Haunting images of day they disappeared

HAUNTING images of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman together on their last day alive were shown to the Old Bailey yesterday.

The friends’ final day began happily, with their reunion after Jessica’s return from a family holiday.

She called the Wells house on the morning of Sunday August 4 last year and made plans to visit Holly to give her the present she had bought her. But her older sister Rebecca stopped her to check the younger girl was carrying her mobile phone. The youngster then walked 700 metres from her home in Brook Street, Soham, to her friend’s house in Red House Gardens, where she arrived at about 11.45am.

Jessica proudly presented Holly with the necklace she had bought her, a wooden pendant with the letter H, decorated with two dolphins.

The girls and another schoolfriend, Natalie Parr, played on Holly’s computer until Natalie was collected by her mother shortly after midday. Holly’s mother told police she thought the girls might have gone out for about 20 minutes in the afternoon, possibly to the Ross Peers sports centre to buy sweets, but they were back in the house by 3.15pm.

By that time they had changed into identical red Manchester United football shirts belonging to Holly and her brother Oliver, then 12.

Holly asked her mother to take a photograph of them together. That photo, showing them smiling and carefree, was published around the world after their tragic disappearance. A clock behind them shows the time as 5.04pm.

At about 5.30pm, friends, Holly’s family and their guests sat down to eat their barbecue food. By 6.15pm the girls were upstairs in Holly’s bedroom. After that the girls’ movements after they left the house remained unclear.

The jury was then shown CCTV footage of Holly and Jessica walking past a sports centre.

The first still was timed at 18.27.48 and showed Holly and Jessica about to cross a road to the Ross Peers sports centre. Further images showed them walking through the sports centre car park.

The final, hazy still shows the two girls in the car park at 18.28.30. Mr Latham said a receptionist at the sports centre remembered letting two girls in through a security door at around 6.30pm to buy sweets. Between 8pm and 8.30pm family guests left the Wells house and it was discovered that the girls had gone out An immediate search began. The frantic parents reported the girls as missing to the police at 9.55pm, with officers arriving at the Wells home at about 10.30pm