Huntley in witness box for third day

Alleged double murderer Ian Huntley was facing another grilling from the prosecution at his Old Bailey trial today over the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The former Soham school caretaker was in the witness box for a third consecutive day after facing eight-and-a-half hours of questioning since Monday.

Huntley, 29, was accused yesterday of being “cold and ruthless” in the way he disposed of the 10-year-olds’ bodies.

He lost his temper as prosecutor Richard Latham QC accused him of deliberately drowning Holly in his bathroom on August 4 last year.

He also admitted he killed Jessica moments later, describing how he suffocated her as he tried to silence her screams.

The hushed courtroom heard how Huntley then took the bodies to a remote spot and rolled them into a ditch, cut off their clothing and torched them.

They were not found until August 17.

Huntley denies murdering the girls at his home in Soham, Cambridgeshire, but has admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

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

The prosecution alleges she gave him a false alibi by claiming she was in Soham on the day the girls died, when she was really in Grimsby.