British school caretaker Ian Huntley has been found guilty of the murder of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. He has been handed two life sentences.
The 29-year-old was found guilty by majority verdict of 11 to 1 on the fourth day of deliberations.
His former girlfriend Maxine Carr was found not guilty on two counts of assisting an offender but guilty of perverting the course of justice. For that she has been sentenced for 3 1/2 years in prison.
The jury of seven women and five men rejected Huntley's claim that the best friends died accidentally at his home, 5 College Close, in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on August 4th last year.
Huntley, the caretaker at Soham Village College, claimed the 10-year-olds, wearing their Manchester United shirts went inside the college-owned three-bedroom detached house because Holly had a nosebleed.
He tried to convince the jury during more than two days of testimony that Holly drowned in the bath and that he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams. But the Old Bailey jury took over 17 hours to conclude he was lying.
While jurors knew that Huntley had once been charged with raping a teenager, they did not know that he had also been accused of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old and having sex with several other schoolgirls.
Carr (26) who worked with Huntley's victims as a teaching assistant, lied to protect her lover of three years. She claimed she was unaware of his crime, denying a charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender.
PA