Carr points to 'that thing' Huntley in the dock

Maxine Carr broke down in tears at her ex-lover’s Old Bailey murder trial today and said: “I’m not going to be blamed for what that thing in the box has done to me or those children.”

She pointed to her former fiancé Ian Huntley where he stood in the dock, accused of the double child murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Carr, under cross-examination in the witness box, had frequently referred to her ex-lover as “Mr Huntley” or “your client” and said she was scared of him and that he controlled her.

In a moment of extraordinary drama, Carr raised her right hand and pointed directly across the court at Huntley, sobbing as she called him "that thing".

She had earlier insisted he had left her with no choice but to lie, and that she was “pushed into a corner”.

She said other people “had no idea about the relationship she had with Mr Huntley”.

Carr claimed that Huntley told her in front of two police officers: “You have not made a statement, you’re going to have to make a statement.”

She had already lied to a policeman and journalists, saying she was in Soham on the day that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared, when really she was in Grimsby.

She told the jury: “I was pushed into a corner.

“Mr Huntley put me into a position where I couldn’t do anything but do that.

“He was stood there, he was telling the police officer I had to make a statement… I could hardly say ‘No, I’m not, I’ve been telling lies’.”

Carr, 26, has admitted lying to protect her ex-lover but said she never suspected he was involved in the disappearance of the two 10-year-olds, whom she helped to teach.

She denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender.

Huntley, 29, a former caretaker at Soham Village College, denies the double child murder on Sunday August 4 last year but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

The jury has heard that he admits Holly died accidentally in his bath and that he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams, although he insists he did not mean to kill her.

He bundled their bodies into his car, dumped them in the remote ditch where they were found 13 days later, cut off their clothes and torched their corpses.