sometime in that window, both girls
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are killed. The method is still uncertain, but what we
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do know tragically is that they never left that house alive.
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Later that night, while the town sleeps, Huntley begins covering
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his tracks, but his mask, carefully worn for years, is
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beginning to slip.
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To make sense of the terrible murders of Holly Wells
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and Jessica Chapman, we need to understand the man who
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committed them, because Ian Huntley didn't just wake up one
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day and become a killer. His crimes in Soham were
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the horrific climax of a long, disturbing trajectory marked by manipulation, predation,
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and failure after failure by the institutions that should have
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stopped him.
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That's right, and what's especially disturbing is just how many
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warning signs there were. Huntley left a trail of red flags,
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indicators of serious psychological disturbance, exploitative behavior, and escalating risk.
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It's not just hindsight talking here. These were the patterns that,
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if properly he recognized, could and should have stopped him
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long before he ever arrived in Sohen.
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Born in Grimsby in nineteen seventy four. Huntley was the
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eldest of two sons. He came from a fairly ordinary
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working class background, but even from a young age, he
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stood out, though not in a good way. Teachers described
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him as isolated and socially awkward. Classmates called him a loner.
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He had difficulty forming relationships and often reacted to rejection
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with intense anger or sulking.
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He dropped out of college, drifted through dead end jobs,
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and never managed to keep himself stable. He lacked direction, ambition,
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and accountability, yet he developed a sinister sort of cunning.
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He learned how to manipulate people, especially younger, more vulnerable girls,
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and he got good at it.
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Between nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety nine, Huntley was
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the subject of at least ten separate allegations involving underage girls.
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These included
accusations of statutory rape and indecent assault. Some
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victims were as young as thirteen, and while none of
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the cases led to prosecution due to lack of evidence
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or withdrawn statements, the consistency of the complaints paints a
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very clear picture.
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It's hard and particularly as a culp to overstate the
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level of systematic failure. Here, each allegation was logged in isolation.
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No one joined the dots. There was no national safeguarding
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system robust enough to track his history, So when he
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applied for a job as a school caretaker in Soham,
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Huntley came up clean.
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This was a man with a known pattern of predatory behavior,
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and yet he was given access to school grounds and
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proximity to children.
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Let's put Huntley's profile in context. Psychologists often talk about
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MacDonald triad, three behavioral indicators in childhood that are believed
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to correlate with future violent behavior, cruelty to animals, fire setting,
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and persistent bedwetting beyond the typical age.
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In Huntley's case, we know of at least one confirmed behavior.
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He was known to torture and kill animals as a teenager.
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He was also fascinated by fires and was suspected of
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setting several blazes in abandoned buildings. Combine that with his
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manipulative streak, his inability to empathize, and his control over others,
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and the warning signs start flashing bright red.
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And then there's the hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised, or the
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PCLR as we refer to it. It's a diagnostic tool
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used to assess the degree of psychopathic traits in individuals.
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It scores twenty items across two key factors, interpersonal effective
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traits and antisocial behaviour.
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Traits like pathological lying, shallow effect, lack of empathy, parasitic lifestyle,
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and poor behavioral control. Based on what we know post conviction,
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Huntley checks a disturbing number of these boxes. In fact,
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many forensic psychologists reviewing his case believe he would score
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well above the diagnostic threshold of thirty.
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What we're looking at here isn't just a man with
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violent impulses. It's someone with a deeply ingrained pattern of using, discarding,
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and destroying others to serve his own ends without remorse.
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That's the hallmark of psychopathy.
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This is something I probably keep for the rest of
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my life. I think it's what hollygate me on the
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last day of terms. She was very, very upset because
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they didn't get my job.
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And that's the kind of girl she was.
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She was just lovely or dearly lovemage. That's really very sweet,
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isn't it.
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In nineteen ninety nine, Huntley met Max Carr in a
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nightclub in Grimsby. She was just twenty two years old
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working as a classroom assistant. By all accounts, she was shy, insecure,
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and perhaps flattered by the attention of an older man.
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He was controlling from the start. Friends of Car described
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how hontly isolated her from her family, dictated her appearance,
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and humiliated her in public. The relationship bore all the
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classic hallmarks of coercive control. The car stayed out of fear, dependence,
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or a twisted sense of love.
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And this is where things start getting complicated, because after
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the murders, Carr provided Huntley with an alibi. She told
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police they were together on the night the girls disappeared,
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when in fact she was visiting her mother in Grimsby.
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The question is did she lie willingly or was she
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manipulated into doing so?
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Was she a classic enabler or a secondary victim in
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a relationship built on domination and psychological control. It's a
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question we'll explore in Part two when we take a
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much closer look at Maxine Carr's role in the murders
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of Hollywells and Jessica Chapman, and whether she should be
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judged as an accomplice or something more complex.
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Sully the girls are still alive, are probably being held
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together and very much against their will.
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Clarence Mitchell, thank you. Two young girls, a small town,
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a school caretaker who seemed to blend in. But as
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we've seen, there were signs, there were patterns, and there
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were people who missed them or chose not to see them.
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And as the town of Sohem searched desperately for two
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missing children, Ian Huntley was already spinning lies. He was
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cleaning his house, he was controlling the narrative, and the
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public had no idea what was lurking behind that seemingly
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ordinary face.
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In Part two, we'll take a deeper look at Huntley's
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disturbing behavior in the days after the murders, his manipulation
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of the media, his calculated lies, and his partner Maxine Carr.
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Was she a classic enabler or a victim of coercive control.
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We'll also walk through Huntley's final undoing and score him
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against the hair Psychopathy checklist revised to determine whether this
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school caretaker was in fact a textbook psychopath.
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If you found this episode disturbing but compelling, there's more
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From sohem to serial killers, We'll keep digging until the
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full story is told.
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Thanks to BBC News and ITV News for the archive
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clips in this episode.
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And thanks to you for listening. We'll see you next
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time for Part two.