Huntley 'tried to find out what police knew'

Soham accused Ian Huntley loitered around police investigating the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, trying to discover what they knew, his murder trial heard today.

Richard Latham QC, prosecuting, said Huntley had first been seen “hanging around” near the police rendezvous point.

And he next tried to watch the police as they viewed CCTV footage which might show the girls, the lawyer told the Old Bailey jury.

Mr Latham said: “We suggest again that in the same way he had been hanging around near the police car trying to hear what was going on at the rendezvous point earlier that morning, he was in that foyer interested to know if the police could see anything on the CCTV.”

The jury heard that police were viewing the CCTV footage at the Ross Peers Sports Centre in the early hours of Monday August 5 last year, less than 12 hours after the girls disappeared.

Huntley, 29, denies the double child murder but has pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Mr Latham began opening the case against the former school caretaker and his ex-girlfriend yesterday.

Today’s hearing was slightly delayed by legal argument. No reason was given.

Maxine Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the girls’ primary school in Soham, Cambridgeshire, denies one charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.

Mr Latham said the reality was that the piece of film looked at had not yet been identified.

“Police at that stage did not know whether the girls could be seen on the CCTV tapes.”

Turning to the Monday morning – the day after the girls disappeared – Mr Latham described a phone call made at 6.56am. Huntley’s mobile had rung Maxine Carr’s mother, he said.

He said: “The call lasted just under five minutes. You may think a lot was said in five minutes. We suggest that call is a very important call.”

Mr Latham said that, when interviewed, Carr said Huntley had rung her and told her that he had been out with the police searching for the girls all night.

“She described him as being in absolute tears as he was the last person to have spoken to them.”

Carr allegedly said Huntley told her: “I am going to get fitted up like I did before.”

She thought it was between 8am and 9am but it was obviously earlier than that, Mr Latham told the court.

He said he wanted to come back to that call in due course.

“The potential significance of it will become much more apparent.”

“When it was sold to Huntley it still had factory-fitted carpets in the boot. It was immaculate inside and out.”

Huntley took the car to a Scunthorpe garage for inspection, the court heard.

The tyres were almost worn out and had between just one and three millimetres of tread depth. Despite this, no work was done.

Mr Latham said on August 5, 2001, the car was taken into a Kwik Fit in Scunthorpe.

Mr Latham said that there was a garage record of the car - registration J112 YWR - from August 5 2001.

It showed the car had done 38,700 miles.

It had fitted four Centaur tyres which had a minimum tread of seven millimetres.

Mr Latham said that almost a year later, on July 10 2002, 24 days before the girls’ disappearance, Huntley took the Fiesta to a Ford garage in Ely and wanted it serviced and put through an MOT test.

The jury was then shown copies of an invoice.

Mr Latham said: “You can see on the invoice the mileage of the vehicle is entered.”

It showed 48,807 miles.

Mr Latham said: “It’s done almost 10,000 miles in a year, this car.

“Those who test the cars have to write down details of the car they are examining.”

He said the front tyres now had a tread of five millimetres and the rear tyres six millimetres.

He said: “They have lost two millimetres in a year.

“With that rate, they have got a long way to go before they reach the legal limit of 1.6 millimetres.”

Mr Latham said that at 3.16pm on the same day "someone, it does not matter who, used a Soham College land line and rang Huntley's mobile.

“What that was all about does not matter at all. What matters is where his mobile was when he received that call.”

Mr Latham alleged that at the time the mobile was rung, it was picked up on Ely cell site.

“It is the cell site that matters.

“It is several cell sites away from Soham.”

He said, in an expert’s opinion, if the phone call had been picked up on the Ely cell site, the phone could not have been in Soham.

Prosecution said that at 3.36pm on that Monday a timed invoice had been issued to a man who had bought four new tyres.

“The transaction was at a tyre depot in Ely.”

He said four new tyres were fitted to a red Ford Fiesta.

“The registration recorded on the paperwork was not the registration of the car. The man who turned up asked for a different registration number to be put on the paperwork and slipped £10 to the mechanic in order for that to be achieved,” said Mr Latham.

The registration – L78 TXR – was a false number, he added.

“It has never been issued to any car. Only those four … tyres were fitted between August 4 and 17.

More particularly, one of the mechanics noticed the tyres coming off were in surprisingly good condition with four to six millimetres of tread depth.”

Mr Latham said that one of the mechanics who fitted the new Sava Effecta tyres noticed that the old tyres had four to six millimetres of tread remaining and had considered selling them.

He said shortly before Huntley was arrested, the Fiesta was taken away for forensic tests.

“The car had done about 1,000 miles since the MOT test but got four brand new tyres fitted, as we suggest, by Huntley in Ely,” he told the court.

“Tyres, if driven on soft ground rather than on concrete, can leave marks.”

Mr Latham told the court that if you had a “guilty conscience” and don’t want your tyre tracks to be traced, “you may be prepared to spend a lot of money” to get a new set of tyres.

“That’s if you are guilty,” he told the court.

He said that if you were innocent, even if you feared you might be wrongly accused, you would not throw away four tyres and fit them with new tyres as the new tyres might fit the treadmarks found at the site.

He said the only person who could change his tyres with confidence to exclude his own treadmarks “was the person who knew the type of treadmark at the scene”.

“That’s the person who went there with the bodies,” Mr Latham told the court.

The court was shown a photograph of Huntley's Ford Fiesta taken by a member of the press on Thursday August 8.

It showed a close-up of the rear offside wheel and tyre and was taken outside his home at 5 College Close.

Next to it was a picture of one of the tyres taken off the car when police got hold of the car.

Mr Latham said it was possible to tell the tyre taken off the car by police was the same as the one in the picture taken on August 8.

The court was shown two magnified pictures comparing the tread of the tyres.

Mr Latham said: “The experts have blown the pictures up to a huge magnification.

“We suggest you will have little difficulty concluding that it was Huntley who went to Ely and changed the tyres.

“What was the purpose of fitting those tyres?

“At his home, Huntley had a bundle of documentation and receipts for that Ford Fiesta.

“Where was the receipt for the very recent purchase of those tyres? It wasn’t there. He didn’t retain it.

“He wouldn’t want anyone to ever discover what he had done to that car.

“We suggest it reveals a person who is aware of potential police forensic examination and a person who is prepared to take any step he can to destroy evidence.

“We ask a simple question: does an innocent man need to destroy evidence, even before the bodies were found?”

He said that there were two very important questions to be considered in relation to the tyres.

“Firstly, we say it’s the reaction of a guilty man. Only a person who had done something wrong would change the tyres.

“Secondly, perhaps more importantly in the context of what we know now… it shows a man who is thinking calmly and carefully and is calculating his way forward.”

Mr Latham then moved on to Huntley’s witness statement on the Monday, when a detective constable went to his home at 1pm.

He said the statement had a warning at the top and was a “solemn document”.

He said the statement said it was four pages long but it was two pages when typed.

Huntley's witness statement made on the Monday was read to the court. In it he described how he was brushing his dog when "I saw two girls approach at about 6pm.

“One asked about my partner Maxine Carr. Maxine worked at St Andrew’s but had had to reapply for her job and had not been given it. She was very upset. They obviously knew where she lived.

“One asked how Miss Carr was. I told her she was not very happy as it had not been given to her (the job).

“They said they were very sorry and walked off in the direction of College Road. I did not see them again.”

Huntley had described them wearing red Manchester United shirts with the name Beckham on the back. He said in his statement they were between nine and 10 years old, one had blonde hair and the other brown.

“I would say they were both about 4ft 9ins tall, of slim build.”

In the statement Huntley described seeing three men later who had asked him if he had seen two kids.

“I said I had not. They did not give me any details.”

Huntley said he knew the police were looking for two girls “but did not associate them with the two I had seen earlier.

“It was only when I heard two girls who were wearing Manchester United shirts that I connected the fact that I may have seen the girls earlier. When I had the opportunity, I told the police I may have seen the two girls earlier.”

He said he had not seen the two girls again.

Mr Latham said that when the detective was in Huntley’s house, “he was given the clear impression from Huntley that he had not been alone in the house when he saw the girls.

“The impression he had was that Maxine Carr was in the house.”

Mr Latham said the officer had registered Huntley using the expression “we”.

Mr Latham alleged Huntley had given the impression that Carr was somewhere in Soham out looking for a childminding job on that Monday.

“He was obviously confident when talking to the police officer that she is going to back up his story.”

Mr Latham told the court that on Monday evening, when a large number of people were helping to search for the girls, Huntley was cleaning his car.

He said that at the time many people thought this was “insensitive” but the prosecution suggests that there was a more “sinister” motive.

Huntley was cleaning the boot area of the car and one witness saw a professionally fitted boot carpet hanging over the vehicle, the court heard.

Mr Latham said that when Huntley bought the car it had a professionally fitted carpet.

He said the four car doors were also open in what was far more thorough than a “normal Saturday morning” car cleaning.

“We say that there was in progress on Monday a major attempt to sanitise the Fiesta.”

Mr Latham said that sometimes "silly little details tell a story".

He said Huntley had taken out a Blockbuster video on the Sunday, before the girls disappeared.

“That same evening he went back to Blockbusters and returned the videotape. A silly little detail.

“Was this a man, doing things like that, who is overwhelmed by what has happened, but someone who is capable of operating perfectly normally, calmly and sensibly?”

Mr Latham said at 10.29pm Huntley’s mobile rang Carr’s mobile for three seconds. Two minutes later, there was a telephone call from the college.

“It lasted six minutes. We suggest it was Huntley.

“At 22.41 he speaks to Carr for six minutes. At 22.50 he met a group of special constables. They were standing in the parking area outside the school at 10.50 that night. Huntley approached them with his dog and made a report.

“He said he had been out near the tennis courts near the hangar and had seen a man who was carrying something quite substantial.

“It was black and it may have been a bin bag and this man ran off in the direction of a wooded area near the school.”

Mr Latham said a dog handler had been summoned but none was available so a search on foot was made. Nothing was found.

Mr Latham said Huntley told the story about the man with the bin liner within minutes of speaking to Carr.

He said: “Just minutes after talking to her that night, he is making the report of the man with the bin liner.

“We suggest the bin liner sighting was a total invention on his part but an invention with a purpose.

“Please think about this – you have done something with a bin liner you would rather not admit to because it might cause you problems.

“You hope you have not been seen, you don’t know whether, in fact, you have been seen and you don’t know whether anyone in the ensuing days is going to report having seen someone with a black bin liner doing something suspicious or, indeed, that a bin liner is going to be found.”

Mr Latham added; “You just don’t know if you have got away with it.”

He said to report the sighting first would “in a sense, perhaps, exculpate you”.

Mr Latham said: “If the sighting or finding never happens, it doesn’t matter - if you have reported it, it shows you trying to be helpful.

“We suggest that little report of the man with the bin liner running away, a total invention, shows what we say is a devious and calculating mind.”

He was trying to distract attention from himself, Mr Latham said.

“If you conclude that’s what he was up to, I would invite you to juxtapose that with the telephone call with Maxine Carr.”

Mr Latham said Huntley left Soham on Tuesday to drive to Grimsby to pick up Carr.

Carr said in an interview that she used her mother’s telephone to ring Huntley and see what time he was picking her up.

She said when she called he was somewhere near Sleaford, about 45 minutes away, Mr Latham said.

Mr Latham then described how a neighbour saw Huntley and Carr at Carr’s mother’s house at about 12.20pm.

Huntley and Carr were on the pavement in Cromwell Road, Grimsby, near Carr’s mother’s house.

They were standing near a small red car with their backs to the neighbour.

Describing what the neighbour saw, Mr Latham said: “The car boot was open and both of them appeared to be looking into it.

“Maxine was sobbing and Ian just looked really thin and pale.

“As she opened her gate it made a noise and they both looked round and at her.

“Ian closed the boot.

“Maxine put her head down and continued to cry.

“She (the neighbour) asked Huntley if everything was all right.

“He said rather abruptly ’yes’ and they went inside.

“Members of the jury, remember this: the appearance of the Ford Fiesta had been transformed and we are going to suggest there was a significant transformation in the boot.

“When police seized it 10 days later, they found it no longer possessed a factory-fitted carpet in the boot.

“In its place was a piece of domestic carpet which had been fitted to make a good fit.

“What had been in the boot which had suddenly necessitated a new carpet?”

Mr Latham said that by Tuesday the girls' disappearance had attracted nationwide publicity.

A woman had reported two girls of their description walking along the A10 at Thetford on the Monday and that report had gone nationwide.

The prosecution said the woman must have been wrong.

“We suggest those two little girls were dead on Sunday night, not walking along the A10. But the only person who would know that is the person who had dumped them.”

He said the reported sighting was relevant in two entirely different ways. It had sent police on a wild goose chase. “It was completely distracting to the police investigation.

“And what we invite you to infer was that Huntley was aware of the broadcast and therefore that reported sighting.”

Huntley and Carr had picked up a hitchhiker called Mr James.

“He asked where they were going and Carr had replied ’Soham’. When Mr James had said ’That rings a bell’, Carr allegedly replied ’It is where the girls went missing’.”

Asked by Mr James if she knew the girls, Carr replied: “I used to be their schoolroom assistant.”

Mr Latham said that Huntley then said: “Before that woman who was on the TV last night supposedly saw them, I was the last one to see them alive.”

Mr Latham invited the jury to place significance on what he called a slip of the tongue.

He told the jury that the comment “if it was made to Mr James, not only impacts on Huntley. Carr heard the comment”.

Mr Latham said: “In the light of the details she told police she gleaned from Huntley, we invite you to consider whether that comment indicated her state at the time.”

The trial was then adjourned for lunch.