BRITAIN: The man accused of murdering two 10-year-old friends in rural England last year was described in court yesterday as a calculating and manipulative murderer who killed the girls in the full knowledge of what he was doing and attempted to dispose of their bodies so that they would never be found.
Ian Huntley (29) later lied about his movements and hoped to use his girlfriend to establish an alibi, the Old Bailey heard.
"He was trying to get away with murder," the Crown prosecutor, Mr Richard Latham QC, said.
Mr Huntley and his former fiance, Maxine Carr (26), are appearing in court in connection with the deaths of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in August last year.
The girls disappeared from Holly's home on the evening of August 4th, 2002, and after a massive manhunt, said to be one of the biggest in British history, their decomposing bodies were discovered in a ditch 13 days later.
Mr Huntley has pleaded not guilty to two charges of murder, but has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Ms Carr has pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and one of aiding an offender.
The jury was told that evidence would be presented by experts who had analysed records of Jessica Chapman's mobile phone that showed the only place the girls could have been at the time of their deaths was inside Mr Huntley's house.
Mr Latham told the court that Ms Carr, a former teaching assistant at the school in Soham, Cambridgeshire, which the two girls attended, was not implicated in the murder as she had been more than 100 miles away at her mother's home in Grimsby at the time the girls died, Mr Latham said. But he said that, with Mr Huntley, Ms Carr "designed a dishonest account of events" aimed at distancing Mr Huntley from the murder of the two girls.
"I make it clear the Crown does not suggest that Carr was in any way directly involved in the murders, but her part was to provide Huntley with support for the dishonest account of his movements and actions during the critical period on Sunday evening" when the girls disappeared.
"She was involved with dishonest and deceptive behaviour which was not simply isolated misjudgment on the spur of the moment which was instantly regretted. It was a convincing and cold-blooded course of conduct and involved repeated lies throughout the entire period between the disappearance of the girls and her arrest," Mr Latham said.
After two days of jury selection, the court heard the opening argument for the prosecution in a case expected to last at least two months and hear from more than 170 witnesses. Mr Justice Moses is presiding. Mr Latham's opening address is expected to continue today.
Holly and Jessica had been close friends since they were four years old, and during a barbecue at Holly's home on the evening of August 4th had changed into identical red Manchester United football jerseys with the name of the then-team star, David Beckham, emblazoned on the back. A photograph they asked Holly's mother, Nicola Wells, to take of them at 5.04 p.m. was later used in posters circulated nationwide in the hope that the pair would be found alive.
Mr Latham detailed the girls' movements immediately after they left Holly's home, soon after the photograph was taken. One witness, he said, saw them walking down a road near Mr Huntley's home and commented to his wife: "Look, two little Beckhams." Mr Latham told the court that Mr Huntley's lawyers were unlikely to dispute that the two girls went into his home at about 6.30 p.m. on August 4th. Nor would it be disputed that "Huntley was the only other person there and that they died within a short time of going into his home, that it was Huntley who took their bodies to the place they were found." He continued: "He (Huntley) has pleaded not guilty to their murder and to this day maintains this stance." He added that the prosecution would present evidence that "will satisfy you that he killed the two girls." "I will concentrate on why we say it was a double murder. We cannot call anyone who can tell you what happened in that house. There is only one person alive who was there that evening. We will call evidence from which you can draw inference as to what must have happened in the house. More particularly, what cannot have happened in the house, and I am talking about an accident. We assert that after the deaths, Huntley knew what he was doing. He could remember, he could understand. He was a man, insofar as anyone who has killed two 10-year-old girls can be described as rational, who was acting rationally. There is evidence of a calculating and manipulative individual who knew precisely what he was doing. He was trying to get away with murder," Mr Latham said.
"He had presence of mind to remove the bodies from Soham and hid them where he hoped they would never be found."
Central to the case against Mr Huntley, he said, were mobile phone records that would show calls and text messages between Mr Huntley and Ms Carr which would establish that Ms Carr was not in Soham at the time the girls were murdered.
However, he said, analysis of Jessica's mobile phone would show that one of the few places she could have been at the time she is believed to have died was Mr Huntley's home on the grounds of Soham Village Cottage, where he was caretaker.
This would be established, Mr Latham said, by showing that as her cell-phone battery ran out of power, the phone sent an electronic farewell message to a beacon in Burwell, a village about six miles away from Soham.
This beacon, he said, did not normally transmit mobile phone signals in Soham, but there were three small areas, shown in red on a map displayed on a computer screen in court, from where signals were picked up in Burwell. One of the spots was Mr Huntley's home, Mr Latham said.