Carr seen cleaning kitchen

Carr seen cleaning kitchen

Carr seen cleaning kitchen

Soham murder suspect Ian Huntley’s girlfriend Maxine Carr was seen scrubbing the kitchen at the house the couple shared shortly after Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared.

Michael Gee, the assistant site manager for Soham Village College, where Huntley worked as a caretaker told the Old Bailey today that on Wednesday, August 7th, Mr Huntley offered him a drink back at his house.

When he arrived Mr Gee said Maxine Carr was in the kitchen scrubbing the wall tiles.

He added: “She was complaining that the tile paint was coming off as she was scrubbing too hard.”

Mr Gee said Ms Carr was using a scouring pad and there was a Dyson vacuum cleaner by the kitchen door.

Under cross-examination from Michael Hubbard QC, Mr Gee conceded that Ms Carr made no attempt to hide her cleaning when he entered the house.

In fact she drew attention to it, Mr Gee told the court.

Detective Constable Andrea Warren, of Cambridgeshire Police told the court that she had spoken to Mr Huntley on August 5th, the day after the ten-year-old schoolgirls went missing. She said Mr Huntley’s red Ford Fiesta was parked outside his house and he had looked “very smart” and as though he had just had a shower.

DC Warren said Mr Huntley was “agitated” when he gave a statement about seeing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman before they disappeared.

She told the jury that the caretaker was “pale and clammy” as he described talking to the girls outside his house.
He said he had been drying his dog outside his house when the girls approached and asked him how Ms Carr was, the court heard.

Mr Huntley had stated that it was about 18:30 BST and the girls had walked off towards College Road. He said he watched TV for the rest of the day.

Ms Warren said she and a colleague had searched Mr Huntley’s house, which had a strong smell of lemon cleaning fluid downstairs.

She added that Mr Huntley had seemed “a little offhand” when quizzed about the whereabouts of Ms Carr. “He didn’t seem to know exactly where she was,” Ms Warren said.

DC Jonathan Taylor, who accompanied Ms Warren, said he had seen wet patches on the walls of the dining room and had been told there had been a flood. He said there were items on the washing line outside and it was pouring with rain at the time.

Mr Taylor told the court that two days later he had to speak to Mr Huntley again because he had forgotten to give him a form to sign that gave his consent for his house to be searched.

When asked what Mr Huntley said to him, Mr Taylor said: “He said: ‘You think I have done it. I was the last person to see them or to speak to them’, then he started to cry.”

“I told him not to persecute himself, to pull himself together.

“I told him other people had seen the girls in that area and in the high street.”

Asked how Huntley responded to that, he added: “That seemed to cheer him up a bit.”

Holly and Jessica vanished from their homes in Soham on August 4th last year.

Their disappearance sparked one of the UK’s largest ever manhunts. The two bodies were discovered in a ditch near the airbase at Lakenheath in Suffolk on August 17th.

Mr Huntley, 29, denies two counts of murder but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

His former girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, has denied two charges of assisting an offender and one of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

The case continues.