Beyond Evil - Inside the Twisted Mind of Ian Huntley. Nathan Yates
had sex he seemed to treat me like a child; to bully me. He’d tell me who I could talk to, what I could and could not do.’ Huntley tried to keep her shut away in his flat in Cleethorpes, even telling her not to go to school. He told her school would not teach her anything, and she didn’t need it, because she had him. After he had kept her away from school for a week, Katie’s family were visited by truancy officers and her parents appealed to Huntley to release his emotional grip on their daughter. But Huntley was having none of it. He frightened the girl into abandoning her education altogether; she left school at 15 with no qualifications and started to work packing cold cuts at a local seafood factory. ‘The job was horrible,’ Katie said. ‘But it was what Ian wanted. He never worked, although he said I should. And he wanted me to do all the cooking and cleaning. He would lose his temper when I got it wrong. Then he started calling me stupid. I lost all my confidence as I just tried to please him.’
Katie was very close to her mother Jacqueline and her father Brian, but Huntley became insanely jealous of these bonds. He could not bear his woman to have any affection for anyone other than himself. So, if members of Katie’s family called round at the flat, he would tell them she did not want to see them. If they rang, he told them she could not come to the phone. One day Katie’s aunt arrived at the door. He locked his young girlfriend in the bedroom and told her aunt she never wanted to see any of her family again. After that he moved with Katie to Immingham to live once more with his mother and Julie Beasley. ‘I didn’t know anybody there and became totally dependent on him,’ Katie said.
Huntley’s father took Katie to one side and told her she should stay away from his son. His mother also told her she should leave Huntley for her own good. Always restless, Huntley soon took Katie back to Cleethorpes, where they shared a small flat. For her it felt more like a prison; he would not allow her out and he rarely had a visitor. He did not appear to have any friends, instead spending his time leafing through the pages of his many plane-spotting books or scanning the skies for different types of craft. Like many depressives, Huntley talked constantly about his past and the problems he had encountered. He hardly ever spoke of the future, never discussing what he would like to do as a job or where he would like to live.
Katie’s parents insisted they were open-minded about her relationship with her older lover. According to her father, both he and Jacqueline thought Huntley seemed all right at first, despite their misgivings about Katie being only 15. But they noticed him becoming more and more possessive. Retired factory worker Brian, 64, said: ‘We tried to tell her to slow it down but Katie became besotted with him. They would row and bicker over every petty thing. He would use emotional blackmail to control her.’
In a new and sinister twist, Huntley began to beat Katie. She said: ‘I remember one time when I’d put a pizza in the oven but forgotten to turn the temperature down after it had heated up. The pizza came out black and burnt. Ian went crazy and started yelling that I was stupid and useless and should be able to cook by now. Then he slapped me in the face.’ Once he had started hitting her, Huntley couldn’t stop. Afterwards he always said he was sorry, and pledged dozens of times to never hurt her again, but within days the promise was broken yet again and his apologies exposed as a sham. Finally, after she had been with Huntley for a year, Katie summoned up the courage to leave him. The couple had a huge row, and she lost her temper and emptied bottles of wine all over the flat. She ran outside to a phone box and called her father. She waited in the kiosk until he arrived by car to pick her up. This time Huntley did nothing to stop her from going, and she escaped from his clutches with only her pride in tatters. She did not realise how lucky she had been.
Although Huntley had claimed to be in love with Katie, he was seeing another woman within weeks. His next girlfriend was Becky Bartlett, a petite 19-year-old who had no idea what she was letting herself in for. She was shocked by how Huntley erupted into a fit of fury when she told him she might be pregnant. Becky was a next-door neighbour of Huntley’s at Abbey Drive East in Grimsby when he seduced her. She said: ‘He was Mr Charming when we met. I’d just split up with my boyfriend. He started taking me out and then I moved into his place. It was nice being with an older man – he was very confident. We started having sex together, but it was nothing very special. Then I realised I might be pregnant and decided to tell him. He was so angry. As it turned out, luckily I wasn’t pregnant.’
Although Becky was relieved to find she was not expecting Huntley’s child, another of his conquests did become pregnant and went on to give birth to a baby girl. In order to protect the child, her identity is not revealed in this book. She and her mother are among the victims of Huntley’s crimes, their lives marred forever by an innocent association with his terrible acts.
While Becky and Katie felt lucky to escape from Huntley’s clutches, others were not quite so fortunate. On Saturday, 16 May 1998 Huntley had been drinking his usual pints of bitter in the pubs of Grimsby, going on a crawl round his favourite haunts, including the Wine Pipe and the Mortar and Pestle. As usual, he was trawling for a girl to spend the night with, so he made sure he did not drink too much. He wanted to be in control and fully focused, ready to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself. For Huntley, the best chance usually came in the shape of a woman who had been drinking heavily all night in the pubs that stayed open late. He would deliberately seek out those who were the worse for wear, hanging around outside the pubs around closing time and afterwards, ready to pounce on girls in a vulnerable state.
This Saturday night was no exception. Huntley was loitering in the Hollywood nightclub in Grimsby, waiting by the bar with the intent of making use of a woman under the influence of alcohol. As on many previous occasions, he managed to find a target. His eyes were drawn to an attractive blonde just 18 years old who he spotted on the dance floor. He had seen the girl out on the town the previous night, and had tried to chat her up without any success. This time he was determined to possess her by whatever methods were needed.
Although he was normally not keen on dancing, Huntley made straight for the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and began gyrating clumsily next to her. She attempted to ignore him and moved away to the other side of the area, but Huntley stuck close by her and wouldn’t be shaken off. Soon the slower rhythms of a love song signalled the club was about to close, and the girl made for the door. She said goodbye to a group of friends and decided to walk home alone. She had had a lot to drink, and did not notice that the man who had tried to dance with her in the club had followed her outside. The time was 2.00 am. The girl’s route home was down a passageway known as Gas Alley, a cycle path which led from the Hollywood club across an area of waste ground, the site of an old railway line. It was a fine, cloudless night and the girl was in good spirits, feeling confident and unafraid despite the fact that the spot was deserted. Huntley, who had crept up silently behind her, pounced. He grabbed the girl from behind and gripped her throat with his right hand. His eyes bulging wildly, he swore at her and threatened to beat her head with a brick. He punched her in the face, yanked up her dress and tore off her tights and underwear. The girl, who was little more than five feet tall and weighed less than eight stone, tried to fight back but was overpowered by the frenzied attack. She tried to scream, but Huntley jammed his hand across her mouth as he raped her brutally. His anger satisfied, Huntley tried to persuade the girl not to report the rape, threatening to kill her if she told anyone. He began to chat more calmly, pretending nothing had happened. As he wheedled away, the girl saw her opportunity to escape and ran. Huntley decided not to pursue her, and instead walked back to his squalid flat in Veal Street. Minutes after arriving home, the girl and her distraught parents rang the police to report her ordeal.
The next day, the attack made front page news in the local newspaper, the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, as officers launched an appeal for witnesses. Five days later Huntley gave himself up at a local police station. He was interviewed then charged with rape. He appeared at Grimsby and Cleethorpes Magistrates’ Court the following day, and was remanded in custody to Wolds Prison in Lincolnshire. A week later, at his second court appearance, he was released on bail. After another fortnight of investigation, police decided to drop the case. The decision not to prosecute Huntley left the victim, now a 23-year-old mother of one, furious and dismayed.
The publicity surrounding the case had a heavy impact on Huntley’s life. Friends, colleagues and neighbours alike began to whisper that Huntley