Double child killer Ian Huntley could get a taxpayer-funded funeral and memorial service, and the prison governor will be forced to write a letter of condolence to his family, after he was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate at HMP Frankland.

Huntley, who appalled the nation with the murders of ten-year-old schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, died yesterday morning after his life support was switched off on Friday.

So hated was Huntley that even his own daughter has called for his ashes to be ‘flushed down the toilet’ – yet the prison faces having to grant him the customary death rites, as dictated by government policy.

Firstly, the governor of the Durham prison, Darren Finley, will have to pen a letter of condolence to Huntley’s family and invite them to visit the prison.

He must also offer to contribute up to £3,000 towards funeral costs, which would be payable to funeral directors upon the receipt of invoices.

This is to cover reasonable costs of any service the family organises, which could include a hearse, a coffin, a faith leader and cremation fees. If the family chooses not to arrange a funeral, then this money would not be distributed.

It is expected that Huntley will be cremated at an undisclosed location.

On top of this, protocol says that a memorial service should be organised through the prison’s chaplaincy, which the family, other inmates and prison staff may attend.

Huntley was hit over the head repeatedly with a spiked metal bar taken from a waste metal basket, sources told the Daily Mail.

Triple murderer Anthony Russell, 43, is suspected of launching the brutal assault, which left Huntley ‘torn apart like a rat’ and lying in a pool of his own blood.

Prison sources this weekend suggested to The Mail on Sunday that the issue of Huntley’s next of kin had caused a family ‘disagreement’.

The decision to turn off his life support was supposed to fall to his daughter, Samantha Bryan.

Ms Bryan, however, had never met her father, and so it was left to his mother, Lynda Richards.

She had travelled to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary from her home in Lincolnshire a few days after the attack.

Ms Bryan, 27, told The Sun on Sunday she does not believe that her father deserves a funeral. 

She said: ‘He shouldn’t have the dignity of a funeral and grave. I will not be going. A funeral is pointless for a man like him.

‘I don’t want there to ever be any possibility of freaks or weirdos going to a resting place or memorial, to show him some kind of twisted respect.’

Huntley was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 40 years in December 2003. Judges told him that he had ‘little or no hope’ of ever being released.

In the end, he died without ever revealing the full truth about the girls’ deaths, only a sanitised version.

In court, he said both girls died accidentally, claiming Holly drowned in his bath and that he inadvertently suffocated Jessica while trying to stifle her screams.

But in 2018 he confessed to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising the alarm. To her family’s distress, he always claimed Holly’s death was an accident.

Huntley initially claimed the pair had left his house alive, but eventually confessed to dumping their bodies in a remote ditch, cutting off their clothes and burning their bodies to cover his tracks.

During the 13-day search for the girls, Huntley was filmed saying he was likely to be the last person to have seen them on the day they disappeared and expressed sympathy to the families.

This was the latest in a string of violent attempts on Huntley’s life by other prisoners, who detested him for the nature of his unthinkable crimes and for his behaviour behind bars, which sources have said was repellent.

It was previously reported that Huntley wore a red Manchester United football shirt around prison, which infuriated other inmates.

Another inmate slashed Huntley’s throat in 2010, leaving him needing 21 stitches, and in 2005, a convicted murderer threw boiling water over him. 

In an image which became imprinted on the nation’s consciousness, his two victims wore Manchester United jerseys in a photograph taken shortly before they were killed.  

Huntley had apparently come to terms with the fact that he would die in prison, as revealed by leaked tape recordings of conversations he had behind bars.

In 2018, a recording of a phone call was leaked to The Sun, in which Huntley confessed to the murders and made a groveling apology.

He told a friend: ‘And I am sorry for what I have done, sorry for the pain I have caused to the families and friends of Holly and Jessica, for the pain I have caused my family and friends, and for the pain I have caused the community of Soham.

‘I am genuinely, genuinely sorry and it breaks my heart when it is reported I have no remorse; that I relish something. I do not.’

He said that he thought about the girls when they would have turned 18 and 21.

Huntley continued: ‘I know no matter what I say that people are not going to think any better of me. I know that, I don’t expect it to, but I would much rather people have the truth about how I feel.

‘I have nothing to gain by saying these things. I know I am never getting out. I have accepted that from day one.’  

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘The murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman remains one of the most shocking and devastating cases in our nation’s history, and our thoughts are with their families.’

Convicted child murderer Ian Huntley remains in a critical condition in hospital today after being smashed in the head three times with a metal pole, the Daily Mail can reveal. 

The 52-year-old, who is serving life in prison for the murder of two 10-year-old girls in 2002, was attacked while working in the waste management workshop at HMP Frankland. 

At around 9.30am on Thursday, a fellow inmate from his wing grabbed a metal bar from a nearby crate and launched the attack, leaving Huntley in a pool of his own blood with catastrophic head injuries. 

Multiple prison sources suspect that Anthony Russell, a 43-year-old triple murderer, was the one who launched the assault. 

Inmates said to be cheering as he was led away in handcuffs shouting: ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it. I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him.’ 

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.’

It is believed a fight broke out between the two prisoners, before Russell swung at Huntley with the metal pole, hitting him with such force that part of the bar was lodged inside of him. 

Despite officers fearing that Huntley had died at the scene due to the extent of his injuries and concerns he was ‘not breathing’, paramedics managed to put him in a medically induced coma and transport him to hospital. 

He is said to remain there in a critical condition. 

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, so to protect them 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’. 

Suspected attacker Russell was charged with the murder of Julie Williams and her son David Williams, as well as the rape and murder of pregnant Nicole McGregor near Leamington Spa in 2022. 

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 in an attack that inflicted 113 separate injuries. 

Before later assaulting Ms McGregor, who was five months pregnant, just hours after she showed him a picture of her baby scan and then pretending to help Ms McGregor’s partner look for her.  

The Sun reported his celebratory cheers, and fellow lags’ too, in the wake of the attack. 

This is the third time Huntley has been attacked in jail. In 2010, his throat was slashed with a homemade weapon and, in 2005, another inmate threw boiling water over him.

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 – tragically taken on the day Huntley lured them into his house – became synonymous with the desperate search which gripped the country.

A spokesperson for Durham Constabulary said: ‘The 52-year-old prisoner who was injured during this morning’s assault in the workshop at HMP Frankland remains in a serious condition in hospital following treatment for head injuries.

‘Police forensic teams have examined the scene of the attack throughout the day to gather evidence.

‘A suspect, a male prisoner in his mid-40s, has been identified by officers investigating the incident. He has not been arrested at this stage, but remains in detention within the prison.’

School caretaker Huntley lured both schoolgirls into his home and murdered them, before dumping their bodies in a ditch some 12 miles away.

He would later return and attempt to set fire to them.

They were not discovered until more than a week after they went missing, by which time some 400 police officers had joined with local residents to search for the missing youngsters.

Holly and Jessica, who were best friends, had gone out to buy sweets on the afternoon of August 4, 2002, when he lured them into his three-bedroom cottage.

Their disappearance after a family barbecue sent shockwaves through the close-knit community and became one of the most sickening child murders the country has ever seen.

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.

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

His then-fiancée Maxine Carr, who was a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, would also be jailed for three-and-a-half years after giving her partner a false alibi in a bid to help him evade justice.

She famously turned on her partner at court and Huntley was convicted, having tried to claim he had killed both girls accidentally.

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

The case prompted an inquiry into how Huntley slipped through police vetting procedures despite a string of sex allegations made against him in his hometown, Grimsby, in the late 1990s.

The report from the inquiry revealed a ‘deeply shocking’ catalogue of errors across all organisations that had contact with Huntley before he murdered Holly and Jessica.

It made 31 recommendations to improve intelligence sharing, police information systems and employment vetting nationwide.

Huntley has previously been attacked in prison, most notably by armed robber Damien Fowkes in 2010, who slashed his throat.

Using a home-made weapon, Fowkes slashed him causing a ‘severe gaping cut to the left side of his neck’. The wound was 7in (18cm) long and required 21 stitches.

At the time Fowkes asked a prison officer: ‘Is he dead? I hope so.’

A fellow prisoner also attempted to shank Huntley in an ambush in 2018.

In 2005, fellow murderer Mark Hobson also threw boiling water over him in Wakefield Prison.

His crimes continue to cause outrage behind bars, as has Huntley’s brazen behaviour while on remand.

In 2018 Huntley appeared to confess to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising the alarm. He continued to insist that Holly’s death was an accident.

After Carr had served her prison sentence, she was released in 2004 with a brand new identity.