Police refuse to reopen Soham case despite Huntley 'confession'

13 April 2012

Police have ruled out reinvestigating the Soham murders despite killer Ian Huntley's confession that his lover Maxine Carr played a greater role.

The move comes on the day the contents of a secret tape made by Huntley while in prison revealed that Carr had prevented him from confessing to the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

He said Carr slapped his face and told him to pull himself together - because she did not want to lose her job as a teaching assistant or the house they shared.

Little girls lost: The last picture of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman hours before they were killed by Ian Huntley

Police sources said detectives had analysed a transcript of the tape prior to details being published in The Sun and concluded it provided no basis for further inquiry.

The tape recording, made by Huntley before he tried to commit suicide, includes a string of previously unknown claims about his crimes.

Among them:

• How police searched the house while Jessica's mobile phone was on the kitchen draining board - but did not realise what it was.

• How he admitted to Holly's father: 'I'm so sorry'

• How he killed Jessica as she tried to escape from his house

• How he tried to commit suicide because prison chiefs would not let him have a budgie.

Huntley, 33, was caretaker of Soham Village College, the secondary school next to the primary the girls attended in the Cambridgeshire town, when he committed the double murder in August 2002.

He first tried to kill himself in 2003 while he was awaiting trial. The second attempt came in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire, last September after he was told officially he would never be freed.

Huntley took a cocktail of pills but doctors saved him. The tape, which he says he made in the expectation he would die, had been given to another inmate in exchange for the pills he took.

The Prison Service confirmed yesterday: "On 5 September 2006 Ian Huntley was found unconscious in his cell.

"He was taken to hospital where he received treatment and returned to HMP Wakefield the next day. Subsequent to what appears to have been a suicide attempt, a tape was found.'

Huntley: 'Tried to commit suicide'

On the tape Huntley claimed that Carr, 30, who served half of a three-and-a-half year sentence for perverting the course of justice by providing him with an false alibi, stopped him from confessing to the murders.

He said: "On Thursday August 15 there was a big conference at the college. The parents were due to come. I said to Maxine that I was going to tell them everything.

"She just slapped me across the face and told me to get my act together. She said that there was no way she was going to risk losing this new job she had got and the house and everything that we had worked for. She said there was no way she was prepared to lose any of that."

Huntley also talked about the role Maxine played in providing his alibi, although she had spent the weekend of the killings with her mother in Grimsby. He said: "It was believed I disposed of Holly and Jessica on the Sunday evening. That wasn't the case. It was actually Monday morning, about 8.30, that I took them to Lakenheath.

"They spent the night in the boot of my car. I rang Maxine on Monday morning, probably quarter to seven, seven o'clock, told her two girls were missing and I was involved.

"During the course of the morning there were several phone calls between me and Maxine. She told me to get my car cleaned, change the tyres and go to the police. I was to tell them I had seen somebody carrying a black bag, looking very suspicious.

"I did all those things. I wasn't thinking straight. She was doing most of the thinking."

Huntley claimed that on that day of the murder he was brushing his dog Sadie, when he saw Jessica and Holly - who had a nosebleed.

He said: "I brought some tissues down to her. At some point I invited them into the house with the motive of trying to help Holly further.

"The nosebleed didn't stop so I took them upstairs to the bathroom. Jessica needed the toilet, so me and Holly went to the master bedroom and Holly sat on the bed.

"I was stood up. Holly got a drop of blood on the sheet, for which she was very apologetic, and I told her not to worry about it. We went back into the bathroom, Holly fell into the bath.

"That was when Jessica started to cause a bit of a commotion. She tried to, and this is where it varies from my testimony in court, she tried to use a mobile phone.

"I grabbed it from her and turned it off as she was constantly saying I had pushed Holly. Once I had grabbed the phone from Jessica and managed to calm her down as much as possible, I turned my attention to Holly. I pulled her from the bath and placed her on the bedroom floor, There were clearly signs of life at that point.

"I took Jessica downstairs to the living room and kept trying to talk to her and tell her I hadn't pushed her. Which Jessica wouldn't accept."

Huntley added: "I was stressed out. I turned to the mantelpiece where my cigarettes were and it was at that point that Jessica stood up and walked towards the door.

Maxine Carr: 'She slapped his face'

"I guess you could say it was a case of, she acted, I reacted, without even thinking. I just grabbed hold of her, realising I couldn't let her go.

"At that point, with one hand over her mouth and the other round her neck, she died. There was no sexual interference with either girl."

During his outpourings, Huntley revealed the moment he feared he was about to be caught by the police as they searched his home.

He said officers missed a vital clue when they failed to notice Jessica's mobile phone lying on the draining board by the kitchen sink.

"On that Monday morning I was washing Jessica's mobile phone in the kitchen sink, to wash fingerprints off, when there was a knock at the door," he claimed.

"I put the phone on the draining board, I went to the door and it was two police officers, a man and a woman.

"They asked if they could come in and ask me some questions and search the property. The fact that the phone was still on the draining board didn't even register.

"They had a look around the house and went into the kitchen. The male officer was actually stood at the draining board, looking out of the window.

"That was the first time I thought, 'I'm done-for here'. But he didn't even notice the phone. They left without seeing it."

The child killer's tape also tells of an apology he tried to make to Holly's grieving father Kevin before his arrest - but he said Mr Wells did not realise that he could have been confessing.

Huntley said: "I actually approached Kevin Wells and I apologised to him. I said to him words to the effect of: 'I'm so sorry Kevin. I had no idea that she was your daughter'.

"I then went home and waited for the knock on the door from the police. As it turned out, Kevin Wells did not realise the significance of exactly what I was saying. I think he misunderstood, misinterpreted what it was I had just said to him."

Huntley said on the tape: "I do believe in God. I don't know what he's got in store for me. Probably not good. But if he's all-knowing and loving, hopefully he'll be aware of what did happen that day. I don't know.

"My feeling is, probably I'm going to Hell. I just hope he knows and everybody else knows how genuinely sorry I am. That's no lie. I have no reason-to lie. By the time everybody hears this tape, I'll be long gone.

"So certainly I've nothing to lie about. I guess there's not much more I can say, so this is where I sign off."

Huntley also revealed his reasons for trying suicide. He claimed it was living with "what happened at Soham", constant fear of attacks and the refusal of prison chiefs to give him a budgie. He said: "Coming to prison I have realised that I'm never really going to have a safe environment in which to live and I have to live with the fear of assaults every day.

"Watching over your shoulder every single day, it grinds you down. It's not good for you. I'm not saying I don't deserve that."

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