‘Fun girl’ who became infamous

MAXINE CARR cheated on Ian Huntley with a teenager on the weekend Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman died in her house.

The girls' former teaching assistant was seen "kissing and cuddling" with Mark Thomas, who was then only 17, on a night out in Grimsby.

The towering 6ft 5in young rugby player was eight years her junior but petite 5ft 2in Carr was seen wrapped around him in a pub. She continued writing to him while she was on remand in Holloway prison charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and assisting an offender.

At the same time, she was also writing to Huntley and keeping in touch with him through his mother Lynda Nixon Huntley.

The relationship between Huntley and Carr then became even more complicated.

While she was in Holloway her lawyers told her another woman had filed a police statement claiming to have had an affair with Huntley. Eventually, towards the end of last year, she broke off all contact with Huntley but kept writing to Mr Thomas.

The teenager was out with friends when he met Carr and her mother Shirley Capp on the August 4 weekend when Holly and Jessica vanished. Mr Thomas is understood to have faced abuse from people in Grimsby over his relationship with Carr, which he had ended by early this year.

In the trial Carr told the jury she had been devoted to Huntley and that she hoped to marry him. The jurors never heard about her own straying as prosecutors decided to exclude it from evidence.

Carr could be released from jail in just 30 days' time. She will be allowed to apply for an electronic tagging scheme which frees well-behaved, non-dangerous inmates up to 135 days early.

Even without this concession, her automatic release date would be in only five months.

Carr has become one of the most infamous women in Britain.

She told jurors at the Old Bailey that she had been dubbed "Myra Hindley Mark Two" by fellow inmates at Holloway Prison and put in a segregation unit for her own protection.

Yet before August 2002, she had done nothing that would make her stand out.

And no one could have guessed that Carr, the product of a broken home in Grimsby who had dreams of being a teacher, would become embroiled in one of the crimes of the century.

Carr was an immature young woman who was popular with pupils at St Andrew's Primary School in Soham, where she worked as a temporary classroom assistant. But she got too friendly with some of the youngsters, according to teaching staff.

That friendliness was to lead Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman tragically to their deaths when they were enticed into her home by her fiancé Ian Huntley. The only reason they went anywhere near that house is because they knew her," said St Andrew's head Geoff Fisher.

Carr's parents Alfred and Shirley Capp split when she was two. Maxine and her older sister Hayley went to live in the village of Keelby, near Grimsby.

Home was a council house decked out with memorabilia of Shirley's beloved Elvis Presley. Maxine would later change her surname because she hated her father, a farm labourer who still lives in the Grimsby area. Initially she called herself Maxine Benson, but later changed her name by deed poll to Carr.

Carr went to the village primary school in Keelby and then to Healing Comprehensive, where Huntley had also been a pupil.

In adolescence Carr became anorexic and at one stage her weight dropped to a little over six stone.

But friends remember her fondly. A school friend at Healing, who did not want to be named, said: "Maxine was a real fun girl and really sweet. She would do anything to help anyone. She was a bit shy then and not particularly confident but she was always fun to be around." Another former friend added: "She was the sweetest young girl you would ever wish to meet."

She left school and went to work with her mother, with whom she continued to live, at the local Bluecrest fish processing plant. But her dream was always to become a teacher.

She had a series of boyfriends and was flirty, liked going out to pubs and singing karaoke, and was interested in motorbikes.

She had a bumblebee tattooed on her left breast and enjoyed flashing it at admirers after a few drinks.

Former boyfriend Jason Wink said Carr was reserved and quiet but could "become loud" when drinking and be a "terrible flirt".

"She liked to sing karaoke and dance. We used to go to a pub in Grimsby where she would get up and dance on the pool table."

In 1998, after four years at the fish plant, she went to work at the Acorns Rest Home in Grimsby.

Then, in February 1999, she met Huntley at a Grimsby nightclub called Hollywoods.

Three years later she and Huntley decided to make a new life in Soham and he became a caretaker at Soham Village College. She got a temporary job as a classroom assistant at the neighbouring St Andrew's Primary.

Geoff Fisher told how Huntley had begun the chain of events which led to Carr working there.

He said Huntley had told him that Carr was interested in working with children as he helped set up for a dance at the village college in February 2002.

Mr Fisher said he saw her that evening and later offered her unpaid voluntary work helping with Year 1 children.

Carr lied on her application form about her GCSE qualifications but Mr Fisher said the form was not checked because her qualifications were not relevant to the job she was applying for.

Carr was offered the post on a temporary, one-term basis because staff had been so pleased with her work but her immaturity began to show.

He said Carr had not acted in any "sinister" way but as if she wanted to be a "big sister" to the children rather than a staff member.

Mr Fisher said she had been "very disappointed" when she was not offered a permanent post.

Joy Pederson, who was Holly and Jessica's class teacher, said Carr tended to graduate towards a group of girls, including Holly and Jessica.

"Certainly they got on very well," she said.

Mrs Pederson said Carr's behaviour could be "somewhat inappropriate" and that she spent more time with the children than she should have done.

Mrs Pederson said some of the pupils were disappointed when Carr did not get the classroom job.

Holly made Carr a leaving card, which she showed to reporters as the search for the girls went on.

She spoke highly of the youngsters when talking to journalists and police and when she gave evidence.

In court she used the present tense.

"Holly, she's a lovely girl. She's the kind of daughter I would love to have. Always polite, always friendly. Always there for everybody.

"She didn't have a bad word to say about anybody. She's a very nice girl.

"(Jessica), very sporty. Always laughing. Always coming out with wisecracks at school. Just smashing."

She told journalists: "Holly was crying that I didn't get the job."

And she said Jessica, a "tomboy who rarely wore skirts", had asked if she could be her bridesmaid.

"She would say 'when you get married I want to be your bridesmaid'.

"I will even wear a dress."