The crime documentary is back for a third series.
Forensics: Catching the Killer returns with eight new cases – each one resolved thanks in part to the role of forensic science.
This run of episodes opens with a ninety-minute special that follows the forensic work to catch Soham murderer Ian Huntley. When 10-year-old best friends Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Amiee Chapman disappeared in the summer of 2002, an intensive search was launched, ending with the discovery of their bodies almost two weeks later.
What followed was a bizarre chain of events where school janitor Huntley became an unofficial spokesperson for the town of Soham in media interviews, claiming to be the last person to see the girls alive.
However, forensic evidence found in Huntley’s dwellings and car would prove him to be the killer. Huntley murdered the children—likely via asphyxiation—before disposing of their bodies in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
Huntley was convicted of the murder of both girls on 17 December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with the High Court later imposing a minimum term of 40 years. His girlfriend, Maxine Ann Carr—the girls’ teaching assistant—had knowingly provided Huntley with a false alibi. She received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice.
The search for Holly and Jessica in the thirteen days of their disappearance has been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.
Forensics: Catching the Killer, The Soham Murders, Sky Crime at 9 pm on December 5th
