Why Holly and Jessica 'had to die'
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman “had to die” after Ian Huntley’s sexual motive for taking them into his home went “plainly wrong”, the Old Bailey heard today.
The former Soham caretaker was ruthless, merciless and operating for his own “selfish interest” when he killed the youngsters, prosecutor Richard Latham QC said.
Summing up his case, the barrister urged the jury to reject Huntley’s defence that the girls died by accident.
He said: “We suggest the whole business in the house was motivated by something sexual.
“Whatever he initiated with one or other or both girls plainly went wrong and thereafter, in this ruthless man’s mind, those girls had to die.
“They had to die in his own selfish self-interest. Each were potential witnesses – he was quite merciless.”
The claims came as the prosecution concluded its closing statement to the jury on the 25th day of the double murder trial.
Mr Latham also claimed Huntley’s then girlfriend Maxine Carr had “worked it out” that something had happened to the girls but lied for Huntley because of the prospect of marriage and a “new start”.
Carr said she was in the house in Soham on the day the girls disappeared when she was in Grimsby.
She has denied she suspected Huntley was responsible for the girls’ deaths and he had told her they had left their house.
Mr Latham said she must have realised the significance of changes such as a massive clean-up of the house and car and what Huntley had told her.
Mr Latham said: “It was awful to contemplate. She may have refused to confront what she had worked out and, no doubt, she would desperately have liked it never to have happened, but that doesn’t stop her being in a position of knowing or believing that it has.”
Mr Latham said Huntley had “nerves of steel” to carry out a series of media interviews knowing the girls were dead.
He said the defendant also conducted “a series of ruthless acts” by dumping the bodies of the girls in a remote ditch and cutting off their clothes to remove potential evidence that would link him.
Mr Latham said: “Is this the mind of a man who has closed down and can’t think rationally, and hasn’t got a proper memory of what has occurred?
“We suggest it is the complete opposite – it is a man under control and he is thinking, thinking very hard indeed.”
Huntley denies the murder of Holly and Jessica but admits he was responsible for Jessica’s death in his house on August 4 last year after Holly died accidentally in the bath.
He also admits he dumped their bodies, cut off their clothing and set fire to them.
Mr Latham said Huntley was “manipulative” and thinking carefully as he spoke to the press, neighbours and police in the days after the girls disappeared.
“This is, as I keep emphasising, a thinker, a planner, a man who is acting calmly and rationally,” the QC said.
On the media interviews and the fact that Huntley actively sought out Holly’s father Kevin to speak to, Mr Latham added: “We suggest it takes nerves of steel knowing, and again I put this neutrally, that he was present when Holly died, that he dumped her body and then fired it, and that it was decomposing in the ditch where he left it, as he was engaged in these media interviews.
“He actually sought out Holly’s father, sought him out.”
Carr denies two counts of assisting an offender and one of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
