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Ian Huntley is one of the most notorious and cold-blooded killers that Britain has ever seen. The 28-year-old gave interviews on national TV, feigning his distress over the disappearance of two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, when he had been the cause of their families' earth-shattering devastation.

Now aged 51, he is in a high-security prison and won't see freedom until 2042, after his crimes left two families without their beloved children, devastated a community in the quiet Cambridgeshire village of Soham in 2002, and shocked the entire country. It emerged that the child killer had previously been accused of rape, but had been allowed to work at a school in a seemingly trusted position as a caretaker, leading to national outrage and a change in the law, so workers had to be appropriately vetted.

The search for Holly and Jessica in the 13 days of their disappearance has been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history, after they went missing on August 4, 2022.

The two best friends had been spending the day together at Holly's house, where Jessica gave her a holiday gift, they played together, took photos in matching football shirts, and shared a family barbecue.

But by the evening, their parents' worlds fell apart after they found the girls weren't in Holly's room. The best friends had left for a nearby sports centre without their parents knowing, but on their way back, they walked past the house of the school caretaker, who abducted them.

Police officers and members of the local community searched tirelessly to find Holly and Jessica, but two weeks later, a gamekeeper and his companion discovered their bodies lying side by side in a 5-foot deep irrigation ditch, near an airbase in Lakenheath, Suffolk.

During the search, the evil murderer Ian Huntley had been giving interviews to PA news and Sky, feigning his devastation over their disappearance as the last person to have seen the children. In one interview with Sky News, he claimed to be holding on to a "glimmer of hope" that they would be found safe and well.

He claimed he had spoken to Holly and Jessica as they walked past about a job that his partner, Maxine Carr, had applied for, who had been a teaching assistant at the girls' school.

But journalists began to become suspicious of a man who came across agitated and too interested in the details of the case.

When PA reporter Brian Farmer asked Carr a question about how the girls may react to strangers, Huntley, who barely knew the girls, "jumped in" to explain it in chilling detail.

"I think the way he described how Holly and Jessica would react is exactly how they did react," Mr Farmer said. "He knew how they'd react because that's how they reacted when he killed them."

Police received reports that Huntley had previously been accused of rape, and that Carr was actually socialising in Grimsby town centre on the night of the girls' disappearance, not at home in Soham as she had claimed.

On August 16, the pair were questioned at length by the police, and extensive police searches that evening found the harrowing evidence of his crimes: the matching Manchester United shirts that the girls had been wearing on the night of their disappearance inside a bin at Huntley's place of work.

Efforts had been made to burn the clothing, and fibres recovered from these garments were a precise match to samples retrieved from Huntley's body and clothing.

His home had also been meticulously cleaned, and there were traces of dust in his wheel arches that were the same mixture used to pave the road leading to where the girls' bodies were discovered.

The prosecution said the evidence pointed to a "devious and calculating" mind of a man who had lured the girls into his home, murdered them and tried to get away with it. Asphyxia was found to be the likely cause of their tragic deaths.

Both Huntley and Carr were arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder on August 17. Huntley denied both counts of murder and claimed that Holly died because she fell into his bath as he tried to treat her for a nosebleed, and that he killed Jessica by placing his hand over her mouth as she screamed.

The cold-blooded killer was convicted of the murder of both girls in December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with the High Court later imposing a minimum term of 40 years.

His girlfriend received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice, after knowingly providing a false alibi for him.

The child killer is now in the Category A prison, HMP Frankland in County Durham, after facing a series of attacks from other prisoners.

Damien Fowkes was sentenced to a life term for slashing Ian Huntley's throat, and rapist Paul Marshall left Huntley with severe scalding after he threw boiling water over him at a high-security prison in Wakefield. Huntley has tried to take his life several times while in jail.

The killer is now said to have been moved to a section of Frankland prison typically reserved for pensioner inmates, despite turning 52 next week, which has made him the "butt of jokes".

It came after Huntley was reportedly found to have numerous forbidden items in his cell, including an Xbox, DVDs, USB sticks and magazines.

A source told The Sun: "Everyone else thinks it's funny and he's the butt of a load of jokes. He's quite arrogant and has been acting like the big 'I am' for ages so this will take him down a peg or two."

It came a year after The Sun claimed that officers had seized a red Manchester United-style shirt from the killer, thought to be a sick reference to his 10-year-old victims. The prison service said it could not have commented on individuals.

Ian Huntley's 40-year sentence means he cannot be eligible for parole until 2042.