 The girls' families have told of their anguish when they disappeared |
Following two days of visiting sites in Cambridgeshire, the jury in the Soham trial returned to the Old Bailey to see the first witnesses take the stand at the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr. The court also heard the reading of statements from the families of the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who Mr Huntley is accused of murdering. No family members are expected to take the stand. Mr Huntley denies the charges, while Ms Carr denies two charges of assisting an offender and one of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
The key details to come from family and witness statements on Day Six are as follows: - In a statement read to the court by lead prosecution lawyer Richard Latham QC, Holly's mother Nicola said on Sunday 4 August, Holly, Jessica and another friend Natalie Parr were playing on the computer in the Wells' home, before Natalie left at around noon.
- The Wells family hosted a barbeque in the afternoon.
- Mrs Wells said she could not remember hearing the front door go but said it might have been open from bringing food inside.
- At 8.20pm, the guests left the barbeque. When Mrs Wells called up to the girls to come and say goodbye, there was no answer.
- She thought the girls might have been playing at the front because their curfew was not until 8.30pm.
- Mrs Wells said: "At 8.35pm, I started to think she will phone in a moment. At 8.45 maybe 9, I started to panic a bit."
- At 9pm, Mrs Wells phoned Jessica's mother and asked if they were there while Kevin Wells went to look for the girls on his bike, she said.
- Shortly after, Mrs Chapman rang to say she and her husband had gone out to look, and at 9.30pm Mrs Chapman turned up at the Wells' house.
- Mrs Wells said she called Holly's mobile phone soon after she went missing but it was switched off and she found it in her daughter's bedroom at about 9pm that night.
- In another statement, she told police that prior to Holly disappearing, and to the subsequent police search and inquiry, she was not aware of the existence of, nor had she met, Ian Huntley.
 Maxine Carr and Ian Huntley are on trial at the Old Bailey |
- She said she was first aware of the caretaker at an early news conference, when he spoke to her husband.
- She said: "I did not speak to Ian Huntley and I don't know what he said to Kevin as I was standing some distance away."
- Holly had never previously been inside the caretaker's house or Ian Huntley's car, she said.
- She had never spoken to Carr but recalled seeing Holly and Carr hug each other at the end of a majorette practice at Soham Village College.
- Holly's father Kevin Wells described how on the Sunday afternoon Jessica phoned her parents to ask permission to stay over for a barbeque, which was granted.
- After eating, the girls went upstairs to Holly's room and could be heard through the thin floorboards. That was the last time they saw them.
- After a press conference to appeal for information about the girls, Ian Huntley approached Kevin Wells. He said: "Kevin I'm so sorry, I didn't realise it was your daughter"
- Mr Wells said he thanked Huntley for his kind words
- Ian Huntley said he needed to speak to the police to change his timings, and Mr Wells described him as looking "drained, with panda eyes"
- Barbecue guest Robert Wright told the court he and Mr Wells went to the college to search for the girls and found the door unlocked, but they were forced outside by Mr Huntley's dog which was barking and "going mad"
- He said he had never seen Mr Huntley before but the caretaker explained that police had already searched the building.
- A statement from Jessica's mother Sharon Chapman, said she had met Ian Huntley as many as four times previously, She worked at a playschool and he would attend to problems with the toilet and heating.
- Mrs Chapman - a learning skills assistant - worked alongside Carr at St Andrews primary school.
- She said Jessica thought a lot of Ms Carr, and considered her "cool"
- She said on the night of the girls' disappearance she and her husband watched television until about 8.30pm, when Mr Chapman said: "Isn't it about time Jess came home?"
- Mrs Chapman said that Mrs Wells rang at about 8.45pm to ask if the girls were there
- The court also heard a short statement from Jessica's father Leslie Chapman, and from her elder sister Rebecca Chapman.
- Rebecca recalled a conversation with Ian Huntley on the morning of Monday 5 August outside the school. She had asked if the girls might be hiding in the school somewhere, and Mr Huntley replied, "I wouldn't think so. All of the college grounds have already been searched"
- The prosecution's first witness, the girls' teacher Joy Pederson, was called.
- Mrs Pederson said Holly and Jessica were "mature in a sensible way" and that Holly was slightly more dominant.
- She said Ms Carr worked with two classes, and was supposed to divide her time between each, but when free would come to Pederson's class.
- "She tended to gravitate to a group of girls, Holly and Jessica were both in that group. Holly did say she liked Miss Carr very much," she said.
- In cross-examination Michael Hubbard QC suggested Maxine Carr spent a lot of time with the children, sometimes more than she should.
- When he suggested she was a person whose "heart was sometimes ruled by her head", Mrs Pederson replied "yes sometimes".
- Eyewitness Lucy Tuck said her husband Mark spotted the girls walking along the side of the road on the night they disappeared and said, "Oh look, two little Beckhams!"
- Airport fireman David Thomas spotted both girls driving home from work on the Sunday evening.
- The next day he saw CCTV coverage and knew the time superimposed on the recording was wrong. He thought the correct time when he saw the girls was "no earlier than 1823".
- Mobile phone technology expert David Bristowe said Jessica's mobile had "deregistered" from the network at 1846. He said this was either because the phone had been switched off or the battery had failed
|  | WATCH AND LISTEN The BBC's Duncan Kennedy
"On Monday the jury will see for themselves where events are alleged to have taken place"
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