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Anorak News | Ian Huntley: Meet Soham Killer’s Crazy ‘Girlfriend’ Joanna Rutledge

Ian Huntley: Meet Soham Killer’s Crazy ‘Girlfriend’ Joanna Rutledge

by | 29th, October 2010

IAN Huntley, the man who murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, is dating one Joanne Rutledge, 27. The Sun says she is his girlfriend. They’ve been exchanging letters for about a year.

Huntley has no chance of ever leaving jail. Her will be locked in one institution or another until he dies. This lover might be just what the prisoner officers at Category A Frankland jail, Co Durham, who have to keep the killer alive need to make their lives easier.

But Andrew Parker, the Sun’s writer, isn’t interested in that. Rutledge is a way to get Huntley back on the front page and stir easy emotion in readers:

Besotted Rutledge gushed sickeningly last night about her bizarre love for Huntley – the evil killer she claims lusts after her.

He isn’t dating her. They’ve not actually met. She is not his girlfriend. Such are the facts. Says she:

“Ian’s lovely. I sent him some photographs of myself and he said I looked really good. He fancies me. Things have progressed with him, we’ve spoken on the phone and there’s a visit on the way.”

By own reckoning she will have to visit him. And he will need approval for the visit. Love may yet be stymied by metal bars, high walls and the law. Says Rutledge:

“I want to see this through and I want to meet him. I’ve come this far to meet Ian Huntley. I first contacted him because I’m interested in true crime and I want to meet him.

So. Not a besotted lover but a woman interested in “true crime”. Although calling him “lovely” seems to be a misuse of the word, unless she’s trying to win him over?

“He’s had thousands of letters since he got convicted and he can make phone calls to anybody but I’m the first stranger he’s contacted. Frankland do a check on you and they know he rings me and they are recorded. They know what he writes to me and what I write to him. They have to verify each person he contacts. He’s told me he doesn’t expect to get out of prison ever and nor does he think he deserves to get out of prison.”

Rutledge seems to be pleased with her connection to Huntley. As for her being a stranger, she contacted him first. Her letters to a killer have got her on the front page of the Sun. It’s got her noticed. What else do we know about her? Barker is informative:

Pals said Rutledge has a “twisted” obsession with sex killers and had posted a picture of herself on a social networking site alongside American murderer and rapist Ted Bundy.

Pals says she’s twisted? No wonder she’s looking to make new friends, even if one of them is a child killer. And she’s not actually with Bundy. She’s just put his photo on her Facebook page – the one on which she bills herself as “CRAZY”. Here’s Barker again:

Rutledge said hated Huntley warned her to be careful in case people begin to see her as the “new Maxine Carr” and target her.

Maxine Carr was the woman who dated Huntley when the story of the missing girls broke. It was never proven that she knew he was a killer. Her crime was protecting him. She went to jail for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Rutledge is woman with a carrier bag full of letters and opinions on Baby P (his abusers should have got longer in jail) and Jon Venables, one of James Bulger’s killers she says gets fairer treatment than Huntley, a ludicrous comment given the media frenzy on the child who killed a child.

But Barker has space to fill and the opinions of a “crazy” and “sick” woman who is “besotted” with child killer are worthy so long as they hit the keywords on a slow news day…

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Maxine Carr (25) teaching assisant in Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman's class at St Andrew's School with a card from Holly written on the last day of term. *The pair vanished from their homes in Soham, Cambs, on Sunday 4 August 2002. Two newspapers have put up rewards, one for 150,000 and another for 1 million.



Posted: 29th, October 2010 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink