Parents await body identification
The devastated parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were tonight waiting in dread for the confirmation that two bodies found at a remote beauty spot were their missing daughters.
Hours earlier, the caretaker at the college by the 10-year-olds’ school and his girlfriend were arrested on suspicion of murdering them.
Almost two weeks after the Cambridgeshire schoolgirls vanished, walkers found the bodies by a track in a fenland nature reserve near RAF Lakenheath about seven miles north east of Soham, their home town.
Police said the pair had not yet been identified.
Nicola and Kevin Wells and Sharon and Leslie Chapman were informed of the 1pm discovery and were being consoled by family and friends.
As forensic teams began the painstaking and lengthy task of recovering the bodies without disturbing any possible evidence, police continued to question Ian Huntley, 28, and Maxine Carr, 25.
Though police have not named them, sources confirmed they were the couple arrested at 4am today.
Mr Huntley, who reported talking to the girls on the night they vanished, is being held on suspicion of abducting and murdering the best friends, while Ms Carr, a teaching assistant in the girls’ class last term, was arrested on suspicion of murdering them.
Their house, on the grounds of the girls’ primary school, St Andrews, was being painstakingly examined by a police search team, along with the school and Soham Village College on the same site, in a probe expected to last a week.
Officers have already found "items of major interest" at the college - the town’s secondary school - though police would not say what they were.
Searches were also expected at the home of Kevin and Lynda Huntley, Ian Huntley’s parents, in the nearby village of Littleport.
It emerged tonight that Mr Huntley senior used to work in a local pub and live in a cottage near where the bodies were found.
Ron Cowper landlord of the Brewers Tap in Lakenheath where Kevin Huntley was a barman said:
"There’s a farmhouse and a cottage near to where the police are currently looking and he (Kevin) used to live in that cottage."
Today’s developments came as a bitter blow to the families of the girls, police officers who helped the search, the people of Soham and the nation as a whole, all of whom had clung to hope that the pair would be found alive.
The shocking news reverberated around the normally sleepy town.
The girls’ headteacher, Geoff Fisher, 54, broke down in tears. He said: "I’m devastated. I have been clinging for the last two weeks to the hope that Jessica and Holly would be found alive, clinging to the hope that they would be starting school in September in their final year at St Andrew’s.
"We have been through the rollercoaster of the last fortnight and the news this morning was just devastating. I felt totally numb.
"My thoughts immediately went to Holly and Jessica’s parents who have been through this whole process and are still going through it. I can’t imagine what they are feeling."
College principal Howard Gilbert added: "I was distressed, shaking. We have all been following the story of the girls and hoping for a happy ending."
Methodist minister Alan Ashton, who has been leading prayers for the girls’ safe return, said: "It is the worst possible news. The grief is going to be profound and deep.
"It’s going to be a time of immense grief. It’s with profound shock that the news has been announced this morning. The town is going to be immersed in grief as it absorbs this terrible news.
"Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the two families.
"It’s going to take many days to sink in."
At the parish church, three candles continued to burn beneath pictures of Holly and Jessica. They were lit as part of an "Act of Hope" at the Norman church more than a week ago at a special vigil service for the girls, when townspeople spoke of their determination to find the girls alive.
