Soham jurors sent home

13 April 2012

The Old Bailey jury has been sent home after failing to reach verdicts in the Soham murder trial.

The seven women and five men deliberated for just over five hours on Friday and a further six hours today.

Trial judge Mr Justice Moses sent them out shortly after 10.30am today, as the 28-day case reconvened.

Ian Huntley, 29, a former caretaker at Soham Village College, denies murdering Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman on Sunday August 4 last year but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

The jury has heard 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.

His ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant in the 10-year-olds' class, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender.

She has told the jury that she lied to protect her then fiance, giving him a false alibi, but insisted she never suspected he could be involved in the girls' disappearance.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in