Court told how Holly and Jessica ‘vanished’

PROSECUTOR Richard Latham QC yesterday opened the trial for the murders of Soham schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

Mr Latham gave the jury a brief synopsis of the case, explaining what he hoped to prove against defendant Ian Huntley.

Mr Latham said: “At about 6.15pm on Sunday, August 4, 2001 two girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, left Holly’s home and walked out on to the streets of the small Cambridgeshire town of Soham. They were two friends, they went to the same school, they were in the same class.

“Within the first few minutes of leaving they were seen by a number of people. It was of course still daylight.

“They didn’t tell anyone at home they were going out, in all probability they were intent on returning within the hour. No doubt they felt secure and confident in an area with which they were entirely familiar.

“They lived there, they went to school there, they would have thought they were surrounded by faces they knew. Shortly after 6.30pm, in a matter of about quarter of an hour of leaving home, they simply vanished”.

What followed was “one of the longest and most public missing persons inquiries that has ever taken place in this country,” he said. “Everyone directly concerned in the search, the parents, the public, the police, the people who helped in the search and indeed the entire country, clung to the hope that they would be found.

“Running in conjunction with the search was a police investigation designed to find whoever was responsible for their disappearance.

“Just under a fortnight later in the early hours of Saturday August 17, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr who lived together at 5 College Close, were arrested on suspicion of the murder of the two girls.

Mr Latham said: “The prosecution case is that these two girls fell into the hands of Huntley within a very short time of leaving home.

“Thereafter, we say within a matter of minutes or at most hours, for some reason known only to him he chose to murder them both. We allege that he went on to remove the bodies from Soham. We allege that he hid them in such a way that he anticipated they would never be found. In that objective he was very nearly successful.”