BRITAIN: Jurors in the trial of Mr Ian Huntley, a former school caretaker charged with murdering schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, visited the site yesterday where their bodies were dumped in a ditch.
On the second of a two-day visit to key sites involved in the trial, the seven women and five men of the jury were taken to woodland in Suffolk where the girls' bodies were found at the end of an agonising 13-day search in August 2002.
On Monday, jurors visited various places in the girls' home town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, including the house at Number 5 College Close where Huntley lived and where prosecutors say he murdered the girls on the evening of Sunday August 4, 2002.
Last week, the jury at the Old Bailey heard that 10-year-olds Holly and Jessica died in Huntley's house, probably from asphyxiation. Their burned and decomposed bodies were found by chance after two weeks, side by side in a drainage ditch near Lakenheath in Suffolk, about 15 miles from Soham.
Prosecutor Richard Latham has told the court that Huntley was unlikely to deny that Holly and Jessica went into his house on the evening they vanished and that they died there. Latham has dismissed any idea that the girls could have died by accident, saying Huntley murdered them and then carefully planned how to hide the bodies and cover his tracks. Latham said Huntley, 29, who knew the Lakenheath area, went to the ditch twice -- once to dump the girls and again three days later to burn their bodies in a bid to erase DNA evidence. He also said fibres from the girls' distinctive red football shirts had been found on Huntley's clothes and on the carpets in his house.
Prosecutors say Huntley's former girlfriend, Maxine Carr, conspired to cover up the crime. Carr, 26, denies assisting an offender and perverting the course of justice, but is not accused of murder.