Ian Huntley, the man who murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, was found unconscious in his prison cell after a suspected drug overdose, the British Home Office said today.
Ian Huntley
Huntley was found guilty in December 2003 of the double murder of the 10-year-olds in the Cambridgeshire village of Soham in August 2002 and sentenced to life in jail.
An inquiry into the murders found he had managed to get a job as a caretaker at a local school despite being a suspected sex offender. He lured the two girls to his house, killed them and then dumped their naked bodies in a ditch.
A Home Office spokeswoman said Huntley, who was in Wakefield prison in west Yorkshire, had been taken to hospital. "He is under heavy sedation while receiving treatment for what is believed to be an overdose," she said.
Huntley, 32, attempted suicide in June 2003 while he was awaiting trial. Media reports at the time said he saved 29 anti-depressant pills and was found suffering a fit on the floor of his cell.
The Home Office said it had ordered a review of the "management strategy" for Huntley at Wakefield, to be carried out by Rob Kellett, head of the Prison Service's Standards Audit Unit.
Huntley's latest suspected suicide attempt is not the first bid by a notorious convicted killer to end a lifetime in jail.
In 2004, also at Wakefield, Britain's most prolific serial killer Harold Shipman committed suicide by hanging himself with prison bed sheets just before his 58th birthday.
John Powley, a governor at the school where Huntley worked, told local media: "I am sure there are some people in Soham who would wish him to die and say good riddance to bad rubbish.
"My view is that he committed a heinous crime. He was properly convicted and now he should serve his sentence. If that means he spends the rest of his life in prison so be it."