Court hears of hunt for Holly and Jessica

Searchers involved in the hunt for schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were giving evidence today at the trial of their alleged murderer.

Witnesses from the girls’ home town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, UK, travelled to the Old Bailey for the 10th day of the double child murder trial as the prosecution focused on the activities of accused Ian Huntley on the night the girls vanished.

Townspeople, police officers and officials from Soham Village College, where Huntley worked as a caretaker, were listed to give evidence.

Huntley, 29, denies murdering the 10-year-old friends but has admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

His ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the girls’ primary school, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.

The prosecution alleges she gave Huntley a false alibi for the day the girls went missing, Sunday August 4 last year. Their bodies were found in a remote ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, 13 days later.