![\"Holly](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-holly-wells-jessica-chapman_7175568.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSoham murderer Ian Huntley has been seriously injured in an assault in prison this morning.<\/p>\n
Huntley, 52, was taken to hospital after being found in a pool of blood following an alleged attack by an unknown inmate, Sky News understands.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of the murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002 and is serving a life sentence with a minimum of 40 years at HMP Frankland in County Durham.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Image:
\n Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Pic: Reuters<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Durham Constabulary said: “Police were alerted to an assault which had taken place within HMP Frankland in Durham this morning.<\/p>\n
“A male prisoner suffered serious injuries during the incident and was transported to hospital.<\/p>\n
“A police investigation is now under way into the circumstances of the incident and detectives are liaising with staff at the prison.”<\/p>\n
A North East Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We received a call at 9.23am on Thursday 26 February 2026 to reports of an incident at HM Prison Frankland in County Durham.<\/p>\n
“We dispatched two ambulance crews to the scene and requested support from the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS). One patient was transported to hospital by road.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, a Prison Service spokesperson said: “A prisoner is receiving treatment after an incident at HMP Frankland on Thursday morning. It would be inappropriate to comment further while police investigate.”<\/p>\n
Read more from Sky News: It is not the first time Huntley has been attacked at HMP Frankland.<\/p>\n In 2011, an inmate who slashed Huntley’s throat with a makeshift knife was jailed for life.<\/p>\n Damien Fowkes was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years for the attempted murder of Huntley in March 2010 and the manslaughter of child killer Colin Hatch.<\/p>\n Fowkes inflicted a wound seven inches long on the Soham murderer’s neck and the court was told it was only “good fortune” that the weapon missed anything vital.<\/p>\n Huntley captured the attention of the nation in 2002 with the murders of the two 10-year-old schoolgirls.<\/p>\n He killed them in August of that year after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets, and then dumped their bodies in a ditch.<\/p>\n Huntley was their school caretaker and put himself forward as a volunteer to help search for them after they went missing – and was interviewed by reporters on camera.<\/p>\n The efforts to locate the girls in the thirteen days after they disappeared have been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.<\/p>\n Huntley was convicted of the murder of both girls on 17 December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.<\/p>\n His girlfriend, Maxine Carr – the girls’ teaching assistant – had knowingly provided Huntley with a false alibi.<\/p>\n She received a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soham murderer Ian Huntley has been seriously injured in an assault in prison this morning. Huntley, 52, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-446736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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