Murder suspects reinvented their lives

IAN HUNTLEY and Maxine Carr changed their names and invented new backgrounds before they arrived in Soham last September.

They both briefly held a succession of jobs and stayed at many different addresses before moving to the Cambridgeshire village.

His wife is said to have dumped him for his younger brother a few months into their marriage. After this he was said to have had a relationship with a 15-year-old girl.

Huntley was also suspected of raping a woman in an alleyway less than a year ago. He was never charged with this crime.

Not long after his marriage ended, his mother and father broke up and his mother moved in with her lesbian lover. Huntley was devastated and almost had a nervous breakdown, according to some sources.

It was at this time the 28-year-old began calling himself Ian Nixon, using the maiden name of his mother Lynda, but later reverted back to his real surname. His partner changed her surname from Capp to Carr and decided to keep her new identity.

The couple both grew up 100 miles away in the Lincolnshire fishing port of Grimsby where they were known by neighbours as detached, but otherwise friendly and pleasant.

Carr’s parents were separated and she was raised by her mother, Shirley Capp. She left school after her GCSEs to start work in a fish processing factory where she discussed her ambition to work with children with colleagues.

Although she was quiet and reserved, Carr enjoyed taking part in pub karaoke nights.According to one boyfriend she would sometimes expose her breasts in the pub after a few drinks.

But another boyfriend, Jason Wink, 24, said: “Her life was very normal. She had no hobbies and not many friends that I knew of.”

Carr lived with her mother and sister on an estate in Grimsby, where neighbours described the family as “completely normal”.

Huntley worked in a series of jobs fter leaving Whitgift School in Grimsby in 1990. They included: Among them were acting as a sales rep, a security guard, working at a fish processing factory and at a supermarket.

There were often periods of unemployment and one of his former girlfriends described how Huntley, who has a brother and sister, was always restless, moving house every few months.

It was at the start of 1999 that Carr moved in with Huntley, setting up a new home together at a flat in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. Neighbours said the couple occasionally had noisy rows and sometimes appeared aloof, but they were otherwise unremarkable.

By this time, Huntley was working as a security guard and his partner was a hotel receptionist. It is believed to be through this family connections that Huntley learned of the vacancy at Soham Village College last summer for the post of caretaker there. His application was accepted and he was cleared by the routine police checks into his background.

Huntley said he had changed his surname to Nixon because his parents had separated and that he reverted back to using his real name of Huntley when they were reconciled.

With the job came a house at the edge of the grounds of the college, and the move south was completed in September last year in time for the new school year.

The couple told their families that they planned to marry, although no definite plans had been made. Carr also found work in Soham, as a classroom assistant at St Andrew’s Church of England Primary School.

Among the pupils at the school were Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.When Carr’s contract ended, she applied for a full-time job at the school but was unsuccessful. At the end of the summer term, Holly Wells gave her a box of Roses chocolates and a handmade card. Inside, she drew a smiley face and wrote: “I’ll miss you a lot.”

The mother of Maxine Carr has been urging her to tell the police everything she knows.

Shirley Capp, 56, said nothing would break the bond between her daughter and fellow suspect, Ian Huntley. She said: “Maxine is in love with the man. Nothing will break them. She adores the ground Ian walks on, and she is no killer.

“I cannot vouch for him. I don’t think anyone can. But I can vouch for my daughter and I believe she is innocent.”

Mrs Capp said her 25-year-old daughter had changed her name from Capp because she hated her father who left when she was two.