{"id":461915,"date":"2026-03-07T04:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T04:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/461915\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T04:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T04:01:07","slug":"soham-murderer-taken-off-life-support-and-close-to-death-bbc-understands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/461915\/","title":{"rendered":"Soham murderer taken off life support and close to death, BBC understands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A school caretaker in the Cambridgeshire commuter town, Huntley committed one of the most shocking child murders of the century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had been at a family barbecue in August 2002. It&#8217;s believed they were on their way to buy sweets when Huntley, then aged 28, lured them back to his home and killed them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC understands that triple killer Anthony Russell, 43, is suspected of attacking Huntley.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having been kept on life support in hospital, it was turned off on Friday, according to prison sources. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This was not the first time he had been attacked at HMP Frankland. In 2010, he was slashed across the throat and needed 21 stitches. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The prison is nicknamed monster mansion due to its extreme levels of violence. It houses some of the most dangerous criminals including murderers and rapists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Huntley was also attacked in 2005 by a convicted murderer who chucked boiling water over him at HMP Wakefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A school caretaker in the Cambridgeshire commuter town, Huntley committed one of the most shocking child murders of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-461915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461915","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=461915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}