BRITAIN: In a day of dramatic and often disturbing evidence in the Soham murder trial, Ms Maxine Carr yesterday told the Old Bailey that she would not take the blame for what her former boyfriend, Mr Ian Huntley, whom she referred to as "that thing", allegedly did to the two school friends he is charged with murdering.
Ms Carr (26) spent an intense seven hours in the witness box, during which she was called on to justify having lied about her whereabouts at the time, on August 4th last year, that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman died and in the following two weeks before her arrest.
She was also challenged on her assertion that she at no time believed Mr Huntley, whom she had planned to marry and who has denied murdering the girls, was responsible for their deaths.
Ms Carr is charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice and aiding an offender by lying to police to provide Mr Huntley with an alibi. She has pleaded not guilty. Mr Huntley (29) has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Ms Carr said she had not suspected Mr Huntley in the girls' deaths, despite a series of incidents that the prosecutor, Mr Richard Latham QC, said should have alerted her to his involvement.
Mr Latham questioned Ms Carr in great detail about her actions after August 4th and suggested that not only was she aware that Mr Huntley had killed the 10-year-olds, but that she knowingly lied to police, and in media interviews, to help him cover up his crimes.
Through the course of the day, Ms Carr described Mr Huntley as abusive and controlling, said she was scared of him, that he had emotionally "pushed me into a corner" and that she felt she had no choice but to lie for his sake. She maintained that her sole motivation had been to protect Mr Huntley from being falsely accused of the girls' murder because she believed in his innocence.
She also said she had spoken of the girls in the past tense during a television interview days after their disappearance, not because she knew they were dead by Mr Huntley's hand, but because she no longer worked at their school. She had previously been an assistant teacher in their class.
In one of the most dramatic moments in a long day of evidence, while being cross-examined by Mr Huntley's barrister, Mr Stephen Coward QC, Ms Carr lifted her hand and pointed to where Mr Huntley sat in the dock flanked by uniformed prison officers. In a firm and angry voice, she said: "I know exactly what I have done, sir. I have come in this witness box and I'm not going to be blamed for what that thing in that box has done to me or those children."
She said she had feared Mr Huntley would be sacked from his job as a school caretaker if rape allegations that had been made against him, and subsequently proved false, resurfaced.
The court has already heard that Ms Carr was at the home of her mother, 100 miles from Soham, when the girls were killed. Mr Huntley told the court earlier this week they had died in his house, and that he had disposed of their bodies in a remote ditch and torched them with petrol.
Ms Carr said she returned to Soham on August 6th, when Mr Huntley drove to Grimsby to collect her. She noticed the car, usually a mess, had been cleaned and the carpet in the boot changed.
On returning home, she found the house was not in the mess she had expected, and she was surprised to find that Mr Huntley had changed the sheets and duvet on their bed, placing the previous set in the washing machine. She said that throughout their relationship he had never before done any washing.
Mr Latham said: "What was the first thing that went through your mind?"
Ms Carr: "That he had had a woman in the house."
Mr Latham: "What for?"
Ms Carr: "Sex."
Mr Latham: "The first ever time he had done the laundry he had laundered bed linen and you immediately thought sex?"
Ms Carr: "Yes. With an adult."
Mr Latham: "Not putting too fine a point on it, by thinking of sex you thought he had laundered semen?"
Ms Carr: "Or a smell, perfume, anything like that."
She said it was "disgusting" to suggest that the washing had been connected with the presence of Holly and Jessica in the bedroom, which Mr Huntley had told her about. She had been preoccupied with the plight of the missing girls and had not questioned Mr Huntley's explanations, saying: "He had an answer for everything."
The trial continues.