Huntley 'changing his story as trial continues'
Soham accused Ian Huntley is changing his story even as his murder trial is going on, the Old Bailey heard today.
Huntley altered two aspects of his evidence from his stance just “days before” his trial got under way, prosecutor Richard Latham QC said.
The accusations came during one of a series of combative exchanges between the pair during the trial of the double murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
It was also one of many occasions when Mr Latham accused Huntley of tailoring his evidence and inventing stories to “fit the facts” of the prosecution case.
The encounters came as Huntley, who denies the 10-year-olds’ murders, spent a second day in the witness box.
Mr Latham asked Huntley if he remembered a pre-trial hearing at the Old Bailey on October 29, when his defence counsel, Stephen Coward QC, made a number of admissions.
He said they included the fact that the girls died in Huntley’s house and that he deposited the bodies where they were found – admissions the jury have already heard.
But Mr Latham then turned to the subject of Huntley changing his tyres on the Ford Fiesta the day after the girls died and Jessica’s mobile phone.
When in the witness box yesterday, Huntley told the court the “primary reason” for changing his tyres at a garage in Ely was to avoid linking the car to the site where the girls’ bodies were dumped.
Huntley, in his evidence in chief, also said he had picked up Jessica’s mobile phone when it was sticking out of her pocket as she lay dead on the floor of his house.
But today, under cross examination, Mr Latham said: “The purpose, you told us, to change those tyres was to cover your tracks, literally, wasn’t it?”
Huntley replied: “Yes.”
Mr Latham said that at the pre-trial hearing on October 29, before the jury was selected, Mr Coward had said Huntley had changed the tyres on his car as a matter of course, not to cover his tracks.
“That’s what he said on your behalf on October 29. Now you, for the first time yesterday, said that in fact it has everything to do with the deaths of the two girls,” Mr Latham said.
Huntley: “Yes.”
Mr Latham: “You have changed your story again, haven’t you, Mr Huntley?”
Huntley: “There’s two reasons why I changed my tyres.”
Mr Latham: “You have just agreed with me that there was a primary reason and that was literally to cover your tracks.
“You have changed your story again, haven’t you?”
Huntley said again that there were two reasons for changing his tyres.
Mr Latham said Huntley’s own counsel had told the court in his pre-trial announcement that the defendant had “no memory of Jessica Chapman having her mobile telephone with her”.
Huntley: “That’s right.”
Mr Latham: “Well, that’s come to you, has it, in a flash of inspiration since October 29, Mr Huntley?”
Huntley: “Things have been coming back to me gradually since July.”
Mr Latham: “You realised that it’s just impossible to deny the telephone and impossible to deny the change of tyres.”
Huntley rejected this, insisting that his memory had become clearer since July.
Mr Latham: “But this is October 29, days before this jury was empanelled to try you.
“You have changed your story even during this trial, haven’t you?”
Huntley: “No. I was concentrating on the main issues.”
Mr Latham said Huntley was able to pick his way through the prosecution’s case in October last year.
Huntley: “I am not picking my way through at all.”
Earlier in the day Mr Latham accused Huntley of conducting a “cold blooded analysis” of the prosecution case.
He said he had carefully read through papers served on his defence team and then constructed his version of events.
