Beyond Evil - Inside the Twisted Mind of Ian Huntley. Nathan Yates
child, in a bid to make her stay. One night shortly before the split, he started dribbling and faked a fit. He ended up lying on the floor, his body contorted. Worried, Claire called an ambulance, but when it arrived paramedics found there was nothing wrong with Huntley.
Friends of Claire insist that it was only after leaving Huntley that she began a relationship with his younger brother. According to them, Wayne tried to help her because he was concerned at the ordeal she had suffered. He comforted her and tried to make sure she was all right, and during that process the pair fell for each other. Julie Beasley, Huntley’s mother’s lover, said: ‘From the moment Claire and Ian met, they were always rowing. They argued more than they ever saw eye to eye. Wayne was a softy. He was sensible, had a good job as an engineer and treated Claire right, as opposed to Ian, who was a fish-factory worker and had a temper. I think in Wayne she saw what she never had in Ian, and she always got her own way. She could have anything she wanted with Wayne because he felt so much for her. It is real love between Wayne and Claire. With Ian and Claire I think it was a novelty and was never going to last. I think it hurt Ian.’
The fact that Claire left him for Wayne caused Huntley immense anguish. From the moment Wayne had come into the world Huntley had been jealous, and these feelings had grown stronger over the years; where Huntley drifted from job to job and lied to girls about being in the RAF, Wayne had forged a career with the Air Force as an engineer. Now the subject of his envy had left Huntley exposed as a failure for all to see. And that failure consisted of a rejection by a woman, something Huntley could never stand at the best of times. The humiliation hit him like a brick to the forehead.
According to Julie, Wayne and Claire kept their relationship secret from the rest of the family for a month. Then, realising he could hide it no longer, Wayne confessed to his brother at the home his mother Lynda shared with her girlfriend. Julie said: ‘Wayne came round to the flat. I don’t have a clue what was said. I just remember there was a lot of shouting and bellowing in the hall. Ian went mad. He went bonkers mad. He kept saying he was going to kick his brother’s head in. He wanted to go after him. Wayne finally came clean and told Ian about the affair face to face because he was an honest man, and that is when the secret was out. I had been at Ian and Claire’s wedding when Wayne was best man. I don’t think any of us could believe what was happening. I didn’t want to stick around and see them come to blows. I don’t think they hit each other, but there was a lot of shouting and threats, and then Wayne left. It caused a real rift in the family. The brothers didn’t speak for about a year and Ian said he wanted nothing to do with Claire ever again. I just felt sorry for Lynda because her family was never going to be the same again. She always tried to keep the peace. She hated knowing her two sons were rowing.’
Huntley was so furious over the situation that he refused to exchange a word with Claire for four years. The feud delayed the divorce as Huntley used every means he could legally to punish the couple, refusing to clear the way for them to marry. In the end Wayne and Claire had to wait until 13 January 1999 before the decree absolute was issued by East Grimsby County Court. In the meantime Huntley went round telling everyone who would listen that Claire was a ‘slag’ and that his brother had betrayed him. Years later, while on remand at Woodhill Prison, near Milton Keynes, Huntley would develop a paranoid belief that Wayne was poised to steal the love of his life, Maxine Carr, as well. In a bizarre suicide note written before he tried to take his life, Huntley claimed Wayne was trying to control his fiancée. It was an odd suggestion since Carr was at that time behind bars at Holloway Prison, but Huntley was deadly serious. He also wrote in the note: ‘On no account can Wayne come to my funeral.’
The fallout from a domestic situation which could hardly have been worse for a man like Huntley was to leave him profoundly disturbed. A former flatmate said: ‘He was totally shattered when his wife went off with his brother. He virtually had a breakdown. He was on medication. He couldn’t believe what was happening to his life. Everything he loved was upside down.’ Huntley complained of several classic symptoms of depression: listlessness, an inability to get out of bed or be moved to care about anything, his own well-being included. Of course, he was a master at feigning physical and mental illness in pursuit of sympathy. His ex-wife would later tell friends that in reality his feelings were not so badly hurt. According to her, Huntley did not care so much about losing her as about losing control over her. But doctors were sufficiently worried about his state of mind to prescribe him antidepressants. He was dismayed to find the startling news of his unusual marital break-up was all over Grimsby. Another friend of the family commented: ‘It was the talk of the town – everyone knew what he was going through.’ Despite Huntley’s obstructive behaviour, the couple did manage to marry; five years later they were joined in a ceremony at Thetford United Reform Church in Norfolk.
The elder brother must have resented the vastly different circumstances Wayne could provide. Instead of a registry office they used a country church; the groom appeared in a black morning suit with pinstriped trousers, cream waistcoat and red cravat. Claire emerged from a chauffeur-driven limousine in a white dress with long train, wispy veil, gold tiara, silver earrings and pearls. Their reception was held at the £90-a-night Bell Hotel, where the honeymoon suite contained a four-poster bed. Claire, holding her bouquet of white lilies, beamed with pride as the guests sipped champagne. Those at the ceremony managed as far as possible to ignore Huntley’s pointed absence.
Huntley’s method of dealing with losing Claire to his brother involved renewed attempts to seduce and dominate young girls. His delicate ego wounded, he took it out on another series of conquests, whom he treated in his normal callous manner. Friends of Claire would later point out that he made a 15-year-old girl pregnant soon after his wife left him. Two years later he seduced Katie Webber, another 15-year-old still at secondary school. Katie met Huntley, then 23, when he had left the Heinz factory and embarked on another period of moving from job to job, the work being arranged by the Maindate Employment Agency in Grimsby. Administrator Sue Penney, who used to pick Huntley up to take him to work, said he had seemed a lonely person who did a huge range of jobs before he was sacked for a ‘variety of reasons’, one of which was his overbearing arrogance. One of the jobs he did for a few months of 1996 was working as a door-to-door salesman selling scratch cards to raise funds for a local charity, the Handicapped Children Action Group. Katie’s mother, Jacqueline, was a colleague, her role being to organise the ticket sales. As soon as he realised she had a teenage daughter, Huntley was keen to spend time with her. Before long he had made use of his connection with the family to worm his way into Katie’s affections. He even moved into the four-berth caravan in the Webbers’ garden.
Now a 22-year-old mother of two girls living in Cleethorpes, Katie said her first impressions of Huntley were favourable. ‘Ian was nice,’ she said. ‘He was friendly and quite good-looking. He was a bit above himself, but he seemed interested in me. He asked me out and we started out going to pubs. He told me I was pretty and clever and that he liked me a lot. We held hands and when we sat down he rested his hand on my leg. I guess I was infatuated and young, so I was easily impressed, but I thought he was a pleasant person.’ Katie felt grown-up in Huntley’s presence; he took her out and treated her like an adult woman. Though she looked mature for her age, Katie was young enough mentally to find his attentions flattering. Huntley struck her as a sensitive man; he fostered this image by talking endlessly about a nervous breakdown he claimed to have suffered. He also impressed the girl by making out he used to have an important job as manager of a food store in Cleethorpes. In Huntley’s fantasy world, the breakdown had forced him to give up that position.
Katie said she was totally beguiled by Huntley’s act. Within just a few weeks of meeting they were having sex in Huntley’s small and scruffy bedsit. Though this was a new experience for Katie, it was less exciting than she had expected. She later described the sex as ‘unexceptional’, ‘swift’ and ‘ordinary’. She added: ‘He seemed less interested in sex than in being in control.’ Along with many of Huntley’s girlfriends, she found him inadequate as a lover. Away from his preferred excitements of sadism and paedophilia, he seemed incapable of sustaining himself for more than a couple of minutes and often had trouble getting an erection in the first place.
What Huntley did get out of sex, though, was a sense of dominance. Once he had slept with Katie, his manner with her changed immediately. He became controlling and