Trial hears more from Maxine Carr's interviews

The double child murder trial of Soham-accused Ian Huntley today heard more disclosures from the police interviews of his ex-girlfriend.

Maxine Carr told police after she and her then boyfriend were arrested on suspicion of the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, that she had given Huntley a fake alibi for Sunday August 4 last year.

She had told police she was in Soham on the weekend the girls vanished – when in fact she was in Grimsby – but said she lied to protect Huntley, who she said was charged with rape in 1998.

Huntley was charged with rape four years before he was accused of the murders but was “acquitted” when the case came to court, she said in her police interview.

She lied for him because he had suffered a nervous breakdown after the rape accusation and feared he would be “fitted up” again, she said.

The former caretaker at Soham Village College told his then girlfriend that she was to tell the truth if they were ever arrested, she claimed.

The jury heard that Huntley and Carr were both arrested on August 17, and that Carr was interviewed later that day.

They today heard more of Carr’s interviews, which were read to the court by prosecution lawyers.

Huntley, 29, denies the double murder of the schoolgirls but has admitted one charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

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