Huntley was on rape charge
Soham accused Ian Huntley was charged with rape in 1998, his Old Bailey murder trial heard today.
The jury heard details of a police statement made by his ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr on August 17 last year after the couple were both arrested on suspicion of the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
In the statement, Carr said: "The reason why I told the police I was at home was because my partner Ian, he was accused in 1998 of attacking a girl, of raping a girl."
She said the case went to court and that he was "acquitted" but that he subsequently suffered "a nervous breakdown".
The prosecution alleges that Carr gave Huntley a false alibi for the day the ten-year-old girls went missing, Sunday, August 4 last year. Their bodies were found 13 days later.
Carr, a former classroom assistant at the girls' primary school, had initially told police she was with Huntley in Soham the weekend the girls disappeared. In the interview she revealed that she had been in Grimsby.
Carr said the reason she had not told the truth was because her partner "was accused in 1998 of attacking a girl, raping a girl".
She said: "He was put in prison or a bail hostel or whatever."
Carr said he was cleared when "police came up with a video of him in a nightclub at the time it was supposed to have happened". But she said that he then had a "nervous breakdown".
Carr told the police in the interview: "When I found out he was the last person to speak to them (the girls) I just did not know what to do."
She said Huntley had told her to tell the police that she was in Grimsby. Carr said Huntley had told her he had "not done anything".
She told officers: "He just hasn't done anything. He just doesn't do anything like that."
She described speaking to Huntley on Monday and he told her he had been out all night searching with the police.
Carr said Huntley rang her all weekend because she had an eating disorder and he wanted to make sure she was eating.
Earlier, the jury heard a pathologist cast doubt on Huntley's account of how they died.
Home Office pathologist Nat Cary said it was "unlikely at the least" Holly could have drowned in Huntley's bath as a result of a fall.
He also expressed surprise that there was no evidence of Holly's blood on her top or elsewhere if she had gone to the bathroom because of a severe nosebleed, as Huntley claims.
The Old Bailey jury heard former school caretaker Huntley's version of events for the first time yesterday.
His lawyer Stephen Coward QC said Huntley claimed Holly died after falling into his water-filled bath as he tried to treat her for a nosebleed.
Jessica died as Huntley put his hands over her mouth to try to stop her screams, the court heard.
The admissions yesterday came as Dr Cary gave evidence about the state of the girls' bodies when they were found, 13 days after they vanished on August 4 last year.
The jury has heard that Huntley admits putting the two lifeless 10-year-olds in his red Ford Fiesta and driving them to the remote ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, where their bodies were found.
The prosecution alleges that Huntley murdered the two girls, but says it cannot put forward a definitive version of events after they entered his home, sometime after 6.30pm on Sunday August 4.
Dr Cary said yesterday Huntley's version of events had never been put to him before and he was given permission to study it last night and discuss it with the forensics officers who examined Huntley's house.
Today Dr Cary told the court that drowning in bathrooms usually happened when people were drunk or on drugs.
He added that he was not aware of any previous cases where someone was drowned in such a confined space when there were two other people present.
He continued: "It does seem unlikely at the least that a fit 11-year-old girl (sic) could have slipped into a pre-run bath of water and drowned in the presence of two others. Why no rescue of Holly?
"Drowning would take some time, it's not instantaneous. The restraint, the covering of the nose and mouth of Jessica prevented her, I would suggest, from being able to rescue her friend from the bath, if that's what happened."
Dr Cary then turned to the description of what happened to Jessica.
The expert said he would normally associate smothering with the elderly or the very young, meaning infants, and occasionally the intoxicated.
He added: "Jessica was none of these. She was a fit, conscious young girl.
"In my view the only way in which she could have been smothered to death would have been through forced restraint against vigorous struggling.
"You cannot just smother in mid-air, sitting on the edge of a bath.
"You would have to either force them up against something in order to cover the nose or mouth, perhaps a wall, or put your hand behind the head and smother with the other."
The pathologist said that in either case, the amount of "vigorous struggling" that anyone would carry out in such a situation it would be obvious to the other person as to what was happening.
He added: "I would not expect such smothering to be capable of causing rapid death."
He said again that compression of the neck could occasionally cause rapid death through loss of airway through the nose or mouth, but added: "It would take many seconds and would very likely go through a loss of consciousness."
He added: "Therefore to complete the task, the nose or mouth would have to continue to be covered when Jessica had already collapsed unconscious.
"I find it wholly implausible that Jessica somehow is smothered to death in an upright posture."
Huntley, 29, denies the double murder of the schoolgirls but has admitted one charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Carr, 26, denies the conspiracy charge and two counts of assisting an offender.
The case continues.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...1161?view=Text
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