Caretaker: I lied to police over murder of Soham girls

Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr avoided eye contact with each other when they appeared in the dock together for the first time since their arrest eight months ago over the killing of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

The girls' parents were at the Old Bailey yesterday as Mr Huntley, a school caretaker, denied murdering the 10-year-olds from Cambridgeshire. But he admitted that he lied to police when he told them Ms Carr was with him in Soham during the 48 hours surrounding the children's disappearance.

Moments later his 26-year-old former girlfriend, a teaching assistant in the girls' class at St Andrew's Primary School in Soham, denied the joint charge – that she and Mr Huntley, 29, had falsely claimed that she had been in Soham on 4 and 5 August last year. The alleged false claim would have enabled her to corroborate her former boyfriend's account of his activities.

The pair, separated in the dock by one of seven prison officers escorting them, did not exchange glances. Ms Carr, who had previously appeared in court via video links, spent much of the 35-minute hearing staring at her shoes.

For the first 10 minutes, when they entered their pleas to the charges against them, the couple were watched by the families of Mr Huntley's alleged victims, seated in a single row 10 feet in front of the dock.

The Chapman and Wells families arrived together outside the Central Criminal Court shortly before the scheduled start of the hearing at 11am. Whether deliberate or not, it was a symbolic act of unity as they prepared to see the man accused of murdering their daughters for the first time since his arrest on 18 August – the day that the girls were found in woodland near an American air base at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, nearly two weeks after their disappearance.

In the wooden-panelled Court One packed with journalists, Nicola and Kevin Wells, the parents of Holly, sat closest to the dock, their heads level with those of the defendants. Further away on the long wooden bench sat the other parents, Leslie and Sharon Chapman, with Jessica's teenage sisters seated between them.

As the murder charges against Mr Huntley were read out by the court clerk, Holly's parents stared unblinkingly towards the dock. At one moment Mrs Wells, 36, a secretary, shook her head.

Mr Huntley, dressed in a billowing white shirt too big for him and a grey speckled tie, was barely audible as he answered: "Not guilty."

Mr Wells, 39, a contract cleaner, continued to stare intently while the remaining charge, of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, was read out until Mr Huntley was led back down the stairs to the cells for a brief adjournment.

Mr Chapman, 52, an engineer, and his wife, 43, a teaching assistant, glanced briefly at Mr Huntley before looking ahead into the well of the court as the prosecution and defence lawyers made their arguments.

At no stage did Mr Huntley or Ms Carr, dressed smartly in a navy trouser suit and a blue blouse, look towards the families. Nor did a frail-looking Ms Carr, who entered her formal not-guilty pleas in a whisper to two further charges of assisting an offender, return the glances of her former boyfriend before and after he admitted the joint charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

The charge alleges that the couple colluded together during the hunt for Holly and Jessica to tell detectives falsely that "Carr was in Soham on August 4 and 5 and therefore able to corroborate the account of Ian Huntley as to his activities during the said two days".

The schoolgirls were last seen walking near their homes in Soham, near Newmarket, after a barbecue at the house of the Wells family. The search for the children, the largest operation of its type mounted by Cambridgeshire Police, drew massive domestic and international attention.

Mr Huntley, who had arrived at the court from Woodhill prison in Buckinghamshire in a prison van with blacked- out windows, and Ms Carr, who had been driven from Holloway prison in north London, were remanded in custody. Their trial is due to start on 6 October.