Silence on streets of Soham as jury retraces girls’ final steps

TOTAL silence fell on the streets of Soham yesterday as a murder trial jury retraced the final steps of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Under grey November skies the jurors walked the final route taken by the two 10-year-olds before entering the house where they are alleged to have been murdered by Ian Huntley.

They also stepped inside the hangar building at Soham Village College where the charred remnants of the girls' clothes were found hidden in a bin.

The centre of Soham was sealed off by police, turning it into a virtual ghost-town, and overhead a police helicopter enforced a no-fly zone.

Traffic was halted and the residents of the normally busy Fenlands market town became almost invisible as the jury coach drove into town, surrounded by police outriders.

A few shoppers watched in silence from a supermarket and one old woman turned away as the convoy passed through the empty streets. Even the CCTV cameras erected in the town since the tragedy were turned away during the jury's tour of the key sites in the case.

The jury coach began its journey at the Old Bailey at 9.40am and reached Soham at 11.07am. After a brief pause at Soham Village College affording jurors their first glimpse of the empty shell of Huntley's former home the convoy travelled to Jessica's family home in Brook Street.

The coach slowed to a virtual standstill as it passed the two-storey house, marked by a lone policeman, and was then driven the 700 metres to Holly's home in Redhouse Gardens.

Jurors heard Jessica left home at 11.45am on the day the girls disappeared, Sunday August 4 last year, and walked to Holly's, where the two played all day before leaving the house unnoticed shortly after 6.15pm.

The jury of seven women and five men, guided by prosecution counsel Richard Latham QC, got off the coach outside the Wells' house and paused to hear the lawyer set out their route into the town centre.

Mr Latham shepherded the jury as they filed into an alleyway and out into Sand Street, the town's main thoroughfare. Trial judge Mr Justice Moses followed.

Police officers stood in every street entrance, ensuring no-one could approach the jury.

The court party, which comprised some 40 people escorted by four policemen, then entered the Ross Peers Sports Centre. They went inside the foyer to view the CCTV screens which captured the last known footage of Holly and Jessica at 6.28pm on the day they vanished.

Yesterday, the screens were blank, showing only an empty car park.

Mr Latham next led them back to the college, crossing in front of Huntley's former home Number Five College Close before walking up College Road where the final sighting of the girls took place.

They doubled back again and were shown the house's garage before heading into the two-storey, three-bedroom cottage itself.

Huntley, 29, the former caretaker at Soham Village College, denies the double child murder but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

His ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the girls' primary school, denies the charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.