Girls may still be alive
Ian Huntley, 28, the site manager at Soham Village College for the past nine months, and 25-year-old Maxine Carr, a former teaching assistant in the girls' class, were quizzed for seven hours at separate police stations.
Cambridgeshire Police said the couple had agreed to be questioned and had been treated as "significant witnesses".
A spokeswoman said the pair had now completed witness statements and were no longer with officers.
The couple will not be returning to their house, which is the subject of a detailed search using what police
described as highly sensitive equipment. The house was one of the last places the 10-year-olds were seen.
St Andrew's Primary School, which the girls attend, was also being scoured for clues in a process that was expected to last several days. Meanwhile, a police helicopter hovered over the school's playing fields.
Police sniffer dogs and surveillance units were drafted in last night to conduct an exhaustive search of a college in the home town of missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Police in helicopters carried out infra-red scans of the college grounds after questioning the college's caretaker and his girlfriend.
Police said the two ten-year-olds could still be alive.
Ian Huntley, 28, and his 25-year-old partner Maxine Carr were still being questioned early this morning after they agreed to help police.
When Mr Huntley applied for the school caretaker's job, he did so under the name of Ian Nixon. A police check was carried out and he was found to be suitable for the job in January this year. He changed his name, for what he described as family reasons, to Ian Huntley three months ago.
His partner was also cleared to work with children when police carried out background checks on her prior to her taking up a position as a temporary teaching assistant in Jessica and Holly's school in February this year.
She applied for a full-time position but was turned down at the end of last term. She had been close to the girls, particularly to Holly, who gave her a card saying she would miss her when she didn't get the job.
A team of nine scenes-of-crime officers were dispatched in a police van with blacked-out windows to search the couple's home last night. A short time later, a convoy of police vans, surveillance units, police helicopters and sniffer dogs arrived to search the grounds of Soham Village College. The college had previously been searched four times. Police also began searching Holly and Jessica's school, St Andrews Primary School.
Mr Huntley and Ms Carr live in a two-storey, detached house in the girls' home village of Soham, in Cambridgeshire. They moved into their house, on the grounds of Soham Village College, in the past few months.
Police were not describing Mr Huntley and Ms Carr as suspects, however, but treating the development as a significant step forward in their investigation. They said the search could continue for the entire weekend.
The couple had given several TV interviews, including one yesterday morning. Mr Huntley claimed to be one of the last people to see the girls. He told reporters he spoke to the girls at about 6.15pm on Sunday, August 4 about an hour before the last positive sighting of them. The last sighting confirmed by police was at 7.20pm.
Mr Huntley appeared on GMTV yesterday and said he felt "gutted" the girls were still missing. "It doesn't help the fact that I was one of the last people to speak to them, if not the last person to speak to them. I keep re-living that conversation and thinking perhaps something different could've been said, perhaps kept them here a little longer and maybe changed events."
Asked if he still had hope for the girls, he replied: "Yes. Yes."
Speaking to reporters a few days after their disappearance, Mr Huntley wept as he recounted what he saw. "I was outside cleaning the dog down when these two girls, Jessica and Holly, appeared. They said 'How's Miss Carr?'. I said 'She's not very good, she didn't get the job'. She had been a teaching assistant and had applied for a job full-time but didn't get it. I just saw them for a few minutes. I don't know where they came from but they walked off down the road towards the library. When they were out there, they were as happy as Larry. I've never seen them walk past this house before.
"They haven't run away. They didn't have a care in the world. It was a very brief conversation. I must have been one of the last people to speak to them. You can't help thinking about it."
Mr Huntley wept as he added: "It seems they have just disappeared off the face of the earth. How can two girls go missing in broad daylight, then nothing? No sighting. No nothing. It beggars belief."
Ms Carr told reporters last week: "On the last day of school, Holly gave me a card with a smiley face on the front and a poem inside. She was crying because I didn't get the job."
A red Ford Fiesta was parked outside Mr Huntley and Ms Carr's house yesterday and there was a poster in a window reading: "Do you have any information about the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman?"
Neighbour Lorraine Barnes, 30, said: "They've only lived here a couple of months and they seem very nice and genuine people."
At a press conference yesterday at which Holly and Jessica's parents begged their abductor to give the girls back. In an emotional appeal, Sharon Chapman, 51, fought back tears as she broke a 10-minute silence at a press conference to demand: "Just give them back. Put an end to all of this for them."
Struggling with her emotions, Mrs Chapman, said: "Time doesn't mean anything. Hours and days just seem to roll into one. Before you know it, it's dark again. You don't realise the day's gone by."
"The noise level in my house is so quiet. So quiet, even though there are lots of people coming in and out, it's just so quiet and empty."
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