Carr sent to Holloway after court

THE girlfriend of the man alleged to have murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman was last night in custody after appearing in court charged with allegedly lying to police.

Former teaching assistant Maxine Carr was transferred to Holloway Prison, North London Britain's biggest women's jail after being remanded in custody following an appearance at Peterborough Magistrates' Court.

She was accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice during the hunt to find the missing 10-year-olds.

Carr's boyfriend, school caretaker Ian Huntley, 28, who was charged with murdering the two 10-year-olds on Tuesday, was not in court for the hearing. He was being held at Rampton high security hospital, in Nottinghamshire, under the Mental Health Act having been deemed currently unfit to appear before magistrates.

Up to 500 people were outside the courthouse amid high security to see 25-year-old Carr arrive and leave in a police van. Many waved banners and jeered, while others stood silently holding up pictures of Holly and Jessica. An egg was thrown at the back of the van as it left after the hearing.

Carr looked pale and drawn during her appearance after which she was remanded in custody for eight days by the magistrates. She smiled briefly at a court official as she was led into the 7ft long dock and was flanked by three female security officers.

One of the gathered crowd, mother-of-six Dawn Collins, 53, of Peterborough, said: "I got up this morning and decided to come down to be with people who are feeling the same. I find it so hard to come to terms with it, that those two little girls are gone."

Cambridgeshire police later confirmed that the two bodies found by a track at Lakenheath, Suffolk, on Saturday were those of the two friends.

The remains were found by a passer-by 13 days after the girls went missing from their homes in Soham, Cambridgeshire. A police spokesman said the bodies were decomposed but would not confirm how they were identified.

Meanwhile, the initial search of the bungalow belonging to Huntley's father, Kevin, has now been concluded by forensic teams. They spent three days at the house in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, starting with a search of the garden, then of the inside of the house and, finally, the hedges bordering it, for which they used metal detectors.

Some 50 items of potential evidence have been taken away for analysis and the house will remain cordoned off and empty until that analysis has been done - which could take weeks.

In the village itself, there are at least 10,000 floral bouquets spread across the local churchyard paying tribute to Holly and Jessica.