BRITAIN: Mr Ian Huntley fought with himself over reporting that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had died in his home but feared that police would not believe the children's deaths had been accidental, he told the Old Bailey yesterday.
Mr Huntley, who is on trial for the murder of the girls on August 4th last year, described his torment as he realised that the 10-year-old friends, wearing identical red Manchester United football shirts, had died in his upstairs bathroom.
"I kept thinking, how do I explain this to the police? If you can't believe what has happened yourself, how can you expect the police to believe it?" he said.
Giving evidence on the 20th day of the trial, Mr Huntley said he could not remember what happened immediately after the girls had died, and he was still unclear exactly how their deaths had happened. He has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Answering questions from his barrister, Mr Stephen Coward QC, Mr Huntley said that Holly and Jessica had come to his house to ask after his then-girlfriend Maxine Carr, who had been an assistant teacher in their class but had failed to secure permanent employment at the end of term.
Ms Carr (26) is also standing trial, charged with helping Mr Huntley concoct a false alibi. She has pleaded not guilty.
While the three chatted outside Mr Huntley's house, Holly's nose began bleeding, he said. The court has already heard Holly had a history of spontaneous nosebleeds, though Mr Huntley said he knew nothing of this.
When her nosebleed appeared to worsen, he and both girls had gone to the upstairs bathroom to find tissues. The bath was half-full, he said, because he planned to wash his dog, which had run off and returned home filthy.
As he passed tissues to Holly, who was sitting on the edge of the bath, he had slipped on a bathmat and fallen onto her.
She was flung backwards into the bath, he said.
Jessica, standing near the bathroom door, began screaming in a high-pitched voice: "You pushed her, you pushed her," he said.
"When Holly fell into the bath, I was stood there waiting for some movement or for her to get up," Mr Huntley told the court. "There was no movement, I just panicked and froze. I couldn't think." In an effort to stop Jessica's screams, which he said added to his panic, he put a hand over her face. "I was trying to stop her from screaming so I could think," he said. Eventually, he thought he should help Holly out of the bath, and when he let go of Jessica, she slumped to the floor.
Jessica's condition had not registered with him, he said, because "my main priority now was to get Holly out of the bath." He pulled Holly's limp body to the bathroom floor and checked her neck and wrist for a pulse, but found none. Then he checked Jessica for signs of life, also to no avail.
He did not try to resuscitate the girls, he said.
He said all he could recall from the following moments was sitting on the bathroom floor next to the girls' bodies, a pool of his own vomit nearby.
Deciding against calling the police, he moved Holly and Jessica's bodies downstairs, and put them, along with bin bags and a can of petrol, in the boot of his car and drove aimlessly until he found a remote field in Lakenheath, about 16 miles away.
There, after finding a deep, water-filled ditch, Mr Huntley said he "opened the boot of the car and picked up one of the girls - I'm not sure which one. The bank of the ditch was too steep for me to carry the girls down so I had to place her at the top of the ditch so she rolled down. I then returned to the car and did the same" with the other body.
He then climbed into the ditch and, fearing the football shirts would not burn, cut them from the bodies. He then doused the girls' remains with petrol and set them alight, he said.
He never returned to the ditch, he said, but spent the next two weeks until his arrest on August 17th weaving a web of deceit about his role in the girls' deaths to Ms Carr, the Wells and Chapman families, neighbours, journalists and the police.
The trial continues.