Product Description

The horrific murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman shocked and sickened the nation. The man found guilty of their murders is now one of the most reviled men in the country. As if his crime was not dreadful enough, he has recently admitted that he lied under oath about the circumstances of one of the murders. This in-depth book is written by investigative journalist Nathan Yates, who witnessed the murder hunt first-hand and even interviewed Huntley and former girlfriend Maxine Carr. Yates also has an exclusive source for contact with Ian Huntley and will have further revelations about how far Huntley has lied about what happened that tragic day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17794 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Nathan Yates covered the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman as a Daily Mirror staff reporter, from the day of the girls' disappearance. The indepth reporting of these events won Nathan and his colleagues the title Team Reporters of the Year at the 2003 British Press Awards. Nathan has been at the Daily Mirror for seven years and has worked for four other national newspapers since leaving Oxford University with a first class degree in English.

Customer Reviews

Beyond evil - profiteering from parents worst nightmare
I was struck with horror when Jessica and Holly disappeared but when the caretaker was arrested, I always felt there was something more to the tragedy. I bought the book to see if I could discern anything more.

And I didn't. (Not suprising! Why I thought I could find out more than the entire Cambridge constablary!!)

The book is written by a journalist and pieces together the full story in one paper-back, rather than on different days in newspapers. In my opinion, it offers no new research or perspective and the author just uses the Wells and Chapman families tragedy to swell her coffers. She is a true hack.

Beyond Belief
I have already read Holly Wells' Fathers own book on the Soham Murders in 2002, so I decided to read this book to see the tragedy from another point of view. Author Nathan Yates is a tabloid journalist from The Daily Mirror, who like many others in his profession, witnessed the investigation first hand. On several occasions he encountered both Huntley and Carr, and once even interviewed them in their own home.

While this book delves deep into the past of both the murderer and his accomplice and carefully peices together Huntley and Carr's upbringings, their relationships, and Huntley's previous catalogue of violence, it also details the murder, the athermarth and Huntley's meticulous cover-up as if Yates was there, inside the Head of Huntley while he was carrying out his evil plan. Yates documents what Huntley would have been thinking and feeling when he murdered the girls, when he was hiding the bodies and subsequently trying to return to his normal life. All the time I was reading this I couldn't help thinking 'how would Nathan know what was going on inside Huntley's head?'. Huntley has never spoken out about the murders or the reasons why he commited such despicable crimes, so I doubt than anyone but Huntley himself knows the truth about what really went through his head that day. Yates also persists in detailing just HOW Huntley killed the girls, which is something even the pathologists couldn't be 100% sure of, so how can an ordinary tabloid Hack know exactly what went on in the House of Horrors and how Holly and Jessica died when he wasn't even there?! This only serves to upset you more, and you can't help but relive their last precious moments in your head, something which upset me greatly when I read it.

This book reads like it should be written by a phychologist, someone qualified to know what Huntley would REALLY have been thinking, maybe someone who spent time anaylsing his state of mind in prison, not a tabloid hack whose job is to document the investigation - not to try to get into Huntley's phyche! I am sure this would have made for a very disturbing and upsetting read for anyone connected to Holly and Jessica on a personal level.

But all the same I did enjoy the book, told from a different perspective, from people who saw the investigation from the outside, and actually spent a fair amount of time with Ian Huntley.

This book only served to make me dispise Huntley even more than I already did, while the jury is still out on Maxine Carr. This book is worth a read if you can keep an open mind and remember that it is written by a journalist whose job is to sensasionalise the facts, and not a hardered phychologist who really did get inside the twisted head of Ian Huntley.

an interesting source.
this book is very factual,it was especially interesting to read about the awful events in soham from a reporters experiances there. it gave us an insight into the minds and history of these two evil beasts, it is well worth reading,and i would highly recommend it. If you are interested in the soham case then this along with Kevin wells book,Goodbye Dearest Holly are two exceptional reads.