Huntley ‘denied seeing Holly and Jessica’
Soham murders suspect Ian Huntley denied seeing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman when he spoke to a neighbour shortly after the girls vanished, the Old Bailey heard today.
Lorraine Barnes told the court that she had asked Huntley: “You saw the girls last night, didn’t you?”
Ms Barnes said Mr Huntley simply said “no” when she saw him the morning after the ten-year-old friends went missing. “That was all he said, end of conversation,” she added.
She told the court she had helped in the search for Holly and Jessica and had gone to Mr Huntley’s house to tell him she had been asked by police to search the college grounds.
“Huntley said I had no need to search the grounds,” said Mrs Barnes.
“He said the grounds had been searched the night before with police sniffer dogs.
“I asked Huntley if skips had been searched. The skips had rolled-up carpet in them.
“I said to Huntley, “you saw the girls last night”. He said “no”.
“He didn’t seem as though he wanted to talk to me.”
Under cross-examination, Ms Barnes confirmed that Huntley had told her he had seen a red Ford Fiesta driving around.
In a statement read out earlier from Ms Barnes’ husband Robert, he said that on Monday, August 5th, at 07:30 BST, Mr Huntley had knocked on his door and said: “Two girls missing”. He said he had been out searching all night.
“He blurted it all out,” said Mr Barnes.
The two girls 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.
