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Wales Online
Wales Online
Lifestyle
Karen Price

The Soham Murders: What happened to Maxine Carr, girlfriend of killer Ian Huntley?

They were the brutal murders that shocked the nation.

Best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were just 10 years old when they were murdered by school caretaker Ian Huntley in 2002 in Soham, Cambridgeshire.

Now, 20 years on, a three-part TV documentary is examining the case. The first episode, Soham: The Murder of Holly & Jessica, will air on Wednesday, March, 9 on Channel 5 at 9pm and will explore the horrific case that saw the two girls murdered by someone they trusted and how their killer tried to cover his tracks. You can read the full story here.

Read more: Netflix's Inventing Anna: The true story of the fraudster heiress and the victims that lost hundreds of thousands of dollars

Carr lied during the investigation and told police she was at home with Huntley when Holly and Jessica disappeared when she in fact was not there.

Jessica and Holly (Shutterstock)

A search of Huntley's house and grounds of Soham Village College, where Huntley worked as a caretaker, found items of clothing that the girls were wearing when they disappeared.

After finding the clothes both Huntley and Carr were arrested and after this Huntley refused to answer any questions and the police had to refer him to have a psychological evaluation.

Carr however quickly confessed that she had given Huntley a false alibi, saying that Huntley had told her the girls had come into their house as Holly had a nosebleed.

Once told of the evidence against Huntley, Carr began to cry and said that she didn't believe he had murdered the girls and defended his innocence throughout the investigation.

Huntley was charged with two accounts of murder and Carr was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice and was later charged with two counts of assisting an offender.

During the trial, Huntley claimed the deaths were accidental, but he was found guilty and displayed no show of emotion when this was announced in court, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

What happened to Maxine Carr?

Carr was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and found not guilty of assisting an offender and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison - she served just 21 months of her sentence before she was released.

She is one of only four former UK prisoners protected by a lifelong anonymity order — along with child killer Mary Bell and James Bulger’s murderers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.

Since her release from prison in 2004 it has cost the taxpayer around £2.5million to provide Carr with a new identity and police protection.

She has since rebuilt her life - and even married her new boyfriend - who knew about her past - in a lavish ceremony wearing a £2,000 ivory dress.

But her new husband’s relatives were said to be stunned at his decision to marry Carr after learning of her shameful past.

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