‘Huntley’s predecessor sacked over ‘inappropriate relationship’, court told

SOHAM accused Ian Huntley was the focus of a schoolgirl crush just weeks before he allegedly murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, his Old Bailey trial heard yesterday.

A youngster got "too close" to the then caretaker at Soham Village College and had to be spoken to by the vice principal.

The court heard that Huntley's predecessor was sacked the year before, following an "inappropriate relationship" with a 13-year-old girl.

As a result all applicants for the vacant post, including Huntley, were grilled on what they would do if a girl at the school was attracted to them.

Huntley's barrister Stephen Coward QC, cross-examining the college's vice principal Margaret Bryden, said: "Because of previous history, there were concerns. Therefore, all applicants were asked tricky questions."

He said Huntley had answered in an "exemplary fashion" and Mrs Bryden agreed.

Huntley said that should such a situation arise, he would report it to a senior member of staff.

Mr Coward said: "In actual fact, it happened, did it not? It happened in July. It was reported to you and dealt with by you."

Mrs Bryden said: "It was not only reported to me but reported to the principal as well. I dealt with it with the girl in question."

Mrs Bryden also said that Huntley had "confided" in her about his father.

Cross-examining her, Maxine Carr's barrister Michael Hubbard QC said: "He made some pretty shocking allegations about what had happened to him in his early life. "Did it ever occur to you that he lived in a world of his own fantasy? Did you ever think he was making things up?"

Mrs Bryden said: "There were times I thought he was exaggerating things but did not think he was making them up."

Huntley applied for the job of site manager under the name Ian Nixon and was interviewed on November 9, the court heard. Asked what she had thought of Huntley as a candidate, she said: "I was delighted. Here we had a very sensible approach to it, someone who was going to marry, whose fiancée was there, and a very level-headed person."

Huntley was offered the job, "pending police protection checks for child protection".

He and Carr moved into a cottage on the site and Mrs Bryden said she was aware of rows between the couple, especially towards the end of the summer of 2002, and Huntley would become "sullen".

After the girls vanished, Mrs Bryden said Huntley told her several times he was the last person to see them alive.

"He told me that he had been to his GP and he had been given medication and was being treated for depression and high blood pressure," Mrs Bryden said.

In a previous phone call on August 8 four days after the girls disappeared Huntley complained he was "being hounded by the press and police and he needed to go away for the weekend", she said.

Earlier, the court heard that Huntley had a secret "quiet area" where he went plane-spotting at Lakenheath near the remote ditch where his alleged victims were found. Huntley, 29, denies murdering the two girls but has admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the girls' primary school in Soham, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.