‘Mental shutdown’ erased memory of girls leaving, Huntley told mother

IAN HUNTLEY told his mother he remembered “100%” how Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman left his house alive — a year before he admitted they died in his bathroom.

Huntley told his mother in October last year that he had "shut down" mentally after the girls vanished but could now remember them leaving his home alive.

His conversation with Lynda Nixon-Huntley secretly recorded as she visited him in prison and played to his murder trial yesterday directly contradicted the version put before the Old Bailey jury on his behalf.

The jury has heard that he admits the 10-year-old girls died in his house, that he dumped their bodies in a remote ditch, cut their clothes off and set fire to the bodies and the clothing.

But he told his mother that the two friends came to his house, that he treated one of them for a nosebleed and they left alive.

The caretaker even suggested they could have been killed by a stranger who followed them, knowing their DNA would be found in his cottage.

Huntley told his mother: "I am adamant, I am 100%, (I) remember them girls leaving my house." The jury heard transcripts of Huntley's conversation with his mother, and also a tape of a conversation between Mrs Nixon and Huntley's then girlfriend Maxine Carr.

Carr's distraught sobs were played to the courtroom as she told Mrs Nixon: "I don't understand why this had to happen."

But in a later phone call she appeared to question elements of his account, saying it "didn't add up," because he failed to mention the girls when he called her in Grimsby later on the day they vanished Sunday August 4 last year.

Huntley, 29, denies two counts of murder but admits one charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Maxine Carr, 26, a former teaching assistant at the girls' primary school, denies the conspiracy charge and two counts of assisting an offender.

The court has heard that she admits giving him a false alibi.

Huntley told his mother during the visit on October 23 last year that he had summoned his lawyers to visit him at Woodhill Prison, near Milton Keynes, and told them: "I've remembered about that day."

He described how he had not been able to tell police what had happened because he "shut down." Mrs Nixon: "It's the police that need to know." Huntley: "There's nothing I can do, if a doctor says I'm unfit, then I am. Like yesterday, I just shut down yesterday, mum. I don't know why, I couldn't stop it."

Mrs Nixon: "No."

Huntley: "I knew it was happening but I couldn't stop it, you have no idea what that feels like to have no control over what you do, to be so scared that you find yourself huddled up next to a toilet on the floor (begins crying) because that's what I was when I came round.

Mrs Nixon: "Oh, Ian." Huntley outlined what he claimed to remember of the day the girls vanished, saying they had come to his house while he was outside brushing his dog Sadie.

One of them had a nosebleed and they sat on the edge of the boot of his car, which was open, while he brought them tissues, he said.

When the bleeding did not stop he let them into the house but told his mother the kitchen sink was full of washing-up, so he took them upstairs.

They went into the house some time between 6.20pm and 6.25pm and left at 6.35pm, he said, adding that he remembered the time because he then started cooking his evening meal.

In the jail visit, Huntley berated his mother, saying he needed his family to have "confidence and faith" in him. He suggested to her that the girls could have been followed from his house by a stranger, and appeared to try to explain away some of the forensic evidence against him.

Huntley: "Yeah, well this is what I've been thinking, I think somebody's been following them girls, seen them girls at my bloody house knowing full well they might find some DNA in my house, put the clothes at the school to make it look like it's me and that's really what I believe happened."