The girlfriend of the man charged with murdering Cambridgeshire Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was yesterday remanded in custody after appearing in court on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Shortly after Ms Maxine Carr's court appearence, police confirmed two bodies found in a forest were those of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, ending a more than two-week ordeal for their families.
The teaching assistant at the school where the girls were students made a brief appearance at Peterborough Magistrates Court just after 10 a.m. and was remanded in custody until August 29th. She was taken to Holloway prison, the largest women's prison in Britain.
Her partner, Mr Ian Huntley (28), was charged on Tuesday with murdering the girls.
Ms Carr looked pale but composed behind a glass screen in the courtroom and spoke only to confirm her name, her date of birth and her address in Soham. Her voice was barely audible.
There was no application for bail and defence lawyer Mr Roy James said his client denied any involvement in the abduction or murder of the children. She is charged that, between the August 9th and August 18th, 2002, she did a series of acts which had a tendency to pervert the course of public justice by giving false information to police officers involved in a criminal investigation.
Cambridgeshire police were only yesterday able to say for certain the two bodies found at Lakenheath, about 15 miles away, last Saturday were those of Holly and Jessica. The statement from police yesterday said: "The area where the bodies were found continues to remain cordoned off.
"Police will say nothing more about the state in which the bodies were found at the scene other than that they were decomposed. All other details are important evidentially and will not be disclosed by the police," it said.
Meanwhile, a director at the psychiatric hospital where Mr Huntley is being held under the Mental Health Act has dismissed suggestions that patients in the unit live in luxury that is akin to being on holiday.
Dr Mike Harris, forensic services director at Rampton High Security Hospital in Nottinghamshire, said yesterday that patients had virtually no freedom.
"If any members of the public feel they would like to spend some time in Rampton I'm sure they would find it very far from like a holiday camp," he said.
"Apart from the fact that you are locked inside the very secure perimeter, you are locked inside your ward, so you have virtually no freedom. If you go anywhere you are escorted by staff. You are on a ward with a significant number of other people who have histories of dangerousness so you at risk from other patients on the ward yourself," he said.
Dr Harris said new admissions were observed closely before they were allowed mix with other patients. "They are watched 24 hours a day," he said.
He added that the length it took to assess patients varied. Mr Huntley has been admitted for an initial assessment period of 28 days.
"For a patient to come to a high security hospital they are usually more disturbed or have more serious problems or represent a greater risk to the public and the assessment period normally takes longer than that, but not always, sometimes things are clear within the 28 days," Dr Harris said.
As the debate in Britain raged about whether Mr Huntley would be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act and never stand trial, Dr Harris stressed his staff were "pretty good" at spotting people trying to feign mental illness.
"I wouldn't for a moment suggest that we can spot it in 100 per cent of cases but I don't think we are bad. I think if you back to one or two cases where the courts took a view that the wool was being pulled over the eyes of the psychiatrists I think history would say that virtually all of them ended up in secure institutions moving from the prisons to hospital some months later."