Jurors to see where Soham girls' bodies were found
Jurors in the Soham murder trial were today due to see the remote ditch where the bodies of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found.
The seven women and five men will be taken down an isolated track where accused killer Ian Huntley is alleged to have dumped the corpses and cut off their clothing before returning days later to set the bodies on fire.
Walkers discovered the skeletonised remains lying in an irrigation ditch on August 17 last year, 13 days after the two 10-year-olds vanished from their home town of Soham, Cambs.
Yesterday the jurors retraced the final steps of the best friends after they left Holly’s house in Redhouse Gardens, shortly after 6.15pm on Sunday, August 4 last year.
They visited key sites around the small Fenlands market town, including 5 College Close – the former home of Huntley and his ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr.
Huntley, the former caretaker at Soham Village College, is unlikely to deny that the two best friends died while in his two-storey house, the Old Bailey heard last week.
He is alleged to have murdered the girls within hours of their disappearance and put their bodies in the boot of his red Ford Fiesta for the 30-minute to drive to woodland near Lakenheath air base in Suffolk.
The jury has heard that Huntley knew the area well because his father had previously lived less than a mile away and because his interest in plane spotting led him to visit the US air base.
An expert botanist consulted by the prosecution has suggested that pollen grains found in Huntley’s car, on his shoes and on a red petrol can link him to the spot where the bodies were dumped.
Chalk used to cover the track was also matched to residue on a suspension arm of Huntley’s car, according to prosecution counsel Richard Latham QC.
The jury has seen a photograph of the spot where the remains were found – the bodies themselves were obscured by a fallen tree trunk – and around them scorched shrubbery could be seen.
Mr Latham said a liquid accelerant such as petrol had been used to try to burn the bodies.
Today the jurors are expected to be shown a branch above the grisly scene on which strands of Jessica’s hair were found.
The jury was told that two tracks to the spot had been made through beds of nettles.
An expert who examined the trampled nettles suggested that levels of regrowth showed the bodies were dumped on the same day the girls vanished.
The second track is alleged to have been made several days later when the killer returned to torch the bodies.
The remains were discovered by a local gamekeeper and two walkers who were alerted by the smell of rotting flesh.
A sluice gate nearby had recently been opened by a local farmer allowing water which had been in the ditch to recede.
Mr Latham alleged that Huntley picked the spot with care so that the bodies would never be found and that in that objective he was very nearly successful.
Jurors will be accompanied on their visit, which takes place on the seventh day of the trial, by the judge, Mr Justice Moses, members of the prosecution legal team and lawyers for Huntley and Carr, who are not expected to be present.
Huntley, 29, denies the double child murder but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the girls’ primary school, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.
She is accused of providing Huntley, with whom she lived at 5 College Close, with a false alibi for the day the girls vanished.
The jurors are visiting Lakenheath on the seventh day of the trial.
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