Police found the clothes of slain schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in a bin mixed with the hair of Ian Huntley - the man accused of killing them - a court has heard.
The clothing was discovered in a school hangar on August 16th 2002, almost two weeks after the two girls disappeared from their homes in Soham in Cambridgeshire.
"Each item of clothing had been cut off its owner," prosecutor Richard Latham QC told the jury at the Old Bailey court. He said an attempt had been made to burn them.
Mr Latham said police entered the hangar after finding the keys during a search of the house Huntley shared with his then girlfriend Maxine Carr. Huntley had access to the hangar as part of his job as caretaker of the school.
But Mr Latham said Huntley had made a "slip of the tongue" when he asked a journalist "have they found the clothes yet?", days before the girls' bodies were found.
"How did he know on Thursday morning that the girls' clothing had been parted from their bodies?" Mr Latham asked.
"The bodies were still a week away from discovery."
Huntley, who denies murdering the two ten-year-olds, sat in the dock as the prosecution delivered the second day of their opening speech. He had to leave the court early because he felt unwell, his defence said.
Carr, 26, has not been accused of murder but denies charges of assisting an offender and perverting the course of justice.
Mr Latham told the court Huntley had acted like a guilty man throughout the search for the girls.
"He pestered [the police] for an update," he said. "We suggest this was a man trying to stay one step ahead of the police."
The court also heard how Huntley and Carr thoroughly cleaned their car and house following the girls' disappearance.
A junior school caretaker said he had seen Carr clean her kitchen so much "she complained that the hand paintings had been removed" from the tiles. Other witnesses saw Huntley clean his car while the search for the two girls was on, Mr Latham said.
The court also heard Huntley rang Carr in tears the day after the girls disappeared and said he would be wrongly accused of the crime. Carr told police in a statement that Huntley was in "absolute tears" and said "I'm going to get fitted up (wrongly accused) like I did before."
The girls' disappearance sparked one of the biggest manhunts in British history and the discovery of their bodies almost two weeks later horrified the public and drew sympathy from around the world.
Holly and Jessica vanished from their homes in Soham after a family barbeque on August 4th, 2002.
The search ended in tragedy 13 days later when the girls' decomposing bodies were found about 15 miles from Soham. The bodies were so badly disfigured that coroners were unable to determine the cause of death.