'We blocked every avenue he went

IAN HUNTLEY was forced to fall back on a "tissue of his lies" to try to save himself, England's Crown Prosecution Service said outside court yesterday.

Marion Bastin, speaking of the co-operation between the English police and the Cambridgeshire CPS, said: "We made sure that we blocked every avenue Ian Huntley went down to work his way out of the murders. It left him with no alternative but to fall back on a final story which was no more than a tissue of lies to save his own skin."

For two long weeks in August 2002, Britain's attention was focused on Soham and the hunt for Holly and Jessica.

Only one man knew the 10-year-olds were already dead, their bodies so well hidden they might never be found.

Huntley had tried to sanitise everything that might link him to the crime But gradually police amassed evidence, some as small as a grain of pollen, that told a more murky tale.

When slotted together it was enough to convict Huntley of the murders.

Witnesses who had seen the girls, so noticeable in their bright red Manchester United tops, could pinpoint the exact time they vanished on Sunday, August 4.

The final signal from Jessica's mobile phone put her or at least her handset in Huntley's house at 6.46pm the same evening.

Forensic evidence linked the remote spot in Lakenheath where the bodies were found to Huntley's car, shoes and the petrol can from Soham Village College where he was a caretaker.

And when the girls' red shirts were discovered charred in a bin at the college, fibres from the clothes proved an exact match with those found on Huntley's clothing and in his home.