Ian Huntley was hit up to 15 times with a three-foot metal pole as he bent down to tie some string on a recycling crate, it has been claimed. 

The Soham murderer was rushed to hospital after he was attacked by a fellow inmate at a recycling workshop at HMP Frankland in County Durham on Thursday morning. 

The inmate, who killed ten-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, remains in hospital on life support, in a medically induced coma. 

Doctors are said to be shocked he has survived, after Huntley sustained severe injuries including brain damage, a broken jaw and skull fractures.  

Multiple prison sources suspect Anthony Russell, a 43-year-old triple murderer and rapist also serving a life sentence, was the attacker. 

He is said to have showed no remorse for the bludgeoning, which rendered Huntley ‘unrecognisable’ even to his own mother, who visited him in hospital. 

A source has now told of the ‘unbelievably savage’ nature of the attack, saying it was ‘more savage than has so far been reported’. 

They told The Sun: ‘He was bending down tying some string onto a recycling crate when he was first hit – so was in a position like you’d be in when tying your shoelaces. 

Ian Huntley (pictured in August 2002) was rushed to hospital after he was attacked by a fellow inmate at a recycling workshop at HMP Frankland in County Durham on Thursday morning

Multiple prison sources suspect Anthony Russell (pictured), a 43-year-old triple murderer and rapist also serving a life sentence, was the attacker 

‘And people who saw it say he was battered around 15 times – Russell just kept hitting and hitting him.’ 

The source said many fellow prisoners knew the attack was coming and had even discussed it the night before it happened. 

None of them, however, stepped in to help as it unfolded, they claimed, leaving staff to intervene, with officers and inmates alike thinking Huntley was dead.   

The insider described how Russell was handcuffed and led, smirking, towards the prison chapel. 

He is understood, they continued, to have proudly admitted the attack in police interviews – and expressed his disappointment he did not kill Huntley. 

The Category A prison was locked down after the brawl, with officers searching cells for weapons, amid fears of similar ambushes. 

It comes amid reports Huntley’s head was ‘split in two’ by the attack, which saw Russell boast, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve killed him!’ as he was led away. 

A prison source told The Mirror he is likely to be isolated from other inmates for several years following the attack. 

‘Because it’s a serious assault, he’ll be moved to a segregation unit,’ they said. 

‘He’ll probably just be held there for the foreseeable, certainly, because you can’t go around either trying to kill another prisoner or killing other prisoners, so he’ll probably be in a segregation unit for the next five, ten years, maybe.’ 

The ambush is being investigated by police, who have neither arrested the suspect yet, nor confirmed his identity. 

A Durham Constabulary Spokesperson said: ‘A 52-year-old man remains in hospital in a serious condition.’ 

It comes after Huntley’s mother, Lynda Richards, 71, told friends ‘part of me hopes he dies’ and she ‘just wants to be free of it’. 

She made a secret trip, escorted by a Prison Service liaison officer and a friend, to his bedside, travelling 175 miles from her home in Lincolnshire on Thursday. 

A source told The Sun she knows ‘few will mourn his passing’ if he dies – but said she is ‘still his mother’. 

The assault was harrowing for her, the insider said – and Ms Richards only heard about it from a friend who saw it on the news. 

But the source said now he has been attacked so many times in prison, she thinks ‘it might be better if he didn’t pull through’. 

‘It’s an extraordinarily difficult thing for her to come to terms with,’ they said. ‘Part of her just hopes he passes away this time.’

Huntley is serving at least 40 years behind bars for the infamous Soham murders in Cambridgeshire in 2002. Pictured: Best friends Holly Wells, left, and Jessica Chapman, right, who were murdered by Huntley

The pair are close, the source said, speaking over the phone just two days before the attack: ‘He’s still her son, regardless of what happened.’

But she knows, they said, that she and the rest of his family, who are all scarred by what he did, ‘can’t be at peace until it’s all over’. 

Ms Richards told pals she wanted to be with her son in hospital if there was a chance he was to pass away. 

She and her friend were driven to the North East on Thursday morning and arrived at the hospital just before midday. 

Huntley is the only patient on the ward, which was cleared for his arrival and is now under guard by armed police and senior justice officials. 

It is understood he is unlikely to be moved back to HMP Frankland if he survives and would instead probably be transferred to a secure hospital. 

There are three in England – Broadmoor in Berkshire, Rampton in Nottinghamshire and Ashworth on Merseyside. 

Holding him in such a facility would keep him away from other inmates and allow for him to be closely monitored. 

His condition is said to be ‘grave’, with surgeons, who are understood to have operated on his head wound, shocked he is still alive. 

Doctors gave him only a five per cent chance of survival after he was battered in the prison recycling workshop at around 9.30am on Thursday. 

An insider said on Friday: ‘It is miraculous he is still alive. Medics have worked miracles on him and he has clung on. 

‘The prison nurses and staff who first saw him thought he was gone. And medics said there was only a five per cent chance of survival after an attack like that.’

A Durham Constabulary spokesperson said on Friday morning: ‘There has been no change in the 52-year-old man’s condition overnight – he remains in hospital in a serious condition.’ 

Russell is understood to have started an argument with Huntley, with a fight soon breaking out between them.

He then bludgeoned the Soham murderer with the metal pole, hitting him with such force that part of the bar was lodged inside his head. 

Sources have said he was rendered unconscious by the first hit – and that it was ‘only a matter of time’ before he was attacked. 

The killer (pictured in August 2002) lured pals Holly and Jessica into his three-bedroom cottage, after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets on the afternoon of August 4 of that year

Many inmates are said to have cheered rather than rush to his aid. 

Insiders claim there had been a ‘queue’ of inmates who wanted to kill Huntley, including Darren Osborne, the Finsbury Park Mosque attacker. 

They said the attack came because Huntley ‘was trying to bully’ Russell and ‘turn others against him’.

The suspect was heard celebrating, as he was held by prison officers and led away in cuffs, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it! I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him!’. 

He was moved to segregation but has not been arrested. 

Paramedics and an air ambulance descended on the high-security prison, where staff were convinced the attack was fatal. 

They found Huntley in a pool of blood and immediately placed him an induced coma before rushing him to hospital by road. 

A prison source told the Daily Mail: ‘Huntley was working in waste management with other prisoners from Wing A, the segregated wing for prisoners who can’t be in the normal jail population for their own protection.

‘The other prisoner got a metal bar from the waste metal crates and smashed Huntley three times in the head with it.

‘It was a very, very serious injury, having been struck on the skull like that.’

The source said Wing A is made up of inmates at risk of attack from other prisoners, such as sex offenders or jailed police officers. 

To protect them, the insider continued, they move around the prison as a group and remain segregated from the others.

One woman, who visited an inmate housed alongside Huntley, told the Daily Mail it looked like he had been ‘ripped apart like a rat’.

She added: ‘He’s in a bad, bad way. I shouldn’t say it, but it’s what he deserves.’

Another source said the double killer’s condition was ‘touch and go’ and described the scene on the wing as ‘absolute chaos’.

One former prison officer said guards would now be on the lookout for copycats.

The killer and his former girlfriend, Maxine Carr (pictured, after her arrest in August 2002), were arrested 13 days after the girls went missing

‘Just like on the outside when something horrendous happens you get copycats looking for five minutes of fame,’ they told the Mail.

‘It’s the same in a prison but obviously the tension will be very much heightened.

‘As a Category A prison security is always high, but it will be even higher now and the guards will be even more aware.

‘You’ll have people who will have seen this and are now thinking they can have a go at attacking someone they don’t like, so the guards will be wanting to stop that.

‘The man who did it will be kept away from the rest of the prisoners as a punishment and to stop him gaining notoriety.’

The source said prisoners who had gained public notoriety were particular at risk of copycat attacks.

‘That’s why the likes of Charles Bronson are segregated – partly that’s because of the threat he poses but it’s also because you don’t want another prisoner having the notoriety of being the “one that done Bronson”.’

While some prisoners will be celebrating the attack on Huntley, the source believes many will not because of the changes it will impose on their routine.

‘The prisoners that are there like their routine, they don’t like anything that might upset their association or anything like that,’ she said.

‘You don’t get remand prisoners in Frankland – it’s all people who have been convicted of very serious crimes.

‘The majority of prisoners in Frankland have already accepted their lot and most of them abide by the rules and go to education.’

Russell, from Coventry, was initially locked up after a week-long killing spree in October 2020. 

He killed Julie Williams and her son David Williams, before raping and murdering Nicole McGregor, who was five months pregnant. 

At the time, West Midlands Police believed Mr Williams was strangled with a lanyard due to Russell’s ‘mistaken belief that he was in a relationship with his girlfriend’.

He then went on to kill Mr Williams’ 58-year-old mother, inflicting on her a horrifying 113 separate injuries.

Russell then later assaulted Ms McGregor, just hours after she showed him a picture of her baby scan. 

After his arrest, Huntley (pictured) denied the murders, subjecting the schoolgirls’ families to a gruelling six-week trial at the Old Bailey, starting in November 2003

He dumped her body in woods near Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, before helping her partner look for her.  

Huntley is serving at least 40 years behind bars for the infamous Soham murders in Cambridgeshire in 2002. 

He lured pals Holly and Jessica into his three-bedroom cottage, after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets on the afternoon of August 4 of that year. 

The school caretaker murdered them, before dumping their bodies in a ditch some 12 miles away. He would later return and attempt to set fire to them.

Suspicions about Huntley were raised after he appeared to tell one journalist in morbid detail how the girls might react to being taken by a stranger.

The killer and his former girlfriend, Maxine Carr, were arrested 13 days after the girls went missing. 

The girls were not discovered until more than a week after they went missing. 

By that time, some 400 police officers had joined with local residents to search for the missing youngsters. 

But he denied the murders, subjecting the schoolgirls’ families to a gruelling six-week trial at the Old Bailey, starting in November 2003. 

It came after Huntley attempted suicide in prison, in June of that year. 

He lied in court at his murder trial that Holly had drowned in his bath and that he had accidentally suffocated Jessica while attempting to stop her from screaming. 

Huntley was convicted in 2003 of both murders, having pleaded not guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 40 years. 

He was soon put behind bars, where he has been attacked several times by other inmates for his heinous crimes. 

In 2005, he was scalded with boiling water at HMP Wakefield, and in 2010, he had his throat slashed at HMP Frankland, where he moved two years prior.  

He tried to take his own life again in prison, in September 2006. 

Huntley is said to have become so paranoid about attacks in prison that he began to fear his food being poisoned. 

It led him to rely on fast food and confectionery from the prison shop instead of its regular meals, an insider said, so he knew exactly what he was eating. 

They added: ‘He has been living on a diet of things like cheesy Wotsits.’  

Last year, he was said to have been strutting around the jail wearing a No 10 Manchester United-style shirt in an apparent vile taunt about his victims.

A photo of the schoolgirls wearing matching football shirts was taken on the day Huntley lured them into his house.

His former girlfriend Carr, who gave police a fake alibi for Huntley at the time, was jailed for three and a half years for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. 

After being released in May 2004, having served half her sentence, she was granted a lifelong anonymity order. She now lives under a new identity.