Huntley's colleagues give evidence at Soham murder trial
Former colleagues of Soham accused Ian Huntley were today giving evidence at his Old Bailey murder trial.
A fellow caretaker and the principal of Soham Village College, where Huntley worked at the time of the deaths of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, have been called as witnesses.
The court was also hearing from police involved in the hunt for the 10-year-olds, and from Huntley’s neighbours in College Close, where he shared a house with his then girlfriend Maxine Carr.
Huntley, 29, denies murdering the 10-year-old friends but has admitted 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.
The prosecution alleges she gave Huntley a false alibi for the day the girls went missing, Sunday August 4 last year. Their bodies were found in a remote ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, 13 days later.
A neighbour of the defendants said Huntley had knocked on his door the morning after the girls disappeared.
In a written statement read to the court by junior counsel for the prosecution Karim Khalil QC, Robert Barnes said Huntley told him: “Just thought you’d like to know there’s two girls missing.”
In his statement, Mr Barnes, who lives with his wife Lorraine, said Huntley told him he had been out searching all night but then walked away without giving him the opportunity to have a conversation.
This was on Monday August 5, the morning after Holly and Jessica disappeared.
He said he was aware Huntley was the caretaker at the college and that Carr was a temporary classroom assistant.
He added that he was knew the couple had a red Ford Fiesta car which – nine times out of 10 – was parked half on and half off the front garden.
The next witness, Mr Barnes's wife Lorraine, said Huntley had denied seeing the girls when she spoke to him at about midday on Monday August 5.
The court has heard that Huntley told police in the early hours of August 5 that he had seen the girls and spoken to them as they walked past his house on the previous evening.
Mrs Barnes said she spoke to Huntley at about midday on August 5 when she went to his house to tell him that the police had asked her to have a look around the college grounds.
She told the court: “He said why, I had no need to search the grounds, they had already been searched the night before by himself and sniffer dogs.”
Mrs Barnes said she asked if the skips around the college grounds had been searched, because she knew there were rolled up carpets from the flood at the college in them.
She told the court: “He said ’Why would anyone want to look in those?’.”
She added: “I said ’You saw the girls last night, didn’t you?’.”
She said he just replied: “No.”
She added: “That was all he said, end of conversation.”
Mrs Barnes said that weeks earlier Huntley had mentioned to her and another neighbour that he had seen a white van and a red Ford Fiesta driving around the college grounds and that he had not recognised them.
She said she mentioned those sightings to him on August 5 and he denied those as well.
She added: “He didn’t seem as though he wanted to talk to me.”
Stephen Coward QC, for Huntley, asked her if she was sure that Huntley had denied seeing the girls the night before.
She said she was certain.
