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Topics: Crime, UK News, True Crime, Parenting
Anish Vij
Child murderer Ian Huntley wrote an unsettling letter to his daughter after she requested to visit him in prison.
The conclusion to the case that shocked a nation saw school caretaker Huntley receive two life sentences after the bodies of two schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were found in a ditch in Suffolk, UK in 2002.
Huntley lured the girls into his home and murdered them, later disposing their bodies in a cover-up attempt.
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Maxine Carr, his girlfriend and teaching assistant, received a three-and-a-half year sentence for conspiring to pervert the course of justice by providing a false alibi for her boyfriend.
Huntley's daughter Samantha Bryan, 26, was just 14 when she accidentally found out that her father was a criminal.
When doing some research for a school project on crime, she discovered Huntley's case, along with a pixelated photo of herself.
Her mum Katie Bryan, 46, alleged that she met him as a 15-year-old schoolgirl and was in a relationship with him when it would be legal under consent. Huntley was 23 at the time.
Samantha - who lives in Cleethorpes, Lincs - has again hit out at her father for not allowing her to visit him behind bars.
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When she requested to meet him, the killer sent back a letter, which read: “Given the probable length of my future and your current motives I doubt there will be enough time for a significant shift in circumstances in order for us to ever meet.”
In an interview with The Sun, Samantha has called her father a 'a pitiful, twisted, manipulative coward'.
“There’s so many other things I could call him. I feel contempt,” she said.
“His letter has left me with even more questions than I had before.
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“He might be ill but I don’t know for sure given he’s written about the probable length of his future. I don’t know what that means.
“But surely if he is sick you’d want to give some answers — you’d have nothing left to lose. Or maybe he is referring to the length of his sentence.
“But one thing is clear — he’s not going to meet me.
“There was never any thought of forgiveness from me, but a part of me did hope that he might tell at least part of the truth.”
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Samatha admitted that she still has nightmares about Huntley, which began when she was younger.
She added: “I had hoped to get answers for myself but also for Holly and Jessica’s families.
“It deeply troubles me that they haven’t had answers. But his reply is so definitive I’m now going to step back and stop hoping.
“I need to step away — for the sake of my sanity and my future.”
Huntley, 50, is still serving out his sentence in HMP Frankland in Durham, and will not be eligible for release until he is 68.