A hitch-hiker picked up by Soham accused Mr Ian Huntley two days after Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman vanished was giving evidence today at the caretaker's Old Bailey murder trial.
Mr Huntley travelled to Grimsby to collect his then-girlfriend Ms Maxine Carr from her mother's house, and he travelled back to Soham, Cambridgeshire, on Tuesday August 6th last year.
The pair stopped to pick up hitch-hiker Mr Robert Jeynes and the prosecution alleges that they spoke about the missing 10-year-olds during the journey south.
Mr Jeynes said Ms Carr was "cold and unemotional" when she spoke about the schoolgirls. He said Mr Huntley has commented that up until "last night when a woman appeared on TV who had supposedly seen them, he was he was the last person to see them alive".
When asked by Mr Huntley's defence lawyer if he was sure Mr Huntley had used the word "supposedly", Mr Jeynes said: "He definitely said that because I thought 'you want to be careful because in films it is always the last person to see them alive who gets done for murder.'"
The prosecution claims Mr Huntley murdered the girls on August 4th and put their bodies in the boot of his car before driving them to a remote ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, and dumping them.
Mr Huntley (29) denies murdering the friends but has admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Ms Carr (26), a former classroom assistant at the girls' primary school, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender. The prosecution alleges she gave Mr Huntley a false alibi for the day the girls went missing. Their bodies were found 13 days later on August 17th.
The trial will adjourn early this afternoon as police in London prepare for US President George W. Bush's state visit.