'Police think I did it' - Soham accused said

The jury also heard that Huntley later asked Miss Tubby if the girls’ clothing had been found nine days before the bodies were discovered in a ditch.

Huntley, 29, the caretaker of Soham Village College, denies murdering the 10-year-old friends but has admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

His ex-girlfriend Maxine 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.

Miss Tubby told the court that she had spoken to Huntley on Monday August 5, the day after the girls went missing.

She said: “He approached me in the car park (of the college) on Monday night to say that the police thought he was the last person to see the girls before they disappeared.

“He said that police had searched his house and that they thought he did it.”

She also told the court that Huntley asked her if the girls’ clothes had been found nine days before the bodies were discovered.

She said on Thursday August 8 she learned that the police were planning a press conference at Huntingdon for that evening.

She said she rang her six o’clock news desk to say that they thought there would be a “significant development” at that press conference and that Huntley approached her while she was on the phone.

She told the court: “He asked me what the significant development was and I said I did not know, I played it down.

“The next question (from him) was ’Have they found the girls clothes?”’

The bodies of the girls were found on August 17 in a remote ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk.

Miss Tubby told how she tried on numerous occasions to interview Huntley and was given his mobile phone number.

She said she eventually got an interview with him on August 14 which she described as a relatively short one.

She also revealed, when asked by prosecutor Richard Latham QC, that during her pursuit of an interview she made a slip of the tongue picked up on by Huntley.

She said: “I said it was important that he did an interview because he was the last person to see the girls alive.”

Mr Latham stressed that this was before the bodies were found and asked what the reaction was to the word “alive”.

The witness said: “He was angry and said ’you do not mean that, do you?’ and I apologised profusely.”

Under cross-examination Stephen Coward QC, for Huntley, asked the witness if she had taken notes of the conversations with Huntley at the time.

She said she made notes later when she gave her police interview which was on August 18.

Mr Coward asked to see the notebook where she had made notes on her conversations on August 5 and 8, to be told by the witness that it was at home.

Asked to see the notebook she had got with her the court heard that that started from Monday August 12.

Mr Coward suggested that two pages had been ripped from the front of the notebook but Miss Tubby said it was just one and that was because she was a very organised person, had made a mistake and ripped the page out to start again.

Mr Coward then said the witness had made a hand-written statement yesterday and read a phrase “Notes made by me during these conversations”, he asked what that meant and the witness said it was the notes she made at the time of the statement and that they were in the book she had brought to court.

Mr Coward asked again why she had not brought the other notebook to which the witness said: “The police did not ask for notebooks at the time I gave the statement and I did not think I would need them today.”

She stressed that in her first meetings with Huntley she did not see him as a significant person and appeared to be “glorifying in the fact that the police had said (he was the last to see them) and that’s why I did not think he was serious”.

She admitted that she did think the conversation on the 8th about the girls’ clothes was significant.