BRITAIN: The man charged with murdering the Soham schoolgirls agreed at the Old Bailey yesterday that he had killed one of the 10-year-old friends by holding a hand over her face and ignoring her struggle as she suffocated to death.
It was the first time that Mr Ian Huntley (29) has publicly admitted that he killed either of the girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. The day before, he had admitted only that he was responsible for their deaths in what he had hitherto described as an accident.
In a day of dramatic revelations and fierce exchanges yesterday with the prosecutor, Mr Richard Latham QC, Mr Huntley, a former school caretaker who has denied two murder charges, made a series of admissions before the jury hearing his trial in Court No 1.
"I would say that one died as a result of my inability to act and the other died as a direct result of my actions," he said of Holly and Jessica. Yesterday, in his second day of testimony as part of his defence, he elaborated on the way in which Jessica Chapman died in his bathroom.
He is aiming to convince the jury that the girls died as a result of a bizarre sequence of accidents, not, as the prosecution asserts, that he planned their deaths, lured them into his house and killed them in cold blood.
He has already told the court that Holly fell backwards into a bath of water, the implication being that she hit her head, was knocked unconscious and drowned.
He has said he froze with panic and did not help the child from the bath, thus saving her life, because he was unable to think of what to do.
As Holly lay motionless in the bath, Jessica began screaming, he said. He demonstrated how he had placed one hand over her mouth and nose and insisted that he could not remember what he was doing with his other hand.
Under cross-examination by Mr Latham, Mr Huntley answered a barely-audible "Yes" when asked if he had killed Jessica by holding his hand over her face in an attempt to stop her screaming.
In one of a number of emotional exchanges, Mr Huntley eventually admitted that his other hand had "possibly restrained somehow" the child he agreed was fit and active and who would have at that time been struggling for her life.
Mr Latham asked: "If you had given that girl the slightest chance she would have lived, wouldn't she?"
Mr Huntley: "Yes."
Mr Latham: "You didn't give her the slightest chance, did you?"
Mr Huntley: "No."
Mr Latham: "No, and that sort of thing doesn't happen accidentally does it, Mr Huntley?"
Mr Huntley: "I didn't mean to kill her."
Mr Latham challenged Mr Huntley's assertion that Holly's death had been accidental, suggesting that "the only way that child would have drowned in the bath is if you were holding her under the water".
"I was not holding her," Mr Huntley said.
Mr Latham: "Jessica was screaming because you were murdering Holly, that's the truth, isn't it?"
Mr Huntley: "No."
After this exchange, Mr Latham suggested to Mr Huntley that he had a temper. "You can get angry, can't you, Mr Huntley?"
He suggested that Mr Huntley had lost his temper with the girls on the afternoon they died, to which he replied: "I had no reason to lose my temper."