Maxine Carr 20 years after Soham - 'White wedding, motherhood and besotted husband'

Maxine Carr 20 years after Soham - 'White wedding, motherhood and besotted husband'

Maxine Carr was granted lifetime anonymity after providing child killer Ian Huntley with an alibi for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
(Image: Getty Images)

ByFrances KindonShowbiz Features Writer

   10:11, 4 Aug 2022Updated20:37, 4 Aug 2022

It was twenty years ago today that schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared on their way to buy sweets in the sleepy town of Soham, Cambridgeshire.

Almost two weeks later, the bodies of the 10 year olds were found in woodland having been murdered by evil school caretaker, Ian Huntley.

His live-in partner Maxine Carr, now 45, worked as a teaching assistant at the little girls' school, and gave him a false alibi.

She was jailed for 42 months, and was released from Foston Hall prison in Derbyshire in May 2004 after serving half her sentence.

But the strength of public hatred meant she had to be given a new identity by the courts and given round-the-clock protection.

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She was moved to more than 10 different safe houses in two years, and in 2011 it was reported that she had given birth to her first child - a son - in a secret safe house.

In 2012 she was believed to have started a serious relationship with a man who is aware of her past.

As of 2014, she was said to have been living in a seaside town.

The town cannot be named because of the lifetime anonymity order granted to Maxine Carr by the High Court ten years ago.

She is just one of four ex-UK prisoners protected by lifelong anonymity – along with James Bulger's murderers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables and child killer Mary Bell.

And that same year she apparently got married to a man in a £2,000 wedding with all the trimmings.

According to the Daily Mail, the pair tied the knot at a secret hotel, with the bride wearing a £2,000 ivory dress.

Her husband-to-be walked her down the aisle, sources said, adding that they feasted on a three-course wedding breakfast and drank £10 bottles of sparkling wine before honeymooning at a family-friendly resort.

Insiders claimed her husband was fully aware of who she is and was 'absolutely besotted' with her.

However, the news is said to have been a bitter pill for the heartbroken mothers of Holly and Jessica, who never got to see their daughters grow up and build a life of their own.

"The families of Holly and Jessica will never get to see their daughters marry," a source told the newspaper.

"They will never get to enjoy their big day.

"They have nothing to look forward. Why should she?"

The search for Holly and Jessica was one of the biggest the country has ever seen. Hundreds of local people volunteered along with US Air Force staff from a nearby base to trawl the countryside.

Every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire was interviewed but there seemed to be no trace of the primary school pupils.

A massive media appeal kept Holly and Jessica on the front pages of every paper and in every news bulletin and for 13 days no stone was left unturned.

Chillingly, Huntley himself was interviewed by reporters and even helped in the search for Holly and Jessica.

Carr was also keen to speak to the press and in one interview she bragged about how much she had clearly meant to little Holly especially.

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She showed reporters a card Holly had made for her on the last day of term to thank her for being such a good teaching assistant.

Speaking to a TV reporter, Carr said: "No one believes they would ever run away.

"They were very close to their families. This is something that I will keep for the rest of my life.

"It's what Holly gave me on the last day of term and there's a poem written inside saying 'to a special teaching assistant' and that we will miss her and we will see her in the future.

"That was the kind of girl she was, she was just really lovely."

Her chilling slip was spotted almost instantly - she had referred to Holly in the past tense.

Only those who knew what had really happened to the best friends would know that they had been killed.

Suspicion was now starting to fall on the pair, who were taken in for questioning 12 days after Holly and Jessica disappeared.

The following day a gamekeeper made harrowing discovery - Holly and Jessica were found lying side by side in a ditch close to an RAF base in Suffolk, 10 miles from Soham.

On August 20 Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and Carr was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

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Jailed for perverting the course of justice eh ?

And who exactly has paid for this felons anonymity over the years .... as if I didn't know.

Whilst folk are struggling to survive, this is an example of how the system spends their hard earned cash - you know, the cash the system steals from you in the first place through taxes.

It is one of the cases where journalists were able to cross-examine in more depth than police officers would have been allowed under the rules.
Another case was the couple who burned their children alive, trying to get a bigger house – because they had so many children !

The journalists and reporters are allowed to carry on asking questions even AFTER it becomes obvious that the person is beginning to incriminate her/himself.
A police officer has to stop at that point and give the Caution, which normally shuts down the interview, and if what has been said allows reasonable suspicion, to make an arrest, which shuts it down completely.  (PACE 1984, Code C)

Journalists are in this immensely privileged position, and in my view have a responsibility to Society at large to use it wisely and for greater good of the greater number.
They are then free to write their articles about how "They cracked the XYZ case"

Whoever posted this comparison with the holly wells Jessica chapman case if I had a hat I’d tilt it we’ll done enough said.

Ian Huntley was innocent.

Those two girls in Soham were murdered by US military personnel.