Carr 'could be free in weeks'

Maxine Carr could be freed within weeks after the governor of Holloway Prison approved her application to be released early with an electronic tagging device, it emerged today.

The 26-year-old was sentenced seven weeks ago to three and a half years for conspiring to pervert the course of justice after her partner Ian Huntley murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

She has been in jail since August 2002 and would stay behind bars until mid May if she were to serve half her sentence.

But she could be released early under the home detention curfew scheme. She would be fitted with an electronic tag and alarms would be triggered if she left her house during the curfew.

Ed Willetts, the governor of the women’s prison at Holloway, north London, has approved Carr’s application to join the scheme, The Sun newspaper reported.

A Prison Service spokesman confirmed to PA News that Carr’s papers have been sent by the governor to Martin Narey, head of the Home Office’s National Offender Management Scheme.

Holly and Jessica disappeared in their home village of Soham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2002.

Their bodies were found in a ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, 13 days later.

School caretaker Huntley was sentenced to life in December last year.

The house where he murdered the girls is expected to be demolished in April, education authority officials said yesterday.

Cambridgeshire County Council said arrangements were being made to have the house outside Soham Village College demolished during the Easter holidays.

The nearby storage hangar where Huntley tried to hide the girls’ clothes after killing them would be demolished at the same time, said the spokesman.